by Romi Hart
And then my eyes opened – out of nowhere. I didn’t hear a thing, other than my brother’s soft breathing. The cold air around me was pitch black. And as I exhaled a fall fog formed in front of my mouth.
With no idea what had pulled me away from the near deathlike slumber, I listened very carefully, knowing that Codut could be out there somewhere, readying himself to come to take Freedrick away.
Time had passed, I knew that much. How much time had gone by? I did not know. For all I knew, hundreds of years may have elapsed since I fell asleep.
The way my heart skipped a beat, then two, then three before it pounded hard and unsteady warned me of the sorrow I might be facing. If I went out into the world, finding my sweet Crina no longer there, then I might not want to roam it any longer.
And what if I’d missed the child we had together? What if I missed that person’s life completely?
And why did that bother me now?
I’d had offspring with other females. I’d never known them at all. And I’d never seen the females I’d bred again.
Crina wasn’t just some female that I’d bred. She was the one person in the whole universe that hit me in a place no one ever had.
She had my heart. She had my mind. She had my soul. If she was no longer around, I had no idea how I would feel about my immortality.
Sitting up, I yawned and stretched, still having no idea if I could even leave our cave yet. Freedrick’s soft snores told me that he still hadn’t been pulled from his hibernation.
So, why have I?
Why was I the only one awake? Why was it still darker than dark?
I’m dreaming!
Of course, that had to be it. I wasn’t awake at all. Had I really been awake, then there wouldn’t be such complete darkness. There had been some light when we’d gone down for our long nap, due to Codut’s icing of our cave.
The longer I sat there, running my bear paws all over my body to see if I could stir myself to become actually awake, I had the feeling that not much time had passed at all.
Small chirping sounds began to echo around the cavern. A small body swooped near my head. I waved my arm to shoo it away. “Bats. Ugh.”
The realization that bats were inside our cave and still alive filled me with hope. There was no way a long amount of time had gone by since we’d laid our heads to rest. If that was the case, then there would be no bats left alive.
Or so I hoped anyway.
Bats are small creatures. They can crawl through tight and narrow spaces that other things cannot.
My idea was all but dashed when I heard my brother’s roar as he woke up. “Rowr!” His giant paws moved through the air, swiping at the bats that had the audacity to bombard him while he slept.
“The bats must’ve been what woke me up too,” I sent to him telepathically. “Pesky varmints.”
Even in his telepathy, Freedrick grumbled in a tired fashion, “Varmints? Who are you, Yosemite Sam?” His hand connected with a bat and sent it squealing across the cavern.
And it hit me in the side of the head. “Hey! Watch out! You hit me with that stupid bat.” I picked it up as it had landed near me and threw it back at my brother. “Here, you can have it back.”
I heard it hit him with a smack and another squeak. Then it flew away, making odd beeps as it went. “What time is it?” he asked. “What day is it? What year is it? How I hate that Codut for doing this to us!”
He was getting himself so worked up that he’d take forever to get back to sleep. “Calm down. Being angry will get you nowhere, Freedrick.”
“When I get out of here, I will hunt that damn dragon down and gut him like a fish,” he swore. “I will tear him limb from limb. I will chew him up and spit him out.”
“Yes, yes, you’re a fierce bear. I know.” Curling back up, I closed my eyes since I couldn’t see anything anyway. “Until then, let us nap our lives away. Being awake makes me think too much about what I may have missed out on.”
“Crina’s love?” my brother asked.
“And that of our child’s. I’d said stupid things to her when she’d told me that we were pregnant. If I could go back in time, I would change that for certain.”
“Child?” he asked. “When did you start calling your offspring by that?”
“Not sure. But having a baby with Crina makes it seem more real to me. It’s the love connection, I assume.” It bothered me that right when I’d found love, I had to go and get trapped in a damn cave by a damn dragon.
A sudden flurry of bats moved through the cavern. All of them flew in the same direction. “Why do you think they’re moving mass exodus style like that, Zanthe?”
“I’m not sure. But I think we should follow them. We can use their radar-like squeaks to find our way.” Getting up, I moved along on all fours, traveling with the bats.
“I’m with you, brother,” Freedrick said as he came along. “They’ve got to be going somewhere. And maybe so can we!”
I could tell that we were moving toward the mouth of the cave. And once we got into the main cavern, I saw light coming in through the ice. Although dim, it shined blue, red, orange, and even green.
“Do you think someone is out there, trying to make a portal to get in here?” I asked. I’d tried to make one for us to get out, but it failed. We’d come to the conclusion that Codut had some sort of spell or used something in his ice that made it impossible to escape it, even with a portal.
The bats had gathered on the ceiling, all of them chattered like crazy as the lights kept moving on the other side of the wall of ice. Freedrick went up to it, running his paw over it. “It’s melting.”
“Heat,” I said then morphed into my human. “Freedrick, it’s her. It’s Crina. She’s formed a rescue party to save us!”
He changed into his man form too, looking far better than the last time I’d seen him. His cuts and bruises were all gone. “Do you really think so? What if it’s not her? What if it’s Codut and he’s brought others to subdue us?”
I couldn’t think that way. “I can’t see why he’d do that. First of all, he only had to wait for the ice to thaw.” Then it hit me that Codut had been coming back to form more ice over our cave. That meant he could come back and find Crina – or whoever was out there melting the ice – and then he would quite possibly kill them. “Let’s pound the ice from this side. We should hurry. What if Codut comes back?”
Freedrick nodded and we both changed back to our bear forms to use our massive paws to pound at the ice that was melting away, forming pools of cold water around our feet.
Just as the first spot opened in the middle of the ice wall, my brother and I withdrew our bears, standing there as men as someone in a white parka-like coat finished melting the ice with – of all things – a flame thrower.
We all had to step back as the bats were the first to go, flying out in a mad rush for a good twenty minutes. Then the white-coated person came back up. “Zanthe? Freedrick?”
“Crina!” I barrel toward her, sweeping her up, kissing her nearly frozen lips, the cooing, “I love you so much. I’m so sorry for saying the things I said. I trust the test, not my nose. Can you ever forgive me?”
“I can. I already have. I love you too, Zanthe.” Her arms wrapped around me, but only for a moment. “We’ve got to go. He can see us all.” She took my hand, leading me out of the cave that Freedrick had already left. “I’ve found a cave where we can hide until you guys figure out how to handle that dragon. I’ve got a truck not far from here. We have to get to it, then we can drive to the cave.”
Freedrick followed, his eyes on the sky that peeked through the treetops. “Where is this cave, Crina?”
“Deep underground. It’s an ice cave.” She looked at me with a smile. “If you are what I think you are, and you should be since you survived a month in captivity so far, then you’ll be able to live just fine there for a while.”
“It’s been a month?” I asked her.
She nodded. “And we�
�re still going to be parents. I hope you’re ready to be a daddy.”
“I am.” My heart soared with the great news. “You’ve made me happier than you will ever know.”
A white truck sat in the midst of the trees and we headed straight for it. The sound of wind rushing through the trees made us stop running. “Shh.” Freedrick’s eyes were glued on the sky. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. “The damn bats.” Come on, let’s hurry to the truck.”
Crina climbed into the driver’s seat as Freedrick and I got in the passenger side, squishing in. “Only one seat, huh?”
She nodded. “It was all that I could afford.” Putting it into drive, she took off. “It’s got snow tires and it’s all-wheel drive as well. We can get through pretty much anything with this little baby.”
I couldn’t stop smiling. She’d impressed me. “You’re amazing.”
“I am a little, aren’t I?” She laughed and the sound filled the tiny cab of the truck. “When you know you’re the only one who can get the man you love out of a jam, then you find things within you that you never knew you had before.”
My girl is a badass!
“When I get you alone…”
Freedrick stopped me as he said, “Please wait until I’m further away from you two than this before you start telling her what you’re going to do to her.”
“Sorry.” I would hold off for as long as I could. But I wasn’t going to be making any promises.
Through the snow-covered fields, we went, deeper and deeper into the wilderness than I’d ever gone before. All the way until jagged rocks began to jut out of the ground. “Here we are.” Crina smiled as she came to a stop in front of a small hole in the ground. “This is the front door, so to speak.” She began backing up, then stopped underneath a rocky ledge. “And this is our garage, so to speak. Come on. We’ve got to tarp it with the white tarp I’ve got in the back. And can you grab the flamethrower, Freedrick? I don’t like leaving it in the back of the truck.”
“You found a hole in the ground and you climbed into it alone?” I had to ask as that didn’t sound like the girl I knew.
“I did more than that. I did my research. And then I followed the coordinates to this opening. You have to go pretty much straight down for a while before you come to the icy bottom.” She grabbed three backpacks out of the back of the truck then tossed the white tarp to me. “Can you two put that on the truck?”
Freedrick and I exchanged looks of wonder as Crina began going toward the small opening in the ground. Stopping in front of it, she opened one of the backpacks, taking out a rope. She clipped it onto a hook near the top of the hole, then she put her backpack on. “I’ll go down first and light it up so you two will be able to see.”
“I’ll go down first.” I wasn’t about to let her do that.
But she just waved, then disappeared. A thing which had my brother laughing. “She told you, didn’t she? I’m going to like having her around. She seems fun.”
Moments later, I was on my way down, using the rope that had been in one of the other backpacks. I had my brother go down before me. I wasn’t going to leave him alone for even a second.
For all I knew, Codut was watching us. I wasn’t going to make my brother easy for him to take.
Just as my feet hit the icy surface, I saw Freedrick with the flamethrower, deicing a pathway. Crina took my hand, leading me along with her as we followed my brother. “I’ve got lots of food down here. I’ve brought down all sorts of things that I knew we’d need. Plus, I thought I could count on you to hunt us up some meat now and then. It’s cold enough down here to store it for eons.”
I wanted to address the elephant in the room. “So, you know that we’re bear-shifters?”
“I do now.” She grinned. “I had a very good idea. It came from a dream I had. And now you’ve told me that it’s true. In my dream, there was a black dragon after Freedrick. You, me, and our baby are all just sub-characters in this thing. Funny, huh?”
“I don’t think there’s much funny about any of this, Crina Loveanu.” I pulled her around, into my arms, then kissed her. “But I am glad that you have come through for me and my brother in a way I never saw you being able to do.”
“Since I’ve met you, I’ve found out that I can be quite remarkable when I need to be.” She kissed me. “I hope you will agree to live with me forever and ever as a couple. I don’t think formal marriage is a thing that shifters do. The legal matrimony paper would disintegrate before the people who signed it would.”
“You’re talking about immortals.” My body tingled as I thought about making her one of us. “Would you want me to change you, Crina? Would you want to become a bear-shifter?”
Her eyes danced as she asked, “Will our baby be one?”
I couldn’t help the smile that crept over my face. “If I make you into an immortal before he’s born, then he will be one too.”
“And if it’s not a he, but a she, then what?” she joked.
Smacking her bottom, I picked her up in my arms. “You are something else, my sweet.”
“And so are you, my teddy bear.” Her arms looped around my neck as she lay her head on my shoulder. “I am glad to have you with me. Now I can relax and let you take care of me for a while. I’ve done my part for now. Once the baby comes, I’ll have so much to do again. But for now – take care of your woman, Zanthe. She’s tired and needs pampering.”
With my woman in my arms, an eternity ahead of us, and a brand-new ice cave we will call home, I believe happiness is ours for the taking.
24
Crina
Rocking in the chair Zanthe made me out of the boughs of trees, I held our son as he slept soundly. Sighing, I couldn’t take my eyes of the little boy. At times he would pop into a furry cub, then pop back into my baby boy again.
Not that I was much different. I was still working on switching between bear and woman. The transition wasn’t always totally effective. Sometimes I came out with my top half bear and my bottom half woman. Not that Zanthe minded at all.
He’s such an animal!
Our ice cave kept us out of Codut’s eye for almost a year. We’re hoping it will keep doing so for at least another year. Preparing to battle a dragon is no easy feat. And being stuck, not only underground, but also a great distance from civilization makes it hard to find shifters who will agree to fight against something like a dragon.
It had been a bit hard for me to understand just how powerful dragon-shifters are. They overrule all of the smaller shifters. But, with help, they can be brought down. And if they can be brought to trial in front of their dragon-shifter peers, they can be wrangled in that way. Although none of the ways to defeat a dragon come easy, we won’t stop until we find a way.
Freedrick is not a man we want to lose. And never will we lose him to become what Codut wants to turn him into. A man with a good heart is hard to come by. When you added in the courage the man possessed, it made him into something an evil creature would kill for.
We were sure Codut would kill to get his claws on Zanthe’s brother. As sub-characters in Codut’s novel, I knew it was me, our baby boy, and Zanthe who were always in harm’s way.
But that was just the way it had to be. My baby and I were just as much a part of Freedrick as we were his father. In the shifter making process, I gained blood from Zanthe, but also his brother as well. Adding in a second bloodstream makes for a sturdier shifter, from what they’d said at the time.
All I knew for sure, was that I felt stronger than I’d ever known possible. And when our son was born, he held his head up right away, pulling his head off my chest to look at his father and uncle.
Bear blood now ran in all of our veins. Codut would be up against more than he’d ever bargained for with us now – even if he did see us as minor characters in his plot to steal Freedrick away from the world to turn him into a warrior for evil.
Carrying in a bowl of fresh salad, Zanthe wore a grin. “I popped over to that café
in Los Angeles, California that you like so much. The farmer’s market salad was on special. I thought you’d like to have a bowl.”
Using the portals to travel the globe for the things we needed and wanted was my idea. But we never went together. Freedrick never got to go at all. And we never stayed out more than an hour at a time. We knew we had to be careful not to let Codut find us.
“Take your son, so I can enjoy that delicious looking salad.” I handed him our son as he handed me the bowl. Leaving a kiss on his lips, I thanked him, “Thank you, my teddy bear. You are extremely thoughtful. I’ll pop out to get something for us all for dinner after I enjoy what you brought me.”
“Sounds nice.” Zanthe took over rocking our son as he gazed at him. “He’s so handsome.”
“I agree. He looks just like his father. Especially when he’s a little bear cub.” I stabbed a pile of greens then put them into my mouth. “Yum.” Since becoming a bear, even when I wasn’t in my bear form, I had become quite a big eater. “I’m thinking steaks for later. And giant baked potatoes too.”
“A pint of beer,” Zanthe added. “Or better yet, a keg.”
“You expect me to carry a keg of beer down here?” He’s crazy if he thinks I can manage that.
“You’re strong enough.” He smiled at the baby. “I like the name, Roark. Roark of Romania.”
I sort of liked that name too. We hadn’t found a compromise as of yet and the baby was already almost two months old. “If I will agree with that name, then will you agree to allow me to name the next baby?” I crossed my fingers with hope.
“But I like that we’re coming up with their names together.” His lips pulled to one side as he contemplated my request. “How about this? If you will agree to name him this, then I will give you the final say with the next one. But we will each get to put our ideas for names out there for the period of one month before you make that decision.”
“Compromise. I love it.” He had a way of making me understand life so much more than I ever had before “Roark, it is. Our son, Roark of Romania, will be the best son a couple of bear-shifters has ever had.”
