Two Bears are Better Than One(13)

Exhaust filled the air. His father, his mother, and the rest of the clan looked up, distracted from whatever their day’s tasks were. He and Rogue sparred, along with the rest of the clan’s warriors. Elsa, his first mate, had flipped him over on his back, and she was about to give him a claw across the chest when the first wave of odor filled the woods.

He blinked as he charged through the brambles, and low hanging branches scraped his eyes. He didn’t want to remember, but at the same time, he couldn’t forget. He could never forget, no matter how many years separated the tragedy and the present.

The smell preceded a lot of choking and sputtering and coughing, and then the cloud of smoke.

They were all taken – Elsa, Skye, and all the rest. He assumed they’d been taken, because if he considered the alternative, he couldn’t stand the pain in his heart.

King found himself walking slowly through the woods, and shook his head to gather his senses. There were other things to worry about right then, such as the wolves howling and the helicopter overhead.

As he passed the small cabin where his mate was, he felt the familiar twinge in his chest. This time though, he knew what it was.

As he turned back to look one last time, a light in the cabin flicked on and then off.

And then, once again, the mark on his chest burned hotter. It couldn’t be. Could it? Could this feeling, this tight, sweet feeling of longing, one that he hadn’t felt for a long, long time, could it finally be real?

Doesn’t matter, he told himself. No time. Got howling lupines to deal with. Got a brother to find.

Again the wolves howled, probably a mile from where he was. But then, behind the baying, was another sound – a roar? Was that confusion or pain he heard? He took a deep breath. It didn’t matter. Whatever it was had come from Rogue. He’d know that voice anywhere.

*

Rogue thought only of his mate, who hadn’t yet realized that’s what she was, not really, as the wolves closed in. She said the words, she made love to them, and gave herself up, but she didn’t believe. Not yet.

Jaws snapped at his face, bringing Rogue back to the present problem – the wolves he thought were only a handful, turned out to be much more numerous. If only he hadn’t been distracted by thinking about Jill’s soft thighs, her floral-scented hair, her...

Not now, he told himself. Keep it together.

The wolf stood up on his back legs, took two swings, and then let his muscles thicken, so that he was stuck somewhere between wolf and man. Rogue took the swipe across his shoulder, roared in pain, and then closed his teeth on the wolf’s half-human claw when he swiped again. The scream didn’t surprise him, but the claw on his back, and then the fangs digging into his shoulder, did.

The other thing that surprised Rogue was how in the heat of the moment – in the fight that he used to live for; wolf against bear, snarling, biting, clawing, the only thing he thought of was Jill.

Her hair, her soft breathing, her smooth skin, and the way she smiled in her sleep when he bathed her with the cloth. He swung a paw, slashed another lupine across the face, sending him flying back into a tree with a desperate yelp, and then decided right that second, that he wasn’t just fighting for himself anymore.

He was fighting for her, and for his brother, and for the rest of the clan. He was fighting for the future, and the wolves – and that helicopter that kept circling overhead – weren’t going to do the first damn thing to stop him.

The helicopter came around again, lower than last time, spotlighting the woods fifty feet away from the brawl. Whatever they were looking for, he thought, they weren’t doing a very good job of focusing on the real action. It swept down low, but at just that moment, Rogue was busy fending off one attack and biting down on another leg that carelessly got close enough to his mouth for him to chomp.

A thump preceded a loud whooshing sound.

Something thumped against his hindquarters.

A sharp pain.

Coursing numbness that made one of his legs freeze, and then made his back ache before it, too went numb. He rolled to the side, dodging another sloppy, wild wolf claw, and shot an uppercut straight into the chin of the one who threw it.

Vision... blurring, he thought, lurching forward and taking another bite to the back of his head.

Without thinking about it, he shifted halfway back to human, and reached behind himself.

He cried out, stumbled twice, and clawed at the place where the numbness started. One of his gropes knocked loose a dart, but the damage was already done.

The world around him started to darken. Another claw ripped deep into Rogue’s leg, and he somehow turned aside at the last possible moment to avoid a swipe that would have cut his throat.

Nothing made sense.

Panic, seething and terrible, filled his mind. Jill fought for attention in his brain, but she was losing to the oblivion of agony.

A lupine lunged, and he took hold of its throat, his hand closing more from a muscular reaction to the drug than out of his own strength. Either way, it did the job. The monster whimpered and went limp.

Rogue’s knee hit the ground, squishing into the rotten leaves and broken twigs.

Rain, he thought, started to fall. Although it was hard to tell if it was actually rain, or just sweat pouring into his raw, dry eyes.

A lupine dove for him. Rogue tried to lift an arm, but it was no good. He was useless, helpless, a half-dead sack of skin and bones and muscle.

But as the creature went for his throat, he thought first of Jill, then of his brother.

Brother?

A roar split the night, followed by a massive tan body, followed by a wolf thrown backward by the impact of a shoulder. It yelped, it grunted, and then retreated, limping, into the woods.

“Brother!” King snarled. “Can you hear me?”

Rogue groaned incoherently, slobbering more than speaking. His eyes were mostly closed, his lips barely moving.

Numbness still gripped him, but instead of getting worse, second by second, the fuzziness eased. For a moment, the brothers fought together, slinging wolves from side to side, cracking skulls, breaking arms that healed moments later. Lupines are relentless, especially under the moon’s light.

The pack was weakening, but so were King and Rogue. Blood ran down their fur, but they kept fighting, kept clawing and biting. They couldn’t stop before the lupines stopped, or they’d have no chance.

Again the helicopter swooped around, but this time when Rogue stole a glance upward, he saw the man who’d darted him. Wearing a loose fitting, open collared dress shirt, he had some kind of device attached to his head that must’ve been how he saw to fire. He wore dark fatigues, combat boots, and was shaved clean from head to toe. His face was ragged, like he’d been torn apart and put back together.

There was something strangely familiar about him, but nothing Rogue could place – more a distant memory than anything else.

The man just watched, staring at the melee, but not moving. Then he stepped back, and the sliding door retracted. Just like that, he was gone.

King hadn’t noticed, he’d just kept fighting, which turned out to be a very good thing when he turned a wolf’s head aside at the last minute with a crushing swipe of his paw that sent the creature flying and screeching.

Still groggy from the drug, Rogue turned back to the action, barely dodging one thrashing, half-human claw. Another caught him on the jaw, turning his head with a painful wrench. He grunted in pain and fell to the ground in a semi-conscious daze.

“Brother!” King growled. “Get up!”

Rogue pitched to the side, rolling onto a half-shifted elbow. When he was injured, he found it difficult to concentrate on keeping one shape or another, so he went back and forth. Still, he shook himself, keeping his wits enough to knock a wolf off his brother’s back.

But it was going too long. There were too many lupines, and too few bears.

These fights weren’t uncommon, although in the recent weeks they’d grown more frequent. In years past, they’d have these wild throw downs once a season or so, but now? It was getting hard to remember a week that went by without something happening.

Another wild sweep of claw came from Rogue’s left. He stumbled backward, dodging out of the way and then throwing a hook that connected with wolf jaw, crunching hard.

Breathing heavily, his muscular chest heaving in the moonlight, Rogue unleashed a roar that shook the earth. The lupines froze, staring at him, eyeing him suspiciously. “Enough!” he shouted. King, for his part, stood on his back bear legs, and clawed himself before dropping back to the ground with a heavy thump.

The wolves ringed them, spreading out more and more as the moments ticked by.

“What’s wrong with them?” King asked. “Don’t you see their eyes?”

Rogue looked at the nearest one as he backed away, and squinted into the darkness. King stood again, shifting to the same half-bear form as his brother. His snout was shorter, his muscles thick and burly, fur lining his tight, tanned, sweat-covered skin. “Look how they move. The lupines don’t normally act like this.”

“The helicopter?” Rogue asked. “The man who shot me? Do you think he’s got something to do with their frenzy?”

King shook his head.

The two circled, back to back, as the wolves retreated.

A breeze from overhead cascaded down onto the two. Rogue and King exchanged a quick glance, and then looked up at the underside of a metal beast they should have heard approaching.