But then it reared back, lifting a paw the size of a Rottweiler, and prepared to take her from this earth.
Dora’s eyes were open as the paw came down, but it didn’t fall. It never touched her. Instead the bear roared a deadly roar of frustration as it was swept to the side in a blur. Dora sat up straight as she watched another bear knock it against a tree. Tear at its flesh with a vicious claw.
She saw the golden brown fur, the set of the shoulders. It was Danil. Danil was here.
***
A woman needed privacy. He knew this. But he didn't like it. He was pushing her too much and he fought against himself. It was in his nature to push. To take. And he was trying to find a balance with her.
So she could take her private moment in the woods and he would wait in the car with his brothers, like a non-suffocating husband. He crossed his arms over his chest and tapped his foot, peering through the woods and trying to get a glimpse of her.
She should almost be done by now.
Emin hung up the phone call with AJ and turned around in the car, speaking in fast Belarusian. "AJ wanted to know if any of us had seen the news last night. Apparently, Dora's arrests have made the news. The fact that she's a famous journalist, come out of hiding, and obviously investigating these animal testing sites has become a bit of a story. AJ says her cover has been blown. That they probably know we're coming. That we'll be watching the facility this morning. We should go." Emin's eyes suddenly focused and furrowed. "Where is Dora?"
Danil nearly took the door off its hinges as he flung himself out of the car. He was shifting, his clothes torn to shreds around him, a full-sized grizzly before he'd even made it five feet from the car. He bounded through the woods, her scent so strong he could taste it on his tongue. And the scent of another.
A bear. A shifter. A deep chemical smell. It was the way that Anton had smelled when they'd rescued him from Navuka.
Dimly, Danil heard the sounds of his brothers pursuing, but he kept their thoughts out of his head, concentrating only on finding her.
How had she gotten so far so fast? Danil thought frantically as he raced around the far edge of the facility. She was all the way on the other side of the woods.
He galloped through a stand of trees and didn't stop, even though his heart did, when he saw Dora splayed flat on her back and a horror of a grizzly bear, more machine than animal, looming over her, one paw raised to strike.
Danil was a beastly streak of lightning as he leapt over top of Dora's prone form, slamming into the Navuka grizzly. Because he had no doubt that's what this creature was. This monster.
As the massive bear slammed into the tree behind it, Danil caught sight of the metallic, enhanced teeth, he could smell the machinery whirring inside it, the chemicals pumping in its veins. And worst of all, he saw no spark of life in its single eye. Not even pain registered. The bear was completely brainwashed. Or controlled.
Danil got a flash of memory. What Anton had been like when they'd first freed him. Little better than dead for all the soul he'd had left. They'd had to nurse that back into him as well. His personality. His free will. His love for his family. He'd damn near forgotten it all in the year they'd spent turning him into a weapon.
As the grizzly stood on its back legs and roared what could only be termed a battle cry, Danil had to guess that this poor creature had spent more than a year in Navuka's grips. There was no turning back for this one. And it was with that in his brain, and Dora in his heart, that Danil charged the bear. The two great beasts clashed like Titans. There was the natural tree-trembling roar of two grizzlies in battle but there was also the foreign ear-splitting screech of Danil's teeth on metal as he pierced the skin of the other grizzly. There were plates of armor underneath the bear's skin. Injuring him was going to be difficult.
Danil roared in frustration as the other bear swiped and connected with Danil's shoulder, tossing him off balance and tearing into his thick hide. But it didn't put him down for long. The bear was bounding toward Dora again and Danil smashed him to the ground with a mighty roar.
Danil's teeth gripped for purchase on the grizzly's back. He found it. He punctured the hide and whipped the bear backwards, spinning him across the small clearing and setting him to roaring. The sticky, chemical-laden blood was like tar in Danil's mouth and he spit it out immediately. He turned, putting himself between Dora and the bear, and roared, lifting a paw and smacking the other grizzly to the ground again. The bear let out a growl of frustration and it hoisted itself to its feet, coming at Danil again.
And again, Danil smacked the bear to the ground. Danil's rage at the grizzly only grew. At Navuka. At whatever it was that was telling this bear to keep coming for Dora, even though it was injured, dragging, outmatched.