Taking Hold

by Anya Bast

  Taking Hold

  by

  Anya Bast

  She could lose this child. Oh, please, God, no. Not another one. Her heart wouldn’t be able to stand it.

  Lily stopped near a tree and inhaled the cold crispness of the early winter air. She didn’t need a wolf’s nose to know that snow was coming, a lot of it. Every step she took further up Elgonquinn Mountain ratcheted her panic skywards. So far she was doing a good job of using that reaction, instead of letting it use her, but it was close. There was nothing she hated more than not being able to control the circumstances affecting those she cared about . . . and she cared very much about this boy.

  Deadfall rustled under the paws of the shifter accompanying her. Mac, a hulking silver-tipped wolf, came to stand beside her. He raised his nose to the wind to hunt beyond the scent of the impending storm for any trace of Casey, the lost boy they sought. Three days ago he’d just vanished into the forest. His parents were frantic, but had been commanded by the pack alpha to allow Mac to hunt for the child. The pack had only sent one lone wolf to search for Casey, which showed how much faith they had in the boy, or maybe it showed how little hope.

  As a trained nurse, she’d volunteered to accompany him.

  But she and Mac would have to find shelter soon or all three of them would be lost. Lily feared most for the child. He was fifteen, a man in the eyes of the pack and able to look after himself, but not from her all-too-human perspective. Or maybe it was her past that coloured her perspective and made her think of Casey as younger than he truly was.

  Lily knew him. She did a lot of volunteer work for the Elgonquinn Mountain shifter school system. Casey was a solid beta, not particularly strong as wolves went, but not a weakling either. He loved music and girls, just like any other teenage boy. He liked to read too, something he didn’t want his peers to know. Lily fed him fantasy novels on the sly. Of course, he especially liked books about vampires, werewolves and other paranormal entities. Every time she thought of that boy out there all alone her chest went tight with fear.

  The one lone wolf they’d sent to search was a true lone wolf: Macmillan Hardy was the best tracker the Elgonquinn Mountain pack had to offer, and he was a telepath to boot, not a skill all shifters possessed. He worked often with the Elgonquinn Mountain forest wardens, an alliance that was rare in the chilly - no, frigid — relationship between human and shifter society. Lily had worked with him often and respected him greatly.

  Mac looked tough and he was - broad-shouldered, brawny and intimidating from every angle. His face wasn’t handsome, not by a long shot, yet there was some indefinable allure to him. His eyes, like his hair, were dark brown, and they were intelligent, full of depth and emotion. And for as much as his body contained strength, she’d seen a gentleness in him to sharply contrast it on more than one occasion. He cared every bit as much about Casey as she did - no matter that he lived apart from the pack.

  The man was an enigma and Lily was fascinated by him, just as she was interested in shifters as a whole.

  When Lily was a child, the shifters had been forced to make themselves known after a wolf was caught on video making the change (once video cameras became so readily available, it was inevitable). Humanity, predictably, had been shocked. But there were so few wolves, so few packs, that they’d been largely defenceless against this new human attention. The only thing that had stopped the pitchfork mob, and the scientists ready with their dissecting scalpels, was a small group of equal-rights activists. Her parents had been a part of the movement.

  Paranormals had been popular in movies and books up to that point, but once werewolves were revealed to be real, all that changed. Some humans, like herself, were still fascinated by them, but the bulk of humanity feared them - as if the monster in their bedroom closet had suddenly turned out to be real.

  But Lily had reason to think humans were more bloodthirsty than the wolves.

  It was fortunate that the wolves had already cordoned themselves off from the greater human society, living in remote areas that allowed them the freedom to be who they were. They didn’t interact with humans much and never had. Honestly, the shifters preferred it that way, anyway. Procreation between the species was impossible; it seemed they were biologically compatible enough for sex, but not for creating children. So the government had declared many of the lands where the wolves had already congregated to be federally protected, and the shifters lived on them in relative peace, for their own protection.

  But it was really more to segregate them and everyone knew it.

  “Anything?” she pushed out, her voice raw and filled with emotion - both for her safety and the boy’s in the face of the impending storm.

  Not yet.

  Lily had been watching Mac and had noticed he was constantly scanning for any psychic traces of Casey. It would help their search a lot if Casey could tell them where he was . . . plus knowing if he was even alive would be nice. This mountain was unforgiving and had felled many an experienced hiker.

  She closed her eyes for a moment, then swung her backpack down from her shoulder. She dug inside for a warmer pair of gloves, wishing for the hundredth time to have Mac’s thick, warm fur.

  Mac trotted into the clearing before them, headed in some direction unknown to her. Communication wasn’t one of the man’s strengths, but tracking was, so she’d trust him.

  The wind gusted hard, stealing her breath. Mac disappeared over the ridge of a hill. “Hey,” she yelled. “Human back here. I won’t be able to survive the kind of storm brewing up on the horizon.”

  Mac looked at her, his handsome head tipped regally. Without a word, he sallied forth, further into the wilderness.

  Great.

  With a sigh, she followed him, her will to find the boy more powerful than her desire to protect herself. She headed into the wind. It was blowing hard now and slicing against her partially numb cheeks. Little bits of ice had started to pelt down on her, like tiny slivers of metal, and the cold scent of snow had grown heavier in the air. There was a point, when walking into a snowstorm, at which your vision became obscured from all the squinting you had to do. She’d surpassed that point long ago. Her head ached from having to trudge headlong into the wind.

  Mac stayed ahead of her at all times, probably more to avoid her company than as a caring gesture. She didn’t take it personally; Mac disdained everyone’s companionship. And, hell, she was a human - beneath his notice completely, she was sure. Although there was a fierce note of protectiveness in him, if you knew where to look. It was in the little actions she’d noticed him make in Pack City, like accompanying an elder to the store and back, or defending one of the middle schoolers against a group of bullies. Right now he was all about finding the boy and that made her admire him — even more than she already did.

  You had to be strong to be a lone wolf, to buck the pack. You had to be stronger than the alpha to stand on your own because standing on your own meant you were a threat to the larger social organization.

  Kind of like herself.

  Her friends and family would be shocked by just how much she knew about shifter society. Lily knew it was unacceptable, but she was fascinated. She always had been, ever since she’d been eight and the werewolves had announced themselves to the world. It was the reason she’d pursued a nursing career and ended up working with the Elgonquinn Mountain wardens and the local pack. She was one of the few human health care practitioners who would have anything to do with the shifters. It was she and her colleagues who worked closest with the seven wolf packs across the country, the Elgonquinn Mountain pack being the largest. That made her sort of an outcast in human society. At dinner parties - which she tried to avoid as much as possible - she received all kinds of odd looks and even odder questions and comments
.

  “Is it true the alpha has the right to any female in the pack?”

  “I heard they’ll eat human flesh given half a chance!”

  “And when they shift from wolf to human they’re naked as the day they were born . . . and they don’t even care. Immodest beasts.”

  “They’re all inbred, you know, won’t touch a human . . . thank God!”

  Most of their information was wrong, but she never bothered to correct them. People guarded their misconceptions of the shifters jealously. It gave them an excuse for their “justified” outrage.

  Mac stopped and waited a beat or two for her to catch up and then continued on. It must have been difficult for him to keep her slow pace, but he never complained. Her boots snapped cold, dry twigs as she progressed, the smell of snow heavier in the air. Her coat rustled with every movement.

  Suddenly, Mac stilled on the top of the hill, nose high.

  Lily scrambled up to collapse next to the huge animal, kneeling on the frigid earth and breathing heavily. “Find something?”

  Mac remained still and non-responsive.

  I heard something.

  He probably meant telepathically, Lily thought.

  It’s gone now. Come on, we need to get you to shelter.

  He trotted forwards, following some wolfish instinct. Forcing herself to her feet, she tagged along, the cold wind biting her face, digging into her joints and invading her lungs.

  The ice chips turned to snow and grew heavy fast. The world was only white, searing her eyes and melting pain into her head like thick acid.

  Lily stopped at the edge of a frozen lake to rest, just for a moment, and watched Mac make his way across it, the snow swirling and billowing around his legs as he skated across the glassy surface. He was moving faster now and she had to concentrate on not falling too far behind. She pushed her exhaustion away as best she could and set off. Maybe the fact that Mac was moving more rapidly meant he’d caught some sign of the boy - a psychic or physical scent. Her steps quicker at the possibility, she shouldered the weight of her load and sped up, her boots crunching ice and the wind whooshing into the sides of her heavy hood. Every moment they didn’t find the boy was another moment he might be lost forever.

  Halfway across, the ice under her feet cracked.

  Lily stilled, terror sending a jolt, colder than anything Mother Nature could create, through her veins. From a distance away, Mac also stopped, turned, stared.

  Crack.

  “Mac.” Her voice came out a whisper. She was almost afraid her voice might weaken the ice further. Stupid. “Mac!” Damn it. She’d thought for certain the ice had been frozen all the way through. Hell, the possibility it wasn’t frozen hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  Move. She had to move. Maybe she could progress past the weakness in this part of the ice. Carefully, she stepped forwards, inch by inch.

  Crack. Crack. Craaaack.

  Lily screamed. Plummeted. Frigid water closed over her head, stole her breath and heartbeat. She went motionless with shock for a moment before terror set her limbs to thrashing. Panic jolted through her veins. She couldn’t even think. The cold drained everything away.

  Weight. Dragging her under.

  She struggled to get her pack off her back, then pushed herself up. Her head breached the surface and she took a ragged gulp of air, her lungs and major organs burning, burning.

  Under again. Heavy coat pulling her down.

  Quiet. So cold that the shock leached from her body, leaving numbness behind. The numbness was nice, almost warm. Silence. Stillness.

  Floating. Would it be so bad just to let go?

  Hands grasped her coat and yanked her up, the sweet tranquillity broken by a cold wind. She ate air in small, razor-sharp bites. The strong grip pulled her over the ice lip of the pool, dragged her across the frozen surface of the lake. Above her she saw only white. Pain had entered every molecule of her body. Her teeth chattered so hard, she was sure she’d break them.

  A face entered her line of sight - eyes as light and icy as the frozen water, face as jagged and hard. Mac mouthed her name but she heard nothing.

  Then she saw nothing.

  Lily woke with a jolt, sitting up. “Casey!”

  Mac sat beside a fireplace, poking a stick into the embers. His back was to her and he didn’t turn. He wore only a pair of well-loved jeans, the muscles of his back working as he tended the blaze. Even his feet were bare.

  The soft blankets shifted against her body and she realized she was naked. The bed was rough hewn from logs. In fact, she was in a log cabin and everything in it looked handmade. A small cooking area - not quite a kitchen — stood to her right. There was a couch and a chair, two hulking bookshelves stacked to bursting with books. There was Mac and the fireplace.

  She hurt.

  The memory of falling through the ice flooded her mind. Flailing against the weight of her clothing. The bitter cold. Giving in to the seductiveness of the water. Her nurse’s mind flitted through the possibilities - hypothermia, frostbite? But she felt all right, if a bit chilled and sore.

  “Where am I? How did you get me here?” She flipped the blankets back and her bare feet hit the wood floor with a slap. “We have to go. Casey—”

  “Is safe,” Mac said from the fireplace without turning around. “At least for now.”

  “What do you mean?” Pause. “Goddamn it, talk to me!”

  He paused in his incessant jabbing at the fire and turned. “I found Casey. Telepathically.” He paused in his incessant jabbing at the fire and turned. His gaze swept her. “Get back into bed.” His voice had a rough edge that made her jerk away.

  Remembering she was naked, she eased back under the blankets. Oh well, he’d been the one to undress her. He’d seen it before. Being a nurse, it wasn’t like the naked body bothered her much. Mac needed to get a grip.

  “Casey is in a cave. I think I know where he is, but he can’t tell me for sure. He’s lost.” He paused. “He’s being hunted.”

  “Explain.”

  Mac turned his head away from her. “He’s being tracked by a bunch of humans. They’re hunting him like an animal. They intend to shoot him.”

  Lily’s blood went almost as cold as when she’d fallen into the lake. “That’s imposs—”

  “No, not really. It wouldn’t be the first time a group of shifter-hating humans has come up the mountain for a bit of sport. They always pick the young ones. They wouldn’t dare try this on a mature member of the pack.”

  Lily stared at him for a long moment, letting his words sink in. He had no reason to lie, even if she desperately wanted this to be one. It made sense she’d never heard of it happening before. The pack wasn’t exactly into information dissemination with humankind, not even with well-meaning, bleeding-heart nurses. “If that’s true we need to get to him before the hunters do.”

  “Not that easy.” Mac jerked his head towards the window. “Not even I can travel in this.”

  Beyond the window, it was white - a pure sheet of snow that looked like someone had taken a paintbrush to the glass. Every once in a while, the wind lulled and she glimpsed chaotic white swirling. It was a flat-out blizzard.

  “Oh no.” The panic welled and she forced it down with what she hoped was not a visible effort. “The boy . . .”

  “Is safe, like I said, for now. He found a cave and he’s in wolf form. Casey is a smart kid. He’s warm and dry for the time being.” Mac paused, his expression going tight. “Let’s hope for less for the hunters.”

  “Where are we?”

  “My home. I was leading us here when it became clear the storm was brewing. Luckily we weren’t far when you fell through the ice. How are you feeling?”

  She levered up a bit, covering her naked parts with the blankets and wincing. “Like I fell through the ice.”

  “I’ll have food for us soon.”

  That was good since her stomach felt like it was going to gnaw through her spine.

  “Yo
u didn’t get frostbite, no hypothermia. It was close though.”

  “How do you know? You a doctor?”

  “No.” He stirred the fire. “I just have a sense for stuff like that.”

  She sneezed. “All I contracted is a cold, I guess. I can live with that. Thank you.”

  He inclined his head. “I thought the ice could hold you if it could hold a one-hundred-and-eighty-pound wolf.”

  She sniffled and raised a brow. “What exactly are you implying?” Well, at least her sense of humour wasn’t totally lost.

  He only stared blankly at her.

  “Never mind.” Apparently he didn’t spend much time around women ... or anyone, for that matter. “Please tell me you have a bathroom.”

  He looked pointedly at the back of the cabin. “Just like any other house.”

  Thank God. She went to flip the blankets back and was immediately hit in the face with a pair of grey sweats and a black sweater. “Hey, relax! I wasn’t going to gross you out with my body again, don’t worry about it.”

  “Wear those.” He turned back to the fire. “Your clothes are still wet.”

  Fuming, she pulled on the too-big clothes, followed by a pair of thick wool socks that were lying on the bedside table. “I thought shifters weren’t supposed to care about things like nudity.”

  He didn’t answer her. Big surprise.

  “Do you have running water?” she snapped, rising.

  He was back to poking the stick into the fire. “Running water, heat, electricity. I equipped the place with solar collection panels.”

  Of course he was off the grid more than halfway up Elgonquinn Mountain, far from the pack and even farther from human civilization. Just the way he liked it, undoubtedly. She sneezed again, glowered at his back, then headed in to drive the residual chill from her bones with what she hoped was steaming hot water.

  She entered the small bathroom and started the water in the shower. The wind whistled past the small oval window above the toilet, snow swirling. The boy was still out there somewhere in this.

  Catching her reflection in the mirror over the sink, she pushed a hand through her short hair, letting the thick ends trail through her fingers. There were no tell-tale signs of injury as a result of her fall through the ice. Mac had rescued her from the water and managed to get her warm quickly enough. OK, maybe he did have a “sense for stuff like that”.