“There’s incoming! We’re trapped!” one of the soldiers yelled. His voice was tinged with panic. “There’s fucking hundreds of them! They’ve already taken out the Delta and Bravo squads!”
Clara allowed herself a fierce grin of joy. She’d been waiting for this moment for so long.
Then, coming from a tunnel ahead of them and to their left, she heard shouts and growls and roars.
Patrick quickly moved her to the side of the tunnel, and shifted to bear form, covering her and Flint with his body.
Suddenly, Flint darted out from behind Patrick and Clara, right into the middle of the battle. He threw back his little head and let out a high pitched yowl of rage.
“Flint! Get back here!” Clara screamed, crawling after him.
Flint ignored her, and leaped through the air, attaching himself to the arm of a human soldier, who frantically tried to pull him off.
Suddenly, Clara heard a howl. There was an enormous wolf crouched low, fur bristling. The wolf launched himself at the soldier, and as he proceeded to take the soldier apart, Clara grabbed Flint firmly and ran down a side tunnel. She crouched there, covering Flint with her body and keeping a tight grip on him as he squirmed and yelped. The cub was clearly desperate to get back into the middle of the fight.
“Jeez, you are going to be one kickass Alpha when you grow up,” she muttered to herself. If only Roxanne had lived to see this.
The roaring and screaming and gunshots seemed to go on forever. Finally it stopped, and the air stank of blood and bodily waste and spilled intestines. She could hear agonized moans coming from the humans, and angry growls from the shifters.
She looked up, cautiously, at the sound of thudding footsteps heading her way.
The enormous wolf was loping towards her, with several other wolves and a lynx shifter behind. He paused and turned human, and so did the rest of them. They stood there, panting, naked and covered with blood. The lynx shifter was female, with multi colored streaks in her dark hair.
The big wolf shifter stared at Clara and the cub. “Is that my son?” he asked. “Is that Roxanne’s baby?”
Oh, thank God, Clara thought. This was his father. He wasn’t an orphan.
“It is her baby. Roxanne died trying to escape. I’m sorry,” Clara blinked back tears. “She was going to get help for us, but she died in a tunnel collapse.”
“No, she didn’t. She got out. That’s how we found you,” the wolf said. “I’m Steele Battle, of the Timber Valley Pack. You’re Clara, aren’t you? Roxanne drew a picture of you.”
He knelt down next to her, and she placed the cub in his arms. Steele cradled him in his muscular arms, with infinite tenderness.
The cub shifted back to human form. Now he was a chubby baby boy with thick, curly blond hair and angelic blue eyes. Steele stared at him in wonder, and Flint stared back.
She saw Patrick lumbering down the hallway in bear form. Clara laid her hand on Patrick’s leg, closed her eyes, and began healing it. She could feel the bullet pushing out of the wound and heard it clink to the floor, and then she felt the wound closing.
Patrick pointed at the cub. “That’s one great kid you’ve got there,” he said. “He saved my life. He’s the reason I’m going home to my wife and cubs.”
Clara opened her eyes again. Patrick’s wound was healed, leaving behind a round white scar. “He really did,” Clara said, as the lynx shifter walked over and helped her to her feet. “A soldier was going to shoot him, and Flint shifted for the first time ever and bit his leg. It gave me time to rip the soldier’s throat out.”
“My boy did that?” Steele beamed from ear to ear, and then Flint reached up and touched his face with his chubby little hand, and broke into an answering smile. Steele blinked hard, and rubbed at his eyes with the palm of his hand. “Something in my eye,” he muttered gruffly.
Chapter Seventeen
It was chaos outside, but happy chaos. Shifters shouted and howled their triumph, roaring in happiness, high fiving each other. The fear that had gripped shifters across the nation was lifted; they knew the face of the enemy now, and they’d killed most of them. Even more importantly, they had the missing shifters back.
A dozen freed shifters stood blinking in the sunlight. It was late afternoon, and they’d emerged from the mines after being let out of their cells and led through a maze of tunnels. Clara and several of the other healers had healed all of the shifters who’d been wounded during the fight.
There was a gentle breeze stirring the grass and shrubs near the old mine entrance. The sky overhead was an endless blue, and off in the distance, the trees were a riot of color, with fall coloring the leaves golden, red and yellow. Tears of joy burned Clara’s eyes.
“The air smells so good,” she cried out, spinning in a circle, her hands held up high.
Steele stood with Roxanne, who was holding their son. He had his arms wrapped around her. Every time he looked down at his baby, he broke out in a huge smile.
Clara walked over to them. “Anyone need healing?” she asked.
She looked closely at Flint. “He’s fine. What a tough little guy.”
“Clara, I can never thank you enough for keeping him safe in there,” Roxanne said. “I am eternally grateful to you.”
“Hey, I’d be happy to babysit him anytime,” Clara said, stroking his blond curls gently. “He’s an awesome kid.”
“Takes after his dad,” Roxanne said, flashing a smile at Steele. “I heard someone say that the Elders are making sure all of your families have been contacted, by the way. They’re arranging transport for everybody.”
“That’s going to be one heck of a reunion ,” Clara said. She managed a weak smile. She couldn’t imagine how hard her disappearance had been on everyone in her pack. Her parents tend to be very controlling and smothering; she was looking forward to seeing them again, but she was already mentally bracing herself for the hysterics and the drama. Her mother always tended to make everything all about her.
“And I thank you for coming in to rescue us,” she added to Steele. “Speaking of people that I should thank…where are Donavan and Brice? I need to tell them thank you, and figure out who the heck sent them in there to save us.”
“Who is that?” Steele asked. Flint grabbed ahold of his finger, and Steele grinned at him, then turned back to Clara.
She stared at him. “The humans. You know. The two human soldiers who shot the other soldiers and got us out of there.” She scanned the crowd. There were hundreds of people milling around, but they were all shifters. Brice and Donavan were nowhere to be found.
“Patrick,” she called, “Where are Brice and Donavan?”
Patrick lumbered over. “I don’t know,” he said, looking around. “Did we ever figure out who sent them?”
Clara shook her head.
“They couldn’t have been with STAB,” she said, puzzled.
“Wait. So they were human soldiers, and they helped you get out?” Steele stared at her. “Are you sure?”
“They loosened our straps so we could escape, shot the other soldiers in the head, brought soldiers uniforms for us so we could put them on and sneak out, led us out through the hallways….yeah, I’m pretty sure,” Clara said.
She and Patrick exchanged baffled glances. “Who the heck sent them?” she asked.
Steele looked around. “Hey, Trevor!” he called out. A tall, blond wolf shifter trotted over to them. “Trevor Gund, this is Clara,” he said. “Trevor, did anyone in your family happen to disguise themselves as soldiers and sneak in to help free the prisoners?”
“Of course not,” Trevor said, looking puzzled. “We were working with your Wardens, as you call them, to get into the facility. We would have told you if we’d have had anyone inside. Why do you ask?”
“He’s a shifter,” Clara said. “I told you, the soldiers were human.”
“Some of his family is human,” Steele explained. “They’re related to Roxanne. They’ve got some kind of genetic mutation that allows them to mate with humans and have children.”
“The two human soldiers started working there a couple of weeks ago,” Clara said. “They must have had credentials that convinced the STAB people to hire them. Who the heck were they? I asked them who they were, and they kind of changed the subject.”
Worry creased Steele’s forehead. “I don’t know. We’ll need to tell the Wardens about this right away. The fact that there’s more than one group of human soldiers who know about our existence is certainly a concern.”
Patrick had been listening with interest, but his expression suddenly changed, and he let out a low, enraged growl. Clara turned to see what he was looking at, and she saw Dr. Jonas, weeping and kicking, being dragged out. She had heard that they’d managed to capture half a dozen human soldiers, all of whom would be interrogated by the Wardens, along with Dr. Jonas.
“I want to kill him.” Patrick’s face went dark with anger, and he began bristling, brown fur rippling over his body.
Clara let out a sympathetic growl as the Wardens quickly rushed past. She could hear Dr. Jonas’ terrified screams drifting by. “I’m a member of the U.S. Military! You can’t do this to me! It’s treason!”