The Bear Shifter’s Promise

by Martha Woods

  And then they were gone, the barest disturbance in the wall of smoke as she stared after them. Then, with the sound of approaching wolves and a heavy weight in her heart, she prepared to sign their death warrants.

  Jeremy sprinted through the forest, branches snapping and scratching against his face in his haste to follow Hank’s path, fists clenched in his need to get there before anything else could possibly happen. He’d made the wrong decision, he’d realized when he woke up in a fitful sweat, there was nothing glorious or honorable about letting an old man march off to his death, much less to torch the crops of potentially hundreds of people who very well may have no interest in war.

  It was a decision that Orson had been unwilling to make, and now he could see exactly why. It was a stain on your soul to sign off on the deaths of innocents, and he’d had every ounce of sense when he’d refused unequivocally to do so. If only Jeremy had listened to him rather than to his gut, trusted his leader to know what was best for themselves and everyone else.

  But there was smoke on the air, it was impossible to miss, that stinging in your nostrils that seemed to seep into your very skin and close around the corners of your brain, enough to make you feel like a migraine was digging at the walls of your skull, and above that there was something that made his heart drop completely into his stomach.

  Blood.

  “No, please no…” Jeremy pushed forward, stumbling over a low, fallen tree and crashing down the side of a hill, only coming to a halt when his back slammed into a rock and sent him flying foot over head into the dirt. “No… not… not this…”

  “Jeremy?”

  That voice… he’d dreamed of it over the last few days, had felt it creeping into the edges of his consciousness whenever the guilt got to be too much, before he clamped it down with a combination of stubborn pride and a palm slap to his temple. But here it was, unmistakably right in front of him, and when he looked up to see the two figures bloodied and ashen, silhouetted by the orange glow of the blaze, he knew that either something had gone horribly wrong, or he had fallen head first into hell.

  “Orson?” He asked, somewhat numbly as something fell down in front of him, a wet splat that splashed something up into his face with a recoil. When he wiped at his eyes and looked down, it took him a moment to recognize the wide eyed, dead glare of Hank’s corpse, his chest torn open and his body quite clearly broken underneath the skin. As he scrambled backwards with a horrified cry, he looked up at the two shifters when they approached him, afraid to make even a single move lest they tear him open as well.

  “Was it… was it you?” He asked, looking between Hank and Orson, “Did you kill him?”

  “Yes,” Orson answered, with no small amount of sorrow, “He didn’t give me a choice. Why was he there in the first place?”

  “I sent him… I sent him to torch the crops, to force them to just give up and move on. But I woke up and… it wasn’t right, none of this was! I shouldn’t have sent him on that mission, I shouldn’t have turned my back on you, I should have just… I should have just…”

  “You should have done a lot of things,” Orson sighed, kneeling in front of him, “But you still have time to do what’s right, do you understand?”

  Jeremy shook his head, slumping limply against the tree and sighing, “No… I don’t understand.”

  “Jeremy, do you trust me? After everything that’s happened, everything that you’ve done and everything that’s coming, do you trust me to do what’s right?”

  It took him a moment to think if he actually did, or if his fear had clouded his judgement, but when he did… it was obvious what the right answer was. “Yeah, I trust you.”

  “Good. So here’s what you’re going to do.” Orson stood, staring sadly at Hank. “Jennifer and I torched the crops at the wolf clan, and when Hank showed up I killed him myself once he learned that I was going to do the same for our crops. Once I do I want you to take his body back and tell everyone that I’m the one to blame, and you’ll have to order my death.”

  “Order-” Jeremy shook his head, objections already on his tongue, “Orson I can’t do that!”

  “You can, and you will, because otherwise everyone in this forest is going to die. You’ll negotiate with the wolves, you’ll make it so there’s no confusion on who is responsible, and then you’ll get all of our people and get out of this forest. Leave the land to breath, and give all of them a fighting chance at survival.”

  “I…” Jeremy tried to think of another solution, just as he had with Hank, and just like then he couldn’t come up with anything better. With the hole that he had dug them, the blood that had already been shed as a result of his decisions, this was all that he had. He just had to make himself comfortable with telling another lie about what had been one of his closest friends once upon a time. “Ok, I’ll tell them that. I’ll… send whoever we have after you, so please just… get out of here as soon as you can.”

  “Trust me, I’m not going to sit back and let myself or my family die after all of this.” Orson stepped past him, pausing when he realized something. “My brothers, my sister, they’ll probably have a death warrant on them for being associated with me. I hope you understand that if any of them are in danger, I’m not going to hold back. I want all of you to be safe, and I want the wolves to be safe too, but I’m not going to put them above my family, do you understand that?”

  Jeremy nodded his head, he expected nothing less from someone like Orson. He’d been lost for years without his family, and anyone who felt that they could step between him and then was going to have a very rough realization of what a bad idea that was, and what they were willing to do to protect each other. “I’ll try and hold them back from taking that path, but if they do… they’ll only be the ones who were never really fond of you to begin with. Just… try not to kill them, please? I know that it’s your family, but they have families back here themselves.”

  “I don’t want to take them away from that, but that’s up to them now.” Patting Jeremy on the shoulder, he offered a sympathetic smile as they showed one last look. “I’m sorry that it had to end like this Jeremy, we really had something good going.”

  “Not really,” Jeremy replied, laughing to himself, “But I could have at least stayed by you the whole way.”

  “You’re doing that now,” Orson said, squeezing down one last time before he continued up the hill, “Goodbye Jeremy, maybe we’ll see each other again sometime.”

  “I hope not,” He said, already running through the limited ways a meeting would be possible again. A precious few of them actually involved both of them being alive. “Good luck, both of you. You deserve more than this.”

  “I know,” Orson said, disappearing again with Jennifer in tow, herself having thrown a single look of understanding his way before she vanished in the smoke as well. As the shouts of those still at camp grew and the darkness began to light up with the fires of what precious little they’d still had, Jeremy picked up Hank’s body and began his journey back home. He had one hell of a week ahead of him, and it was about time that he met it head on, like a leader should.

  It was what Orson would want of him.

  Chapter 9

  The meeting place was unfamiliar, unsuited to their normal sensibilities, but both clans had known that neutral territory was necessary for a meeting of this magnitude. It was the first time that any of them had met face to face since the end of the last war, and it wasn’t lost on anyone that this could very well be the start of another. The only thing preventing outright hostility had been the statements from both Elder Sarah and Jeremy, confusion mixing with anger as they thought back to their former comrades who had made their escape under the cover of the blaze. As it stood, no one knew where they had gone, and there was an extremely vested interest in finding out where they had vanished.

  A matter which was a keen point of negotiation and understanding in this meeting, both heads of the clans having requested isolation as they realized that th
e other knew exactly what had truly happened.

  “So, two of our best and brightest torched everything and forced us out huh?” Jeremy leaned forward, pinching his brow between his fingers. “I feel bad for being stupid enough to make that necessary, how about you?”

  “I’m not exactly thrilled about it,” The Elder replied, heavy bags under her eyes showing that she’d gotten very little sleep in the days following the burnings, “As time goes on I understand it more and more, but my people are still angry. They ask for blood, and they’re not going to stop until they get it.”

  “No, they’re not,” Jeremy agreed, having been witness for the many… colorful conversations about what the members of his clan who had been dedicated to the cause had expressed wanting to do to Orson and his “Black furred bitch”. Conversations that had set his teeth on edge and left him barely able to hold himself back from launching across the table, but conversations that he understood nonetheless.

  It had been what Orson had intended after all.

  “So you put a kill order out on his siblings, is that right? Is that still ongoing?”

  “That’s right,” The Elder said, with no small amount of shame, “The order is still out now, and my agents are making headway in dealing with them personally. There’s a lot of anger in their ranks now, I imagine that they’ve only put more people to work on finding them.”

  “Same with mine, they want to either kill them on sight or drag them back to our territory and string them up for all to see. Being that we don’t have territory anymore, there’s been an agreement for death on sight, unpleasant as it is.”

  “It doesn’t seem right, but I’m not going to argue with them. We can just… delay them a little for the next few days, give them a few days to actually gain some ground before we set the hounds loose.”

  “Hounds?” Jeremy smirked, flicking the scrunched-up paper ball next to him across the room with his finger, “I think you’re the only one with hounds, we’re an entirely different species after all.”

  “God…” Elder Sarah sighed, “It really is going to be exhausting getting along with you, isn’t it?”

  “Absolutely,” He laughed, “But it’s what’s best, isn’t it? Even if it’s for something so… wrong, we can at least try to mend our relationships through it, can’t we?”

  She nodded, looking across at the clock as it ticked away the minutes, each one of them another minute that Orson and Jennifer had moving towards freedom. “We can. I just hope that it’s enough to make a difference.”

  “Well, if it’s not… I have a feeling that they’ll come back and let us know just how stupid we’ve been, don’t you think?”

  “Oh without a doubt. Now let’s focus on making sure we don’t screw up an already perilous situation why don’t we?”

  When they stepped out of the room a few hours later there was a definitive agreement. The forests were to be evacuated of both their presence, the lands freed up for the animals and vegetation to regrow from the damage that they’d already been through, and they were to relocate and assimilate into more populated areas that had already gone through the civilization process.

  As for Orson and Jennifer… there was a joint agreement that they needed to be killed, whatever the cost, a ruling that was extended to any remaining family regardless of connection to the overall events or even overall contact. Within the next few days wolf and bear alike would be moving out to ensure that the order was fulfilled, and it was no secret that it was going to be a difficult assignment.

  They however, had no clue just how difficult it was going to be.

  “So, how are you finding it?”

  Orson turned over in his bed, head still pounding from the running that they’d done over the last few days, his cheeks having a thin carpeting of rough stubble from the journey that they’d both been forced on. They’d made it into a relatively small town about two hundred miles northwest of their former home, where they’d stolen a car and kept their pace further west. Orson, much to his embarrassment, didn’t know the first thing about driving a car, forcing Jennifer to take up the reigns with her equally limited experience while he kept a lookout for anyone suspicious.

  It was with some frustration that he’d had to acknowledge that the most suspicious people around were the two of them, but they’d gotten out of town before that had been an issue.

  Now here they were in a motel room somewhere in Salt Lake City, having found a small amount of money in the pack that Frank and Helga had given them, as well as a small collection of bills that had been stuffed into the glove box of the car. For what reason someone would carry a collection of twenties and fifties in their car they had no idea, but it was enough to get them a night or two with a roof over their heads. Now they just had to figure out where they were going to go from here.

  “Come on you lazy asshole, wake up!” Jennifer shoved him over onto his side, laughing as she jumped in next to him, “We can’t stay here forever, you’re gonna have to get up eventually!”

  “I just… wanna few more minutes,” He mumbled, throwing his arm lazily over her hips and pulling her closer, “How are you so energetic after everything?”

  “Because people are going to be trying to kill us, it kind of puts a little bit of energy in my steps, you know?” Relaxing next to him, hands on his forearm, she leaned her head down against his. “Where do you think we should go from here? I don’t know if it’s safe to head east, not with all the effort we put into getting west, that kind of leaves two options.”

  “Mmm…” He nodded in agreement, finally pulling himself up and sighing deeply, “I think… I don’t know what I think, I don’t even know what we’re going to do tonight honestly, it’s all just been a blank these last couple of days.”

  “Tell me about it, hard to believe how far we’ve gone in such a short amount of time. We’ll probably have to get another car soon, people might be looking for that last one and we don’t want to leave too much of a trail.”

  “We’ll deal with that when we come to it, it’ll probably be fine for the next few days at least.” Hesitating for a moment, he squeezed their hands together and pressed his lips to her temple. “I know that it’s maybe a bit late but… are you sure that you want to do this? I wouldn’t blame you if you decided to go your own way, it’d probably be harder for them to find us separately and-”

  She cut him off with a kiss of her own, drifting her palm across his cheek and moaning into his mouth, waiting until he was doing nothing except focusing on kissing back before she pulled back, thumb rubbing idly along the line of his jaw. “I’m serious, and I’m sure. Now stop asking would you? Kind of a major turn off, you know?”

  He laughed, looking away and shaking his head. “I know, I’m sorry. Just wanted to be sure you know? Definitely going to be one hell of a conversation on our hands when we have to explain why people are trying to kill all of us.”

  “Well, at least it’ll be something that we can laugh about in the next couple years… hopefully.” She pulled his head down, cradling it against her chest and feeling him release the tension that he’d been carrying in one satisfied breath. “I don’t have a family, not anymore. So I guess yours will be the next best thing, you know? Anyone who tries to hurt them is going to lose.”

  “No arguments there. But for now…” He pushed her down slowly, arms braced on either side of her as she looked up at him with a grin that he eagerly returned. “I think that we can enjoy the room just a little bit more, don’t you think?”

  Jennifer looked out the window, seeing the sun barely starting to crest over the horizon and lighting up the city, the world waking up slowly around them and heralding the dawn of a new day. She chuckled, tracing her thumb along his collarbone and whispering, “Well… ok, why not? It’s our time now, after all.”

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