Between a Bear and a Hard Place (Alpha Werebear Romance)

by Red, Lynn

  *

  “Is that them?” Rogue stuck his head out the window of the Cessna before realizing that maybe the reason they’d taken night vision cameras was to effectively see in the dark. “It’s dark.”

  “Right,” Jill said. “Good, I’m glad you’ve mastered light versus dark. Let’s get you into college.”

  King snorted a laugh at Rogue’s expense – something that hadn’t happened in quite a while, and something that made Jill smile. As they skimmed the trees, and then began to circle slowly, she started to think back about the past few months. Everything had changed – everything – but at the same time, there was a very comforting sense of sameness. After all, Jill’s life had been chaotic to different degrees since she started working for her present employer. The fact that her boss knew about shape-shifting bear people, and knew about the GlasCorp conspiracy hadn’t even surprised her when it all came out.

  Neither did the fact that Jacques – the pilot who had taken her to so many field journeys, including the one where she found Rogue and King – was presently zipping around in an under-the-radar airplane to catch a couple of escapees and a woman who probably had no idea what the hell had happened.

  “Miss Jilly!” he called back, over the roar of the prop engine and the wind blasting past the wide-open passenger door. This particular plane was a custom job that he’d developed just for situations like this one. “Seems to me this plane’s a little full already, how you wanting I should catch this other trio?”

  They turned another circle around the hiding group. The current, and completely insane, plan was for Rogue and King to essentially take a flying leap out the side of the plane, pop emergency low-altitude parachutes, and escort them to a safe place for extraction. Of course, insane is a relative term, all things considered.

  “We gotta come back for them, right?” she yelled back. “How about a chopper?”

  Rogue stared out the door, hypnotized by the passing pines and firs. King had his eyes closed, his fingers interlocked behind his head which was firmly wedged between his knees. Jacques told him that’d be good for the nausea.

  “First, them bears gonna have to drum up the courage to jump! We been cruisin’ the right altitude for ten minutes. I don’t suppose you can just shove ‘em out?”

  King growled so loudly Jill could hear him, even over the engine. Rogue was still just staring, like he was contemplating his own mortality for the first time in his life.

  “Boys!” Jacques yelled. “We been over this a thousand times. I wish I could jump with you and do that thing where we’re both strapped together, but reality is? This is the simplest thing. You just jump, then you yank the cord, and try to keep your feet down. Gravity does all the hard work!”

  That didn’t help.

  King made a slight lurching sound. Rogue’s thousand yard stare deepened. “Does this not seem stupid to anyone else?” he groused.

  “No, it does,” Jill said. “But unless you want to chance those three getting snatched back up by GlasCorp? I don’t see much option.”

  “We could wait for Draven. He’s always got an idea. Whether they’re any good or not...”

  “The last of his ideas,” Jill said, “included escaping in a black helicopter after I ventilated a mutated bear. Remember that?”

  King let out another growl, this one slightly tinged with the sound of a groan.

  “And anyway,” Jill continued after listening to her larger mate’s piteous groan, “the sooner you jump the sooner you land.”

  “Yeah,” Rogue said, cracking his knuckles and climbing to his feet, “and the sooner I can get a pine tree jammed up my ass.”

  Jacques snickered, Jill smiled. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “Just keep your legs together.”

  Rogue scoffed a laugh and shook his head before grabbing King’s parachute shoulder strap. “Do I need to slap you?” he asked. “Because I will.”

  “Just jump,” King groaned. “I’m not gonna leave you hanging. Er, so to speak.”

  Neither bear reacted to the fact that Captain Super Serious just made an awful pun, but Jacques was having a ball. “Remember!” he yelled back. “Count to five, feet down, pull the cord. And as soon as the first one of you jumps, next one counts ten, does the same thing. Got it?”

  Rogue tried to flash one of his smug, cocky asshole grins, but the sweat on his forehead gave his nerves away. Jill grabbed his hand, put her other hand on the side of his face, and turned his head to face her. “I love you,” she whispered into his ear, before kissing him deeply, hungrily. “You get done with this and we’re gonna have a hell of a time later.”

  She whispered something else into his ear, and as Rogue’s eyes widened in surprise, a wind caught him, and he let go of the door, flipping two times, then following Jacques instructions exactly. Seconds later, he was floating.

  “You too,” Jill said to King. “Stay safe.” Another kiss that seemed to steel the bear’s ragged-worn nerves. “Don’t worry, we’ll be right behind you.”

  “For anyone else,” King said, swallowing hard. “I’d pitch you out of the plane.” He kissed her so hard, so hungry, that her head was forced backward. “I heard what you said to Rogue,” he said with a grin. “I’ll hold you to that.”

  Jill blushed, and King released his hold, sliding backward into the empty air. Just like his sworn brother, the massive bear turned a few somersaults before he stiffened, and pulled the chute cord. With longing eyes, Jill watched until both of them disappeared below the canopy.

  “You sure they’re gonna be okay?” she asked, finally returning to her seat and settling in beside Jacques. “They’re not exactly the best with heights.”

  He let out a chuckled. “Won’t have to deal with heights for long. They’ll be fine. Them two are tough boys. You know that. But what did you tell them? Whatever you promised them must’a been scorching hot. It’d take quite an offer to get me to do what they just did.”

  “Oh,” Jill said, smirking. “It wasn’t much. I just promised them a couple of hamburgers.”

  Jacques cocked an eyebrow.

  “Bears are simple, you know. They’ll do anything for a burger.”

  “Ah ha! You know what makes me like you so much, Miss Jilly?”

  She shook her head, still looking out the window to see if she could catch a glimpse of her bears. It was no good, but on the heat sensor mounted underneath the fuselage, she was able to see that both of them had landed, and since neither started going cold, she figured they were in one piece. “What?”

  “That you are, without a doubt, the worst liar I have ever come across.”

  Both of them laughed for a moment, though Jacques’s was more boisterous than Jill’s. She chewed her bottom lip, fairly confident that if anyone could do what needed to be done, Rogue and King could manage. But she didn’t like the idea that for several hours – five or six, likely – they’d be completely alone, surrounded by unfamiliar forest only a hundred miles or so from GlasCorp HQ.

  Then again, I wasn’t lying. There’s nothing else to be done. Unless we leave these three to their own devices while Draven comes up with something? No options. I don’t like not having options.

  “They gonna be fine, Jill,” Jacques said in his smooth, Cajun accent. He used to throw in some French to make a curious patois, but she was thankful he’d stopped doing that quite so much. “Them two?”

  She looked at him, light from the instrument panel illuminating the soft lines on his face. There was a reason they’d dated, after all.

  “They been through worse than any damn thing I can imagine. A little jaunt through ‘da woods? Grabbing a couple of their kinfolk? Worst part for them’s already over wit’.”

  She smiled, somehow soothed by what he’d said.

  One thing was for sure though, she knew that much. The next four, six, however many hours it was, those were going to be some of the longest of her life. But she nodded and patted the pilot on the back of the hand with which he was grabbing the
plane’s control stick.

  They sat for a few moments in silence, she in thought and him paying attention to his instrument panel. He broke the silence with a drawled-out humming sound.

  “What’s up?”

  Jacques squinted into the sun and pulled on a pair of sunglasses. “I was just gettin’ to think. You ever fly one of these?”

  Jill laughed. “Oh no no no, not doing that. No sir, no how.”

  “I sure am tired,” Jacques said, feigning a yawn. “Gonna fall asleep any second.”

  He closed his eyes, lay back in the chair and cracked one lid to look at her. “Oh boy, I’m dead asleep! This plane gon’ crash!”

  With a snappy “you son of a bitch!” Jill laughed and grabbed the stick. “Take this thing!”

  He let a smile crawl across his face. “You gonna do fine. Let’s consider this a day for doing new things, huh? Them two fell out of a plane, you’re gonna fly it. I ain’t gonna always be around. Never hurts to know what you’re doing, huh?”

  By the time her heart stopped pounding, Jill realized that she was keeping the plane straight.

  And then she realized that Jacques the snoring to her left wasn’t faked. Her pilot was sawing logs, and she was, apparently, flying a plane.

  -9-

  “This is going to get real confusing, real fast.”

  -Claire

  “Well, about the best thing I can say about that is that my ass is completely tree-free,” Rogue said, unclipping the parachute and picking a stick out of his hair.

  King looked over at him, completely unscathed. “I didn’t have any problem,” he monotoned.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Rogue laughed softly. “That’s the way it goes isn’t it? I ram into a tree, you gracefully skitter along the ground to a happy stop?” He shrugged. “That’s why I’ve got more character built than you.”

  King frowned and eyed his sworn brother sideways. “Meaning?”

  “Don’t worry about it. We got some bears to find. It’s two of them, and a girl, but I’ve already told you that.”

  The two began to tromp through the woods toward the coordinates at which they found the trio when they were still circling. They couldn’t have gone very far since then, and once they were anywhere in the vicinity, finding them shouldn’t be a problem. But convincing them to come along? That... might be a different story.

  “Did he tell you anything about them?”

  Rogue shook his head. “All he gave me is names – one called Stone, one called Fury. He said they were kept separate from the rest of the clan. Why that was though, Draven didn’t know.”

  For a few moments longer, Rogue and King crunched forward, through the sticks and the brush. “Look how domesticated we’ve become,” King finally said. “Tracking prey as men.”

  “I’d rather not alarm them. If they end up panicking, we can do what needs to be done, but I figure coming to them obviously in peace would be a better idea. And anyway, there’s no telling what we’re dealing with. No telling whether they’ll recognize us, or... hell, whether they even know they were part of a clan. These were cubs taken all those years ago, or must have been.”

  “Why do you say that?” King shrugged under a low-hanging branch.

  “No reason,” Rogue answered. “Hope, I guess. Hope that maybe we aren’t all alone. That maybe some of the clan escaped the experiments that did... whatever they did.”

  King stuck his hand out, catching Rogue’s shirt, and wordlessly silencing him. Both men crouched, low to the ground and scanned the area. “Did we just get snuck up on?” Rogue hissed. “Or did we accidentally sneak up on someone?”

  “Shh,” the taller bear hushed the smaller one. “Listen.”

  So close to the ground, Rogue could feel something, rather than hear it. “The ground’s vibrating,” he said. “Feels like something is moving underneath us.”

  “Or above,” King said. He looked up into the sky, but the canopy of course blocked out any view of the moon.

  “No question they have to be looking for the runaways,” Rogue said, eyes shifting side to side. “But why is the ground shaking?”

  King shook his head, and when he looked back at Rogue, his eyes were beginning to glow, and the hair on his arms, and neck was growing coarse and long.

  “Not a bad idea,” Rogue said, crouching down and letting his animal ferocity overwhelm his human form. As his muscles stretched and thickened, and his fur grew coarse, and heavy, a smile – a snarl – curled his lips around long, dagger-like teeth. It felt good to do this, it always had. The sense of raw power, of unbelievable might that coursed through him was impossible to describe, but whenever he ended up in a fight, the results were always the same.

  His senses came to life, and a zen-like state of utter calm descended on Rogue’s soul. Still the ground shook, but instead of worrying about it, he simply prepared. Whatever it was that emerged, or descended, he was ready.

  He shot a look in King’s direction to find the other bear just as taut and ready. King’s golden fur, streaked with brown, bristled on the back of his head, in a ridge running down the bigger bear’s spine. He turned his head, growling under his breath as he spread his feet.

  All at once, the humming vibration simply stopped.

  The two exchanged glances once again, Rogue wrinkling his huge forehead in thought. King jerked his head backwards, and slunk into the underbrush with Rogue by his side.

  A smooth whirring shortly replaced the rumble. Rogue’s eyes, and King’s too, grew wide as they watched the place they’d just been standing retract like the cover on a hot tub being pulled back into the surrounding deck. Leaves clattered down the hole, sticks tumbled with weak thuds.

  “They’re here?” the voice came in a stacky rasp, like a person speaking through a gasmask. “Don’t see them.”

  Eight, black-clad figures emerged, all armed with some sort of assault rifle. All of the men – Rogue assumed they must be men – were identical in height, weight, build, and clothing. Pure black from head to toe, from their matte-finished combat boots to the hoods that covered their entire faces, no human feature was visible.

  “Form up,” another one of the faceless soldiers said, whipping his hand above his head. “Sensors found them. Although the girl is missing. She doesn’t matter.”

  The hard, cold, hiss of the voice was vaguely haunting. Rogue’s ears prickled, his muscles ached for action. More than anything, he wanted to charge them and spray the forest floor with... well, with whatever would come out of these things after a good claw swipe. He looked at King, who was silently observing the strange sight in front of him.

  “Four,” one of them said. “Makes no sense. The sensors aren’t ever wrong.”

  All their voices are exactly the same. Or, only one of them is speaking. That can’t be though, because different ones keep gesturing. Rogue’s thoughts were racing. In the last three months, he’d seen enough TV to know that whatever these things were, they were no good. They looked similar to the way Draven had been dressed, but knowing that they were involved with GlasCorp was already a foregone conclusion.

  The eight figures had drawn into a circle, each of them moving their heads slowly left, then slowly right, as though the green glass of their goggles functioned as some kind of scanning device, and they were just waiting to pick up some kind of signal, some sort of reading.

  Something crunched in the far distance, on the other side of the area, almost exactly opposite the circle from where Rogue and King were crouched. The figures didn’t react to it, as though they didn’t have normal senses, because the sound wasn’t quiet.

  “Report.” Same voice, different source.

  “Nothing,” one of them said. “Nothing,” said another, and on down the line.

  “I have something,” said the seventh voice. He was pointed in the direction where Rogue heard the crackling sound. “Motion. Or heat. Something. It’s strange though.”

  “Strange? Report.” It was the first voice again, or so Ro
gue thought. It was hard to tell.

  I wonder if they’re some kind of security system? Or some kind of Borg? He’d been watching a lot of Star Trek. Hive mind?

  “Changing shape. Directly ahead.”

  The first voice emitted a sort of chirping sound, followed by a series of clicks that couldn’t possibly have come out of a human mouth. And then for a moment, the static was back. Hissing, crackling, like he was producing a radio tuned to a static signal. Slowly, he started reciting numbers.

  “One, eight, six. Two, seven, four, four, eight,” it intoned. Rogue felt his skin crawl. He read something about number stations in one of Jill’s crazy-person conspiracy magazines. The conclusion the author came to was that they were forgotten remnants of cold war, or possibly early radio era, spying. Long series of nonsense numbers that contained some kind of important missive.

  “Nine, Forty-three, one-sixty-two, eight.”

  Then again, here were a bunch of weird-as-hell cloaked figures, and one of them seemed to be the walking version of a number station.

  “Eight, sixteen, forty-seven. Forty-seven. Forty-seven.”

  King let out an attention-getting, low sound. Rogue looked in his direction. “I think we better do something,” he said in the tight-throated voice that they used when they were bears. “I think they found our kin.”

  As though controlled by some external force, all eight of the figures turned at once, unloading their guns into the forest without a single second’s pause.

  Rogue roared, King flew out of their hiding place, and two breaths later, King had one of them in his jaws, Rogue had sent one flying with a swipe, and bullets were going in a whole lot more directions than “straight ahead.”

  By the incredibly short period of time that it took the soldiers to retrain their aim – this time on Rogue and King – whoever it was they’d been firing at took a turn. One black-hued bear and one golden one crashed straight into the group of six, thrashing, slashing and clawing like hell itself opened up.

  Rogue took one look at the pair of newcomers and knew he liked them instantly. Without a second thought, he charged headlong into the melee. Left and right he flung his claws wildly, not thinking, not planning, but just feeling the battle course through his veins. Something warm struck him in the face, but when it ran into his mouth it wasn’t the coppery taste of blood that he’d expected. Instead it was bitter and foul. He heard King shout something, but the largest of the three bears wasn’t fighting,.