by T. S. Joyce
She was crying as he dragged her toward the tree line. His hand was strong and steady, dry and warm, while hers was clamming up more with every step they took away from the safety of the house. That thing upended three cars. No, not cars. A jeep, a bronco, and a jacked-up pickup truck. What chance did four people have against something like that?
The hairs prickled on her neck and when she turned around, Dillon was gone. “Dillon?” she whimpered.
“He’s fine,” Bron said in a strange, gravelly voice. “He’s flanking us.”
Alder, spruce, pine and fir towered above them as they weaved through the woods. A roar echoed through the trees, long and loud, and she dug her nails into his hand. “What was that?”
“A bear,” Bron said, void of emotion.
A bear? A mother fucking bear? She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, and she was going to pass out with the breakneck pace Bron was setting. Her legs locked against the forward motion.
With a grunt, Bron turned and pulled her into his arms, and continued on his way.
“We should climb a tree,” she suggested in a small, panicked voice.
“Bears can climb trees. You need to get to the—”
“Road. I get it.”
Another roar followed by a couple of short bursts sounded from much closer. And she buried her face against Bron’s chest. His heart was racing, and that scared her more than anything. It had been easier to pretend she was going to be okay when Bron seemed so confident, but maybe that was all an act.
He began to jog as they ran parallel to the meadow in front of the house. His strides were long and graceful, like she weighed nothing. Holding on tighter, she cast a glance behind him and gasped.
A giant black furred bear was charging full speed for them.
“Bron?”
“I hear him.”
“Bron?” she asked again in a higher octave.
“Dillon’s got him.”
A grizzly rushed from the trees and tackled the other. End over end they tumbled and a scream of terror burst out of her. Bron clamped his hand over her mouth.
“You’ll bring them all right to us if you show that kind of fear, and we need them spaced out. Can you run?”
“There’s two bears,” she said dumbly. “There’s two bears fighting.”
She couldn’t take her eyes from the frenzied violence. It wasn’t play fighting over a blackberry bush. These animals were battling to kill each other.
“Can you run?” Bron clipped out again.
“Yes,” she whispered.
Setting her down, he pulled his shirt over his head as they ran side by side.
“What are you doing?”
“Keep running.” His eyes were so serious when they met hers. They were so light, her breath caught in her throat. “Don’t stop and don’t look back, no matter what.”
A loud crash and crunching metal sounded from back by the house, and she lifted her shoulders to her ears and crouched as she stumbled through the brush.
Crashing trees sounded and two more bears, one ruddy and one dirty blonde charged from the east.
“Go!” Bron yelled. “Don’t look back.”
But his words had turned gravelly and strange sounding, and she couldn’t not look.
Heaving breath, she tossed a glance over her shoulder and skidded to a stop. Bron’s spine rippled from the base to his shoulders, and he grew massive as dark chestnut colored fur sprouted from him. His face elongated with a spattering of sick sounding crunches and he dropped to all fours as six inch claws stabbed through his hands. And when he stood again, just a moment after he’d been the man she loved, he wasn’t human anymore, but a towering, eleven-foot grizzly bear.
Her screams were covered by his bellowing roar as he charged the two bears.
This wasn’t real. It wasn’t! It couldn’t be. It went against science and nature and probably every other law that governed how the world turned. Frozen in terror and panting like a racehorse as tears streamed down her face, Samantha turned to see another bear charging straight for her. And this time, there were no bear people to save her.
She had to save herself.
Spinning, she ran as fast as her legs could carry her, stumbling and righting herself and leaping through thin areas in the brush, hoping to slow it down. From the crashing foliage that was growing closer with every step, she was failing.
There wasn’t time to look back. There wasn’t time to lose her footing, only to put one foot in front of the other faster than the last step. Branches whipped at her face and arms, and she sobbed when the bear roared so close to her it hurt her eardrums.
Another bear was running at her up ahead, trapping her. It was smaller and black, and when Samantha looked it in the face, the bear wasn’t focused on her, but on the animal behind her.
It was stupid—so stupid—but she couldn’t help the terrified wish that came from her throat. “Reese?”
Long white teeth flashed as the bear grunted, and Samantha had no choice but to hope this one was on her side. At the last second, she veered off to the left and the black bear lunged at the one behind her.
Samantha’s throat was raw from screaming but that didn’t stop her from giving it another go. Bears and people. People bears. Joseph was full of them, and she’d been living as a naive human all these years.
And Bron…nothing he’d ever told her was true.
Running, stumbling, crying, Samantha didn’t even know the direction of the road anymore. She couldn’t think over the echoing slaps and bellows of pain that shook the woods. As she burst through the tree line and into a clearing near the driveway, the silver jeep nearly ran her over. At the near miss, Muriel slammed on the brakes to the damaged vehicle and ushered her in.
“Are you one of them? Are you trying to kill me?” Even to her own ears, Samantha sounded frightened and at the edge of sanity.
“Yes and no. I have no reason to kill you. This isn’t my fight, remember? Now get in before one of them comes for you.”
“Bron said only trust Dillon, Grant and Reese.”
The woman’s gaze flicked over her shoulder. “Grant betrayed you. I won’t. I’ll explain what’s happening if you get in. I don’t want you dead, Samantha. You’re the only one who can save me.”
Samantha dared a glance behind her, and a blonde grizzly was running through the woods.
“I can get you to safety,” Muriel tried again. “Now get in!”
Sprinting around the front, she dove onto the passenger seat, and Muriel hit the gas just as the bear reached them. The jeep was one of those off-road vehicles, with no doors and a soft fabric top that had been clipped back. Not exactly good at keeping bear claws from reaching in and snuffing out her life.
Muriel shifted gears and frowned at the rearview mirror. Samantha didn’t even want to see how close the bear was. Metal crunched in the back and she clung to the seat for dear life as they weaved, spinning gravel this way and that. Muriel hit another gear and jammed the gas.
Swerving onto the main road, the woman huffed a relieved sound and Samantha dared a glance back. The bear stood on the side of the road, tilted his head to the sun and bellowed.
“We aren’t allowed in town in our bear forms,” Muriel explained over the engine noise. “That’s as far as they can go until they change back.”
“Bron is a bear,” she said. “He’s a bear. A real bear with fur and claws.”
“Don’t freak out,” Muriel said.
“Oh my gosh,” Samantha said, rubbing her eyes until they hurt. “I slept with a bear. That’s against the law, isn’t it? I’m a criminal. I’m a sexual deviant.”
“He’s already slept with you?”
“Oh my gosh, I’m sorry. That was completely messed up to say in front of his wife.”
“Ex-wife and it was never a real marriage. Do you love him?”
“Bron is a bear,” she repeated. No matter how many times she said it, her mind couldn’t get a grasp on the combination of words
that had become an overwhelming truth in her life. Her stomach dropping to the floorboard beneath her feet. “I think I’m going to be sick.” She swallowed hard and the churning only got worse as another mile passed. “Yep, I’m definitely going to be sick. Pull over.”
Two hundred yards away from the safety of her own house, Samantha yacked in the bushes of Bethany Brown’s house. Or at least it used to be Mrs. Brown’s house before Samantha moved away, and from the perfect line of tulips she heaved onto, she was going to go out on a limb and say the notoriously fickle gardener was still queen of this roost.
Muriel gathered Samantha’s long tresses at the base of her neck and rubbed her back. “I used to hate you,” she whispered. She sounded so sad. “Bron loved you. Couldn’t stop loving you no matter how hard he tried and no matter how hard I tried to make him. He used to say your name when he was with me—called me Sam by accident. But now I’m sad about what our marriage did to both of you. I didn’t want this either. I had someone else I wanted too.”
Samantha’s shoulders shook as she held her stomach and hunched forward. Her heart was breaking. She hadn’t known Bron at all. “Why did you help me back there?”
“My father is trying to force a reconciliation with Bron.”
Samantha looked up, and the sun behind Muriel glowed through her hair, making a halo. “And you don’t want that?”
“No. We worked hard for our divorce and neither one of us wants to go back to pretending. That’s why I’ve been calling him. That’s why I went over to his house today, so that we could figure out a way to avoid falling into the same vicious cycle. I can’t choose another mate until Bron isn’t an option for me anymore.”
“You mean until he chooses me?”
Muriel nodded, and sadness pooled so deeply in her mossy hued eyes.
“What if he’s hurt out there? And Dillon and Reese?”
“Bron will be fine. He’s second in the clan and has fought almost every bear to get there. He’s a brawler. Don’t spare your concern for him in a shifter fight, Samantha.”
She noticed Muriel didn’t mention Dillon and Reese though.
Muriel leaned closer. “You can’t have him human.”
Samantha’s breath was shaking so badly, and she clutched her arms tighter around her middle to steady the tremors. “What do you mean?”
“It’s not allowed. There are only seventy-five bear shifters left in the world and we can’t breed with humans. It doesn’t work.”
“That’s why they want me dead. His…clan?”
“He’s a Cress—the last of the Cress line now that Trent is gone. His family ruled our kind a long time ago. He isn’t allowed to mate an un-breedable female or he’ll be banished, and you’ll be in danger for always. And if he decides to leave with you, it will cost him his people, his place, the safety of his clan, everything.”
“So he was never mine to begin with,” Samantha murmured, defeated. She couldn’t ask him to forsake everything for her. Hell, she didn’t even know if he was what she wanted anymore. The lies had stacked up too tall between them. She would’ve understood when they were kids, if he would’ve let her in. But he’d chosen not to.
Muriel’s voice dipped to a whisper. “I can turn you if it’s what you want, but you should think about it first. It is risky, and painful, and it can’t be undone.”
She tried to imagine turning into the thing Bron had been, and her mind skittered away in fear. She’d watched his bones break and claws rip from his flesh. How could she ever willingly do that to herself? “If you can turn people, why are there so few of you left?”
“Because the clans have forgotten how. The women in my family are medicine people though, and the books have passed to me.”
“I think I need to leave.”
Muriel was quiet for a long time, then offered Samantha a hand and helped her up. “Maybe you should. It’s your best shot at survival.”
She drove Samantha the last stretch to her house and scribbled her number on a piece of paper before handing it to her. “In case you ever decide he’s worth it.”
“Thanks,” Samantha said, as soft as the breeze, then turned before Muriel could see the devastation in her face.
She loved him more than anything, but this was her humanity she was talking about snuffing out. After all she’d been through, she couldn’t think about anything but the moment Bron changed into an animal, over and over on an endless loop.
She had to get away from here.
Jogging up the walkway, she pushed her way inside and threw her things haphazardly into the suitcase. Tears fell onto her tossed clothes in a steady river of pain, but fuck it all, she’d just watched the people she loved fighting as creatures she’d only heard about in legends.
And worst was all the lies.
Lies, lies, lies—her life had been peppered with them and she didn’t know what to believe now.
It would be impossible to think clearly about all of this in Hells Canyon. She needed to be out in the real world, with other humans, if she wanted to get a grasp on what had happened here.
Overwhelmed and scared, she threw her luggage in the back of her Jetta and peeled down the road that led out of town.
Bron was a bear shifter. Her friends were shifters too, and she’d been kept in the dark all her life. Oh, what stories they must have strung together to keep her naive. How many times had they shared secret jokes at her expense, and met behind her back.
What an idiot she must’ve looked like to them.
Tears burned her eyes as she blasted past the Now Leaving Joseph, Oregon sign, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand.
She had been trustworthy, they just hadn’t wanted to let her in.
And she’d be damned if she was going to live her life feeling like an outsider.
Chapter Twelve
Samantha hadn’t known where she was going until she hit the Benton county border. Her thoughts had swirled around and around the impossible things she’d seen, and now she was questioning everything.
Like how Dad was involved in this and how much he knew about Bron’s people. Suddenly, it seemed really important she talk to him about what really happened when she was younger.
One quick phone call to the prison and she was told she would have to wait until tomorrow to visit Dad.
And as impatient as she was, she thought perhaps it was better this way. She needed some time to regain control over her emotions, and to think about what had happened today. Already, a hundred strange occurrences from her past had clicked into place with the explanation that Joseph was overrun with paranormal creatures. She needed time to marinate on all of this before she walked into that prison demanding answers like a deranged lunatic.
About ten miles from the prison was a hole-in-the-wall hotel called Comfy Nights Motel. The welcome sign looked to be about a hundred years old and some of the letters were missing. The parking lot was cracked and resembled a map of chaotic Portland streets, and there looked to be only ten rooms in the flat-roofed, dilapidated building. But at thirty bucks a night, if it was good enough for her budget, it was good enough for her.
Evening stretched long shadows across the sleepy town by the time she was checked in and picked her room. Lucky number seven, because her life didn’t need any more bad mojo right now.
Settled into the musty smelling room, she ordered Chinese delivery and ate her weight in egg rolls, dousing her heartache in calories and soy sauce.
Flopping back onto the bed, she stared at the beige ceiling and sniffled. Her tears had dried up in the car on the long drive over here. She had frightened the cashier at a gas station when she’d come in to pay for gas and an economy sized package of chocolate cupcakes. Her eyes were red and puffy, and she probably resembled a weepy demon when she’d handed him her crumbled twenty dollar bill, but so what? She wouldn’t ever see him again. At least he didn’t make the sign of the cross when she left.
The ripple of Bron’s spine played again in her m
ind. This is why he growled during intimacy, and why his eyes changed colors. That hadn’t been a figment of her imagination that they lightened. It was probably why he insisted on wearing sunglasses all the damned time.
If she went back, would he do that still? Now that she knew?
They’d been star-crossed lovers all this time, and she hadn’t even known. If he could keep something so huge a secret for so long, how could she ever trust him to tell her everything? That’s what she wanted with a man. Complete trust. Bron hiding this huge part of his life, perhaps the biggest part of it, made her think he wasn’t trustworthy at all.
Her thoughts turned back to the night Dad had come back covered in the blood of Bron’s father.
The soft murmur of her parents talking—no, arguing—woke Samantha up from a deep sleep. It was finals week and junior year had been hard on her grades. She had an English test first period and couldn’t be losing sleep because her parents were at it again.
Pissed off and sleepy, she flung her feet from the bed and padded down the hallway.
“What have you done, Tommy?” Momma asked as tears welled up in her eyes.
The sight of Dad drew Samantha up short, and she crouched in the shadows of the dark hall. From his fingertips to his elbows, he was covered in sticky looking crimson. “I did what I had to do.”
“Is he dead?” Momma’s voice came out a frightened, high-pitched sound. “You were supposed to scare him, not kill him!”
Dad brushed past Momma and the kitchen sink turned on full blast. Samantha imagined all that red swirling down the drain.
“We have to tell her why,” Momma whispered. “Why you did this, and why he deserved it.”
“No! She never finds out, or what I did was for nothing.”
Samantha dared a peek around the corner. Her dad, tall and dark headed to contrast with Momma’s petit blonde, was standing with his back to her, scrubbing and washing his arms like he’d never feel clean again.
Momma rested her hand against his back. “Oh, Tommy. What’ll we do?”
“You’ll get her out of here—away from Joseph as soon as you can. Don’t look back. Don’t let Sam look back either.”
