by Selena Scott
“Hell yeah!” he’d yelled, gifting them with the first smile that Matt had seen from him. The young man’s teeth were white and his eyes were navy blue, like his sister’s. Matt realized that the kid was handsome. It had been hard to see before, through all that solemnity.
They’d decided to break for dinner at that point and Matt found himself standing outside, in his mittens, while John Alec flipped burgers on the grill.
“You really don’t want a coat or something? A hat? It’s freezing cold out here.”
John Alec, standing in just a pair of jeans and a thermal shirt raised his eyebrow at Matt’s mittens. “I’ve endured much worse.”
Deciding it was better not to argue with the Warrior, Matt let it drop.
“This tool you’ve made. It’s very, very important that I learn how to use it.”
Matt nodded. “I’ll work on different versions of it. Maybe a different build would be easier for some people.” He hesitated. “If you don’t mind me asking, why is it so important?”
Alec sprinkled some seasonings that Milla liked onto one of the burgers. “Because right now the only way that we can get in and out of Herta is through the gates that already exist. Which means that often we’re trapped there.”
“Why would you go back? I mean, I know it’s your home, but isn’t it extremely dangerous for shifters there?”
He was quiet for a long minute. “My sister is still in Herta.”
“Oh. You want to bring her here?”
John Alec laughed. “Valentina would rather eat dirt than live on Earth. But if I had a tool to cut between worlds, then I could aid her without having to leave Milla for such long periods of time.”
“Aid her with what? Is she in danger?”
John Alec flipped the burgers. “My sister and I are in the business of freeing shifters that are enslaved on Herta. We fight a war with the slave owners. But we have so many limitations. Your invention would allow us a lot more options.”
“Right.” Matt nodded, thoughts jumbling together. “You could even start a caravan. Rescuing and freeing the enslaved shifters, bringing them right back to earth.”
“My thoughts exactly.” He was quiet for a minute. “It would also make Inka much safer. From the one who hunts her.”
Matt was at full attention. “You mean if we were able to close the gates in the forest, she’d be safer? There’d be less chances for him to see her?”
“Yes. And there’d be less places for him to drag her back through as well.”
Matt’s blood turned into knives.
John Alec saw the man’s face. He thought about how it would have felt to have those words said about Milla. “He won’t take her if she’s with others. And he wouldn’t risk fighting a she-bear in her own world. Inka would be much too strong for him. But make no mistake. The hunter wants her. We will all have to be careful. To protect her. If she gets dragged back in her human form, he’ll have all sorts of power over her. She… would likely succumb.”
“Can the hunters open and close the gates?” Matt would never know how he managed to make his voice as steady as he did.
“I’m not sure. But the gates are certainly multiplying. Like I said, Matt Woods. Perfect your tool. We all need it now.”
***
Matt and Inka drove home at the end of that weekend. She told him he could sleep if he wanted, and he did recline the passenger side chair, but they didn’t stop softly talking the whole way home.
And they did the same thing the next weekend.
And the next.
Little by little, the family was figuring out how to use the tool. And Matt was getting to know each of them in turn. Surprisingly, Ansel had been the easiest. Inka’s big brother came off as gruff and protective, and he was those things. But he also understood what it meant to care about a woman, and he allowed Matt to be close to Inka. Besides, both of them were hard workers and pretty handy when it came down to it.
When it became annoying to drag his equipment back and forth, Ansel had built Matt a small work area in his backyard so he could keep working on the weekends. Matt had been touched and impressed with the craftsmanship. In fact, under Matt’s instruction, Ansel had been able to start building the bodies of the prototypes and Matt made the finishing touches.
The key to the other three men’s hearts had been allowing them to start teaching him combat. Never having been much of an athlete besides running, Matt was admittedly out of his element. He could often use his size, and basic physics, to dominate one of them. But when it came to hand-to-hand Matt found himself knocked on his ass more often than not.
“Sometimes it’s like you fall in slow motion,” Kain had told him one day and made Griff burst out laughing. “It’s because you’re so tall. I think you’re done falling but then there’s like eight more feet of you left to fall.”
Matt had been able to kick Kain’s legs out from under him and Griff had laughed even louder. Even John Alec smiled.
Milla, on the other hand, was a much tougher nut to crack. She wasn’t rude to Matt. But she wasn’t warm either. And though she was a reserved woman, Matt had seen her be affectionate toward her family. And especially toward her husband. Matt didn’t want Milla to stick her tongue in his ear, but he wouldn’t have minded a smile every now and again.
When one month turned to two and the weather began to turn toward early summer, Matt realized that he was starting to look forward to the weekends almost as much as he looked forward to the weekdays. He’d come to really love the time he spent in Green Mills. Nothing really beat that time he spent alone with Inka, though. He loved their life together. It was so simple. She worked during the day, and so did he.
She’d started running with him in the evenings and he’d bought her a killer pair of binoculars so that she could birdwatch in the park. She was pretty much living with him in his apartment. Some weeks he was pretty sure she didn’t even unlock Milla’s door.
They made love in the kitchen, on the couch, in his bed and shower, and twice at the movie theater around the corner when no one else had been in the theater.
He’d never been happier.
Or more worried.
Inka’s safety was constantly on his mind. The closer he got to perfecting the prototype to be something all of them could use, the more worried he got. It seemed that Inka’s bad dreams had been transferred to him. He dreamt constantly of something bad happening to her. She herself felt infinitely safer with Matt by her side. But the more he came to care for her, the more he worried of something ever happening to her. Nothing could happen to her. She was the most precious thing on this earth.
Somehow, he felt that the minute one thing became perfect, the next thing would be destroyed. And things were so good with Inka, something was bound to go bad.
He was dicing tomatoes while Inka stirred the pasta on the stove when his landline rang. Only one person ever called that line.
“Inka, no!”
But it was too late.
“Hello?” A smile bloomed over her face. “Hola, Mamá!”
Hold the phone. Literally. Did she just call his mother Mamá? And they were chatting like they’d done this before. Well, he supposed that Inka was often at his house without him. When he went for a run or to do some errands. Was it possible that his mother had called before?
“Si. Muy bien. Pues, yo vi tres, ah,” she tilted her head back to Matt. “How do you say ‘finches’?”
“Pinzones,” he answered automatically, completely at a loss.
Inka turned back to the phone. “Si, vi tres pinzones y un halcón cola roja. Si! Yo tambien. No?”
And then his mother was off and chatting in that way she had and Matt knew that Inka had stepped in it. Because once you got her started, sometimes there was no stopping her. Matt, scratching at his head, set the tomatoes aside and wandered into the lab to check on the notes he’d taken that day. Yup. All in order. He wandered back out.
Inka had drained the pasta and was stirr
ing the sauce in. She laughed into the phone and made a joke.
Matt frowned and wandered back to his bedroom, feeling very strange indeed. Maybe his bed needed to be made. Nope. Looked like Inka had done that before work. Alright. His frown increased. He went next to the bathroom where he made a quick grocery list, but he realized that mostly everything was stocked in there as well.
He went back out to the living room and turned a full circle. Something scratched at his mind but he could not, for the life of him, think of what it was.
“Matt! Dinner!” Inka called from the kitchen.
When he re-entered, she was just hanging up with his mother, grinning into the phone.
“You alright?” she asked, the second she saw his face.
He nodded, one hand scratching at the back of his head. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m good. I just, could have sworn there was something I was supposed to do. I just can’t remember what. I’ve forgotten something.”
“Oh,” she shrugged, sliding the bowl of pasta across the counter to him. “You’ll think of it.”
Matt sat and started eating, and he really hoped she was right.
***
It was the next Saturday that had the whole group in the woods again. Matt had been hard at work and he’d come up with a new prototype that he thought would work for Milla. Inka, Ruby, and Milla had been the hardest three to make the tools for. Matt guessed it had to do with the higher frequency of their voices.
Either way, he hoped this was the one. And he really hoped that Milla could get hers to work. Maybe it would thaw her out a little bit.
Matt walked around from person to person, correcting their grip on the flute-like tool, giving tips here and there, but truthfully, they were all getting pretty good at creating the windows. But almost everyone needed practice at closing them.
He still wasn’t used to the way the portals glowed when a shifter was near. He hated the dozy, helpless expressions that came over their faces when the portals called to them. Especially when that look was on Inka’s face. He didn’t want her anywhere near these windows to the other side. But he didn’t have it in him to exclude her. And she needed to learn just like the rest of them.
“Here,” he adjusted Milla’s grip on her prototype and ignored the glare she sent his way. He was just turning back toward Inka when he felt it. Every shifter in the group stiffened, lifting their noses and sniffing the air. Matt whirled to Inka and he saw exactly what he’d feared seeing.
Terror on her face.
The shifters could smell something that was terrifying Inka to her bones. Matt didn’t have to guess. He was three steps closer to her when it happened.
The window opened up directly behind Inka, round and perfect and big enough for a human to slide right through.
Inka’s eyes went dozy but also fierce. She reached for Matt at the same second that a shadow appeared in the portal behind her. The shadow was six feet tall and yoked with muscle. Matt caught sight of something like bones, but they were being worn like a mask. Like clothing.
He was almost all the way across the clearing to her when the creature behind her reached out one muscular arm and snatched her around the waist. He yanked her back and into the other world.
And then the portal was closing. Matt was dimly aware that all the portals they’d been messing around with that day were all closing. This creature was somehow able to control all of them at once.
Inka was all the way through and the portal was getting smaller. It was almost gone.
No. Matt was not going to get left on this side. Not without Inka. He launched himself headfirst through the portal and landed on his hands and knees. He looked back just in time to see each and every gate slam closed.
They were on the other side. With no way back. And Matt didn’t even need to search his pockets to remember that he’d left his prototype with Ansel. But it didn’t matter. What did it matter that they were trapped if he didn’t have Inka?
He’d gladly live his life in this alternate world if it meant being with her. He kicked up and scanned, but he was alone in the dim forest, seeing nothing. How could that thing have disappeared so fast?
He strained, listening for anything, a footfall, the stirring of a branch. Anything. Anything.
“Matt!”
Her voice sounded once from his left. Matt heard a dull thump and sprinted toward it. He swung through a stand of ancient pines and skidded on the beds of needles. And there they were. The creature, which he could see now was a man, was dragging her back through the trees, one hand around her neck.
Matt barreled forward, heedless of nothing but destroying this man who was hurting Inka.
The man turned, and seeing Matt, grinned in sick pleasure. “Ah, the she-bear has taken a human for her pet?”
He tossed Inka aside and Matt had just enough time to see that she was drugged in some way. Her eyes couldn’t focus and her limbs fell heavily to the ground. Whether it was from some drug he’d poisoned her with or if it was the effect of Herta itself, Matt couldn’t tell.
He launched himself at this man. There was no time to try and come up with a plan of attack. Some of his combat lessons with John Alec must have stuck because Matt was able to bring the hunter to the ground. He tackled him down and used every ounce of his weight to slam him into the ground.
Matt’s bones clacked but it was nothing compared to what the hunter must have felt. He reared back, got one good sock across the bone-lined face and then he was knocked backward. Once, twice, a third time. Matt thought they might have been kicks but he wasn’t sure.
The man stood over him and Matt felt his skull get kicked directly into the tree behind him. “You think she’s yours?” the man glowered down at him. “She’s been mine since the day she first shifted. And she’ll be mine until she dies.”
Oh God. He wanted to make her his personal slave. Matt reared back up, wished he had any kind of weapon. Instead he tripped the hunter and caught him hard with an elbow.
The armor of bones that the man wore cracked on one side and Matt tore at it, needing to injure him. He dug his fingers in and tore, and came away with a jagged bone shard. The perfect weapon. Matt lifted it and charged, but stopped stock still as something hot sliced his stomach through his jacket. The bone fell out of Matt’s hands as the hunter grinned at him.
Matt’s eyes fell to his midsection where he saw the handle of a dagger sticking out of his middle. His vision grayed. His knees buckled. Some endorphin was flooding his system and it made everything clearer and blurrier. He looked around for Inka, couldn’t find her. Why couldn’t he find her?
And then something golden and gorgeous and humongous came into his vision. A great clawed paw swept the hunter to the side and he cracked against a tree. Inka. She was fighting. She was fighting for him. For their lives.
His sweet, perfect, sensitive Inka was fighting. And Matt hated it. He grabbed the handle of the dagger and gave it one good yank. The knife slid from his gut and into his hand.
Inka stood between the hunter and Matt. She winced when the man sliced her chest with another knife, but it barely fazed her. Matt saw her take a strange step to the side and he knew the drugs must still be affecting her. He dragged himself up the tree behind him and took a stumbling step forward.
Inka swiped the hunter to the ground, laid a massive paw on his chest. She leaned, just the tiniest bit, and the man howled. She was going to kill him.
His mariposa. His butterfly. Inka, who had teared up when they’d seen eggs in the falcon’s nest outside his window. Soft and sweet and perfect. He couldn’t let her kill. He wouldn’t damn her to that. He would do it. He would kill this hunter. He couldn’t make Inka do it.
He saw spots as he took two more steps forward. The man was fighting, clawing, tearing at Inka’s paw. He was shouting words to her that Matt couldn’t understand. Matt felt something hot and raw slither out of his gut. His hands were already wet with blood. What was a little more?
Matt fell to his knee
s at the man’s head. He held the blade to the man’s throat. Took a deep breath and—
Thwack.
The hunter’s head kicked to the side as a small steel arrow landed squarely in his temple, buried all the way to the feathers. He immediately went limp under Inka’s paw and she and Matt skittered away from the dead man.
Matt looked up through the trees and saw Milla standing there, a hard expression on her face and a bow in her hand that she slowly lowered to her side. Her eyes flickered to his and he saw something he barely understood in them.
“Shift, Inka! Shift now!” John Alec shouted to Inka as he sprinted from behind Milla. Matt was on all fours now and he felt like he was floating away. But he turned his head to the bear beside him and saw instead his human Inka, naked and curled into her side like a snail. He tried to crawl, tried to reach for her, but could only lay his hand over her foot before darkness took him.
CHAPTER TEN
It was a full day later that Matt blinked his eyes open into the hospital room.
“Inks,” Griff called softly from the other side of the room. He crossed to where she was sprawled over the foot of Matt’s bed and shook her shoulder. “He’s awake,” he whispered before slipping out of the room to tell the others in the waiting room.
She groggily dragged herself up to his side.
“You’re an early bird,” Matt grumbled. “You shouldn’t be sleeping.”
“What?” She kissed his cheek, his chin, couldn’t help but kiss his hospital gown.
“It’s 11:30 in the morning. You should have been up for hours.” His voice was low and gravelly.
“I was up all night.”
“Hmm.” He grumbled deep in his throat. “Are you alright?”
“Me? I’m fit as a fiddle. It’s you we’re all worried about.”
“But I saw him. I saw him slice you.”
Inka laid her chin on two stacked fists against the bed and eyed him carefully. “Bears are very fast healers,” she whispered. “Like under a minute fast.”
