by Selena Kitt
“I saved her life once, brother,” Jonah told him softly. “We’ll do it again—I promise you—but you have to stop and think!”
“We don’t have time,” he choked, the thought of Ivy in danger making him see red. “I’ve already lost enough time, fighting with you. You don’t have to come with me—but I have to go.”
“All right.” Jonah let him go with a resigned sigh and a shake of his head. “Christ, I’ve been bear for almost two years… I’m almost afraid to shift back. But we’ll be faster if we shift.”
“More than two years,” Caleb growled. “How long did they have you in a cage before I freed you?”
“I don’t know.” Jonah’s eyes shifted away, into the distance.
It was the direction Ivy had gone and Caleb’s heart hammered in his chest, keeping time. With every beat, she was getting further away.
“Why did you run?” Caleb asked. It was the question that had been on the tip of his tongue, the one he’d been waiting to find his brother to ask. “I opened that cage and you were gone. Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”
“You never should have let me go.” Jonah turned his face away. “You should have just let me die there.”
“They’d already killed our parents,” Caleb reminded him, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I wasn’t going to lose you, too.”
He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, feeling it shake. Caleb couldn’t imagine what he’d been through, locked up in that goddamned lab. He had no idea what experiments they’d subjected Jonah to, what tortures he’d undergone, but Caleb’s imagination had run wild for the past few years while he’d tracked Jonah from somewhere deep in the Colorado mountains. The trail had gone cold several times, and for a while, he thought he’d never see his brother again.
“Jonah.” Caleb put one big arm around his brother’s shoulder, giving him a side-arm squeeze. “Listen—it’s not your fault, man. He—”
“Fuck!” Jonah shoved him away, hard. If it had been anyone else, Caleb probably wouldn’t have felt it at all, but his brother was a shifter—he was inordinately strong. But Caleb wasn’t going to let him go, not now, not after finally finding him.
“Don’t you understand?” Jonah croaked, looking down at his hands, palms up. There was blood on them still, from the man he’d disemboweled in the clearing.
That reminded Caleb again of Ivy and he glanced into the woods. Was she out there, hiding, the way he’d told her to? Run and hide. That’s what he’d said. He knew, wherever she went, he would be able to track her. But the presence of one of the men from the farmhouse all the way out here—what did it mean? Were there more of them out there in the woods even now?
“It is my fault!” Jonah cried, turning his bloody hands up to his brother. “I have blood on my hands! That man—he was never, ever meant to be like this. Like us. None of them were!”
“I know.” Caleb nodded, the pained look on his brother’s face almost enough to break him. Had he been living this way, the whole time? Thank God he’d been stuck as bear, instead of human, or he might have killed himself. “But Jonah, listen to me. It isn’t your fault!”
“Yes!” Jonah roared, his hands clenching into bloody fists. “Yes it is! It was me! Me, Caleb! Whatever this fucking feeding plague is, you let me loose on the world, and I fucking infected them all!”
“No, you didn’t!” Caleb grabbed his brother’s shoulders, shaking him as hard as he dared. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! It was Vaughn! He infected himself!”
“What?” Jonah’s word was barely a breath. His eyes—dark, like their mother and father’s—stared back at him, dazed, full of confusion. “But… no… I was the carrier. He… he said I was… he said…”
“He lied.” Caleb shrugged one shoulder, shaking his head at the time he’d lost with this man, the only family he had left, all because of Vaughn. “Vaughn’s always wanted to be one of us, Jonah. Fuck developing shifters as military weapons—that was just his excuse. He took that serum he developed because he wanted to be like us. And it turned him into…”
Caleb stared at the man staring lifeless up at the darkening sky. The sun had disappeared behind thunderheads.
“He turned them all into that,” Caleb finished, meeting his brother’s eyes. They were filling with unbelieving tears.
“It wasn’t me?” Jonah swallowed hard, his lip curling in anger. “All this time… it wasn’t my fault?”
“Unless you let Vaughn kill our parents and kidnap you, little brother—and I’m pretty damned sure, given the scar Vaughn’s got on his face, you put up one helluva fight—it wasn’t your fault at all.” Caleb pulled Jonah to him in a hug, feeling his brother’s shoulders shaking with emotion.
“I thought it was me,” Jonah whispered. “I’m going to kill him.”
“That’s the spirit.” Caleb smiled, clapping his brother on the back as they parted. “Listen, I’m going after my mate. You coming?”
Jonah nodded, then sighed. “Back to bear?”
“Why couldn’t you shift all this time?” Caleb wondered aloud, puzzled.
“I don’t know.” Jonah shrugged. “But it was when I bit your shoulder that I felt it—I knew I could shift back. I tasted your blood, and…”
“Blood, huh?” Caleb wondered at this. “This virus, whatever it is—they said it was blood borne. Back when the news was still reporting. Like AIDS, I guess. Blood and saliva.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Jonah snorted. “I’ve been living bear the whole time.”
“Just like Mom and Dad always wanted us to,” Caleb said, hearing the sadness in his own voice.
“Come on, let’s go find your girl.” Jonah gave a giant shake of his head, and he shifted, his hands going to the grass, turning to paws in an instant, his thickly muscled body blurry with the change.
It happened fast—almost too fast for the human eye to see. Most wouldn’t even be able to register it. They would see a human standing there, and the next—a bear. And they’d probably think they needed a good stiff drink at that point—or, conversely, that they should probably stop drinking too much.
Just as quickly, Jonah changed back, and Caleb looked at him in surprise.
“Just wanted to make sure I could change back.” Jonah gave him a lop-sided grin before shifting to bear again.
Caleb shifted, too, and they both put their noses to the grass, searching for Ivy’s sweet scent. It made Caleb’s heart beat faster when he caught it, and the thought of her alone and frightened—probably frightened of him—killed him. But the thought of her coming across Vaughn or one of his men was even worse.
He had to find her. Overhead, thunder cracked and Caleb roared. Jonah roared back, and the two bear brothers took off in the direction Ivy had gone.
It had been so long since Caleb had tussled with his brother, or even run beside him, he was elated as the two of them covered ground together—and the same time, he was so worried about Ivy he felt sick with it. Jonah might have felt the weight of it, but it hadn’t been his fault.
Caleb blamed himself. It was his fault he couldn’t be content to live the way his father and mother wanted him to—bear, instead of human. They’d wanted him to stay home, in the caves, to hibernate in the winter like a good bear, and fish and hunt in the summer. Never mind that they could shift into human form whenever they wanted to—just because you could, his father argued, doesn’t mean you should.
The human world was too complicated and harsh, according to his father—to heartbreaking and hard, according to his mother. But to Caleb, it was beyond exciting, and far too tempting for a young shifter to resist. He had to taste the human world, from its divine cooked foods to its luscious, fleshy women. And, he discovered, in human form, he was like a god. There was nothing he couldn’t lift—his strength was unsurpassed. He could see at night—humans couldn’t do that. He could smell a meal cooking a mile away.
Shifting was the best of both worlds—why would you choose to stay bear
? Not that he had anything against living in caves and fishing in streams. He liked those things, too. That’s what he tried to explain to his parents when he’d left the cave with Vaughn.
Because Vaughn had been his fault, too, hadn’t he? Vaughn had been Caleb’s friend, had learned his secret—a fact that had, ultimately, cost Caleb’s cautious and suspicious parents their lives. And they’d been right, all along. But Caleb wouldn’t listen. He had to go off on his own, and while he thought he was taking advantage of Vaughn’s privileges—Vaughn’s ability to get Caleb everything from a driver’s license to a school record and a traceable past—Vaughn had been taking advantage of him, planning all along.
He should have known it, he realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that summer Vaughn had been vacationing up north with his family and suggested they become “blood brothers.” Caleb had refused at first, but Vaughn had persisted. Even then, Vaughn was experimenting, trying to find a way to become shifter, like him. His experiments had just grown more involved and complicated over time, until he’d finally succeeded.
At least, partly.
He’d managed to get hold of shifter blood, anyway, after Caleb had finally cut ties with him five years ago. He still couldn’t believe Vaughn had thought Caleb would jump at the chance. He could be part of something big, Vaughn kept saying. They would make super-human soldiers for the military—Caleb was already notorious and sought out in the Marines for his strength, speed and skill—part human, part shifter. Didn’t he want to be part of making history?
Caleb had ended his “friendship”—if that’s ever what it had been—with Vaughn then. Caleb’s time in the world had taught him exactly what his parents had wanted him to learn—and he wanted nothing more than to go home, find a mate, and live free for the rest of his life. His brother, Jonah, had never left, not like him. He would go home, he would find them, they would be a family again.
Caleb never thought Vaughn would come up here, to Copper Harbor, looking for shifter blood. Never anticipated that his former friend would kill Caleb’s parents and take his younger brother hostage. It had taken him a year to find where they’d caged Jonah. And by then, the damage had been done. Vaughn had infected himself.
I should have killed him then and there, Caleb thought. Another thing Caleb could blame himself for. And he did. He’d had a choice in that fateful moment—he could free his brother or kill Vaughn. He knew he didn’t have time to do both. He had chosen to free Jonah, and in doing so, had doomed the world to this fate.
Overhead, the rain began, dampening Ivy’s scent and Caleb slowed, nudging his brother with his shoulder, and he slowed too, sniffing the air. It was charged with energy. He could feel it raising his fur. They had followed her for over a mile, and he knew, now, where she was headed. Where she likely was already. The thought made him colder than the rain pelting his fur.
Ivy had gone home.
Caleb shook himself, shifting back into human form, and Jonah did, too. The clearing where Ivy’s little homestead stood was at the edge of these woods and he didn’t need to go any further to know she was there.
“I have to go,” Caleb told his brother. He was signing his own death warrant, walking into a dozen of those armed men, but he couldn’t leave her there.
“No, Caleb, wait.” Jonah put a hand on his arm. “There’s something you don’t know…”
“I know she’s my mate,” he said, searching the tree line for any sign of life. “I don’t have a choice, Jonah.”
“Listen, this is Vaughn,” Jonah said. “He wants me. Preferably alive. You too, if he can get you. They’ll use her as bait.”
“I know.” Caleb smiled grimly. “It’s working.”
“It’s suicide,” Jonah hissed, grabbing his brother’s arm as Caleb made to move. “But there’s a way to do this that isn’t! Will you listen to me for once before going off half-cocked and getting everyone killed!”
Caleb hesitated. His instincts were strong, his blood on fire. He needed to find her, needed to protect her. She was so close—and as a bear, he could kill at least half of them before they took him down. But half wouldn’t be enough to save her, would it?
“We can do this, brother,” Jonah spoke over the wind and rain. “Together.”
Caleb relented, turning and saying, “Tell me.”
Jonah did.
Chapter 13—Ivy
Ivy’s father had been a deer hunter. When he died, her freezer was still full of venison that he’d shot, dressed, and processed himself. He pretty much did everything in the barn. There was a pulley system set up so he could string the deer up and safely gut it before skinning it. He had taught her how to do it when she was twelve—she’d been such a tomboy. Most girls her age were into nail polish and boy bands. Ivy had been learning how to skin deer.
Now she was strung up like one in the middle of the bloody barn, hanging there as bait.
She just prayed that the rain had come in time—that Caleb hadn’t been able to pick up her scent and follow. She prayed that he would stay safe out there in the woods, alive and free.
Her arms ached, her shoulders stretched so far they felt like they were going to pop out of place. They had bound her wrists with the wire cable her father had used to hoist deer. It dug into her flesh. Her ankle throbbed, swollen, but she was on tiptoe, barely able to keep herself balanced. And of course, they’d stripped her naked before they strung her up, just so they could enjoy the show.
She was beyond humiliation at this point. There were more than a dozen eyes on her, Caleb had been wrong about that. Besides Vaughn, she had counted fifteen heads. But maybe she’d counted a few of them more than once? She wasn’t sure from this vantage point. They’d all come in to get a look at her—and a feel if Vaughn wasn’t looking.
She’d been groped and fondled so much that day, she was desensitized to it. Men’s hands everywhere, squeezing and kneading her flesh. And they all had that hungry look in their eyes—the one she’d seen on the man she’d shot and buried in her garden. She didn’t know if they wanted to fuck her or eat her—but she kind of hoped they’d do it in reverse order.
They all wore military garb—bloody fatigues, combat boots. They all had military rifles, too, big ones. Definitely big enough to kill a bear. Ivy closed her eyes and listened to the rain falling on the metal roof. The sun wasn’t down yet, but the sky was dark with the storm. It had swept in from the west like a dark curtain drawn over the world, and the men had put the barn lights on overhead.
She was strung up and lit up in a spotlight, like a beacon, calling to Caleb.
And she knew, now, that was what Vaughn had wanted all along.
“Come on, Captain,” the voice, full of gravel, came from behind her. “Just a little taste? Just one?”
A hand moved over her back and she cringed when it squeezed the meat of her behind.
“Can’t we at least try her out?” Another asked.
They weren’t all in the barn. She saw some of them milling around inside the house. She didn’t want to think about what the house looked like, after seeing—and smelling—the barn.
Vaughn spoke, from somewhere behind her, too. “I told you, not until he shows up. We need her scent strong and pure.”
Outside, the wind shifted, and the rain blew inwards. Ivy shivered, feeling it dot her skin with moisture.
“How do you know he’s even out there?” One of them complained.
Whiny bitches, Ivy thought, filled with disgust at the men who surrounded her. They’re all whiny little bitches. She smiled, in spite of her situation.
“Trust me.” Vaughn snorted. “I’ve known him since we were kids. He’s going to do the honorable thing. He always does.”
Ivy knew he was talking about Caleb—had overheard him talking to his men about trapping the shifter. Because, according to Vaughn, they needed Caleb’s blood. His shifter blood. The infection these men had—whatever made them crave meat, and not just raw meat, but living, breathing
meat—had been some sort of mutation gone wrong.
The shock of Caleb shifting from human to bear seemed a million years ago now. And the least of her concerns. The shock of finding Vaughn at the center of the group of men who had invaded her house had come as a greater surprise. Not that she’d had a lot of time to contemplate it. When she wasn’t being stripped, pushed, prodded, shoved or strung up, she was being taunted by this man or that.
At first, they liked to come look into her face, to watch her eyes when they told her what they were going to do to her. They liked to rub their crotches and lick their lips, and the smell of each and every one of them made her gag. They all smelled like rotting meat, like something long dead. They all looked like they hadn’t cleaned up after any of their kills. Their clothes were stained with blood and gore, and no one seemed to notice or care.
