by J. L. Wilder
I have to think of something. I have to figure out a way to protect them. But what can I do? The only thing I can think of is to walk outside and hand myself over to the wolves without a fight. As terrified as I am, I know I would do it if it meant saving the others. They mean too much to me. But I also know there’s no way I could pull it off. They’re bigger than me, faster and stronger, and they’re determined to protect me.
I can’t believe I was afraid they would turn me over to the wolves. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, that seems like a best case scenario.
If only they hadn’t all imprinted. The fact that they have means there’s not a single weak spot in the group, not a single person whose guard will be more lax than the others. They’ll all be watching me extremely closely. I won’t have a prayer of slipping past any of them.
“Cami,” a quiet voice comes from outside my alcove.
I want to ignore it. I want to be alone. But there’s something gentle, almost pleading, in the tone, and I’m still so surprised that no one’s angry at me that I feel as if I owe it to whoever’s out there to let him in. I pull back my curtain just enough to show me Ryan’s face.
He ducks inside, one arm wrapped around his torso, wincing as he finds a comfortable position. “Are you all right?” he asks.
“I’m not the one who was slashed.”
“But you’re the one they want to capture and do unspeakable things to.” He closes his eyes. “Cami, you know we’re not going to let it happen, right? You’re our omega. We’d die before we’d let anything hurt you.”
“Please don’t say that.” My eyes fill with tears. “Do you think that, just because I’m an omega, I’m content to sit back and be taken care of? Do you think it’s not going to destroy me if something happens to you because of me? How can you think it would be reassuring to tell me you’d die for me? What do you think I’m so afraid of?”
Ryan reaches out and pulls me to him. Carefully avoiding his wound, I lean my head on his shoulder. He’s so warm. I feel so safe here. If anything happens to any of them, I don’t know how I’ll go on.
“The plan isn’t good enough, is it?” I ask him quietly. “Luka and Jack aren’t powerful enough to fight off five wolf shifters.”
“No,” Ryan says, “they aren’t. I think the plan we came up with is the best one we could hope for, but I don’t think there’s any plan that would give them good odds of survival in this fight. Two bears just isn’t enough.”
“If you could get into the fight, would that change things? Truly?”
“I think it would,” he says. “I think three would be enough. Particularly if one of us could manage to distract the wolves long enough for the other two to make a move.” He sighs. “If only Jack hadn’t ordered me to stay behind. Even with me injured, not at full strength, I think we’d all stand a better chance with three of us in the fight.”
I breathe deeply, trying to stay calm, but my mind is racing. There must be a way out of this. There must be something we can do to survive. I have to figure it out before I lose another family to the wolves.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Don’t do this,” Ryan says.
Jack ignores him. He speaks only to Luka. “Wait until you’re sure they’re following me. Don’t make your move until you see them go.”
“What if only half the pack follows you?” Luka asks. “It’s what I’d do. Divide forces.”
“If they split up, make sure at least three have gone after me,” Jack says. “If it’s fewer than that, I can handle them on my own. If one or two remain behind, you’ll have to take care of them before you pick up the trail. Can you do that?”
Every part of me is shivering, torn apart with fear. But Luka just nods. “I can do it.”
“Will you please just hear me out?” Ryan asks desperately.
Jack raises an eyebrow. “Do you have anything to say that you haven’t said already?”
“Don’t do this.”
Jack nods brusquely. “Take care of Cami. This is all for nothing if they get their hands on her. Do you understand? No matter what happens, you’re to take care of Cami. That’s an order.”
“I don’t need an order for that,” Ryan growls. “Of course, I wouldn’t let her come to harm.”
“All right then.” Jack crosses to me in three strides and gathers me up in his arms. It’s so unlike him, this embrace, that I lose my breath for a moment. I’ve never doubted Jack’s love for me, but he isn’t affectionate. It takes me several seconds to get over my shock and return his hug.
“Please be safe,” I whisper in his ear. “Please come home. I need you to come home.”
He rests a hand on my cheek. “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.”
I don’t believe him. Not for a minute.
Jack releases me and ducks into the tunnel that will lead him out of the cave. He disappears from view, swallowed up by the darkness, almost immediately, but we can hear the sound of his footsteps as he makes his way toward the exit.
Luka pulls me to him and kisses me. “I’d better go too,” he says.
“Luka....”
“Don’t be afraid, Cami.”
“I led them here. This is all my fault.”
“No. Don’t do that. You’re our family.”
“And you’re mine,” I tell him. “You have to come back. Promise you’ll come back.”
He closes his eyes. “I promise.”
Ryan rests a hand on Luka’s arm and the two men look into each other’s eyes for a long moment. I can tell something is being communicated, but I don’t know what. Then Luka embraces Ryan, careful not to squeeze him too hard, and he disappears down the tunnel too.
And it’s just us. Me and Ryan, left behind to wait. I have a million questions. How will we know if the fight’s been won or lost? How long is this expected to take? What if Luka and Jack are badly hurt—how will we know to go help them? But I can’t find the words to ask any of the things on my mind. Maybe I just don’t want to know the answers. Maybe I’m too afraid of what the answers will be.
Ryan pulls his backpack into his arms and fishes around, eventually coming up with a pair of binoculars. They’re nice looking, and I think they must have been expensive. Just looking at them leaves a sour taste in my mouth. Another luxury, another thing we could easily have lived without, acquired by theft?
He sees the look on my face. “What?”
“Those are stolen.” It’s not a question. Of course, they’re stolen. Even if he paid for them, the money he used to get them was definitely stolen, just as Luka used stolen money to pay for the ingredients for his stew. I had forgotten my anger about that fact in the terror of the wolves’ arrival, and I’m surprised it’s having such an effect on me now—there are bigger things to worry about than traumatized convenience store clerks—but my mind latches onto the distraction. Here is something I might be able to do something about, an issue where my voice might actually be heard. Or maybe I just want a fight with Ryan, so I won’t have to think about Luka and Jack out there, running from the wolves, fighting, maybe dying.
Ryan frowns. “What’s the problem?”
“What’s the problem with stealing?”
“I didn’t know you were a stickler for laws,” he says. “Having sex in the woods is against the law too, you know.”
“But it doesn’t hurt anybody,” I say. “You scare people when you steal from them. And you take their property. It’s not okay.”
“What do you want us to do?” he asks, a note of amusement in his voice.
“Get jobs.”
“Cami. Come on. We’re bears, not office stiffs.”
“We’re not only bears. We’re people too. Binoculars are a human thing, and you know it. If we’re going to insist on having things we can’t get for ourselves from nature—things like bikes and spices for our foods—we need to be able to pay for them.”
“So, why don’t you get a job?”
“Maybe I will,�
�� I say hotly, knowing perfectly well that I won’t. At least, not until the babies are a little older.
“Look,” Ryan says, “why don’t you take the binoculars to the mouth of the cave and peek out. See if you can see anything. I’d go myself, but I don’t think I can handle the belly crawl.” He hands me the binoculars. “Just don’t stick your head out or anything. Stay concealed.”
I hesitate. “You’d let me do that?”
“You’ll stay in the cave, right? They can’t get you there. They shouldn’t be outside at all anymore, and if any of them are, Luka will be right there. Just look around and see if you can get a glimpse of the action, and then come back and report to me.”
I take the binoculars, but then I pause. I want to go. I want to see what’s going on out there, to catch a glimpse of my bears and make sure they’re still in one piece. But I’m afraid. What if the news isn’t good? What if they’re already...my mind shudders away from the word. They’re still alive. They have to be.
“All right,” I agree. “I’ll take a look.” I turn toward the tunnel, but suddenly, I find I can’t move. I look back. Ryan’s hand is locked around my wrist, a confused expression on his face.
“Wait a minute,” he says.
“What?”
“Why did you hesitate?”
“What do you mean?”
“It isn’t like you. You’ve never shied away from risk before.” He looks at me carefully. “Are you still feeling sick?”
“Of course not. I told you, it was a passing thing. I’m completely fine.”
“What aren’t you telling me?”
I pull my hand out of his grip. “There’s nothing I’m not telling you.” But I can’t keep eye contact. He’ll see the lie on my face. I’ve never mastered that particular art.
“You’re lying,” he whispers. “But you haven’t been sick again. Something’s wrong, and you’re not telling us what it is....” His fingers pick at the edge of his bandage. I can see the pieces coming together in his head. There’s nothing I can do to protect my secret anymore, but I hope, with everything in me, that, somehow, he won’t figure it out. This isn’t how I wanted this to go.
“You’re pregnant,” he breathes.
I close my eyes. “I am.”
“Oh, Cami...do the others know?”
“I couldn’t tell them. Not when they were going out to fight those wolves. I couldn’t let them be distracted. And....” Can I confide in him about the rest? “I can’t stand the stealing, Ryan. The threats. Not if we’re having children. I can’t have them raised that way. I have to tell Jack I’m not okay with it, and I don’t know what he’s going to say....”
“We need the money,” Ryan points out. “If we’re going to have babies, they’ll need to see doctors. That takes money.”
“I know. You’re right. But there has to be a better way.” I bite my lip. “We really don’t have any guns, right? I can’t have them raised around guns. I can’t do that.”
“No guns,” Ryan promises. “We’re bears. We don’t need guns.”
That’s something, at least.
“How long have you known?” Ryan asks.
“Not long at all. It’s the worst possible time for something like this.” I sigh. “We were all so happy a few days ago.”
“We will be again.” He pulls me close, wraps his arms around me. “They’re good fighters, Cami. They’re going to come back. We’ll be a family.”
“You don’t believe that,” I challenge. “You didn’t want them to go out on their own.”
“But they did go,” he says. “And I have to trust them now. We both have to trust them. They’re very capable fighters, both of them. The plan is a good one. And Jack will go to the ends of the Earth to protect his clan. He’s a good alpha. He’ll get them both back here.”
Or die trying. Ryan doesn’t say the words—I’m sure he knows what they would do to me—but I hear the omission, all the same. I lean into his chest, trying to draw courage from his warm presence. Ryan is still here with me. But what will I do if the others don’t come back? I should have told them about the babies. How will I handle it if they die today, never having known that they were about to be fathers?
Suddenly, standing still is agonizing. I have to do something. I step back out of Ryan’s arms and hang the binoculars around my neck. “Okay,” I say. “I’m going to look outside and see if I can see anything.”
Ryan frowns. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Cami.”
“What are you talking about? It was your idea in the first place.”
“But that was before I knew you were pregnant.”
“Why does that change anything?”
He groans. “I don’t know. I don’t want to risk your life any more than I want to risk the babies’. But it feels more dangerous somehow. Maybe it’s just instinct, but I think you should stay here.”
“I just want to get a look,” I tell him. “Don’t you want to know what’s going on?”
“Well, yes,” he admits.
“This won’t take long. I’ll stay in the tunnel. We’ll feel better when we know something.”
He curves his hand around the back of my neck and looks me in the eyes. “Take care of yourself, Cami. Don’t do anything stupid.”
“I won’t.”
He nods and releases me, reluctance etched across his face.
I make my way carefully down the tunnel, moving more slowly than usual, afraid to make any noise. More than once, I freeze in place after accidentally kicking a rock or scraping my boot against the narrow walls. The wolves have remarkable hearing. If any of them are still out there, I don’t want them to hear me coming.
Finally, after what seems like forever, I reach the mouth of the cave. I stay back about a foot deep in the tunnel, so I won’t be seen, and train the binoculars on the woods.
At first, I don’t see anything. It was probably foolish to expect that I would. The entire point of this plan was to lure the wolves away from our den, to have the fight take place far from here. But as I pan the binoculars across the landscape, I see signs of their chase. Bear tracks. Wolf tracks. I try to count them, to figure out how many chased Jack and how many stayed behind, but I can’t figure it out.
And then, just as I’m about to give up and go back to Ryan, I hear it—an agonized roar. A bear in pain.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The agonized sound tears through my gut like a blade, forcing a gasp out of me. It came from the North, I know immediately, and I turn the binoculars in that direction, but I already know it’s hopeless. The sound was too far away, and there are too many obstacles—trees, rises and falls in the land—in the forest. There’s no way I’m going to be able to see anything from here. This was a fool’s errand.
I try to identify the voice. Was it Jack’s husky baritone or Luka’s pleasant tenor? But it was neither of those. It was higher than both of their normal voices, twisted by agony, and more powerful, echoing through the vocal cords of a bear rather than a human.
There hasn’t been a second cry. Is it possible...I don’t want to think it, but is it possible that whoever made that awful sound is dead?
No. They can’t be. Not my bears. They’re too strong, too powerful, and I simply can’t imagine them broken and lifeless on the snow. Besides, if one of them had died, surely the other would have the sense to run from the fight, to come back here and tell us what was going on. Unless....
No. I can’t think like this.
I realize I’m breathing too fast, on the verge of hyperventilating, and I force myself to slow down. I need to keep a cool head. I need to be logical. There’s got to be something I can do, some way I can help my clanmates. Thoughts race through my head. If I go back and tell Ryan what I heard, I feel sure he’ll run off to join the fight, despite his injury, and that’s the last thing I want. Jack was right to leave him behind. He’s in no shape to confront the wolves. So, telling Ryan is out.
But then, what can I
do? There isn’t anybody else.
Yes, there is. The thought comes to me suddenly, like a breath of fresh air, a welcome relief that opens up the tightness in my chest and clears my head, driving away the anxiety I’ve been feeling. There is someone else who can help, someone who isn’t in the fight yet. Someone whose presence might make all the difference in the world.
Me.
And I wasn’t ordered to stay behind.
It was assumed that I would stay. Ryan was ordered to watch over me. But no one actually ordered me to stay in the cave, and I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the freedom of that fact. I can shift. I can go where the fight is, and I can help.
Ryan will be angry. Ryan will feel deeply betrayed. But I can’t think about that right now. All I can think about is the cry of pain I heard and the wolves, bared teeth and sharp claws, probably cornering my bears somewhere, maybe moving in for the kill. I don’t have time to think things over. I have to act now.
Before the thought can crystalize in my mind, before I’m even really sure of what I’m doing, I’ve balled my feet up under me and propelled myself the last several inches out of the cave tunnel. I’m upright as soon as I emerge, upright and running, bracing myself for the claws of any wolves who might have remained behind to pierce my skin, drag me back...but nothing comes. Gasping, relieved and overwhelmed, I race onward, toward the sound I heard, and as I run, I let the emotion of the moment fill my heart and spread outward, shaking me, shifting me—
Everything is always easier in bear form. I don’t have to think about Ryan, who will, at any moment, realize that I’ve broken my word. I don’t have to wonder which of my packmates is hurt. All I have to do is focus on the single imperative that drives my actions now: find them. Find them. It’s the only thing that matters. The trees seem to get out of my way as I race through the woods, my powerful hind legs driving me forward, my well-attuned nose latching on to the familiar, unpleasant dog scent that means wolves are nearby. It’s easy to follow. I know I’m getting closer.
