Bear The Blaze (Firebear Brides 3) by Anya Nowlan Read Free Book Online Page B

comfortable in, and failing miserably. After a while, Ragnar was reduced to staring at the ceiling, deep in thought.
    A lot of things were suddenly happening in his life. He’d gotten everything in order in Phoenix. Everything ran the way it was supposed to there. He had his schedule and he stuck to it and didn’t deviate. Having structure was important for an addict.
    Pressing his hands behind his head, Ragnar stared into the darkness. He could make out the ridges in the wood, the small spines and shapes allowing his eyes to track lazily across the length of the ceiling. The room felt too empty. He felt too empty. A few years ago, it would have immediately made him reach for a bottle.
    But this time, he actually had a reason.
    The rest of the Hamiltons didn’t know this about him. He’d never shared it with anyone but Rhodes, and he was out of touch more than he was in Ragnar’s life these days. Searching for a reason why he’d fallen into the whiskey and neglected to get up for several years hadn’t been hard to find. He just had to turn over a couple of stones and rifle through his subconscious, and ta-da—a perfectly viable excuse.
    Ragnar scoffed to himself. He wasn’t the kind of man to make excuses. Not anymore. Now, he knew that seeing his father die had done a number on both him and Rhodes. It was the guilt that got him, he figured. Rhodes had turned into an adrenaline junkie and Ragnar had flitted through life until he found a friend in the bottom of a glass. He had to count his blessings that he’d managed to find the strength, or more like his bear had managed to find the strength to get out of it when he did.
    But times like this, his mouth was still dry and parched, longing for a taste of sweet abandon.
    Seeing Slade and Sear had brought it all back. The memories he’d ignored, but now couldn’t understand how he hadn’t seen them before. Power of the mind: blocking out that which has the greatest potential to harm. On the other hand, it also took him a step closer to figuring out what was going on now.
    The coincidences were far too large to be brushed away as random happenstance. The pattern was the same as twenty-plus years ago. And he was willing to bet that the culprits were too. And just like last time, the Hamilton brothers were in the thick of things.
    Ragnar muttered a groan that was somewhere between a growl and a curse. If there’d been a bottle near him now, he was positive that he’d be tearing the cap off with his teeth and downing it with reckless abandon. The fires and the past were not the only things on his mind. Abigail Ramirez had managed to monopolize a large chunk of it too, and she was another “something” he wasn’t paying enough attention to.
    There was no doubt in his mind that she was The One. His mate. The one he was meant to live the rest of his days with, in sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, fires or no fires. But how could he tie down a woman like her—so vivacious and full of life—with someone like him who was practically teetering on the verge of being dead inside?
    Gnashing his teeth together, Ragnar closed his eyes, willing himself to fall asleep. But sleep never came and he didn’t expect it to. Not really. There was too much on his mind, distracting him and keeping him questioning everything he did.
    It wouldn’t be fair to her to commit herself you, he told himself, trying desperately to convince himself of what his rational brain knew, but his bear and emotional side refused to listen to. You’d ruin her, just like you’ve ruined yourself. You know this. So why do you insist?
    It was a good question, he thought. Why? Why couldn’t he ignore her and put her out of his mind? Well of course he couldn’t forget about her. Having met her, Ragnar knew that every day without her would be pure torture. If the past didn’t drive him back to the bottle, losing Abigail definitely would. But could he really be that selfish and go to her, admit