by Jade White
Faina let out a relieved breath. “Good. That’s good to hear.” She had never said much of anything about it, but she was worried all the same. It was obvious just from looking at her. Even knowing that none of them would ever blame her for it, Amelia couldn’t help but to feel bad. So much of the danger they were in was because of the lions, and were it not for Amelia, the lions wouldn’t be there. She tried not to let herself think about it much, but the thoughts were stubborn and difficult to avoid, sneaking up on her when she least expected it. For the moment, she did her best to bury them.
Serik slunk into the kitchen, a tablet clutched to his chest, and promptly stole the other counter stool. “Making enough for two?” he mumbled, darting a glance at the coffee pot.
“Yes,” Amelia sighed. “You’re going to be short forever,” she informed him blandly. “Caffeine stunts your growth.”
“I’m okay with that,” he assured her before he flipped open the tablet’s cover and turned it on. Someday, Amelia would figure out what he was always doing on the tablet and the laptop, and why he protected them as if his life depended on it. Though she supposed the overprotectiveness could have stemmed from having both a twin and older siblings, and so being accustomed to privacy was a foreign matter.
(Of the myriad of things in life that Amelia regretted and would likely come to regret later on, her status as a spoiled rotten only child would never be one of those things. She appreciated the doting, the privacy, and the adoration of her parents.)
Amelia scowled at him, and Faina patted her elbow in sympathy. It was, evidently, an argument she had long since given up on having.
Serik’s only commentary was to accept the mug that Amelia eventually brandished at him, and a quietly snide, “If you object to caffeine so much, you can drink decaf.”
Amelia rolled her eyes and sipped her coffee in silence until the door opened and a parade of stomping feet stormed into the den, muffled, as they were most likely bare. The door slammed closed again soon enough, and it was followed by the sound of rustling cloth. And then the sound of the couch screeching across the floor, and Sezim’s voice swearing colorfully.
“Language!” Faina called, without so much as an ‘Are you alright?’ There was some grumbling in reply, but the swearing did stumble to a halt.
“Do anything fun?” Amelia called down the hall. There was no answer at first until Aibek made his way into the kitchen, wearing only his pants and an unzipped hoodie, though he zipped it as he leaned against the counter.
“We uprooted just about anything we could,” he explained. “If they wake up tomorrow, they will find their camp largely unusable. At the very least, they will become very uncomfortable trying to pack four or five lions into the other camps.”
Well, that was better than nothing, at least.
*
The rest of the family had long since gone to bed, leaving only Amelia and Aibek in the den. They sat beside the fire, each with a shoulder facing the flames, their backs pressed together.
“So, what if the lions decide to attack tomorrow?” Amelia asked eventually. It seemed like a valid concern, given everything that had happened, and they already had proof that even in the cold, just one lion was a formidable opponent.
“Then we knew they were going to attack eventually, and at least they will no longer just be sitting there like stalkers,” Aibek replied. “But they may not.” He shrugged, Amelia shifting as he did. “If tonight worked as intended, we will have killed four of them. We will be on basically even footing, if you pit our terrain advantage against their size. They may well decide to leave, or at the very least to not attack until they think they have an opportunity.”
“I hope so,” Amelia sighed. “But really, what is their deal? Why am I so special?” She heaved out a sigh. “I can’t even assume it’s something creepy like ‘they want my pelt,’ or they would’ve just killed me right from the beginning.”
True, Darius had most definitely been interested in her when they met, but that couldn’t be the only reasoning. No one went through so much trouble just for a good lay.
Even if he was dead set on sleeping with another shifter, he could have found one in the time he had been stalking the mountain. Whatever his reasoning was, Amelia couldn’t wrap her mind around it.
Then again, perhaps she should be grateful. It wasn’t the sort of logic she wanted to be able to understand. She was rather glad that the cruelty of the world continued to confuse her to some extent. But perhaps she was simply unusual in that regard. (Well, truth be told, she was probably unusual either way.)
Aibek snorted. “That was not a mental image I needed,” he pointed out, his tone dry. Even so, he sounded like he found it morbidly entertaining.
“You don’t want to picture my pelt spread out on the floor or across the foot of someone’s bed?” she asked, her voice high pitched and innocent. “What about my head, mounted on some wall? Oh, oh, I know!” She snapped her fingers. “My entire body, taxidermied in a living room, for the lions to have inappropriate thoughts over.”
Aibek heaved his weight back against her, bending her nearly double before he let her sit up again. “Enough!” he laughed. “You will make me ill.”
“I live to make people miserable,” she informed him pleasantly, shifting forward and then leaning her weight back against his shoulders with enough force that he had to lean forward in turn. It wasn’t particularly strong retaliation, but it was retaliation nonetheless.
“Then I regret to inform you, you are not actually that good at your calling,” he returned wryly. He said it so naturally, as if he didn’t even need to think about it before admitting it.
Amelia fell silent for a moment as she construed that, before she grinned and leaned more of her weight back against his shoulders. “You big softy,” she cooed, before she yawned. She lifted a hand to mask it, but it was obvious what it was regardless.
She didn’t think she would be able to admit it so readily, if it had fallen to her to say it first. That he made her happy. The words shouldn’t have been as scary as they were, but habits—hiding most of herself from most of the world around her—were hard to break. She didn’t covet his mountain or the snow or the isolation, or the fact that his entire family was living out of each other’s pockets, but she envied his freedom to simply be what he was without any fear of admitting it.
She was being ridiculous, really. Getting so worked up and so emotional over such simple things. But she supposed she was alright with that.
Aibek bumped a shoulder back against her in turn. “We should head to bed,” he suggested, though he made no move to stand up.
“We probably should,” Amelia agreed, though she also wasn’t particularly expedient about getting up.
They sat there for another twenty minutes in peaceful, content silence, simply enjoying the heat and crackle of the fire in the otherwise dark room. Eventually, they stood up and Amelia put her winter gear back on, and they made their way to Aibek’s room.
It was a peaceful sleep, that night. She had a good feeling about how tomorrow was going to go.
*
Amelia didn’t question it when she was woken up before the sun was even contemplating rising the next morning. She shuffled into her winter gear. She shuffled after Aibek back toward the den and then into the kitchen. She ate her breakfast in groggy silence. Eventually, once the entire family was gathered, Aibek pointed out, “We need to go check on the camp.”
Ah, right. No wonder they were all awake so early. Trying to check on the camp would be a waste of time if the lions were awake. She simply nodded in response and finished eating her breakfast, and then drank her coffee until she was functional enough to follow them all into the den from the kitchen.
“I’m coming with you again,” Amelia informed them as they gathered by the door. She was geared up for an argument, considering she was actually announcing her intent that time, and she was surprised when she didn’t get one. There wasn’t even a token argume
nt. Aibek simply shrugged and motioned for her to follow them.
The five of them stripped down efficiently—it got less and less awkward the more it happened—and transformed before they trotted out the door and into the snow.
The weather had only gotten worse during the night, but the snow was frozen enough that it was simple enough to walk on top of it, only sinking a few inches in the softer spots. It hadn’t warmed up in the slightest, but Aibek and Sezim took turns sticking close to Amelia’s side as they made their way down the rocky incline and farther down the mountain, letting her leech heat from them in small bursts.
It was early still. Early enough that the sun had yet to rise, and if they were lucky, early enough that none of the lions had woken up yet. If they were lucky, they would be able to investigate the sabotaged camp with minimal interruptions.
As they got closer to the camp, they slowed until Aibek came to a halt. He waited until the others stopped, congregating around him, before he began to prowl ahead once again, nodding his head for them to stay put. He stalked forward alone, disappearing from sight around the other side of a snowdrift. The rest of them hunkered down to wait, clustered together in a pile.
There were no sounds of struggle, no sounds of distress. Everything was quiet. Until finally, Amelia could hear the crunching of snow as Aibek crested the snowdrift again. He paused at the top of the drift and jerked his head back toward his shoulder for them to follow him.
Cautiously, the procession of cats stalked over the top of the snowdrift and looked down the other side at the campsite below.
Hardly anything had changed from the night before. The generator was still missing, presumably still buried in the snow. All of the supplies and equipment were in shambles. The tent was dark. There was no one awake or about. The only difference was that more snow had built up around the tent in the night.
Amelia was the first to begin venturing down the snowdrift, her ears pricked forward and her nose twitching as she crept closer to the tent. Until finally, she could smell it. The lions in the tent, at some point during the night, had succumbed to the cold and died. She came to a halt with a jolt as soon as she realized it, her head lifting high and her tail twitching rapidly behind her. She turned to look over her shoulder to where the others were watching her, and she cocked her head to the side at Aibek.
He dipped his head once in a nod, confirming what she had discovered. Amelia whipped around to face him properly and then launched herself at him, bowling him exuberantly into the snow like a furry, four-legged wrecking ball. The yowl Aibek made afterward was a sound Amelia was not soon going to forget, but she didn’t have any time to savor it in the moment. They rolled through the snow unimpeded for about four seconds before the others piled on top of them. They played like a pile of kittens until all of them were dusted in snow and Amelia looked like someone had tried to frost her.
Soon enough, they made their way back up the incline to the miniature village. Morning would dawn properly soon, and the rest of the lions would wake up. They didn’t want to test their luck too much.
But there were only five lions left versus four snow leopards and a cheetah. Amelia didn’t tend toward misplaced optimism, and she knew it would still be difficult if it came down to a confrontation—brutally difficult—but it certainly sounded like a fighting chance.
CHAPTER SIX
Hunting, a few days later, fell to Serik and Sezim. Technically, it was supposed to fall to them and Anara, but they lost their patience while waiting for Anara to wake up and venture out of her room, and so they left without her. No one ever liked it when they went off on their own, but no one needed to know just then.
When they made it to the ransacked camp, they found that it had been even further ransacked. Everything of use had been taken away, and everything else had been tossed into a messy pile. The bodies in the tent were gone, though neither Serik nor Sezim were particularly inclined to go looking for them.
From there, they set off toward the next camp…and found nothing. Everything was gone. The tent. The generator. The equipment. The snowmobile. The lions. As if they had never been there, save for the telltale disrupted snow.
Slowly, the twins shared a look before they both bounded off together into the snow. They had to find the camps, lest Aibek or Anara stumble upon one on accident. (Perhaps it didn’t make much sense, the younger siblings worrying over their older siblings, but they had never been particularly concerned with making sense. It sounded boring and overly tiring.)
They were thorough as they searched, and they searched for well over an hour. When at last they found one of the camps, they both ducked low to the ground, watching quietly from the snow. From there, they could see the second camp within spitting distance of the first. The lions had apparently decided on ‘safety in numbers.’
As if to make life even more difficult, one of the lions was pacing a line between the two camps, in human form and well dressed for the weather. He glanced around periodically, checking the surroundings for anyone approaching or for anything out of the ordinary.
The twins weren’t sure how long they crouched there, watching to see if they could learn anything new. Their hearts sank when, eventually, the patrolling lion ducked back into one of the tents, only for another lion to take his place. They were patrolling in shifts, then. They were never going to be off their guard.
Once again, the twins shared a look. They had to move on. They needed to handle the actual hunting still, and then they needed to get home to share the aggravating news.
Slowly, they stood up, though not completely. They straightened up just enough that they could move through the snow without revealing themselves entirely. Even so, the patrolling lion squinted in their direction, and they had to drop flat into the snow until she turned around to resume her patrol, back and forth between the two camps.
They took the opportunity to bolt, sprinting away as quickly as they could. They hunted efficiently after that, not taking the time to play the games they normally would, and they took turns to drag the buck back up the incline before they left it in the butcher shed.
*
“We can’t ransack another camp!” Sezim announced, the words laced with outrage, as she and Serik loped into the kitchen. “We will die if we do!”
“You aren’t supposed to be going near them on your own at all,” Aibek pointed out, pausing with his spoon raised halfway to his mouth before he lowered it again. “But why not?”
“They wised up,” Serik sighed, slumping sideways against the counter. “Moved the last two camps and are constantly keeping watch. They almost saw us, and we were just passing by.”
“Well, we kind of figured something was going to happen,” Amelia pointed out, stirring a spoon through her coffee. “But seriously, what were you guys doing out there on your own?”
Sezim threw her hands up over her head and burst out in exasperation, “Recon! Because we figured the something that was going to happen would be a bit more explosive than this.”
“You are not supposed to be out there on your own, even if it is just for recon,” Aibek informed them both sharply, though Serik seemed to have already checked himself out of the argument, instead shoving himself away from the counter to start rummaging through the cupboards for a snack.
Amelia began to tune them out after a moment as their argument continued. So much bad news of late was starting to make her queasy, and she wasn’t going to encourage the feeling any more than necessary.
No one questioned it when she excused herself to the den, burying herself in yet another book. She appreciated it.
*
Aibek and Anara went to see it with their own eyes that night, following the loose directions their younger brother and sister had given them. They got just close enough to the camps that they could peer at them through the snow. They could see, even in the dead of the night, someone sitting by a fire, bundled in a jacket and keeping watch. She didn’t appear armed, but that meant little when
she could be a wildcat literally in seconds.
They didn’t venture any closer than that. Their only purpose for being out there was to confirm Sezim and Serik’s story. With that done, they turned toward home again.
It was not good news to bring, but at the same time, it could have been much worse.
*
They all expected something to change. They expected something to give. For the other shoe to finally drop. But still, the lions simply lurked, day after day. The silent, ever-watchful presence was beginning to stress Amelia out so much that she was getting ill, her stomach rebelling each evening.
It was well into February by then. She had missed so much of the semester back home that there would be no chance of making it up, and she would have no choice but to give the semester up as a lost cause. The idea of just deciding to accept the failure rankled at her, but she had rather limited options.
