by Zoe Chant
“Ryder, look at me,” he said. “We’re going to work on helping your memory, so we can find Zeke. First, I need you to take a deep breath.”
Focusing on the goal worked to bring Ryder’s attention back to Ty, and he followed Ty’s rising hands to inhale, and then falling hands to exhale. Already, he looked a little calmer.
“One more time,” Ty said, keeping his voice slow and even. “In....out. Good. Do you feel like your head’s a little clearer?”
Ryder nodded. “Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, I was just thinking—I didn’t mean to freak out on you—”
“No need to apologize,” he said. “We’re looking ahead. Let’s not focus on which way you went anymore. Think about where you were when Zeke fell. Was it higher up than this?”
Ryder nodded vigorously. “It was a lot of snow. And mostly rocks, not too many trees anymore.”
Where they were, it was still heavily forested, and there was only a light dusting of snow on the ground. Ty nodded encouragement. “What did the rocks look like?” He glanced back at Misty, who was now listening closely.
Ryder haltingly described a craggy area. “We were stoked because it was really cool-looking and we’d never explored over there before. We’re always looking for epic rock formations, you know, the really steep weird ones, and it was—like—a huge steep peak with a hole in the middle, almost a crevasse thing. And...that’s where he fell.” Ryder looked agonized. “I swear I would’ve brought him back if I could, but I didn’t know if I could even climb back out by myself, and I definitely couldn’t have done it trying to carry Zeke with me. I didn’t want us both to be stuck and then maybe he’d never wake up—”
“You did the absolute right thing,” Ty assured him, politely ignoring the tear that slipped down one of Ryder’s cheeks. “No one would’ve benefited from both of you going missing.”
The radio crackled. “Cal’s on his way,” Misty reported. “He’s got a couple of people with him. Lynn, too, and she’s bringing Ken and Nate.”
“Do you have any idea what he might be talking about?” Ty asked. “A big peak with a hole in the middle?”
Misty hesitated. “Maybe. Cal or Lynn might have a better idea, although we’re outside the Park, so—but I might. If I’m right, it’s this way.” She nodded northeast.
“Let’s go, then,” Ty said. “We can keep the others apprised. If we don’t find him, they can start searching elsewhere.”
Misty nodded, and they all shifted again, Misty leading the way this time.
***
Misty
Misty was still, continuously, impressed at Ty’s ability to talk to people. She knew that if she’d been the one talking to Ryder, the urgency of the situation would have bled into her voice. She probably would’ve been short and forceful, because a kid’s life was on the line and it was hard not to be.
Ty, on the other hand, had been completely calm, not putting any pressure on Ryder at all. Far from stressing him out, he’d clearly kept the kid from panicking. Misty wanted him on hand whenever she had to talk to a scared witness or a mutinous suspect.
And now they might know where they were going. Misty was once again grateful to her father, who had insisted that she know all of the territory around the town like the back of her hand. Don’t worry too much about the Park, he’d always said. There’s a whole crowd of people whose job it is to know the Park, to protect the tourists from getting themselves in trouble out there. Our job is to protect the town, so you make sure you know all the places a person could get themselves in trouble nearby, because if I know anything about people, you can bet you’ll be finding someone in every one of them over the course of your career.
And she could remember noticing a hole, hidden from anyone who hadn’t climbed up the steep rocks around it—not high up on a peak, where big gashes in the stone were common, and anyone who was climbing would likely be experienced and have equipment with them, but down beneath the tree line.
So she led the way, trotting forward as the terrain got more rocky and difficult, remembering the landmarks she’d internalized so long ago.
These days, she didn’t have time to get this far up, usually; her runs tended to be restricted to the woods immediately behind her house. But she remembered vaguely which way to go.
They arrived at a steep climb upwards, and suddenly Ryder bounded ahead. Her doe startled, prancing to the side before Misty could clamp down on the instinct of Wolf! and stay put.
But then Ty came up next to her, and her doe calmed immediately. The presence of her mate meant that no predator could hurt them.
Ryder was pulling ahead, so Misty corralled her doe and leapt after him. He must have started to remember the way. Thank God.
They climbed further and further up, as the trees thinned and the snow grew heavier, until finally Misty could see a huge rock, a dark shape rising over the sparse forest. Ryder stopped at its base and waited.
When they arrived, he shifted, and nodded to the stone. “Up there.”
“You climbed up,” Misty interpreted, “and then he fell down the other side.”
Ryder nodded. “There’s not a way to get around—you have to go up and over. I tried, after.”
Misty radioed again. Lynn immediately knew where they were, which was a relief, because giving directions through the night-dark woods based only on landmarks would have been difficult.
“Okay,” Ty was saying. “Help is on the way. But we want to get to Zeke as soon as possible, make sure he’s all right. Ryder, you’re coming with us, so let’s scale this rock, all right?”
Ryder nodded bravely. Misty wondered if it was necessary to bring the delinquent teen along—what if he fell, too?—but she trusted Ty’s judgment.
In human form, they scaled the rock, which had just enough of a slope, and plenty of jagged bits to grab. Ty went first, and Misty made Ryder go between them, just in case. Misty’s hands were cold and scraped by the time they got to the top, but no one had fallen.
They made their way across the top of the rock to where it started to slope again. Misty could see the problem Ryder had had. They were on top of one solid rocky outcropping that had a rift in the middle of it. However, the rift didn’t extend all the way to the ends—it was more of a long hole, with steep slopes, almost completely vertical, on all sides. She would have been hesitant to commit to climbing back up with an unconscious person.
“All right,” Ty said. “I’m going to go down there and check on him.”
“I want to come with you,” Ryder said fiercely.
Ty glanced at Misty, checking in on what she thought.
“If you think he’ll be useful, and you’re confident you can keep both of you safe,” Misty said. She trusted Ty’s judgment.
“All right,” Ty said. “We’re going to climb down. It’s not far enough to get seriously hurt if you’re paying attention. Then we’re going to assess Zeke’s situation, see if we can wake him up. The sheriff’s going to wait up here to help us up if we need it. Understood?”
“Understood,” said Ryder.
Ty nodded sharply. “Let’s go.”
***
Ty
In Ty’s experience, when someone was behaving immaturely, the worst thing to do was to treat them like they were immature. A delinquent teen, in particular, was never going to shape up if everyone assumed he didn’t know any better—whether they excused his behavior, or tried to punish him into knowing better, nothing was going to change.
If, on the other hand, you put the kid in a situation where he had real responsibility and he knew it, and where the consequences of his behavior were obvious and up-front and mattered to him, he’d probably shape up. And if he didn’t, he needed more serious help.
Ryder was shaping up.
He followed Ty down the other side of the rock with careful concentration. It wasn’t a long or difficult climb; Zeke must have hurt himself by going down unexpectedly, maybe headfirst. Ty really, really hoped that he wasn’t seriously in
jured or worse.
They were going to find out soon. As they climbed down, a dim shape at the bottom resolved itself into the motionless form of a lanky teenage boy.
Ty landed solidly on the snow at the bottom of the hole, and Ryder followed suit. Immediately, the kid rushed over to his friend. “He’s breathing!” he reported.
“Good, good. Don’t try to move him yet,” Ty instructed, coming over next to him.
What he saw reassured him. Zeke wasn’t conscious, which was a bad sign, but his neck was at a normal angle, there wasn’t any obvious blood, and when Ty checked his pulse, it was strong and even.
He sat back on his heels. “Okay. So far, so good. It’s not great that he hasn’t woken up, but I don’t think his neck is broken.”
Ryder blanched at the idea. “Can I—what can we do?”
“We’re still not going to move him—better to wait for the emergency crews for that. But you can talk to him, touch his hand if you want.”
Ryder leaned over his friend, grabbing his hand roughly. “Hey. Zeke. Hey, idiot—wake up!”
“He might not,” Ty cautioned softly. “But don’t think the worst if he doesn’t. He’s a shifter, he’s resilient. Takes a lot to put us down.”
Ryder sat back, then shook himself, blurred, and became a wolf. He nosed at Zeke’s palm, sniffing him. Then he sat back on his haunches and howled.
Zeke’s eyes snapped open.
Ty started, and then immediately leaned forward. “Zeke, hi. Hey. Don’t try to move just yet. Can you talk?”
“What—” Zeke tried.
Ryder was frozen in place, staring down at him. Then he growled and shifted back. “Zeke! You goddamn—I thought you were dead!”
“What?” Zeke repeated, blinking hard. “Ryder—what—what’s this asshole doing here?”
“Watch your language,” Ty said easily, feeling much, much better about being mouthed off to than he usually did.
“He’s saving your dumb life,” Ryder snapped.
“All right, all right. Zeke, how do you feel? Can you feel your fingers and toes?”
“Uh...” Zeke said, sounding startled. His hand twitched, then his fingers moved. His toes were in boots, but after a second, his feet shifted in place. “They feel—really, really cold.”
“That’s fine, it’s cold out. But you can feel them?”
“Yeah.”
“How about everything else? Anything numb? Anything hurt?”
“Um, I have a headache. A really, really, really bad headache.”
“Okay. You probably hit your head. But if your fingers and toes work, you’re likely going to be okay.” Head injuries could still be dangerous for shifters, but the likelihood of an unhealed brain injury going unnoticed was much less than it would be for a regular human. “We’ll get you to the doctor just in case, though. Anything else hurt?”
Zeke lifted his hands gingerly, stretched his legs carefully. Ty recognized the tentative movements from occasional mishaps he’d had himself, the slow dance of Am I okay? Will I fall apart if I move?
“Shoulder,” he said finally. “Left shoulder. It hurts a lot.”
Ty went around to Zeke’s left side and took a look at it. It was swelling, but didn’t seem to be dislocated.
“Probably landed on it and your head when you fell,” he said. “We should be careful—whoa, hold on there!”
Too late. Zeke was pushing himself up into a sitting position. He stopped halfway up, one hand coming to his forehead. Ryder darted forward to support him, and Ty sighed. Well, if he was sitting up okay, he was probably good to move.
Shifter healing took care of a lot. Ty had a feeling that if Zeke had been a regular human, the fall would’ve been a lot more serious.
As it was, though, Zeke was grumbling about being able to sit up by himself, thanks. Ty took a few steps away and looked up.
Misty was crouched at the top of the hole, looking down at them. Ty had been too distracted until now to notice the dramatic way the tall, craggy stone walls rose up around them, the world blocked out except for a slice of star-spattered sky...and, of course, his mate.
“He okay?” Misty called down.
“Mostly,” Ty called back up. “Hurt his shoulder and took a good bump on the head. He should definitely get checked out, but it doesn’t look like he’s in any real danger.”
Misty’s shoulders relaxed. “Good, I’ll let the others know.”
“We should still get a team up here to get him out,” Ty said. “No one should really be free-climbing this without any equipment or spotters.”
“Says the man who went down with his bare hands and a dumb teenaged boy.”
“That was different,” Ty protested. “There was someone in danger.”
“Uh-huh.” Misty shook her head and turned away to radio the others.
Ty felt a surge of affection and relief. Zeke was safe, and likely to recover without a problem. He and his mate were together. Ty had already managed to do something useful for the inhabitants of his new home.
Overall, a good day’s work.
***
Misty
Misty waited on top of the rock, looking down at the forest below, and so she was able to see the first movements in the trees.
Soon, the dark shapes resolved into a full pack’s worth of big cats. She’d never seen anything like it. A lion, a panther, a tiger, and a lynx headed the group, and then behind them, almost invisible against the dark snow and rock, a phalanx of snow leopards, close the ground and moving so smoothly they seemed to flow over the landscape.
As she watched, one of the leopards spotted her, and bounded ahead of the group. It leapt, grabbing onto an outcropping in the stone with its claws, and scaled the side of the small cliff as though it were climbing a ladder. The others followed suit, graceful and quick, and the panther and tiger, and then at last, the lynx and the lion.
At the top, everyone shifted back. The leader of the snow leopards turned out to be Cal, the head ranger at the Park and the final missing member of the old Marine crowd. The rest of them she knew by sight, though not well: tall, quiet Grey; easy, affable Jeff; then Zach and Teri, a mated pair, and Zach’s brother Joel and his mate Nina—Mavis’s daughter—and of course Mavis and Colonel Hanes. We must have the largest pack of snow leopards in North America, she thought all of a sudden.
“Cal,” she said, coming forward to shake his hand. “Thanks for coming out so quickly.”
“Of course,” he said instantly. “Where’s the kid? Medical attention needed?”
“Nothing emergency, thank God,” Misty said. “Ty would probably appreciate a second set of eyes, and then it’s just getting him up and out of there, and back to town to see a doctor.”
“You got it,” Cal said, then turned back to the group and started giving quiet, sharp instructions.
What followed was the most coordinated series of actions Misty had ever seen. The rangers and the veterans quickly split into two groups, with one climbing down into the little ravine—just as gracefully in human form as they’d been as shifters—and congregating around Ty and the two boys.
There was a short exchange between them, and then Zeke was lifted between two sets of hands—Cal and Joel—and carried smoothly to the side of the rock, where Grey, the biggest of them, took the boy on his back. Someone had brought a set of rope—wrapped around their waist when they shifted, probably—and Zeke was quickly secured to Grey, while another rope was lowered from the top. Grey started to climb up, with the others following closely and ready in case of any difficulty.
Meanwhile, Carlos, Wilson, Ken, and Nate were at the top with Misty, bracing the rope and leaning down to help Grey over the top and get Zeke out of the makeshift harness.
It was all over in minutes, and Misty had to marvel at the ease and efficiency. Zeke was blinking in surprise.
Behind them, Ty and Ryder climbed up as well, and everyone breathed for a moment in the cold night air.
Then Misty step
ped forward. “Son,” she said to Zeke, “you’ve caused everyone a hell of a lot of trouble tonight.”
He winced, pulling his shoulder up. “Uh,” he said. “Sorry.” He looked sheepishly around at all the adults standing with them. “That you had to go to all this trouble.”
Misty let out her breath. “We’re just glad you’re okay, kid.”
He blinked, his eyes going wide. “You are?”
He sounded so surprised. Misty rubbed her forehead. “Yes,” she said. “Believe it or not, Zeke, I really don’t want you to get hurt. I’d rather have you around.”
“And making trouble?” he asked with a ghost of a smile.
“Preferably not that,” she amended. “But that’s all right. I have an idea or two of what might keep you and your friend out of trouble for a while.”
“Whatever you want, ma’am,” Ryder said fervently, as Zeke looked over in surprise. “Seriously. You saved his life.”
Misty smiled. “Well, let’s get him back to town and make sure everything’s okay before anyone makes any promises.”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem, with this crew,” Ty rumbled next to her.
Misty looked around at the group of capable shifters around here. “I bet not.”
***
Misty sighed as she unlocked her front door, Ty right behind her. “That was a long night.”
The sky was starting to lighten above them, heralding the late winter dawn. “Long but successful,” Ty said as he shut the door behind him.
Misty nodded. “Thank God.”
“Do you actually have a plan for Ryder and Zeke, or were you just being ominous?” he wondered, stripping off his jacket.
“Oh, that. Yeah, I’m going to put them to work on the community center building. Carlos was saying the roof needs some repairing. They want to climb all over things, they can be useful doing it.”
“Genius,” Ty chuckled. “And they’ll go along with it, they’re so grateful. Ryder especially.”
“Ryder was conscious for the whole thing. But if Zeke protests, you can bet his mom will be on our side.”
Diane had been effusive in her gratitude, tears staining her cheeks as she hugged her son. Misty had taken the opportunity to assure her that she wanted nothing bad for the Bigelow family, that she hoped Zeke would make a full recovery, and that she wanted to make sure everyone came together as a community more often in the future. Miraculously, Diane had agreed.
