by Selena Scott
“Fuck,” Milla muttered as she stared out at the ocean of green before them. As far as the eye could see, nothing but wilderness. This had just gotten a lot harder.
Ansel let out a deep breath. “Alright. So we need to get to a higher mountain.”
Ruby squinted at the sun that was already low in the sky. “Not tonight we don’t. We need to set up camp.”
Ansel turned back to his girl and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Are you sure? We still have some daylight, we can get pretty far if we tried.” They all knew how much she was chomping at the bit for any information on her brother. “Besides, darlin’, you know we could go a lot faster if we just carried you–”
“No.” Ruby swiped her hand through the air, more resolute than Milla had ever seen her before. “We said that you guys weren’t gonna do that until we knew more about this world. What if you got stuck? What if it…” she trailed off, overcome by all the things they didn’t know.
“She’s right,” Milla said, slapping a hand on Ruby’s shoulder. Maybe it had been a touch too hard because Ruby stumbled forward under the weight of it. “We don’t know what we don’t know, Ansel. Let’s take things slow and see what we can learn.”
It wasn’t long before they’d set up a small camp. Milla was grateful that even though they hadn’t known what to expect, they’d brought some camping equipment. A two-person tent, a sleeping bag for each, a few lightweight pots and pans. Water bottles and filters.
She frowned at their food supplies, though. Clif bars, jerky, two tubs of peanut butter and some bread. Couple of hardboiled eggs. Considering how much wilderness there was surrounding them, it wasn’t going to be long before she and Ansel would have to hunt.
“I’ll take first watch,” Milla told Ansel as the three of them sat on the outcropping to watch the sunset. Their camp was set back a hundred feet or so, but as they didn’t want to attract unwanted attention with a fire, they’d come to the sunset to entertain them.
“Alright,” he accepted her statement easily. He was one of the few people on earth who genuinely understood Milla. He knew that she didn’t say things she didn’t mean.
After Ruby and Ansel went to sleep inside the tent, Milla stared out into the dark of the wilderness around them, her knife in her hand.
***
Every one of Milla’s senses were so sharp, so infallible, that she could scent a hoot owl half a mile down the mountain. She could hear a family of rabbits sleeping in their hole on the other side of the ridge and she could taste rain on the air. But she didn’t think it was headed their way.
The night had deepened to an almost impenetrable black when Milla decided it might be time for her to wake Ansel and take his place in the tent. It wouldn’t make sense for her to tire herself out too much on the first night.
She was just gathering herself to stand when something caught her ear.
One single beat of a heart. She could hear Ansel’s and Ruby’s steady and strong in their sleep. She could hear their breaths as well.
But then, there! Another lone beat. A human’s heartbeat. Close enough that she should be able to smell the human by now. She took a deep lungful of air, but was only greeted by the scent of the forest. The leaves laying against one another, the deep, clean decomposition of a log against the ground. Moss creeping resolutely into each shadow.
Could it have been a different sound that she’d heard? Something that had confused her? A drumbeat in the distance?
Da-dub.
Milla rose slowly to her feet. No. That was a heartbeat. The single heartbeat of a larger animal that she couldn’t otherwise hear or see or smell. Her knife in her fist, she took a silent step toward the tent where her brother lay sleeping. The fact that he hadn’t awoken meant that she wasn’t losing her touch. Any normal creature approaching would have woken Ansel from a dead sleep.
A frisson of energy bleated through Milla’s chest. They were in a foreign world, where much was the same as earth. But this. This single heartbeat in the night. This was very different.
She scanned the woods around her and saw nothing, turning a full circle. She needed to get to Ansel. She took another step sideways before she felt the gentle fan of scentless breath on her neck.
And then the rake of cold steel against her windpipe.
“Be still,” a low, gruff voice growled into her ear in an accent she couldn’t quite place.
An arm banded across her chest, pinning her arms at her sides.
Luckily, Milla heard Ansel’s breath catch in the tent, she heard his heartbeat race. Her brother was awake, the stranger’s whisper had been enough for that.
Milla ignored her own heartbeat racing in her ears and tried to switch her grip on the knife in her hand, face it back toward the man holding her at knifepoint.
But the strong hand that lashed across her arm shifted its grip as well, dug into some pressure point Milla didn’t even know she had, and her knife plummeted, point first, into the soft earth at her feet.
Milla felt an uncommonly bright burst of hatred, annoyance, frustration race through her as his blade pressed harder into the softest part of her throat, and she scented her own blood on the air. And that’s when Ansel came tearing out of the tent. He unfolded every towering inch of himself, a blade in each hand, and stood, blond and gold, ten feet away from Milla and her captor.
“Weapons down or I core her like an apple,” the low voice sliced across the clearing. She wasn’t scared, but the voice sent a shiver through her. There had been an intensity in the words, but no bluffing. He was telling the truth.
Milla could respect that.
“Step away from her or I’m going to tear your heart out with my teeth.” Ansel’s words were equally honest.
“No need, Ansel,” Milla said, her voice calm and as clear as it could be with a knife pressing in on her voice box.
“Milla, no!” Ansel anticipated exactly what she was going to do and now that he was faced with the reality of it, in this new world they didn’t know the rules of, he felt fear slither cold and fast down his back.
But the air was already pulsing around her, syrupy and magnified. Milla felt the strong arm around her grapple to keep hold of her but then the stranger was flung off of her as Milla’s clothes fell to shreds around her and she was no longer a curvy, 5’9” blonde woman. She was a blur of dark gold fur and flashing teeth. Smaller than her brothers when they shifted, she was still well over 1000 pounds of fierce, flashing animal.
In less than two seconds she had this intruder on his back, one of her heavy paws clasped tightly around his throat.
The man’s eyes widened as he took in the furious, gnashing, dark gold bear looming over top of him. Just seconds before, his arms had been full of warm, good-smelling woman. And now he was one breath away from getting his face ripped off.
“A shifter!” he gasped, the knife instantly dropping from his hand onto the soft earth. He used that same hand and brought the back of it to his forehead, showing her his open, bare palm.
The move was strangely vulnerable and sent an unknown thrill through Milla’s body. She looked over her shoulder to Ansel who was at her side the second she had the intruder on his back.
“I fight for your freedom,” the man gasped and Milla realized that she’d unknowingly increased the pressure of her paw against his windpipe. Humans. So delicate.
She let up the weight of her paw on his throat but landed it firmly on his chest, holding him in place. He gasped for air, coughing and letting his hand fall to one side.
“Explain,” Ansel growled.
The man’s dark brown eyes blurred with confusion. “I’m your ally.”
“You don’t even know us.”
Again the man’s eyes were dark with confusion. “I’m on the side of the shifters in the war.” He made the sign again, his palm outward on his forehead, as if that would explain everything.
Ansel looked at Milla and shrugged. They couldn’t outright communicate when one of them wa
s a bear and the other was a human, but they knew each other well enough to know that they both had no clue what the hell any of that meant.
Ansel kicked the knife well out of the way of the man’s hand.
“Let him up, Milla.”
“Careful!” Ruby whispered from the mouth of the tent, the moonlight turning her strawberry hair silver.
In her bear form, Milla felt a wave of protectiveness for the little human crouching behind her. Looking down at this intruder on their camp, Milla knew that she’d tear him to pieces if the moment called for it.
She tossed her head back over her shoulder and waited for Ansel to get behind her. If this man was tricking them, she wanted them to be in between the stranger and Ansel’s girl.
Pressing just a little bit too hard on his chest as a warning, the man winced as Milla removed her paw and stood to the side on all fours. Then, deciding that a little intimidation was probably in order, she reared back onto her two back feet and let out a low, chuffing growl.
The man smiled a little, sat up and dragged himself backwards. “You can put your teeth away, Ladybear. I won’t hurt you unless you hurt me.”
She chuffed again, but this time it was more of a scoffing sound. Ansel didn’t need to be able to directly understand it to be able to interpret it.
“She would tear you into two pieces before you could even draw your knife,” Ansel said, squaring his shoulders toward the man on the ground.
“She might,” the man conceded. He looked back and forth between the gigantic bear eyeing him with what looked suspiciously like hatred, and then the blond giant with his arms crossed. He sighed and pulled out the two knives in his boot, tossing them onto the ground.
Next came the bow at his back and the arrows from their quiver. He really, really didn’t want to give up the mace on his belt or the chain he wore around the knuckles of his left hand. But he figured he needed to buy some goodwill from these bruisers and fast. They didn't need to know about the sleeper darts he kept in a pocket at his chest. Those would be his last resort anyways.
“I mean you no harm. I would never hurt a shifter. Or those who keep company with one.”
Ansel eyed the weapons on the ground and then blinked in surprise when his sister shifted back to her human form. Naturally distrustful, Ansel figured that Milla would prefer to stay in her bear form unless given no other choice.
Ruby darted forward from the mouth of the tent with a blanket in her hands. She wrapped it around Milla’s shoulders and took her down to a careful seat. The men may not have noticed, but Ruby instantly saw the woozy sway that Milla had succumbed to in the seconds after her shift back to human form.
“Milla!” Ansel took a step toward his sister, but was hesitant to show his back to the intruder.
“I’m fine,” she waved her hand and clutched the blanket around her naked form. The truth was, she had no idea if she was fine or not. She felt so strange. The longer she’d been in bear form the more cloudy and woozy she’d gotten. She’d had a very distinct feeling that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And if she could just get there, to the right place, everything would be fine.
“It’s just the Struggles,” the man, now crouching, said. His confused eyes bounced back and forth between the three people in front of him. “You know it’s what happens when you shift…” His eyes suddenly brightened with understanding. “Unless you’ve never shifted on Herta before. Have you just crossed over?”
None of the three people in front of him said a word, but the man rose slowly to his feet, certain he was right. Three people from earth stood before him, one of them definitely a shifter. His heart pounded in his chest and a swell of protectiveness rolled over him. If they really were fresh from earth, then they had no idea what they’d just gotten themselves into. But there was still time to save them. “We need to find a gate. We can still get you back in time.”
“No.”
It was the little red one who spoke, but he saw in the faces of her comrades that they agreed with her. They weren’t going.
“You don’t understand.”
“No. You don’t understand.” Milla rose, feeling a little better, and strode over to her bag on the ground. She tugged spare clothes out of it and let her blanket fall as she tugged them on piece by piece. “We’re here to find somebody who came through the gate over a year ago.”
She turned back to the intruder who stood across the clearing and saw his eyes had gone completely dark. Whether it was from her words or from watching her wiggle into clothes, she had no idea.
“My brother,” Ruby said.
The intruder looked between all of them. “I’d like to sit and eat my dinner. I swear on the heart of my father that I mean you no harm. You can tell me your tale while I rest.”
CHAPTER TWO
There was something about watching the man eat that made him seem a little more approachable to Milla. She didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. But she did allow herself to lean back against a fallen log ten feet away from him. She did allow her eyes to travel the length of his appearance.
She was surprised by what she saw. The adrenaline of his intrusion, and then the wooziness brought on by shifting, had made the man seem larger and more menacing than he actually was. He wasn’t a giant, maybe six feet tall. But with long legs that stretched out in front of him as he ate the food he’d dragged from his bag. He had light brown hair that was cropped close to his head and a few days’ worth of a beard. His deep brown eyes were the only feature of interest in his otherwise plain face.
He wore a brownish green jacket and brown pants that looked to be made out of some kind of canvas. All of it was well worn and grubby. His shoulders stretched the material, but Milla guessed that underneath his clothes he was much more wiry than bulky. She judged that she could dominate him in bear or human form and the thought had her relaxing, but just a tiny bit.
It bothered her that even now, ten feet from him and staring straight at him, she couldn’t scent the man’s flesh. Most humans she could smell from a literal mile away. Particularly pungent ones up to five miles. But this man sat there, chewing something dark and salty and smelling exactly like the forest he was currently in. She didn’t like it.
“Your names?” the man asked.
Politeness that neither Ansel nor Milla felt obligated by had Ruby answering his question. “I’m Ruby. And this is Ansel Keto and his sister, Milla.”
The man chewed, thoughtfully looking between them. “You two have chosen each other?” he gestured between Ruby and Ansel.
“You mean are we together?” She squinted her eyes at him.
He shrugged.
“Um. Yeah. We’re together,” Ruby answered. “How did you know?”
The man gave a little smile, as if the answer was too obvious to even say aloud.
“Your name?” Ansel asked gruffly, as on the fence about this guy as his sister was.
The man swallowed his last bite, wrapped up the rest of his food, and placed it back in his bag before he faced the group again. “John Alec the Warrior.”
“Jesus Christ,” Milla muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. “We’re in the middle of a fucking alternate universe and Peter Pan himself comes to the rescue.”
The man’s brow furrowed. “My name is not Peter. It’s John Alec the Warrior. But you may call me Alec, Milla.”
Her name on his tongue had her head snapping up from her hand. Yet another thing about this Alec guy that she wasn’t sure she liked.
“You said this place is called Herta?” Ruby prompted him to start giving up information.
“It is,” he nodded his head. “Sister planet to earth. On the other side. Only accessible through the gates.”
Ansel thought about the waterfall, the way it had summoned him forward, made it a compulsion to go through to the other side. He thought about all the other places he’d felt that same pull on earth. “There are lots of these gates.”
“On your side
, yes,” Alec answered, stretching his legs out as if they were stiff and crossing them at the ankle. “On our side, not very many at all. That sort of defeats the purpose of the gates in the first place.”
Milla rolled her eyes, annoyed that he was luring someone into asking this question. “And what purpose is that?”
To his credit, John Alec did not look like he was trying to make this a titillating tale. He actually looked disgusted with the information he was about to pass along. “To lure shifters from earth to Herta.” He sighed and looked up at the stars above them. It was a clear night, but the view was partially blocked by the rise of the trees around them. “Shifters are not naturally born here in Herta. But some Hertians desire them above all else.”
“Why?” Ruby asked, a chill of fear in her voice. She couldn’t help but be horrified by the fact that she’d willingly brought two shifters into a place where they obviously shouldn’t be.
Alec eyed her thoughtfully for a second and then turned his eyes onto Milla. She’d never seen eyes like that before. Such a clear, dark brown. Even from this distance, in this dark light, they still looked brown, not black. “Milla, maybe you should explain what it felt like to shift? Explain the Struggles.”
She frowned at him, feeling vaguely as if she were getting trapped. Her mind didn’t want to recollect that feeling. It had been unpleasant at best, scary at worst. She cleared her throat. “Woozy. I was tired. I also… wanted to go somewhere else. Not that this place is bad. It just didn’t feel like the right place.”
“Exactly,” Alec nodded. “The nature of Herta. This place, it doesn’t want shifters to be the gods they once were on earth. When you shift on Herta, it calls you to the main city. Your brain, it makes you go there. And once you’re there, it’s over.”
“What’s over?” Ansel’s voice was low.
“If you shift for long enough on Herta, you succumb. Your brain is concentrated on nothing but following orders. Shifters become completely malleable. Both in their animal forms and human forms. They become the perfect slaves. Imagine. A creature that can plow your fields to perfection as an ox during the day, and clean your home as a human during the evening. Shifters are desired by Hertians planet-wide. To own one is to establish yourself as a part of the gentleman’s class. There’s a fucking trade for them.”
