by Riley Storm
“But where? Where the hell do I go?” Even as her panicked question filled the cabin, the answer came to her. Jessica didn’t like it, but it made the most sense, in a convoluted way of thinking. She would go to the last place they would ever expect her. Maybe there, she would find safety.
If the bears didn’t kill her first.
3
Klaue gently twirled the card around in his hand. The thick cardstock didn’t bend like paper, but he supposed that was the idea with wedding invitations.
Or reminders, I guess.
The invitation had come his way three weeks earlier. It wasn’t long by human standards, he knew, but things worked differently in the shifter world. Which was precisely why he’d RSVP’d for both himself and a plus-one, even though Klaue was possibly the most single member of High House Ursa.
Not by choice. He would be quite content with a mate, but his job prevented him from being free to go out and explore female companionship as often as he perhaps wished. There were downsides to everything in life, and long ago, he’d decided that the prestige of being the second-in-command of the security component for Ursidae Manor was worth the drag on his personal life.
A mate will come eventually. When I am worthy.
That wouldn’t help with the wedding just a few days from then, but it didn’t matter. The wedding was about Kirell and Natalia, not Klaue, and he intended to keep it that way.
Getting up, he walked over through the doors to his working area, putting the reminder on his desk, so that he would see it in the morning. Not that he would forget. Kirell was his boss, after all, and Klaue had nearly been a part of the wedding party, until they’d decided to keep it smaller than was the norm with House Ursa wedding nuptials.
Klaue was happy for the man. Kirell was a perfect Captain for High House Ursa. He looked the part, had the skills, and was respected by all the men who served him. Even Klaue could only claim two of those credentials. The men obeyed him, but they didn’t respect him, not the way they did Kirell. He was practically idolized by the men. Klaue was feared. None of them dared cross him. Hell, most of them were even hesitant to be in the same room as him if they weren’t on duty.
A heavy banging at his door preceded the thick oak rectangle flying open.
“Klaue!”
He sighed. Most of the men didn’t want to be in the same room as him.
“Yes, Kincaid?” he replied patiently as the new Hunter of House Ursa gasped for air.
“Come on, we need to go! Now!”
Klaue stood abruptly, the uncharacteristic urgency in Kincaid’s voice making it clear this wasn’t just another call to come hang out.
“What is it?” he asked, eyeing the Hunter.
“You need to come with me.” Kincaid stepped back and gestured for Klaue to follow, before he swept back into the hallway outside.
Frowning, Klaue jogged after him. The Hunter was another of the Title Holders of House Ursa. Kincaid was new to the position, and so far—as of yet—had not officially done any of his duties.
The Hunter, upon appointment, was somehow altered by magic. Klaue wasn’t sure exactly how it all worked, but it allowed Kincaid to occasionally get glimpses of future mates. To see the strings that bound them.
“Let’s go!” Kincaid shouted, already jogging down the hallway, waving his arm at Kincaid. “No time to waste.”
“Kincaid. What are you talking about? Where are we going?”
The Hunter turned to face him, a gleeful look on his face. “To your mate.”
“Now I know you’ve lost it, Kincaid. I don’t have a mate.” Even as he spoke the denial though, his brain was processing who he was talking to. “Unless…”
Kincaid stopped running and waited for Klaue to catch up to him. “Yeah, sorry, I’m still new at this. It’s never happened before to me. Am I screwing it up?”
Trying not to grind his teeth, Klaue spoke slowly. “What has never happened to you before?”
Kincaid’s eyes were slightly yellow, he saw now, looking nothing like their normal blue hue. What was going on?
“I can see,” the Hunter said. “Come on. She’s coming, and we must be there. Can’t delay a second more.”
Klaue jogged after him, then started running as Kincaid kept up his pace. “Who’s coming?” He asked the question but the answer seemed fairly obvious. Klaue just wanted to hear it from someone else.
“Your mate,” Kincaid said, looking back over his shoulder with a grin before barging through a door and taking the stairs four at a time.
Following the Hunter, he simply jumped from landing to landing. They went down the four floors to the basement in seconds.
“Where are we going? There’s nobody here, Kincaid. This is just the garage.”
“We need to get to the edge of the property. Come on!” Kincaid slid into a car, the engine firing to life.
Klaue frowned, not having realized Kincaid already had keys. Hurrying to keep up, he leapt over the sleek crimson red corvette and squeezed his bulk into the passenger side, trading care for speed. Something broke, but it didn’t matter, he’d have it repaired.
The car took off before he could even buckle up, and Klaue held on for dear life as Kincaid drove like a demon possessed. Rubber burned off in great gouts behind them until the car found traction, and then he was pressed back into his seat violently.
“Do we have to go this fast!” he shouted, unable to do up his seatbelt. The sudden acceleration of the car had locked it into place, no matter how hard he yanked on it.
“Isn’t this fun!” Kincaid shouted as they cleared the lip of the tunnel entrance to the garage. The Corvette slammed back down onto the asphalt, and Klaue’s head dented the roof when he was too slow to duck.
“Ow,” he growled, the noise drowning out the engine for a moment, until Kincaid pressed his foot all the way down and they shot forward at full acceleration.
In an effort to ignore the crazed speeds, Klaue let himself think about what Kincaid was trying to tell him. His mate was apparently coming to the Manor. But why? And who? He hadn’t met anyone new lately, and to his knowledge, there were no expected guests due to arrive for at least several days. Whoever this unexplained arrival was, Klaue didn’t know them.
So how could his mate be there?
The front gates appeared, drawing his attention away. Kincaid hit the brakes hard, nearly sending Klaue through the front windshield. Only a desperate attempt to stop his momentum prevented it, though he did leave deep fist-sized dents in the car’s dash.
“Oops,” he muttered, but Kincaid didn’t seem to hear him. He was already outside, running for the gates as they slowly rolled back.
Klaue got out and raced after him as the Hunter disappeared beyond the stone wall to the right. Charging hard, he rounded the corner and nearly bowled over Kincaid, who had come to a sudden halt just out of sight.
“What now?” he asked, surveying the empty road and lawn in front of them. “There’s nobody here, Kincaid. Are you—”
The sound of an engine roaring in the distance stopped him mid-sentence. It grew nearer, the pair of them waiting just outside the gate.
“What the hell is that?” he asked, trying to identify the type of vehicle that the heavy rumble belonged to. “It sounds huge.”
Kincaid shook his head. “I don’t know. I just know we need to be here when it happens.”
Although Klaue almost asked the obvious “when what happens” question, he didn’t. Instead, he waited. A pair of seconds later, headlights came around the bend at a high speed.
It took him a moment to realize the incoming car was careening out of control, and in terrible shape from what looked like many impacts on its side, and even the roof was caved in. The vehicle, a massive military Hummer by the looks of it, wobbled back and forth across the road, eventually lost control and flipped on its side before sliding roof-first into a tree.
Klaue looked over at Kincaid, only to find the Hunter staring back at him, both of
them equally shocked.
“Is that…” Klaue started to say, pointing at the Hummer. The appearance of another two pairs of headlights cut him off as he realized there was no other explanation.
His mate was in the Hummer.
Klaue charged across the open field, Kincaid right behind him. Whoever was in the trailing cars was going to get there first, if the driver of the Hummer—his mate—didn’t start running toward them.
“Get out!” he hollered as figures piled out of the pursuing cars. Figures he instantly recognized despite only seeing their silhouettes.
Canim!
4
Jessica groaned as the Hummer settled on its side. Tire screeching behind her announced the imminent arrival of her pursuers.
She’d been so close. Just another few hundred feet and she’d have been at the gates to Ursidae Manor, and at least temporary safety. Probably. Maybe.
Are you going to give up now?
Defiance spread throughout her body like wildfire, pushing back much of the hurt and confusion. She undid her seatbelt, sagging heavily into the driver’s side window now that none of her weight was supported by the strap. Awkwardly twisting herself around, she kicked at the windshield. It was already cracked, and after several hard stomps it gave way.
Jessica crawled out into the grass, surprised at how little she actually hurt. The accident hadn’t been that bad. Even the impact of the tree had come after the Hummer had lost much of its momentum. Still, her balance was slightly wobbly and she stumbled. As she felt, her hand closed around a stick.
Behind her, she heard yips and snarls. Looking back, she saw the figures illuminated by the headlights of the running cars as they changed. There was no way she would be able to outrun them in their animal form. The werewolves would catch her well short of the fence and rip her to shreds.
“Here, boy!” she shouted as the first wolf raced across the grass toward her. “Here boy! Come and get it!” she called, whistling at the wolf while waving the branch in her hand back and forth. “Go on now, fetch!” As she screamed the last word, she hurled the branch at the wolf, forcing it to dodge to the side. Teeth snapped.
Yelping in terror, she turned to go, but the sudden movement on uneven ground was the wrong choice and pain flared up her ankle as she twisted it, going down hard. Jessica didn’t give herself time to think it over, she just pushed herself back to her feet and kept going, hobbling along. The gates were in sight. They were even open!
Safety was so close, if she could just reach it. Once she was inside, her plan ended, but if she got that far she figured she would just wing it. That, of course, was a big if.
A snarl from extremely close announced that she was unlikely to make it, though. Looking back, Jessica shrieked as a wolf leapt at her. It was huge, easily double the size or more of anything that lived in the wild. The sight of its yellowed teeth and red-tinged eyes so close made her legs give out and she fell yet again.
The unexpected movement caused the wolf to sail right over her. She lay on her back, looking at the creature upside down as it skidded to a halt and turned to come back at her. This was it. This was how she was going to meet her end.
Just before Jessica closed her eyes to accept her fate, something even larger loomed out of the darkness of the night sky and swatted the wolf away. The meaty paw was larger than her head, and the force of its blow broke at least one of the wolf’s ribs.
Time seemed to slow. All around her, combat raged. Two of the giant bears charged into the faint light from the distant headlights, throwing themselves at the pack of wolves as they tried to drive them off.
At one point, a giant black beast turned and roared at her, its eyes unsettlingly humanlike as it tried to communicate with her.
“What?” she shouted back, wondering why it didn’t feel odd at all to be trying to communicate with a huge bear.
The fighting resumed as wolves came in at her again, the bears dancing around her with surprising agility for their size. They cleared out the wolves and, again, the black furred one tried to speak with her. This time, it pointed sharply with its paw. Jessica followed the direction of it.
“The gate?” she asked, putting two and two together. “I’ll never make it. Unless you’re coming with me?”
Although the bear was forced to whirl back around to fight, the noise it made was easily translatable across species. The universal sigh or exhale could mean nothing other than “duh”.
“Okay, I’ll make a run for it. Give me a double growl when you’re ready.”
Almost before she’d finished speaking, the bear was growling at her. Jessica yelped in surprise and took off as fast her ankle would allow, trying to conserve her breath instead of constantly muttering “oh shit” over and over again.
She kept expecting the fatal blow to come in out of the dark, but it never landed. The sounds from behind her were wild and ferocious, and though she was extremely curious, she never once looked back to see what was going on. The bears had put their lives on the line for her, and she wasn’t going to waste it.
“Holy shit, we’re going to make it,” she shouted, finding another burst of speed as the open gates approached.
Reality decided to intervene just then, as the air between her and the gate shuddered, then went hazy. A split second later, a fissure appeared. Jessica didn’t have time to contemplate what she was seeing before a familiar figure stepped through, the left side of his face still filled with green shrapnel and stained red from a combination of his blood and the wine that had splashed across him.
“You’re mine now,” he snarled, and light exploded from his palm. Jessica was spun around and dropped to the ground, her eyes staring straight at the sky.
Somewhere in the distance, alarms sounded. More bursts of light illuminated the sky and pushed back the darkness. This was it, she decided. The end of her life. At least she would go out with a beautiful view, the starry sky still visible. A cool chill worked its way through her body, a sure sign that she was going to die.
Nearby, something made a ferocious noise. There were a few pops. An explosion? She wasn’t sure. Her vision was growing faded, like static was playing across it, and the chill was growing ever worse. Jessica prepared herself for the end, silently apologizing to her sister, but content knowing at least she would be safe now.
“Hey, are you okay?”
She blinked as the hottest man she’d ever seen suddenly appeared in her vision, like a glowing spirit come to guide her on the next journey.
“Are you an angel?” she asked, stunned at how strong her voice was, despite being at death’s door.
Features that looked shaped out of steel did their best to contort into something approximating confusion, and a very un-angelic “huh?” slipped from the being’s mouth. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m dying,” she explained. “It’s time to go on to the next life. Are you to take me there?”
A thick-fingered hand wiped his head, sending a shower of static across her vision once more. But still the being looked confused. “You’re dying? Where are you hit?” he asked slowly.
She stared up into eyes so bright, they fought back the darkness. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “Everywhere? There was a blast of light from the guy with the wine bottle in his face, and then I hit the ground. Everything went cold, and now my vision is all static-y, filled with white noise.”
The man—he was very large, she realized when he got closer to her—snorted softly. “Listen, lady, I have some bad news for you.”
“You do?”
“Yes.” For just a moment, a bit of laughter danced behind his eyes, but it was gone again in a flash. Whoever he was, his discipline was impressive. The power of his stare, the way his black hair was cut in sharp lines—it screamed military to her.
How can you possibly identify that, seconds before you slip into the afterlife?
“Am I going to hell?” she asked lightly.
This time, the big man let
out a single bark of laughter. “Some people might say that. You’re going to live, though, that’s what I was telling you.”
“I am? But I’m so cold.”
“You’re lying on cold ground. It’s winter.”
“But my vision!” she protested, not believing him.
“It’s snowing,” he said dully, then reached down and hauled her to her feet without waiting for her to respond.
To Jessica’s surprise, her legs worked, supporting her weight, though they did wobble slightly as she slowly grasped everything else that was going on.
“I made it?” she asked, talking more to herself than to her rescuer.
He didn’t seem to care. He stood just in front of her, and for the first time she saw the handful of cuts on his arms, and across his chest and—
“You’re naked!” she yelped in sudden realization.
“Didn’t have time to dress before coming to your rescue,” he explained.
“Right. Thank you for that.” Her manners were returning, even if her brain was still scattered. “Am I…is this?”
The huge naked man with blue eyes, his hair as black as the night, spread his arms wide, taking in the property behind him that was now filled with light and the sounds of approaching voices.
“Welcome to Ursidae Manor.”
5
Glancing off to the side to where the woman sat, Klaue donned the sweat pants that were handed to him. “Thank you,” he muttered, his attention very much distracted.
“You’re welcome,” Kaelyn replied, with just a bit of a verbal nudge to remind him that he was talking to the Queen of High House Ursa, and that maybe he should act like it. “What happened?”
Snapping up straight, Klaue wrenched his attention back around front. “She was being pursued by a bunch of Canim,” he said. “We didn’t know that at first, but as soon as her car wrecked and they got out to pursue, it was obvious. Kincaid and I jumped in. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good ol’-fashioned Canis beatdown, you know. We sent them scurrying.”
