“No!” he snarled. “I’m going to find Jack! You can run home like a damn coward, just like all the other damn cowards, but I’m staying out here. I told you that Jack is the only thing I care about!” He slammed his fist against the soaked bark of a nearby tree. “I care about him and I never even told him that!”
“You have to live through this to be able to tell him anything,” Agatha said, making a soothing motion with her hands.
Tristan turned his face away from her. Then, he shifted back into his wolf form and raced away. For a moment, he heard her calling after him through the pounding rain, but then he was too far away to hear anything at all.
He was strong enough to survive the storm. He was smart enough to not get hit by lightning. He knew Forest Park like the back of his paw.
Jack wasn’t strong enough. Jack was newer here. Tristan could never forgive himself if he just left the omega out here all by himself, at the whim of nature. If nothing else, they were both going to be out in the rain together.
Where would I go if I was Jack?
There was always the possibility that George or another bear had been wandering through the mountains and ambushed Jack again, but Tristan was doubtful about that. The more likely explanation was that his mate had gone for a longer walk that he originally planned, or that he’d fallen asleep somewhere.
It flashed in his mind how Jack went out of his way to walk around the slope upwards. It made sense then that the omega would continue on with that sort of thinking, so Tristan turned his paws downhill and began to pad through the forest.
Agatha was right that he was severely limited in his abilities right now, so he slowed his pace and strained his senses to focus on just the immediate surrounding area. He heard nothing. No animal stirred. There was nothing but the sound of rain and trees; a fierce chill began to settle down upon the forest, carried in on the wind from higher up the mountain. Mingling with the warm weather and the damp rain, fog began to swell up from the forest floor in lazy, smoky curls.
No, Tristan growled, frustrated. His paws splashed through puddles, mud caking between his toes and sticking to his fur. Throwing back his head, rain streaming down his face, he howled and howled, practically deaf and blind.
There was no sign.
For hours, he walked the forest. He went down every single slope, poked his face into bramble thickets, barked inside of hollow logs; at one point, a mother fox leapt out of the burrow he stuck his head into, clawing at his nose. Rearing away with rain stinging in his new scratches, the smell of blood filled his nose.
It was at that point that he gave up, although his body carried on searching long after his emotions grew dull. Slowly, the chaos of the storm melted away. The clouds cleared, and grey dawn light filtered through what remained.
A new day warmed as Tristan made his way back to camp, exhausted and beaten.
Agatha was watching and waiting for him with a towel. Wordlessly, Tristan took the cloth and wrapped it around his shoulders. It wasn’t enough to do anything, though. He was soaked practically down to the bone.
“We’re sending out our searchers now,” the doctor said. Her voice was quiet and soothing. Tristan glared at her, but his heart ached too badly to say any of the words that were crowding on his tongue. “Did you find anything?”
“Of course I didn’t,” he rasped angrily. His hands clenched into fists, and his fingers punched straight through the fabric of the towel.
Agatha reached out and held his wet hand in her own. “We’ll find him now,” she promised. “You did your part.”
“I’m heading back out. Right now.”
I have to let him know how much I care about him.
Agatha clutched at his fingers. “No, you are not.”
Tristan lifted up his face to stare at her firmly. “I am the leader and I will decide what I do.”
“Look at you!” she said, obviously frustrated with him. “You’re exhausted! You’re soaked and you haven’t eaten, and I know you definitely didn’t try to find shelter so that you could sleep. You’re going to kill yourself if you don’t take a break. And then when we find him, I’ll have to tell him that you’re dead!”
“But—”
“And that’s if he doesn’t figure it out for himself! Can you imagine him out there, alone and waiting for you to find him...and then suddenly he feels disconnected from you and he knows he won’t ever be able to feel your presence again? Can you imagine that, Tristan?”
“Fine,” the alpha snarled, knowing that she was right. She was always right. That was why she was on his council. “I’ll rest for an hour, and I’ll get dried off. But you can’t keep me from going back out there.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Agatha promised, and pointed towards his cabin. “Don’t worry. He’ll be found now.”
“For your sake, he had better be!” Tristan snapped and turned on his heel, unable to stop himself from getting the last word in. The truth was that he was terrified and worried out of his mind. He knew that the doctor was watching out for him, but he was terrified of the reality that they might not be able to find Jack. Where could he have gotten to?
Stop it, he scolded himself. You will find him.
He had to find him. He couldn’t let himself even think about the alternative.
Arriving at his cabin, Tristan let himself inside and the door slammed shut behind him. Peeling off his wet clothing, he simply dropped it all in a pile in the corner of the bedroom and then crawled into his bed.
The scent of Jack flooded around him, and he let out a small whimper. Alpha wolves never whimpered. It was considered a submissive trait. However, at that moment he would have done anything at all to have his mate back.
Reaching out, he grabbed onto Jack’s pillow and pulled it tight against his chest. Burying his face deep in the fabric, Tristan fell asleep before he even knew what was going on.
When he woke again, six hours had passed. Agatha was smart enough not to say a word about it to his face, and the alpha ate a quick breakfast before hurrying out into the forest to resume his search.
Days passed and all he did was search.
It felt as though he was reliving the aftermath of the attack on Jack all over again, endlessly roaming in search of something he wasn’t ever going to find. Pain tore at his heart, nearly knocking him to his knees every time he stopped to think about it.
To cope, Tristan simply didn’t stop. He carried on and on and on, well past the point where everyone else gave up and resumed life as usual. It was, to the other wolves, as though Jack never existed at all.
Part of Tristan understood that he was grieving, and that from this point on in his life, he would never stop.
The rest of him refused to admit that the likelihood of Jack ever being found went down more and more with each passing day.
Bitterness choked him, and there were some hours when he felt as though he couldn’t breathe at all.
Nosing around the river several days later, Tristan looked up with narrowed eyes as light paw-steps thundered down the ridge above him. Peter leapt down the slope, stumbling over his own tan paws.
Tristan snorted, amused but not quite feeling up to laughter. “Watch what you’re doing.”
“Tristan!” Peter gasped, leaping to his feet as a human. “We found Jack!”
It felt as though one of those lightning bolts from that ferocious storm struck him straight in the heart. Joy and worry rose up in his throat, tangling together. “What? Where is he!” he demanded.
“The bears have him!” Peter gasped, his thin chest heaving. “They’re at the camp, waiting for you to show up! And Tristan! Jack is pregnant!”
Chapter 17
Jack didn’t know what was worse about this situation: his bulging stomach, the crowd of bears standing behind him, or the fact that he had a bunch of wolves staring at him.
Ever since the bears snatched him from the forest, they’d been keeping him blindfolded in this weird empty building thing. He
didn’t actually know what it really was because they hadn’t taken off the blindfold for the entire time. All he knew was that the echoing of voices and the feel of concrete beneath his hands and feet reminded him of a garage or the parking area of an airport.
The bears kept him shut up in a small room with a guarded door, and he was only allowed to go anywhere with a guide. When it came time to feed him, one restrained him while the other fed him. Their care was thorough and clinical and extremely demeaning to the omega. How many days went by, he didn’t really know. It couldn’t have been too many because of the way he kept track of time by the swelling of his stomach, but at the same time it was much too many.
Even though Jack was probably being held somewhere in Portland, it was still too far away from his beloved Tristan.
Yes. Beloved.
With plenty of time to think, especially since none of the bears would talk to him, Jack had slowly come to realize that he did actually miss his alpha. He wanted Tristan back very much. He wanted to go home—and home no longer meant his apartment, or Wolf Haven.
Home was with Tristan.
He knew something was up from the excited vibrations running through the bear’s body when one came into his room to grab him earlier. Still blindfolded, they dragged him into a truck and drove him very far to arrive at the foot of the mountain, where they finally allowed him to see so he could navigate around.
He hadn’t ever come up the mountain from this side, so he didn’t recognize anything on the way up. After a bit of walking, a wolf had come from nowhere and run across them. Jack saw from the recognition in its eyes that it knew him, and that it also knew there was nothing it could do against a crowd of fully-grown bears. Without any hesitation at all, it led them back to the camp.
And now they were standing around awkwardly, enemies staring at each other over the shoulders of a scrawny, hugely pregnant omega. Peter had run to fetch Tristan, and now there was nothing to do but wait.
Agatha looked at Jack through the crowd, her eyes wide and concerned. He tried to send her a message with his mind somehow, but it was apparent that she had no idea what he was doing and just kept shaking her head. Frustrated and uncomfortable, his feet aching badly, Jack just gave up and stared unhappily down at the ground. All of his senses were straining, but so far there had been no sign of the alpha or Peter.
George, who was standing nearby, finally broke the silence with a grunt. “Maybe your alpha isn’t coming. I bet he gave up on all of you.”
The bear shifter’s words were met with outraged snarls, although Jack noticed that many of the cries seemed muted. The pack was suffering. He could feel it. There had been too much tension, and they were all very tired. Meanwhile, the bears had been lounging around for days and were as fresh as could be. Even though there were two or three times as many wolves, the odds didn’t look good.
Where are you, Tristan?
Just as he thought the words, an outraged howl split the air. Jack whipped around, wrenching his wrist painfully where one of the bears was holding onto him. Over a rise of land not very far away from the camp, a thin tan wolf appeared. At his side, an enormous white beast pounded at the ground furiously, throwing himself haphazardly across the forest floor.
“Tristan!” Jack cried out, his heart soaring. He felt his stomach give a lurch in response, and winced slightly. “Tristan! I’m here!”
The howl rang out again, with a unique timbre to its sound. Jack shivered upon hearing it, his body aching to respond.
In only a few seconds, Tristan had reached the bears and he transformed back into a human, skirting around the gathered enemies in a few strides to stand before his people. Peter ran around behind him, whispering; Jack spared him a bit of attention, long enough to realize that the man was gathering up children and ushering them away. Feeling a tremor of pride inside his chest at the other, Jack turned back to drink in the sight of his mate. He stood tall and proud before the group of bears, his hands on his hips in a powerful stance.
“Tristan,” he whispered. He wanted to run to him so badly.
“What do you think you’re doing here?” Tristan barked, ignoring the omega. “Did you really think that we were just going to leave and let you do what you wanted?”
George pushed his way through the crowd. Jack shuddered at seeing him, dwarfing even Tristan’s majestic form. “No,” George said in his powerful rumble. “I expected you to stick around like the fool you are, exactly like this. I gave you a month to get out, and now I’m going to take this land back by force. You can’t do anything to stop us.”
Tristan sneered. “This land has always belonged to the wolves.”
“Just because you force your way into a place doesn’t mean you belong there!”
“Then, what do you think you’re doing right now?” Tristan scowled. “You’re doing exactly what you’ve accused us of doing! And you think we’re doing to back down? You think we’re going to leave? I will fight you. I will do everything in my power to make you suffer for what you did to my parents and my mate.”
George let out a growl that was really more of a roar. “I will give you one last chance to get out. Leave now. Or we will attack.”
Tristan glanced back over his shoulder at his assembled pack. Most of them were shifting where they stood, turning into fierce wolves with human eyes full of murder and a thirst for revenge. Jack felt pride in his chest again and a powerful conviction; he knew that he was feeling what the leader felt in that moment. He was confident in his pack, as a true alpha would be.
Your parents would be so proud of you if they could see you right now.
Suddenly, his stomach gave a painful wrench that sent him doubling over, gasping and clutching at the roundness.
Tristan’s eyes slid frantically in his direction.
In that moment, George said, “So be it.”
The words transformed into a powerful, trumpeting roar that was fiercer than any thunder. Jack spun around despite the pain practically dragging him to the ground, gasping and throwing his hands up in front of his face with terror as he saw that the gigantic man had morphed into a dominating beast. The rest of the group were doing the same, becoming a monstrous patchwork of shades of brown.
Then, George dropped down to all fours. Still roaring, he threw himself across the ground and bowled right into Tristan, who was knocked backwards but clung to the bear with all four paws. Snarling and roaring, the pair tumbled backwards into the crowd of wolves.
Chaos broke loose, wolf and bear breaking ranks to crash together. Howls and roars mingled, a storm of sound like never before. Jaws crushed and massive paws sent smaller bodies flying away through the air. Wolves piled on top of bears, working in teams to send the larger animals crashing to the ground beneath their combined weight.
Jack threw himself awkwardly to the side, shapeshifting into a wolf as he fell so he could get his legs beneath him and spare his painful stomach the landing. His ankles, swollen from retaining water, nearly crumbled beneath him anyway. Panting and terrified, his stomach heaving, he looked around frantically and saw an opening in the sea of fighting.
He ran for it, his pelt bushed up with fear. He couldn’t help but to flee, even though his innermost thoughts demanded that he find Tristan and fight at his side. His maternal instinct demanded he do the exact opposite, however, and let Tristan fight his own battles. Wetness dampened the fur between his legs, and he had a terrible feeling that this meant his water had broken.
His cub was going to be born in the middle of a deadly battle, and the worst part was that he didn’t know if this was just the normal time for it or if stress was forcing his body to get rid of the baby.
Terrified and hurting, his stomach rippling with cramps, Jack ducked through all the fighters and ran to the farthest side of the camp, hiding behind a building.
A second later, fur flashed past him.
He let out a squeal and snapped at the shape, but Agatha lunged out of the way of his jaws before he lan
ded the bite.
Quickly shapeshifting, she said, “You have to turn back!”
Jack stared at her, black speckles in his vision. He panted and moaned as another jolt shook through his stomach. There’s no way I can shift back! Being a wolf dulls the pain a little!
Agatha shook her head with frustration. “Shifters give birth as humans because we are humans with animal spirits. Your child doesn’t shift with you. They don’t have the ability yet. Change back!”
He just kept staring at her, panting.
“Change, Jack. Do you want all of this to be for nothing?”
Reluctantly, he squeezed his eyes shut and forced his body to do what he told it to. Ten seconds later, he was writhing around naked in the grass with the doctor crouched over him.
“Good. Now, listen to me and do what I say,” Agatha said. She had that intense look in her eyes, the one she always had when she was about to say something that was never wrong.
For once in his life, Jack decided to listen without arguing.
Chapter 18
This was everything Tristan had ever been trained for. This was his time to shine, his moment of glory, and he went at it with his claws out and his fangs glinting in the sunlight.
He rolled over and over with George in his grasp, distinctly aware of the fact that the bear was clawing at his back as they struggled. It was exactly like when he jumped on the bear in the forest that day, only now he could see what he was fighting.
Kicking away with his hind legs, Tristan dropped away from the dark grizzly bear and spun around to attack again. George was gone, swallowed up in the fray.
Snarling with rage, all thoughts of anything else flew out of Tristan’s mind. He leapt at the nearest bear, a stocky black bear with a brownish tinge to its fur. Lashing out with one paw, he scored across its eyes and blinded it. The animal squealed in pain and wheeled away from him, striking out randomly. Tristan leapt on it and wasted no time in biting into its spine, crushing its vertebrae at the base of the neck, and killing it almost instantly.
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