by Elle Thorne
“No!” he ordered his bear. “You can’t do this.”
His pleas made no difference to the bear’s actions as he pulled himself free of the soul binding that kept them together.
“You need a witch. You can’t do this on your own,” he tried to convince his bear.
And yet, the bear kept on splitting their soul binding, tearing it apart, rendering them into two separate beings.
Baldy stared at him. “You can’t do this.”
Could he see the bear was pulling away from him? How did this work?
The big man growled, his shift beginning. “I can’t shift now. Make your bear stop. It’s forcing my wolf to shift.” He dropped the tranq gun, his hands now paws, huge ones with claws, completely unable to hold on to the pistol.
“Stop this,” he beseeched his bear. “He’s no longer a threat.”
The bear stopped ripping their soul binding apart and paused, letting Dunn hear Meri’s heartbeat, how weak it was, how slow. Then he grumbled in Dunn’s mind, urging him to let the bear take over, promising not to reassume with shredding their binding.
“Do it. If it will save her, do it. Just fucking do whatever you have to do.”
His bear needed no more encouragement to push for a shift, taking over Dunn’s body with a swiftness that left him breathless after an agonizing stretching of muscles, lengthening of bones, realigning of sinew.
Dunn’s bear roared, the sound filling the forest, reverberating off the trees. He charged toward the still shifting wolf, and, with one defining swipe of his paw, his six-inch-long claws decapitated the wolf, leaving a headless lupine twitching on the ground.
The bear chuffed his satisfaction then dove toward Meri, shifting mid-leap, leaving a dazed Dunn laying in his human body, right next to her. He felt for her pulse. It was so weak.
It was time for him to do his thing. A thunderous sound rolled through his head. Spinning lights, purple, red, blue, black, they all swirled in his vision as he surrendered his control to dying. He focused on Meri, watching her as the spiraling lights cast different colored shadows across her features.
He leaned close to do something that had absolutely nothing to do with the act of taking her death from her. He placed his lips on hers, let them rest there while he breathed her in, then he surrendered to death and entered the black hole that grew in front of him. A chill settled in his body, turning colder and colder as he yielded to death.
Chapter Fourteen
Meri gasped for breath. Her stomach was on fire. She clutched at it and sat up, only to find she was on a pallet made of blankets in the middle of a forest and two people she had never seen before were watching her. A man with a scar on his face and a woman with dark-brown eyes that held flashes of indigo flames.
It took a moment for her to gain orientation, to remember. “Wha—wait. What—” She moved her hands, peered down at her shirt. Blood. “He shot me.” She flailed wildly, turning around, looking left and right. Not far from her a mound of freshly turned dirt—the right size to fit a human—rose from a bed of rust-colored pine needles. “Dunn?” She crawled to the grave, lay her head on the dirt and sobbed. She sobbed and sobbed, and finally when she stopped, she glanced up again to find the man and the woman watching her silently.
She inspected her blood-covered shirt. “How am I alive?” She undid two buttons and pulled them away. A scar from a bullet wound. Completely healed over. “N-no. This isn’t possible.”
“Your baby’s fine,” the man said.
She grabbed the dirt in her fists. “Baby? What baby? What are you?” She shook her head, completely confused. “What happened to Dunnigan Youngblood? Where’s the guy who shot me? The hybrid man-beast thing.”
“Dunn’s right there.” The woman pointed to a separate pallet. “The other one’s buried there.” She indicated the mound Meri was still practically laying on.
She jumped up. “What? The bald guy? The one that shot me? He’s dead? And what happened to Dunn?” She ran to the other pallet and dropped to her knees, studying Dunn’s face. He was pale. Deathly pale. She checked his pulse. Dead. Again. And this time, for real. “It can’t be. He didn’t survive the first time to die now.” She wanted to sob, but she was all sobbed out. She leapt to her feet and went to the mound of dirt, kicking it, making it fly all over the place. “You motherfucker. You killed him. You bastard!”
The woman put her arms around her. “Your baby.”
“I don’t have a baby. I’m not pregnant. What makes you think I am?” Meri realized her voice sounded hysterical. Well, maybe because I am hysterical. Who could blame me?
The woman turned to the man, her expression spoke volumes, but Meri had no clue what they were communicating.
She turned to Dunn, took his hand. “I’m sorry.”
The woman put her arm around her. “My name is Mae. Mae Forester. We’re going to take Dunn. He should—”
“How do you know Dunn? How did you find us?”
“Us?” The big man with the scar that split his face finally spoke. “What are you doing with Dunnigan?”
Meri’s paranoia radar started throwing flags her way. “How do you know Dunn? How did you know where we were?” Maybe these were more people from Razorpeak. Though they didn’t seem hostile, and they seemed to care about Dunn. And they’d buried the bald man-beast. She appraised their eyes. They appeared sincere. They seemed like honest people.
“It’s a long story,” the man said. “My name is Larsen. They call me Griz. Dunnigan and I go way back. His brother’s been searching for him. I’m helping his brother. Your turn.”
She’d heard that name. Dunn had said it… But still, she crossed her arms over her chest, looking from one to the other. “Not my turn. What makes you think I’m pregnant?”
Another glance between the man and the woman. Finally, the woman said, “Are you sure you aren’t?”
Meri thought back. When was the last time—damn it. It had to have been at least a couple of months. But no—she couldn’t—there was no way. Was there? The scientist in her battled it out with the woman in her. There was a way. Sure. That was what happened when you had sex. That was a risk, even when you thought you were safe sometimes.
She pushed all thoughts of that aside. There were too many loose ends here. “How did you know to find us here?” Paranoia, panic, and hysteria were converging in her mind. “How the hell did you know?”
The woman called Mae put her hand out to Larsen, as though telling him to stay back, then she stepped closer to Meri. “You don’t know any of us, but we are on Dunn’s side. His brother Slate. His girl, Lana, all of us, all of us at Bear Canyon Valley, all of us, we are Dunn’s friends.”
Bear Canyon Valley? That was the place Dunn mentioned. And the name Griz, that was someone Dunn wanted to get a hold of. It seemed these were his friends after all.
“Let me get you home,” Mae said. “I’m sure it’s been quite an ordeal for you. It would be. For anyone. But especially for a pregnant woman.” She put an arm around Meri.
Chapter Fifteen
Dunn sat up. He took stock of his location. A room. A cozy room. No forest. A room with a mountain theme, a pine-scented candle, and rustic wood furniture.
And no bald shifter trying to kill him. He’d been captured. No, wait, he killed the shifter. He’d—
Meri!
He needed to find her. He flew out of the bed, hobbled to the door—rigor mortis was a bitch after a deathbend—and opened it, only to come face to face with Griz and another shifter.
“Welcome back to the living,” Griz said with a grin that would have passed for a grimace because of his scar.
“Where the hell am I?” Dunn’s gaze was locked onto the shifter net to Griz. He didn’t know this one, and, at the moment, his trust factor was running low.
“I’m Doc Evans,” the other shifter introduced himself. “It’s good to see you alive. I’m fascinated by this skill of yours. Maybe sometime you’d like to answer a question or two,
if—”
“Where’s Meri?” Dunn glanced behind them. A thought occurred to him. One he didn’t want to face. One that made his bear rumble. “She made it right? She’s alive?”
Griz nodded. “She’s alive. Mae took her home two days ago.”
“Home?” He rubbed his head to clear the fog of deathbending and the confusion at the notion she had returned to Notre Dame. “What about…? They’re hunting me, you know.”
“You’re safe here,” Doc Evans assured him.
“Where exactly is here?”
“Bear Canyon Valley. You’re Mae’s guest at the moment. We’ll move you to the tunnels if it looks like anyone is coming this way.” Griz patted him on the shoulder. “I’m thinking you’re hungry.”
Sure. Of course, he was. But more important, he wanted to know more about Meri. “What happened with Mer—Dr, Meredith Morales?”
“She was in quite a bit of shock.” Griz led him to the room, pulled out a drawer on the dresser, and drew forth a pair of jeans, briefs, and a T-shirt, socks. Then nodded toward the closet. “Boots in there. A variety of sizes. We keep extras here. Clothing, shoes, everything, because you never know.”
Not one for false modesty, Dunn stripped and redressed. “She was in shock, and then what?”
“The baby seemed to have survived the shooting and the deathbending. Even the shock. You knew she was expecting?”
He nodded. “I heard the heartbeat when”—his memory flashed back to that moment—“when I was in the morgue at Razorpeak.” He’d meant to ask her about it, but they had way too much going on.
“What do you know about the explosion at Morgan’s Run?” Griz asked.
Dunn shoved his foot into a boot. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Griz slammed his fist into his palm. “I wondered about that. Saizon probably did it. Maybe he was drawing us away from you.”
He shrugged. “I do know Saizon’s involved with the wolf shifter I had to relieve of his head. And with Wheeler.”
“Huh. Maybe Saizon’s gone to the wrong side,” Griz surmised. “Let’s go downstairs and get you some food.”
He cocked his head. “I don’t even know who’s on the wrong side at this point. Can we get back to Meri?”
“She’s carrying your child?”
What the hell? He pursed his lips. “I just met her.”
“You seem to be invested in her,” Doc said.
Dunn side-eyed him. They weren’t friends, so where was he getting off coming up with assessments?
“She seemed equally so in you,” Griz noted.
He did a doubletake. “What makes you say that?”
“She broke down when she thought you were dead and buried.”
“So, she thinks I’m dead.”
Griz nodded. “Though she muttered about thinking you were dead once before. Can you elaborate?”
“Yeah. She saw me come out of a deathbend. I told her I must have been in a coma or something. I thought I might have her convinced, but she looked at my blood under a microscope or something. Saw abnormalities. Not to mention, she saw the wolf shifting. So, I’m sure she…” He shrugged. “Who the hell knows what she believes?”
In his mind, Dunn’s bear released a low rumbling growl, as if all of this was Dunn’s fault.
“She’s better off without me in her life,” he said aloud, mostly for his bear, but also as a reminder to himself he was in way over his head with emotions for this woman. And how could that be? What the fuck was up with that insta-love shit? He had never been that way. Maybe closer to insta-lust would describe him in the past. But emotions? So quickly? Without even having had sex? Who did that shit? Not him!
And yet…
“They’re waiting,” Griz prodded him.
“They?”
“Well, Mae and a couple others. And they’ve got Slate bugging the shit out of them. He wants to video chat with you. To make sure you’re alright and all that.”
“Say, how’d you find us?” Dunn asked as they headed down the stairs.
Lana had a vision. Slate called to tell us he thought you were at Razorpeak. I called Flix—”
“Wait. Flix? He’s alive?” That bald son of a bitch wolf shifter had convinced him Flix was dead. Maybe he was dead, and…
“Flix is downstairs. He got the shit beat out of him, but he didn’t give anything up. They did, however, take a disk drive, and, judging from the fact they found you, they discovered the secret entrance designed into Razorpeak.”
“Yeah. They found it. And me—us. But I thought they’d killed him.”
“Not for lack of trying,” Doc added. “Most shifters wouldn’t have survived what Flix did.”
Flix was a shifter. He’d been in the freelancing business of acquiring and dispensing information.
Down the stairs, a hallway to the left, and then they were in a bright, shiny kitchen with a table that would’ve done a military chow hall proud. It was so long, sat a group of shifters and a few humans. Judging from their auras, a witch or two. At the head of the table, a laptop faced them.
A brunette stepped forward. “I’m Mae. Welcome.”
Dunn studied the attractive woman. She was the one Griz said took Meri home. He had some questions for her. She met his gaze with an openness that immediately drew him to her. He’d heard of a Mae, a long time ago. She was Brad Forester’s mate. If this was her… “Forester?”
“Used to be. I’m an Evans now.” She looped her arm around Doc Evans’s waist.
Griz pulled the bench out from the table and flipped the laptop to face him then began punching on keys. “Mae was alone for far too long after she lost Brad. Glad she found Doc.”
This only made him think of Meri. Of how she— Why the hell was he thinking of her? She was carrying another man’s baby. She clearly had someone. His bear roared a reprimand, but Dunn pushed him away. Pure foolishness to have thought he had something with her. It was obviously one-sided. The feelings he thought might be shared—the beginnings of something—all in his imagination. All the product of adrenaline, adventure, and camaraderie.
“She’s back home,” Mae said, as though reading his mind. “I personally walked her to her apartment door.”
“Good.” What else could he say? He couldn’t spill his reckless emotions for her. “Thanks. She helped me escape.”
“These here are my nephews. Lance, Cross, Judge.”
Three shifters who definitely seemed related—two more so than the third—raised fingers to brows in an informal greeting.
Dunn nodded back. But where was Flix? Just as he opened his mouth to ask, he was interrupted.
“Here we go.” Griz turned the computer to face Dunn then gestured for him to take a seat.
“I’ll get you a plate while you visit with Slate,” Mae added.
Seconds later, Slate’s face appeared on the screen. Beside him an attractive woman had her hand on his shoulder. “Dunn. Good to see you. I wouldn’t believe you were alive until I saw you.”
“I’m alive. I dreamt about you. While I was”—he didn’t want to say while he was deathbending, while his soul was suspended somewhere between his body and eternity—“unconscious. I was trying to tell you to get away.”
“I got the message. I’m with friends. Far away.”
“And safe,” Griz added.
“Thanks to that man.” Slate pointed at Griz then waved a tight circle. “And all of the others up there.”
“It was nothing.” Griz’s voice was tight with emotion, making Dunn think it was a whole hell of a lot more than nothing.
“Keep a low profile, man,” Slate said. “I’ll be coming up there to join you at some point. Lana”—he glanced at the woman beside him—“seems to have taken a liking to this area, so we’ll stick around for a spell.” Then he added in a conspiratorial whisper, “A very short spell.”
Dunn laughed at the expression on his brother’s face, but deep down, he found himself happy his brother had found
someone who clearly loved him. And maybe he was a little jealous himself. He noticed Mae had stopped ladling gravy on his mashed potatoes and silently watch him. The gleam in her eyes said she knew something he didn’t. There was also a flash of indigo in those dark depths. He needed to make it a point to talk to her. Find out what she was thinking. She set the plate before him.
“Hey,” Slate said, catching his attention once more. “Go eat. We’ll catch up when I get there.”
He frowned. He wasn’t sure where he’d be. Slate made it sound like he was thinking of coming here permanently. Dunn hadn’t come to any decisions on that matter at all. The only thing he knew was his old life had gone up in smoke. He’d have his position with the Conclave no more. He’d have no position at all. He’d be better off thought as dead because if they thought he was alive, they’d hunt him. And they included an assortment of individuals and entities who’d love to replicate or use his deathbending skills.
“Later,” he told Slate and shoveled roast beef in his mouth. Damned meat was so tender it melted in his mouth. “My compliments to the chef.” He raised his empty fork in a salute.
“I’ll let her know,” Mae said. “It certainly wasn’t me.”
Doc laughed. “Mae’s skills don’t tend toward the kitchen.”
Mae smacked him on the shoulder, a pleasant rosiness rising to her cheeks. “Jake Evans!”
“I was going to say you were better at the whole matchmaking thing.” He mock grimaced, rubbing the spot she’d struck.
“Riiight.” Mae scooted to the refrigerator and poured a glass of tea. She glanced at Slate, a question in her expression. “Sweet?”
“Preferably, but I’ll take it anyway I get it.”
“Perfect, sweet it is.” She placed it before him. “I’ve got to run an errand, but maybe later we can visit,” she told Dunn.
“So, my brother’s woman has visions? She saw where I was?”
“She does,” Griz affirmed. “She’s a seer. And she saw you on a morgue table. She saw an explosion at a morgue—wondering if that was Saizon trying to throw us, or anyone else, off—and she said she saw a woman getting shot. Which it seems that would have been Dr. Morales.”
