by Tunstall,Kit
His entire body was taut with tension for a long moment, and then he shook his head. The fur started to recede from his neck, and slowly he turned to face her. When he did, he was completely Wyatt again, and still obviously wounded.
She let out a sigh of exasperation. “You have to heal yourself.”
There was still a faint growl in his voice when he spoke, indicating he wasn’t as in control as she thought. “Can’t. If I let him out that much, the beast will take over.”
She wanted to continue arguing, but they had to get on the road again. Instead, she took his hand and tugged him along, only slightly surprised when he didn’t insist on pulling away. “We’ll need to take their truck, since the Geo probably won’t start again.”
He grunted, which she took as an agreement, and hurried him toward the truck. Wyatt took the passenger seat without complaint or comment, and she reached the driver’s side, letting out a small curse when she confirmed the engine was turned off, and keys weren’t in the switch. She checked under the visor and a few obvious spots, hoping one of the two would-be bounty hunters had simply dropped the keys somewhere convenient before confronting them, but had no such luck.
Wyatt was still against the door, his head turned away from her, and his breathing slightly erratic. She wasn’t certain if that was from his attempt to maintain control over the bear, or from the wound in his side and the gunshot in his shoulder.
“I have to find the keys.”
He turned to look at her, his expression foreboding. “No way. You can’t go frisk those rednecks.”
She shrugged. “Unless you know how to hotwire this type of vehicle, we don’t have a lot of choice.”
He hesitated before shaking his head. “I’ll get the keys.”
“No, you won’t. You need to rest and try to regain some of your strength if you’re not going to heal yourself.” She grasped her gun, going to the Metro first. The car was stubborn, the hatchback not wanting to give, but she finally got it to open enough to retrieve their duffel bag of weapons. She ran them back to the truck and dropped them in the cab, taking a moment to retrieve a rifle, which looked far more intimidating than the small handgun. “Is it loaded?”
Wyatt had his lips compressed so tightly together that they were almost white. He must be in a lot of pain, because he didn’t insist on accompanying her or doing it himself. He just nodded.
She flipped off the safety and held the rifle in one hand and the handgun the other. When she had to search their unconscious forms, she’d have to set down one of the guns, and she’d decide which one when she reached that point.
Luck must have been with her, because she found the keys in Billy’s pocket, and he was still unconscious from the blow Wyatt had given him with his bear paw. She clutched the keyring in her hand and rushed back to the truck, handing Wyatt the rifle to put back in the duffel bag, but slipping her own gun into her jacket pocket once more. Then she started up the vehicle and drove away, not looking back at the wreckage of the Geo, or the two unconscious men lying on the ground beside the interstate.
***
She drove for more than an hour, not liking the way Wyatt got quieter and paler as time passed. Enough was enough, and she made a decision, exiting at the next available turnoff. It was for a small farm town, and she drove straight through, looking at the buildings around her. Within two miles, they were so sparse as to be almost nonexistent. When she saw a barn standing by itself, looking weathered, but not yet dilapidated, she turned the truck down the bumpy gravel road, which caused Wyatt to stir.
He lifted his head from the window with a frown. “What’s going on?”
“We need to stop. If you’re not going to heal yourself, I have to try to do something about your wounds. You’re bleeding too much, and you’re going to let yourself die.” She spoke the words angrily, beyond empathy at his predicament. She was just appalled that he would allow himself to suffer rather than shift to the bear to save his life.
He grunted at her, and she ignored his response. She followed the bumpy road all the way to the side of the barn, where she got out and approached carefully. She looked around and saw no other signs of habitation, and when she carefully pulled open the double doors, the musty smell and the hint of mold underlying it indicated it hadn’t been used for a while. There was still a faint scent of cow manure, but even that had faded.
Satisfied, she returned to the truck and drove it inside the barn. Once she got out and closed the doors again, it was dim in there, but a section of roof was missing, and it provided adequate light to see the interior. They were definitely alone, and didn’t share the space with any other animals—well, maybe rats and insects, but she didn’t want to think about that.
She moved around to Wyatt’s side and opened his door, carefully easing him out. He was woozy, and she cursed softly. It didn’t take a surgeon to know the bullet in his shoulder needed an operation to remove. She quickly discovered there was no exit hole, so the bullet was still inside him, and it looked like it had done some serious damage to his collarbone, which had halted the progression of the bullet.
He continued to bleed freely, and she shook her head. She looked up at Wyatt, cupping his face in her hands. “You have to transform, at least enough to heal this wound. I can’t do anything for it, and if you don’t do something, I either have to take you to the hospital, or you’re going to die. So you need to decide right now.”
He let out a groan, but after a moment, he nodded. He eased away from her, almost stumbling in the process. She braced his arm with her hand, using all her strength to hold him up. When he continued trying to move, she said, “You’re wasting your energy. Just do it.”
He nodded, his gaze meeting hers. “Fine, but I want you to leave the barn while I do. I won’t risk losing control around you.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “And I won’t risk leaving you alone. If you aren’t able to transform enough, you could bleed out and die. Besides, if I go outside, anyone might see me.” That was a slight exaggeration, since they were at least a mile off the main road, and she could stand behind the barn and likely be shielded from any traffic that might go down the rural roadway.
It wasn’t strictly concern for him that kept her there. She needed Wyatt to realize he wouldn’t hurt her, no matter how out-of-control he was. Eighteen months ago, when he’d nearly killed Clayton Walsh, he’d been erratic and uncontrolled for months beforehand. He’d spent the last eighteen months stifling the bear, and she was only a little afraid that he might lose control. She couldn’t allow him to see that fear, or she’d lose any ground she might have gained.
Not that she was naïve enough to think she’d gained much during the recent ordeal. They were both focused on survival, and she’d had to practically guilt him into letting her come along.
“Then at least move toward the door, so you can get away to easily if you need to.”
With a sigh, she complied, wondering why he hadn’t suggested she sit in the truck so she would be able to pull away if she needed to. It must be because he was feeling the effects of his wounds. It seemed like the obvious idea to her, but she had no intention of driving away, so she didn’t suggest that option. Instead, she stood a short distance away from him, eyes on his form the entire time as Wyatt surrendered control in increments to the bear.
Claws sprouted from his fingers first, followed by paws, and then fur bristled up his arms. It extended to his neck, but his face showed no signs of the bear. From her vantage point, she couldn’t really see his chest, so she tried moving to catch a better angle. From what she could determine, his ribcage was expanding, and she was certain fur was forming on his torso.
Seeing him exert that much control over the bear, allowing only parts of himself to transform, eased most of her fears. Wyatt might fear the bear, and whatever weapon it had been turned into by the military, but she didn’t fear Wyatt. She didn’t know that’s what the military had done for sure, but that was her best guess base
d on things his teammates had said, combined with Wyatt’s insistence on keeping his bear at bay. She wanted the full story, but she couldn’t press him for it now. She’d already pushed him enough, but he had to heal himself.
After a moment or two, when the bear and the human seemed to fight for supremacy, and his entire body shook, the fur began to recede. Seeing the bear disappear, she moved forward, wanting to verify for herself that he had healed the wound before pushing back his ursine side.
As she moved closer, she saw he looked tired, but no longer weak. The wound in his shoulder was little more than a red bruise, and the knife wound in his side had almost fully healed when she carefully peeled away the gauze pads. She nodded with satisfaction. “You need to get some rest before we hit the road again.”
He shook his head. “It isn’t safe. We have to keep moving.”
She let out a small sigh. “I know you’re right, but I’m exhausted, and so are you. We just need to rest for a bit. The truck’s a quad-cab, so we should be able to stretch out on the benches and get some rest. Just an hour or two.”
He looked reluctant, but nodded and followed her back to the vehicle. She slipped into the back bench, giving Wyatt the front, and closed her eyes. Despite her tumultuous thoughts, and the fears weighing down on her that the government would find them, or send more of those weird soldiers, she was able to slip into sleep almost immediately. She hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d said she was exhausted, and she couldn’t even wait to see if Wyatt found sleep as well.
Chapter Five
The rain woke her, along with her body shivering. She sat up slowly, looking at the sky through the missing part of the roof, and frowned at the dark clouds overhead. Rain poured in torrents out of the sky, and it seemed obvious they were going to be in the barn at least a bit longer.
When Wyatt cried out in his sleep, she second-guessed the theory that the rain had woken her. Maybe it had been his cries instead. He sounded frightened in his dream, and he was thrashing on the bench seat. Without thought, she climbed over his seat to lie beside him. Gillian wrapped her arms around Wyatt’s trembling form, running her fingers carefully through his hair as she made soothing sounds while trying to wake him. “It’s just a dream. Come back to me, Wyatt.”
His arms wrapped around her, holding her closer, and she sighed in contentment at feeling his embrace again. She hadn’t even attempted to move on from Wyatt in the last eighteen months. She knew bears mated for life, and while she was human and not a bear, she mated for life too. Wyatt had never claimed her with his mating bite, and they had never had a marriage ceremony or anything yet, but she was his mate in her heart, and no other man would have taken his place.
She was positive it was the same for him, and he wouldn’t have sought out female companionship even to see to his baser needs. He’d been fighting the bear and all the things associated with his old life for the last eighteen months, but in his sleep, he recognized her as what she was. His bear knew she was his mate, and Wyatt just had to remember that as well.
His breathing evened out, and he stopped thrashing as she held him. Wyatt slept for an additional thirty minutes before he started to stir, and she held her breath when his eyes popped open, wondering at what reception she would get. Just because the bear in his subconscious welcomed her didn’t mean Wyatt himself would. He had done everything he could to push her away.
As though on autopilot, his arms fell away from her, and he tried to move backward, though there was nowhere to move.
Summoning her own sense of stubbornness, she clung to him and moved closer. “You were having a nightmare.”
He let out a long sigh. “That’s nothing new. I’m fine now, so you can let go.”
She shook her head. “Don’t you get it yet, Wyatt? I’m never letting you go. I shouldn’t have let you walk away eighteen months ago, but I knew you needed to heal from whatever you’d been through. It’s obvious to me that you haven’t healed though. You simply pushed it all down, and you have to deal with it.”
“And you think this is the best place and time to do that?” he asked with a sneer. “Well why don’t you just go ahead and fix me, Dr. Freud, since you’re the expert?”
His words hurt, but she tried not to let it show. Someday soon, he was going to feel like a royal jackass for all the ways he had lashed out at her, so she didn’t need to make it worse for him. “I can’t fix you. Only you can do that, Wyatt, but I’m here to help. If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen, and if you don’t want to talk, we’ll just lie here until the rain passes. Just let me be here for you.”
He looked away from her. “I suppose I owe you an explanation of why we can’t be together.”
“We can be together, and we will be. But I would appreciate knowing what happened to you.”
“I’d been in the military for five years when I was approached by Colonel Wallace, who recognized me as a shifter.”
She hated to ask questions already, but she’d always wondered and had never had a chance to ask him about it before. “Didn’t the military realize there was something different about you when you went in?”
He shook his head. “Ursa sapiens are just a different evolutionary path from humans, but we still have the same blood type. That’s all they do in the military. They run a panel to see if you’re healthy, and though there were a few discrepancies between normal for a bear-shifter and normal for a human, there was nothing that triggered any red flags. Most of the military had no clue I’m a shifter, and none of them knew about our teammates either. Until Wallace. He wanted to help hone our shifter abilities to make us better soldiers. It sounded good when he laid it out, but he didn’t tell us everything.”
“’Need to know,’” she quoted sadly. “I guess they thought you didn’t need to know the trivial details of how they were going to ruin your life.”
Wyatt let out a snort. “It’s almost like you’ve been in the military yourself. That was exactly it. We didn’t get the finer details until after we’d signed the agreement to participate. It involved a regimen of drugs, and what I suspect was mind control, though I can’t remember much of the sessions they subjected us to. When it was done, they could force our shifters out at will and send us on assignments. That was why I didn’t have any contact with you besides a few letters the last three years I was in the military. We weren’t allowed to leave the base, and our letters were carefully scrutinized, so I couldn’t tell you anything important.”
Gillian nodded. “I remember that time. For a while, I thought you were pulling away from me and about to end our engagement, though I knew that couldn’t really be the case since I was your mate. I was worried, and then you got out, and I was so relieved, at least for a few weeks.” After that, his struggle had come to the surface, and she’d realized the man she loved was still inside Wyatt and his bear, but he’d been injured in some soul-destroying way that required healing. Wyatt’s solution had been to run away and put distance between himself and everyone.
“I think they figured out a way to control our animal side, because they’d send us on missions, and I had no memories of what I’d done. I’d return to myself covered in blood, with no idea what kind of atrocities I committed. It was the same for everyone. To this day, I don’t know everything they made us do, but what parts I can remember involved completely massacring the enemy and any compounds we entered. I don’t know how many people I killed, how many innocents, and I can’t control the bear. That’s why I can’t risk letting him out. When I do, I don’t remember what he does.”
“Have you tried since you left the military, and they’re no longer pumping you full of those drugs?”
He gave her a look that was full of irritation. “You were there when I tried to stop Clayton Walsh and lost control to the bear.”
She nodded. “Yes, but it was an emotional moment, and you were high on adrenaline. Have you tried summoning the bear and allowing yourself to transform when you’re not in a high-stress situation? I
t could be that you have more control over him than you think now that it’s been so long since you’ve been part of their experiment.”
“Or it could be that I’ve permanently lost control of him, and if I give in and fully become the bear, I might never find my way back to my human side. He’s out of control, high on bloodlust and killing. I can’t risk unleashing that beast on the rest of the world.” His eyes darkened, and he drew in a ragged breath. “I couldn’t bear it if I hurt you, or worse.”
“I guess I have more faith in you than that. Pushing away the bear isn’t going to solve the problem. You can’t spend the rest of your life fighting half your nature. You have to regain control of him, and it might be easier than you think.”
“Or I might kill you,” he said with a roar. “I might tear you apart and revel in the smell of your blood. Those are the kind of memories that haunt me, that taint my dreams. If I did something to you, I couldn’t go on. I don’t want to hurt anyone, especially not you.”
“I know you still love me, Wyatt. I love you too, no matter how damaged or wounded you are. I’m not leaving you this time, and I’m not letting you leave me.”
He looked sad. “It isn’t safe to be with me.”
“I’d rather live with the risk and have you then go back to barely existing without you.” Gathering all of her courage, fully expecting to be rebuffed, Gillian stretched her neck and lifted her head slightly to bring her lips against his. She brushed against them in a gentle kiss, and when he didn’t push her away, she returned for another. He wasn’t yet responding, but he wasn’t trying to escape her hold. As she worked her lips lightly over his, they eventually yielded, and he let out a harsh breath that she captured with her mouth before deepening the kiss. This time, his lips molded to hers, and his arms came around her again, holding her tightly against him.
When Wyatt didn’t push her away, Gillian took it as an encouraging sign and deepened the kiss. He was still a little stiff with lingering resistance, but he didn’t try to pull his mouth from hers. In fact, his lips curved, molding and softening as he finally starting participating. His tongue eased carefully through her lips, probing the seam for entrance that she had no wish to deny.
