by Roxie Noir
Kade shrugged. “She was odd, but everything seemed okay, at least until middle school. Then Papa got a new job, and we moved close to the state border with Nevada, and out there it’s mostly wolves and humans. This was right after shifters came out, so things were... uncomfortable.”
He examined a hangnail very, very closely, trying to figure out what to say next.
“She had one friend. Just this one girl, Matilda, and Matilda was a lion shifter but they got along really well, even though all the other kids bullied them really, really bad.”
“Did you get bullied?”
Kade shook his head. “I was good at sports,” he said, half-shrugging. “That kept them off me.”
He rubbed his face in his hands.
“Anyway, it went on all throughout middle school, up until high school,” he said. “Until, finally, one day Matilda was killed in a hit-and-run accident while she was crossing a street. In human form.”
Charlie gasped.
“Did they catch whoever did it?” she said.
Kade shook his head. “Nothing. We never even found out who it was, whether it was an accident or they were targeting Matilda.”
He swallowed hard.
“It pretty much broke Olivia. A week later she went out for bear time and just... never came home.”
Silence.
“I didn’t help her then, so I’m trying to help her now. I want my little sister back.”
There were tears in Charlie’s eyes, and she reached one hand across the table, covering Kade’s hand with her own much smaller one.
“There’s nothing you could have done,” Charlie said gently.
Kade’s hand tensed into fist.
“You don’t know that,” he said gruffly. “You don’t know the first thing about being a shifter and going feral.”
I could have listened to Olivia more, he thought. I could have beat the hell out of anyone who teased her, I could have made my friends her friends. But no, instead, she was my weirdo sister who I pretended I wasn’t even related to.
Charlie’s eyes flashed in anger, and he could see the muscles working in her jaw.
“You don’t know the first thing about me either,” Charlie snapped back.
“Did you have a friend who was a shifter or something?” Kade said.
Stop it, he thought. She’s trying to make you feel better. You don’t have to be such as asshole.
“Most of my friends were shifters,” Charlie said. She pulled her hand back, away from his. “They didn’t go feral, but most of them climbed into a hole filled with oxy or meth and most haven’t come back out.”
Kade let his gaze flick to Charlie’s steady brown eyes with that single gold fleck.
Why do I have to be such an asshole sometimes?
“I’m sorry,” he said out loud.
Charlie shook her head.
“Me too,” she said. “I just meant that people are going to do what they’re going to do. You can’t save anyone who doesn’t want to be saved.”
He looked at Daniel.
“I guess I wanted to be saved,” Daniel said. The side of his mouth twitched up.
Kade knew exactly what Daniel was thinking when he made that face.
“At least you made the benefits of being human seem worthwhile,” he said.
“I don’t think I’ll get my sister back the same way I got you.”
“I hope not.”
Across the table, Charlie wrinkled her nose.
“Is ten years a long time?” she asked.
Both men nodded.
“The longest I’ve ever gotten someone back from was seven years,” he said. “And that was pretty hard.”
That had been a bear, too. Kade still had a scar on one thigh from that job. Even after the other bear had stopped trying to kill him, it had taken him three days to be able to shift back. Kade had almost thought that he wouldn’t be able to anymore.
“The longer you’re feral, the less human you are,” Daniel explained, his soft voice serious. “You’re more and more violent, quick tempered, all that. After a while you can’t understand mercy or nuance or moral gray areas any longer. Everything is kill or be killed.”
Suddenly, Charlie jerked her eyes from Daniel to Kade, looking surprised at something. For a long time, she didn’t speak, but she seemed to be thinking something through.
Finally, Kade couldn’t stand it.
“What?” he said.
“Olivia killed those wolves,” Charlie said.
Kade settled back into his chair, listening to the slight creak of the wood under his weight. Charlie didn’t move, but her gaze just kept boring into him until finally, he had to say something.
“I think so,” he admitted.
“Why?”
Kade shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest. He hoped it had been for a good reason, but it worried at him constantly. Feral shifters were violent, sometimes for no reason, just like regular grizzlies. Except regular grizzlies weren’t nearly as clever or sneaky as shifters.
Also, real bears were never interested in getting revenge on people they’d gone to high school with, or people who they might have thought killed their best friend.
“I don’t know,” he said, finally. “I’m pretty worried about it, though.”
Charlie still looked like she was working through something, her eyes thoughtful, her brow knitted together.
“What is it?” Kade finally asked.
She sighed, then rested her head on one hand, like she was trying to hide her embarrassment.
“I thought it was you,” she finally admitted. “Back at the FBI, they told me that all the evidence pointed to it being a feral shifter named Kade Lessing, since you lived on the edge of bear/wolf territory.”
“So that’s why you were going to tranq me,” Kade said.
Charlie’s mouth dropped open, and Kade couldn’t hold his smile back.
“You saw that?”
“Of course I saw it, you were fifty yards away with a rifle barrel pointed at my face,” Kade went on.
Charlie turned white, then bright pink, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water.
Finally, she managed to speak up.
“Why’d you save me if you knew I was going to shoot you?” she asked.
Because you were in the alone in the woods and you weren’t afraid of me, he thought. Because you thought you were doing the right thing, and because the second I saw you I knew I’d fight every wolf in Cascadia to keep you safe.
Kade shrugged.
“Instinct, I guess,” he said. “Once the wolves were gone I could tell it was a tranq rifle, not the real deal.”
He made the mistake of looking Daniel in the eyes. The other man was smirking, just a little, and Kade knew why: he was brave enough to face down any number of physical threats, but wasn’t about to tell Charlie how he really felt.
“Sorry,” she said. “God, this is such a mess. I can’t believe how wrong the team was about everything.”
“I can’t believe they sent you in there alone with such bad information,” said Kade. “You should probably be dead right now.”
“It’s pretty strange,” Daniel chimed in. “Usually, we deal with this stuff locally. I don’t know why the feds would get involved.”
“This didn’t even happen over state lines,” Kade mused. “Some of the wolf ranches are in Nevada, but none of the dead wolves were from there.”
Charlie looked like she was thinking of this for the first time.
Then, Kade felt a deep itch of suspicion begin, somewhere in the pit of his stomach. He resisted it for a second, then gave in.
Why send her alone? He wondered. Why send someone so inexperienced and fresh that she didn’t even think to check that she was being followed by wolves?
The thought that someone had been careless enough to kill Charlie — and even worse, put a shifter on the hook for her murder — made Kade’s blood boil, his bear pacing and itching to get out.
Don’t tell her, he thought. She’s dealt with enough.
Charlie was fiddling with the sleeve on her bathrobe, worrying at the stitches. Then she finally looked up at Kade, then Daniel.
“What makes you think she killed them?”
“I can tell she’s been here,” said Kade. “A couple of months ago, I was looking for this feral fox and I saw some grizzly scratches on a tree. They were hers.”
“We can always smell who’s marked a tree,” Daniel said.
Kade remembered those seconds with crystal clarity. He’d been human, tiptoeing around the forest, tracking the feral fox, when he’d noticed the scratches on the tree, and there had been something so oddly familiar about them that he’d completely forgotten about the fox.
He’d gone up and sniffed the scratches, and Olivia’s scent had felt almost like a punch in the face.
His little sister, still alive. Alive and back in Cascadia, something he’d never even dared to hope would happen.
For a few years, there had been reports of a feral female bear that matched her description further south, in the eastern Sierras, but those had faded after a bit. In the first few years after she left, Kade had searched hard, but nothing had turned up. Finally, Kade had accepted that his sister was either dead or close to it, and that she didn’t ever want to see him again.
So he’d joined the Army. The officers had looked at him a little strangely, but “Don’t ask, don’t tell” was still in effect then, so they didn’t ask whether he was a shifter and he didn’t tell them that he was.
Then Afghanistan, the roadside bomb that killed his team. He’d survived, shifted, and been discharged promptly once the higher-ups found out he was a shifter.
“They must have done something to her,” Kade said. He cracked the knuckles of his left hand against the wooden table top. “That isn’t how Olivia is. Was. Whatever. Even if she were feral, I know she just wanted to turn her brain off and be alone for a while, and she just forgot to come back. She was never vicious.”
He ran one hand over his short hair, feeling his heart ache for his sister.
“She’s not a murderer,” he said. “I know this looks bad, but it wasn’t her. I know it wasn’t.”
“Okay,” Charlie said. “So let’s get her back.”
10
Charlie
I have got to be losing my mind, Charlie said. The words were barely out of her mouth — “Let’s get her back,” — before she started to regret them.
You can’t just go around Cascadia, helping people release their feral, murdering relatives, she thought. You still work for the FBI, sort of, you know.
In front of her, Kade smiled properly for the first time since they’d sat at the table.
“I’ll get a map,” he said, and stood, walking into another room.
Charlie looked over at Daniel, still feeling baffled. She felt like Kade was hot and cold with her. On one hand, she had a hazy half-memory of him talking to her as he’d run through the forest, carrying her while she bled onto him after the wolf attack. She remembered the gentle way he’d put her on the kitchen table, and how he’d told her that she was going to be okay.
Plus, he’d fought two wolves and then carried her to safety. Neither of those things were easy tasks.
That was the Kade that was starting to make Charlie feel a little gooey inside. She understood why Daniel loved that Kade.
But then, on the other hand, there was the Kade who stood, arms crossed over his chest, as Daniel changed her bandages and fed her, as she tried to move around their cabin. That Kade didn’t seem like he wanted anything to do with her.
“I know he’s your mate, but I don’t know what to think,” Charlie told Daniel. “I really don’t.”
“Kade is like a... gumball,” Daniel said, thinking for a moment. “Hard on the outside, still kind of weird on that first bite, but by the time you really get chewing, he’s all sweet and gooey.”
Charlie blinked at him.
“Was that a weird analogy?” he asked.
Before she could answer — yes, yes it was — Kade was back, a pile of maps under his arm.
He spread one out onto the table, looked at it for a moment, then pointed.
“This is us,” he said, stabbing one finger at the table. “This is Buck’s ranch,” he said, stabbing another finger at the table.
“Is that where they’re keeping Olivia?” Charlie asked.
“You know as much as I do,” Kade said.
Charlie sighed inwardly. This wasn’t the time for Kade to get salty with her.
“You know Buck way better than I do,” she reminded him, trying to do it gently. “Is he going to keep her on his ranch somewhere, or is he the supervillain type? Has he got a lair somewhere else?”
“Buck is anything but a supervillain,” said Daniel. “The man can’t keep his own sons from fighting like cats and dogs.”
Kade snorted. “You mean dogs and dogs,” he said.
“The man has problems besides a feral bear is our point,” Daniel said. “We may as well go to the ranch first. It’s the most likely place.”
“Right,” Kade said. “Okay. We’ll go at night, after dusk, when they’re more likely to be asleep. Tomorrow’s Friday, and they usually get drunk around the bonfire and then head off to bed.”
“Does being drunk make them more or less dangerous?” Charlie asked.
“They’ll be sleepier,” Kade said, totally confident.
Charlie suspected he was wrong. More likely, she thought, it would just make them angrier.
“How many wolves are there?” she asked.
Kade shrugged. “Ten, maybe fifteen?” he said. “Including Buck, who’s the head of that ranch, sort of.”
“The alpha?”
Daniel shook his head. “He’s one of the betas,” he said. “He’s in charge of that pack, but he still answers to the East Cascadia alpha.”
“Wolves are very hierarchical and regimented,” Kade said, making a face. He obviously didn’t approve. “There’s a lot of groupthink and following orders without asking questions.”
For a moment, Charlie wanted to point out that he’d joined the army — the pinnacle of following orders without asking questions — voluntarily, but she didn’t say it out loud. Not the time or the place.
“So, the plan is for us to bust our way in there, you two fight off ten to twenty wolves, and then we tear the place apart looking for Olivia?” she asked.
Kade nodded.
“Sounds about right,” he said. He cracked his knuckles again, this time the ones on his other hand. “Give me a good night’s rest and I can kill any of those dogs who come between me and my sister,” he said.
Daniel also nodded, his jaw tight. “It’ll be a fight, but nothing we’re not up to,” he said.
Charlie looked at the map, thinking.
Their plan was naive at best and straight-up dumb at worst, she thought. Running through the gates of a ranch and just attacking everyone they saw until they found Olivia? It wasn’t going to work, it would probably kill at least a few of the wolves, and it might very well get Kade and Daniel killed.
They admitted themselves that they had no idea how many wolves were on the ranch. For all they knew, given the recent territory disputes, there were fifty wolves there.
Charlie licked her lips and thought fast. They weren’t going to like what she was about to suggest, but it was a much, much better plan that what they’d come up with.
“What if I went in alone?” she asked.
Daniel and Kade just stared at her.
“Fuck no,” Kade said.
“Are you insane?” Daniel asked, his voice rising in volume just a little. “You’ll last five seconds.”
Charlie raised both her hands in a stop talking gesture.
“I’m going in as a trade,” she said.
“We’re not trading you,” Kade said as though it were the final word.
“I’m not your object for tra
ding, first of all,” Charlie snapped. “Just because you could both tear me apart in five seconds doesn’t mean you can toss me around and control where I go and what I do.”
Kade opened his mouth, looking furious.
Then he closed it.
“You go in as a trade, find Olivia, and then we come out and massacre the wolves?” Kade asked. He still sounded angry.
Charlie shook her head again.
“This plan doesn’t involve anyone else dying,” she said.
“So how do you get out?” Daniel asked.
She started picking at her cuticles again. This was the part she wasn’t quite certain about. The part that she wasn’t sure that she wanted to happen, but she didn’t see how else she was supposed to get out of the ranch.
“Remember how I had that pack when they attacked me in the woods?” she asked them.
“You mean when you were going to shoot me?” Kade asked.
Charlie blushed.
“Right,” she said. “It’s got a gun, a couple of syringes of tranquilizer, camping stuff, and an emergency beacon,” she told them.
They looked at her, not totally comprehending it.
“I activate it and the cavalry charges in and saves me,” she said.
“The cavalry in this scenario is the FBI?” Daniel asked.
Charlie nodded.
“And they whisk you back to the east coast?” he asked.
She could feel his eyes boring into her, and she couldn’t bring herself to meet them, her heart twisting in her chest.
“Yeah,” she said.
“No,” said Kade. He stood from the table and walked to the kitchen window, staring out of it at their front yard.
“Kade,” said Daniel.
“She can’t just leave!” he said, his hands gripping the countertop so tightly that Charlie thought it might crack.
“It’s a free country,” Daniel said. “She’s not our prisoner.”
“She’s not supposed to leave,” Kade said.
Charlie gritted her teeth, grabbed a hold of the table, and pushed herself to standing, ignoring the screaming in her back as her wounds moved under the bandages.
“Is that why you’ve been guarding me while I sleep?” she demanded. She was tired, and she felt a little lightheaded. “To make sure I don’t sneak out into the forest in the middle of the night? Do you really think I’m that dumb?”
