by Amelia Jade
And now this had happened. She’d not been necessary. They could easily have overwhelmed Trevor’s resistance and simply taken him from the prison. True, he might never have been comfortable around shifters ever again, but what was that versus their lives? Mia could settle for that, if that’s what it took, and she suspected Trevor would have been okay with it too.
“It’ll be okay,” Garrin said, whispering softly into her ear.
“No it won’t,” she spat, though the vitriol and disgust were all self-inflicted, and not directed at him. “I fucked us. We’re screwed. Either the humans arrest us and treat us as Fenrisians, or the ones chasing us catch up with us and do who knows what to us. There’s no other way out. Look,” she said, gesturing at the troops below. “We’re not getting through that. They’ve got vehicles and more men than you could handle. There’s no way out of this, not even for you.”
Garrin shrugged, but didn’t reply.
Mia frowned at that. Yes, the bear shifter was exhausted. Yes, he was still laboring for breath. Yes he likely wanted to do nothing but sleep for days. But this was Garrin, and he never gave up on an argument like that. Which meant that he didn’t agree with something about what she’d said.
But which part? Garrin was a superb fighter, a highly skilled warrior. He was also realistic in combat, however, and so she doubted he was at odds with her assessment that he could take on the troops below, or any of the others to the north or south that they couldn’t see from their position on the top of the ridge, still partially shielded by the trees.
So that meant he saw a way out. She didn’t see anything that would work for her, which must mean he had some sort of shifter trick in mind.
“There’s a way you could get out of this,” she said at last. It wasn’t a question.
Garrin flinched, but he still didn’t say anything, nor did he meet her eyes.
“How?” she asked.
The big shifter, his breathing beginning to calm, though he still looked exhausted, shook his head, refusing to speak.
“Don’t act like a child with me,” she snapped. “Your actions just now have all but admitted there is a way you could get to safety. At least have the common decency to treat me like an adult and tell me what it is.”
Garrin’s head snapped up, his golden-brown eyes hardening, glittering as her words struck home. But she met his gaze, letting her own steel-gray orbs shrug his attack aside and drive home her own. Mia had nothing to lose. What was he going to do anyway?
The realities of their situation and her determination must have sunk in for him eventually. Perhaps, she mused, his brain was still so addled from their escape that it took time for him to think things through more clearly.
“The cliff,” he muttered.
“You can climb it?” she asked, surprised.
He shrugged. “Maybe, hadn’t thought about it. But even if I could, it would take way too long. The troops would close the distance and tranq me. No, you see that tree there?” he said, pointing to where a great, solitary pine tree rose, separate from the forest and growing right next to the edge of the cliff.
Mia eyed it, and the extra green of the plain’s grasses around it compared to elsewhere.
“Yes?” she asked, wondering what it meant.
“There’s an underground river that exits there, flowing out and into the plains below.”
She shook her head, confused. “How does a waterfall help…” Her eyes narrowed. “You mean to jump it,” she stated.
Garrin nodded. “It’s deep enough.”
“How the hell do you know that?” she asked.
“I never told you about my parents, did I?” he asked.
She shook her head. He’d never brought them up, not even in passing conversation. Though she’d been curious, Mia figured he’d talk about them in time, when he was ready.”
“My parents grew up in Fenris,” he said unhappily. “They’re staunch Cadian loyalists, and left when things started going sideways here. But they would get a lot of undue attention if people knew.” He sighed. “Anyway, this is where they met, and it’s also a semi-popular spot for teenage shifters to test their newfound limits.”
“What do you mean?” Mia asked cautiously.
“It’s a long way down,” he said. “The water below is plenty deep, but it still hurts. We used to see if we could shift into animal form before we hit the bottom.” Garrin shook his head. “It made a bigger splash.”
“We?” she asked. “You were born in Fenris?”
Garrin looked up at her. “Yes,” he said. “But I left when I was fifteen, and never looked back. This place is sick. Diseased. I want nothing to do with it.” His head turned away, looking out over the cliff. “
“How many people know this about you?” she asked quietly.
“Not many. My parents. You.” His shoulders shook with silent laughter. “That’s about it.”
“How did you keep it a secret?”
Garrin shrugged. “Shifters don’t normally ask a lot of questions. We said we came from one stronghold. People believed us. Back then, there wasn’t really a cause for suspicion, or any reason for them to distrust us.”
She moved around until he was facing her.
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said, and leaned in to kiss him.
Garrin blinked rapidly when they parted a short time later. “What was that for?”
She smiled. “For trusting me.”
“I love you, Mia,” he said earnestly. “With all of my being, every ounce of skin and fur. You are the woman I will spend the rest of my life with. Whether it be a long one or a short one, I am not going another minute without you in it.”
She blushed. “I love you too,” she replied, the words tumbling from her mouth with an ease she hadn’t realized she felt. “I’m terrified, both of what’s to come, and of how fast this has happened. But I do love you, and while I’m not promising it will be easy, I want you in my life as well. Forever.”
The urgent need with which Garrin pulled her to him caught Mia by surprise, but her protests died down as his lips smothered hers for another unknown amount of time.
“Well, if I’m going to die, that’s one hell of a kiss to go out with,” he said, trying to make light of their mortality.
Mia opened her mouth to agree as good-naturedly as she could, but the words died as another idea came to her.
“Or maybe we won’t die,” she said slowly as her brain tried equally to tell her she was stupid, and a genius.
She might be neither. She might be both. But Mia knew one thing for sure.
It would work.
Chapter Fifteen
Garrin
He frowned at the sudden light that burned in the foggy depths of her eyes.
“Mia,” he said warningly. “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but on principle alone, I think I have to say I don’t like it, and that we’re not doing it.”
The light tone of his voice was belied by the steel that threaded its way around the words. Garrin had a very, very bad feeling about things, and it seemed likely that he was going to hate the idea more than he’d hated anything else in recent memory.
“So, you’re not going to like this,” she began.
Garrin simply arched an eyebrow.
“I think I’ve already made it clear that I’m not going to like it. That I already don’t like it. So you probably should just not say it. I’m not going out there. They’d simply turn us back, or arrest us, or kill us. Any or all of the above. Without knowing which, we’re not taking our chances with them.”
Mia crossed her arms. “Well we certainly can’t go back that way,” she said, jerking her head in the general direction of Fenris. “And you’ve already said there’s a way out.”
“For me,” he said stubbornly. “You wouldn’t survive the drop. No human could.”
Her eyes flared, and suddenly Garrin knew what she was going to suggest. How she’d been made aware of it, he did not know, but when he f
ound out, there would be hell to pay.
“Absolutely not,” he snapped. “Not a hope in hell.”
Answering anger awoke in Mia, a perfect match for his own temper. Her features tightened and her upper lip curled back. “This is the best chance we’ll ever get,” she said bluntly. “It’ll work, and you know it’ll work.”
He bared his teeth in an angry display, his snarl ripping through the forest around them. “If you live, it might work, Mia. There are no guarantees for either, and the odds of you surviving are slim to none.”
The snort that blasted from Mia could have rivaled his best, and his mate didn’t sit down. She stood up, forcing him to rise to his feet as well, so that she wasn’t looking down at him. “It will work, and you have three living examples of it in your headquarters back in Cloud Lake!”
So that was where she’d heard about it. Allix or Nina had spoken to her, told Mia about the Turning.
“And did they tell you about the dangers? About how most times a shifter attempts to Turn another, it kills them? That nine and a half times out of ten, the human dies before they become one of us?”
“Yes, they did tell me that,” Mia said, her voice quieter but no less fierce. She looked at him, and he saw the knowledge in her eyes, saw the understanding, the terrible, terrible risk she was taking. And he saw her love for him as well, a love that had forced her to come along, a love that had put her life in danger.
“You haven’t thought it through,” he said, lowering his own voice.
“I’m prepared to take the risk,” she said, and to her credit, though he could smell her fear, Mia’s voice didn’t quaver in the slightest.
“And what if it works?” he asked softly.
“Then we jump off the damn cliff, and we swim the river to safety,” she stated.
Garrin inclined his head in agreement. “Okay, then what?”
“Then you take me back to Cloud Lake, and we spend our lives together,” she said with a shrug of her shoulders as if to say, “What are you, stupid?”
“After the war, Mia, I won’t be in Cloud Lake.” He paused for a long second. “And neither will you.”
She frowned. “What? Why would I leav—”
The sentence stopped mid-word as his point sunk home. “Because I’ll be a shifter,” she said softly. “That’s why.”
Garrin nodded slowly. “You won’t be allowed into human territory, except with permission. And your brother won’t be allowed inside Cadia.”
Mia frowned and turned away. Garrin let her have her moment, hoping that it would bring her to her senses. When the Fenrisians found them they would likely kill him. But she as a human would survive. That was what mattered. His life was forfeit, and had been ever since they left the plane. Garrin was okay with that. He’d long been ready to die, having come to terms with that a long time ago, when he’d first experienced combat with the Green Bearets.
But not Mia. She had been dragged into this against her will. Her brother was safe—he assumed the others had made it out of Fenris okay—and now he needed to ensure that she survived as well. It would be the heart of irony for her brother to emerge alive and Mia to have perished during the mission. Garrin needed to do everything in his power to ensure that didn’t happen.
Up to and including not turning her.
It wasn’t that the idea wasn’t tempting. It was. The notion that his mate, the woman he wanted more than anything in the world, that he ached and longed for any time she wasn’t around, could become a shifter was enticing beyond belief. She was perfect the way she was, and he didn’t need anything more from her. But neither would he turn it down.
Not at the expense of her life, however. Garrin needed Mia alive. If she died during the Turning, and he was forced to live on, he would never be able to forgive himself. It would haunt him for the rest of his days, especially when he’d known there was another way out. A way she could survive. Sure, the humans below might throw her in jail for a bit. But it would be sorted out eventually and she would be returned to her home.
No, he couldn’t go through with this. She had to be made to see reason.
“If you Turned me, would I get to live with you?”
He froze. No. No no no. She was supposed to be understanding that he couldn’t do it! That she had to stay human.
“Mia,” he began, but his protest withered and died as she slowly rotated back to look at him, her eyes harder than he’d ever seen before.
“Answer the question,” she said, her voice soft.
Garrin didn’t mistake its volume as meaning she was going to relent. He wasn’t that stupid.
His eyes closed and his chin sank. “Yes,” he whispered. “If you wanted to.”
“I wouldn’t be alone,” she mused. “I’d have you, and the other Green Bearets. And their mates.”
Garrin was shaking his head. “No, Mia. Listen to me, it doesn’t have to be this way. You go down to the human military. Turn yourself in. I’ll go over the cliff. We both live, and in a few weeks you’re home free.”
Mia looked at him. “First off, you’re assuming they don’t shoot me on sight. A big chance there. They’re just as likely to tell me to turn around and go back as they are to take me in. If they do that, I get caught, and killed.” She raised a hand and ticked off a finger. “Secondly, you’re assuming that they won’t just put me in their jail, and then return me to Fenrisian authorities. In which case again, I’m dead.” Another finger ticked. “Or they arrest me, and then determine I’m not who I say I am, and again, I die.” Another finger.
“There are a lot of ways that I die by going down there, Garrin. It is not guaranteed that they’ll treat me the way you think. Trust me, I know much better than you how humanity feels about shifters. They don’t hate you, but few of them trust you either. Which means they wouldn’t trust me.”
“So you want me to Turn you, and risk your death that way, so that you can go jump off a cliff, and hopefully evade the humans that way?” he asked, crossing his arms.
“Yes.”
“Dammit, Mia, this isn’t a game!”
“Does it look like I think it’s a bloody game?” she snapped, stepping close to him, getting her face in his. “I’m playing the odds. You Turn me, there’s fifty-fifty odds I die if I’m a normal human. But based on what I’ve seen from the mates of your men, the odds are far less. They’re batting one hundred percent.” She sniffed disdainfully at him. “If I go down there,” she pointed at the human lines outside the forest, “there’s a seventy-five percent chance, or higher, that I die.”
She turned a level gaze on him. “So just do it already. I know what I’m getting into.”
“This is ridiculous!” he protested. “People don’t just demand to be Turned into shifters. Besides, you have no proof about the whole mates and Turning thing. It doesn’t mean anything! I don’t know what this whole thing with Allix, Nina, and Carrie means, but it doesn’t mean it’ll protect you!”
“Or perhaps it means that it’s time for humans and shifters to work closer together. That you can find mates outside of your little world. That it’s time to integrate our societies more, instead of having you locked away from the world.” Mia shrugged.
Garrin sighed. “I’m going to lose this argument, aren’t I?”
Her arms wrapped him up in a hug, pulling him close. “Yes,” she said gently into his ear before nipping at it softly with her teeth.
He couldn’t stop his grin. “I can’t believe I’m being talked into this.”
“Better get used to it,” she teased as he took several steps back to prepare to shift. “I always get what I want.”
“I guess I should be glad you want me.”
Mia winked seductively. “You have no idea.”
He blushed, but then his expression turned serious.
“Okay, here’s what you need to know about the Turning.”
Chapter Sixteen
Mia
Something was coming.
Mia
opened her eyes. She was lying on the floor of the forest, looking up at the green canopy of branches above her. Blinking her eyes rapidly, she cleared her vision and sat up.
“Garrin?” she called, pitching her voice low so that it wouldn’t carry.
Again the sensation that something was approaching washed over her. There was no noise, no sound, no vibration of the ground. Nothing she could see to tell her what was nearing her little spot of forest. But something was.
There was no response from her shifter mate. He wasn’t around. Where was he? Mia frowned as she concentrated, trying to remember what was going on. Her memory was fuzzy though. She remembered Garrin talking to her, walking her through the process of the Turning. Then…then there was nothing.
The air temperature around her increased abruptly, and Mia looked up, wondering if the sun had gone behind the clouds. But the sky was obscured from her view. Only the light filtering down through the trees told her the sun was even up. Whether it was behind clouds or not she couldn’t tell.
In the distance a dry tree branch cracked.
Mia spun to the source of the sound, her back to the ridge where the human troops should be assembled. When she saw nothing in the forest, she risked a quick glance over her shoulder.
There was no sign of the humans.
Something very weird was going on. There were more sounds in the forest in the direction she and Garrin had fled from. Mia peered into the forest, trying to pick up the source of the sound.
Another branched snapped. Then another.
Mia took a step backward.
Brush rustled to her left and she gasped, jumping away from it, just before a rabbit jumped into view. It looked at her for a second. A wash of warm air hit them, and the rabbit seemed to panic. It shot off down the hill and out of the forest.
A moment later another bounded by, this one not bothering to slow down. Then a pair of raccoons came out, dashing right through her legs as they kept running. Birds began to fly by overhead. A deer crashed through the undergrowth and leapt by not ten feet to her left.
