Fragile Bonds

by Adelaide Walsh

  “Absolutely not,” I demanded. “Should I go wait at the marketplace?”

  He gave me a last little squeeze before sliding his hand down my forearm and cupping my hand in his.

  “Nah, Augustina will be fine with a visitor. Maybe she’ll even go easy on me in front of company.”

  “Coward.”

  That earned me another wink before we were off and marching down winding corridors. Some natural stone, some permanent masonry. There were no corners or squared turns here. Everything seemed to wander with the natural formation of a cave system. But this section—obviously the government offices of the pack—was different from the structures in Punta Cero. Everything here appeared permanent. Not transient in the least. Thinking about it, that subtle sign of stability was probably comforting to the Bears.

  Joaquín’s office opened off a wide, sweeping hallway and was a massive space. There was a hulking conference table on one side of the room, hewn from what appeared to be a single, enormous block of dark wood. Around it sat twelve modern office chairs in a sleek black material. A high-tech comm screen blended into the wall beyond the table. On the opposite side of the room from the table, stood a wall of bookshelves. The cases displayed books on every topic under the sun among small trinkets tucked into cubbies or positioned as bookends. Standing in front of the shelves was a smart-looking bar cart, stocked with squat crystal decanters and simple, yet stylish glasses. Positioned at an angle from the cart, was a lush sofa, upholstered in a sedate black tweed. To the rear of the space, serving as the focal point where Joaquín clearly did most of his work here, stood a sleek black desk, topped in glass and crafted out of brushed black metal on clean cut, modern lines. The whole place was awash in blacks, dark woods, and pale grey accent tones. It screamed executive more than politician, and that was a thought I tucked away in the back of my mind to mull over when I had more time about it.

  There were no windows in this room. The ceiling was a smooth, consistent span of shimmering grey stone, I assumed to afford the leader of this territory maximum privacy. Joaquín padded over to the desk and fell into the big, comfortable looking chair, at the same time nabbing a handful from the stack of papers neatly stacked in the center of the black blotter covering the middle of the desk. Other than the papers on the desk, the wide surface was clear.

  "What? You Bears don't believe in computers?"

  He lifted his gaze from the papers in his hands just long enough to raise an eyebrow and swipe a hand across the top of the desk. The entire surface of the desk suddenly lit with a white glow, and what I thought had been an old school blotter on the desk, vanished. The entire desk top was a touch screen that made my hacker heart skip a beat, and I felt stupid for making the comment. Obviously, I couldn't let that sit.

  "Well...it's portable at least," I said, sarcasm covering up my surliness.

  Not bothering to even address me this time, he reached below the now glowing screen and pulled out a practically-sized tablet, shaking it in the air before returning it to its home. I rolled my eyes and turned to stomp toward the couch, feeling totally out of my depth here. In this moment I was brutally aware of the distance that separated us. This man was a leader. People relied on him, depended on him for protection and prosperity. And I was just a reporter. I felt small.

  "I can hear it when you're breathing changes." His comment stopped me in my tracks before I'd even made it two steps toward the couch.

  "What?"

  "The breath is very tied to what we are feeling at any given moment. I can hear it when your breathing changes," he repeated.

  Now I felt small and self-conscious.

  "So what?"

  "What were you thinking about just now?" He looked at me directly now, having dropped the papers in his hands to the desk.

  "Nothing."

  "I can also tell when a person is lying. The heart rate increases, breaths become shallower."

  Having learned from my last mistake, and not willing to dig a deeper hole for myself, I came clean, in a rare—for me—bout of emotional honesty.

  "I was just thinking that all of this," I swept my hands out around myself, "is very impressive. You're an important guy, Joa. People depend on you."

  "And?"

  "And," I huffed, "I'm just a reporter. I'm not sure what it is exactly you want from me." He stared at me and, again, those auric eyes disturbed me. Felt like they were seeing something in me that I didn't. Maybe something that wasn't even there. He opened his mouth to respond but I cut in before he could do it.

  "What is it that you think is happening here, Joaquín?" I made a little flicking motion between us with my hand and hoped he wouldn't make me elaborate. He stood up, rounded the desk, and leaned his ass on the front edge of the high-tech thing.

  "I don't know what this is." He paused. "But I'd like to explore it, maybe find out."

  "I don't expect anything beyond what you've already given." I could feel my defensive walls slamming down. Didn't want him to think I expected any kind of emotional coddling because we hooked up once and then something bad happened. I wasn't the kind of girl that couldn't handle a one-night stand. His eyes narrowed.

  "So, what, that was just a roll for you? You're not interested in anything else?" Gone was the playful alpha who'd led me here by the hand and kissed me so sweetly after introducing me to his bitch assistant.

  I felt a sting of guilt knowing I'd tarnished that sweetness.

  "That's not what I said. I just meant...you don't know anything about me."

  "I know you're loyal to a fault. I know you have no self-preservation instinct what so ever," he gave me big eyes that said he hadn't yet figured out how I was still breathing, "I know you don't see the lines that divide people, don't even have the word 'discrimination' in your vocabulary. I know you're a fuckin' badass who runs toward a disaster, not away. I know you're an absolute freak in bed. And I know all that makes me wanna find out what else makes all that," he made a little swirl with his pointer finger, gesturing to my entire person, "tick. Isn't that enough?"

  Well fuck. If that wasn't the right answer I wasn't sure what would be. I was at a loss for words, in a segment of the human experience that has always seemed to just float above my ken. I chewed my lip, trying, in vain, to settle on a reaction. It's not that I had never had relationships before. I'd dabbled in a few. It's just that depth in this category...was new to me. I'd never really been one to throw myself into a relationship, and the idea of someone trying to figure out what made me 'tick', unsettled me.

  "Come here," he ordered.

  Too wrapped up in my own string of thoughts to stop myself, I covered the short distance to him. And scolded myself for following orders the second I reached him.

  "You can't tell me what to do," I snapped.

  The Bear alpha just smirked.

  "Oh no? It sure seemed like you enjoyed it the other night."

  I slapped at his chest, but he caught my wrist before my hand connected with that solid steel wall of muscle.

  "Don't you have anything more important to be doing?" I jerked my head toward the pile of papers on his desk. It was precisely stacked, and very very tall. The Bear alpha was, apparently, a very busy man.

  "Oh, reinita, don't tempt me like that."

  He bent his head and nipped at the sensitive skin of my throat, sending frissons of electricity through my body. I let out a gasp when his hands skimmed across the skin of my arms, one dropping low to sneak under the hem of my t-shirt and stroke lazy circles on the skin of my lower back. My breath deserted me and I leaned into his touch. A touch that felt so good, worked so fast, had me slick and ready for him at the slightest brush. His nibbling kiss dropped lower, skating over my collar bone and I thrust my fingers into his hair to keep myself from melting to the floor.

  "I would much rather be doing something more important."

  He lifted his head to steal a quick kiss, a throaty chuckle at his own dirty pun still vibrating through him. How the hell did he do th
is to me so fast? It was like we were teenagers again, aroused by the mere thought of each other. Damn.

  His hands slipped up, over my ribs, stopping just below the curve of breasts that were already heavy and aching for his hands. I gave a low moan as his mouth found its way back to my neck, completely forgetting that Bears had frighteningly powerful hearing.

  His tongue licked out across my collar bone, making me squirm in his hold. He responded by holding me harder, swiping the pad of his thumbs over my nipples. I could feel his body, hard and searing against my own.

  "You're very good at this," I mumbled through the fog in my head.

  His hands on me banishing rational thought and turning me into a creature of sensation. A slave to the arcing waves of pleasure he could ignite in my body. One of his wicked hands dropped lower, fingers curling over my hip and he rocked the rigid line of his erection into the soft flesh of my stomach. The realization that he was reacting to this just as strongly as I was, made my stomach muscles clench.

  "I bet if I checked, reinita, you'd be ready to take me right here, on this desk.”

  I could feel his breath on my face. I laughed and bit his lower lip hard enough to mark.

  “I’m not willing to break this sexy piece of tech until I get to play with it at least once.”

  He growled and pinched my nipple through my shirt, hard enough to make me yelp.

  “We will finish this later,” a slow licking kiss along my jaw, “we’ve got company.”

  I took a step back, breathless and disheveled and I didn’t care one bit. By the time Augustina entered the office, I’d collected myself as well as I could. Her sharp eyes and cunning intelligence did not, however, miss the redness that stained my cheek bones.

  Augustina was a stout and surly woman I guessed was in her seventies. She had long steel gray hair that she wore in a neat braid that fell arrow-straight down her back. Her eyes were a pale green and they seemed to hold ten thousand different stories, one of those telling of a woman who’d seen and done more in her long life than most ever would. I figured the best way to deal with a woman like this was with a direct approach. When she slammed the heavy office door behind her, Joaquín stood up to greet her with a formal kneeling bow, and I extended my hand and introduced myself the moment her eyes shifted toward me.

  "Adriana Rojas, Field Journalist with KHG."

  "A journalist?" She ripped her hand away like she'd just touched something hot. "I'm sure Joaquín has mentioned that the Bears don't take too kindly to the human brand of liberation."

  Ouch. Despite the shit happening behind the scenes the news organization I worked for, I was still proud of the company. Proud of my role. The company may be struggling to navigate this political minefield right now, but they'd played a big role in informing and liberating people all over the world in the past. The newsgroup presented an impressive run of content, spanning the full spectrum of political opinions, had an entire department dedicated to checking the facts presented by our reporters and content mills, and they were good to their people.

  Karinna Holdings Group had grown and evolved and changed over the last fifty years, the leadership in constant flux, but the ideals that drove us all to do what we did as investigators and information merchants remained a constant in the company. And for that I continued to feel a sense of pride, of loyalty to my employer. But not everybody saw the role of a reporter the same way I did. A lot of people saw us in the same way they did insects. This wasn't my first time facing off with someone who didn't value my work. And she wasn't exactly wrong either.

  Changeling society was in fact different from humans. So much of our political maneuvering was aimed at releasing people from the all-encompassing rule of leaders. Sure, many of those leaders were corrupt, violent, and rather stupid, but the operative mission here was this idea that the people should govern themselves. That a democratic system was the one true path. Changeling did not often share that compunction. Most changelings were more than content—adamantly preferred even—to exist under what the humans termed as a dictatorship. None of the packs, although they went by a thousand different names, were democracies. The alpha of each group, by his or her nature, was the final, and undisputed leader of their people. The alpha made the decisions, the alpha had the last word, and members of the pack accepted that. This set up seemed anathema to many humans. Enough that human groups around the world had developed a little pattern of sending 'democratic missionaries' into the more remote changeling packs, only to find those missionaries entirely rebuffed. Excommunicated from the pack and banned from territories with impressive swiftness.

  I did not subscribe to such notions of a one true path. In any area of my life. But this woman had no way of knowing that, and if I'd learned anything from my life up to this point, it was that people reacted to things based on their history of experiences.

  Augustina's reaction had to have come from a nice long line of holier-than-thou human representatives. Expecting her to believe any different from me, despite her own experience, would be illogical. Rather irresponsible even.

  "The human brand of liberation isn't even accepted wholly by humans." I shrugged.

  "And where do you fall on that line of thinking?" she asked with a startling directness. The woman had all the subtlety of a bull dozer. I laughed, demurely, at her willingness to take on such a delicate topic before we'd even finished our introductions. Call me a masochist, but I was finding I kind of liked this woman in a twisted sort of way.

  "I think people have the right to live and let live. And I know without a doubt that there is more than one way of doing that."

  She turned to Joaquín and put her hands on her hips.

  "She's far too reasonable. Get her out."

  Joaquín was back, leaning against his desk, where he steepled his hands and prayed for deliverance.

  "Nieto, what you thinking you're doing bringing an outsider in here. I've got important things to discuss." She widened her eyes, looking very severe. "Confidential."

  "Abuela, you will need then, to be discreet. I'm sure you can find a way of communicating the needs of our gardens in a way that will not result in our ultimate demise."

  "Well," she huffed, clearly offended. "I will try."

  "Adriana, this very old and very rude woman," he flung out a hand indicating Augustina, "is in charge of managing the packs produce gardens. And my wonderful abuela. Say hi, Augustina."

  She did not say hi.

  "This boy has no respect. And I don't have time for this nonsense. You stood me up this morning, you just be glad I took time out of my very busy day to come talk to you, Nieto."

  He gestured to the couch. "Please, Yaya, have a seat."

  Augustina plopped down on the couch and Joaquín followed her over, sitting cross legged on the rug in front of her. He looked like a child, and I stifled a giggle, but followed his lead. I could barely contain my excitement at learning more about the pack structure. Even if it was just how the gardens worked.

  "We have problems, Nieto. With this mandatory recall going on, there are too many of the pack in the den. We are running out of food." She paused, I assume, for dramatic effect. Joaquín just nodded, waiting for her to go on. "The gardens are not meant to sustain this number of bears. Something must be done."

  "When la tribu discussed the recall, we knew this was going to happen. What have you concluded, Abuela?"

  "We need to expand the gardens. We'd planned on supplementing the produce by simply purchasing what we needed from the human import markets, which we will still need to do in the short term, but the pack is not getting any smaller. We must be able to sustain them over a longer period. I insist we expand the gardens, and any surplus we generate we can sell to the human markets."

  "Sounds perfectly reasonable. But if you're coming to me about this, you obviously got a 'no' from The Architect."

  "Bah," Augustina growled and flicked her hand out dismissing the shrewd observation. "That bastardo doesn't know he's
talking about."

  I was really really really trying to be chill here, but this was just so cool! This must be how Benjamin Franklin felt when he was screwing around with his kite.

  "Why was the request declined," he asked.

  "Apparently, it's not in the budget."

  Joaquín let out an exasperated breath. "We've had some major expenses surrounding the recall." He glanced at me. "Setting up internally managed servers is a fuckin' expensive gig." Gaze back on his abuela, he continued, "but buying on the human markets is expensive and we can't be sure how stable the import markets are going to be in the coming months. I've got a meeting with finance tomorrow. I'll see what we can do."

  Augustina nodded. "Good. Now, Nieto, you going to explain what you're doing sneaking around with the human?"

  Joaquín pushed himself to standing, reached out a hand and hauled me up next to him.

  "Her name is Adriana, and we have an appointment that we're already late for. So, Yaya," he jerked his head in the direction of the door, "get moving. “Augustina stood, grumbling, but she pulled Joaquín into a fierce hug, planting an affectionate kiss on his cheek.

  Chapter 14

  I was apparently way easier to read than I thought. And that irritated me. As I laid on the luxurious overstuffed couch in my best friend's apartment, my head in Isla's lap, I was weighing the validity of my life choices. And frankly, I was feeling rather one-dimensional and that only served to further my irritation.

  "So, I'm not entirely getting your issue here, babe," Isla asked as she flipped through some tabloid trash magazine and sipped on a glass of wine.

  "What's not to get? I'm hiding out here avoiding political prosecution and my Bear stalker, I can't publish anything without signing my own death warrant, and I'm just expected to sit here and watch all the humans of South America be turned into a disposable labor force."

  "Well when you put it like that, it's a wonder you're not melting on a floor mid-breakdown."