Two Bears are Better Than One(24)

“Of course not,” Madix said.

“But you’re also not going to do anything that’ll endanger your people any more than necessary. Rogue and King, I get the impression they can take care of themselves. The girl too, to an extent. But the cubs?” The old man shook his head. “There’s a reason I’ve been protecting them for fifty years. Last of their kind.”

“But, sir,” the young man cut in. “If you’re trying to protect them, why are we going along with this?”

“Like I said,” Draven whispered, taking another drag. “One man can’t fight an army. Even if he’s a bear, and the army is nothing but pencil necked bureaucrats. So I watch, I manipulate, I try to do what I can. Hell, the only reason Rogue and King are still alive is because I deflected the Army from figuring out they existed. GlasCorp might experiment, might be trying to create some kind of human enhancement serum using their DNA, but that’s nothing compared to what a bunch of scientists with grants on their minds would do to those people.”

“Our people, you mean,” Madix said.

Draven curled his lip in half a smile and rolled up his sleeves casually. Underneath the stark, black uniform were harsh, line-drawn, tattoos all the way to the wrist. “Dismissed,” he said.

The young soldier looked back and forth a couple of times. “Me?”

Draven nodded. “Report back if anything changes. If not, you did good work. Get some rest.”

“I’m staying, I guess?” Madix asked.

Draven gestured with his head for the younger soldier to leave. He turned on his heel and exited the trailer, but paused as soon as he was outside. “You know them better than anyone,” he heard Draven say. “I’m a generation too old, I came before. But you? You’re theirs. We need a plan, but we need to be careful.”

“Understood,” Madix said. The enormous bear smiled, revealing a set of teeth capped in metal. He wasn’t as put together, collected, and calm as the old man. This guy seemed on edge, a little too intense, and a little... sweaty?

The young soldier smiled to himself. In his line of work, knowing about the secret things in the world was just part of the job. Shape shifters, werewolves, silent helicopters, alien technology, black ops projects in the Nevada desert, it was all old hat.

But, figuring out the General’s secret before the old man said a word? That was damn cool.





-14-


“Rabbit holes – turns out, not just where rabbits live.”


-Jill


The ash was thick and heavy, falling like pillowy snowflakes all around Jill as she crept through the undergrowth. The wolves were still whipped into a wild, screeching, howling frenzy, but they seemed to stay where they were. At least, they weren’t getting any closer, which was nice.

As she got closer and closer to ground zero for that fire storm, her chest burned hotter and hotter. It was like the mark was a beacon drawing her home. None of it made sense, but in that, all of it made perfect sense. Why she’d started studying this stuff in the first place, why she fought so hard to get out here, and how completely she was consumed by the two gorgeous alphas that had claimed her for their own – it all made a perverse kind of sense.

A half burned pine needle, with still a touch of ember on the shaft, fell in front of her. She instinctively stepped on it to put out the flame, but then barked a laugh. Fire was all around her. Thousands of tiny embers, thousands of impotent fires, none of which caught on anything.

But stepping on one was something she could do. As helpless as she felt, that one tiny act gave her a surge of confidence.

“I’m coming,” she said as the mark flared to life, making her stomach, her legs, and between them, tingle. “Whatever I can do, I’m coming.”

As soon as she lay eyes on the massive cave that overlooked the burned plain below, she felt like the world’s biggest idiot. How did I miss this? She shook her head.

That’s when she noticed the eyes. Twenty, thirty, maybe more, peered out from the cave overlooking the field. They were all glowing amber, barely visible in the darkness. Jill took another step forward, hoping she hadn’t just walked straight into a revenge ambush for the wolves she’d blown to bits. But the immense sense of calm and safety she felt told her there was nothing to fear.

“We were waiting for you,” a voice said that made her jump slightly. “Our fathers told us you were coming, but... we didn’t believe it. We thought it was impossible.”

A young bear, much smaller than King and Rogue, slid out of the forest silently, stood on his hind legs, and right before Jill’s eyes, became a young man. She touched her mark, felt the heat. “Are they here?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

The young bear nodded. “We sleep in the cave,” he said. “And no, they aren’t. It’s all right!” he called, turning to the cave. “You can come out, our mother has come.”

“Not my mother,” a black-haired boy spat as he emerged from the darkness. “Mine was taken, probably by her people.”

“Enough.” The one who first spoke to her said. “She’s marked. Are you?”

That shut the mouthy, younger bear up immediately.

As soon as she set foot in the massive cave, Jill’s jaw dropped. “Wow,” she said. “Is this where you live?”

The cubs looked around at one another, looks of obvious confusion on their faces, like they were trying to figure out how much to say. “I’ve heard Rogue and King talk about all of you,” she said carefully. “They’re very proud of their cubs, you know.” That got a few smiles from the still apprehensive crowd.

“We’re not all theirs,” one of the boys, who was regarding Jill rather coolly, stepped forward. “They’re the alphas, so they’re our sworn fathers. But we’re mostly from different parents. Only a handful of us are actually related to them. And the only one with an amber eye is Arrow. He’s next in line. The eyes tell us.”

“But we only have him, there are no others,” a larger boy cut him off. “Can’t be. The helicopter people...”

“I know,” Jill said, “they took them. I know the story; Rogue and King told me. So this is where you live?” Her head was swimming.

“Only when dangerous things are happening outside,” one of the other boys – this one with absolutely piercing ice blue eyes – said. “The alphas are supposed to be separate from the rest of the clan so they can make decisions without interference. It’s got something to do with the traditions. I never paid much attention to those old stories, so I can’t tell you anything else.”

“You must be one of Rogue’s,” Jill said with a fond smile. “He doesn’t care much for tradition either.”

The boy smiled back, and for the first time, she felt like she’d made a connection with one of these young cubs.

“Speaking of,” Jill said, “have you seen them?”

“They went,” the boy, who seemed to be in charge, said.

“Went where? And what’s your name?”

“Arrow,” he said, his cool blue eye and amber eye flashing in the orange flame licking the ceiling of the cave. “When the alphas are gone, I speak for the clan.”

“Oh boy, yeah, he thinks he does, anyway.” Another one stepped up, this one shorter even than Jill but holy shit was he muscular. “I’m Sly.”

“Like Stallone?” Jill asked. The bear cocked his head to the side.

“No, like sneaky. Because I’m the exact opposite of—“

“Sure, like naming the biggest guy Tiny, I was just talking about a movie star, Sylvester Stallone, he’s,” she trailed off for a moment. “You know what, never mind, we have other things to talk about, for instance, this massive fire and what seemed to be a carpet bombing.”

Sly shook his head. “If his name is Sylvester, then... humans are strange.”

She nodded. “You got that right.”

“I do speak for the clan,” Arrow said. “And I say that Sly is an idiot. But I also say we do have other things to worry about. The alphas are gone, they left to look in on the lupines when the latest frenzy started.”

Sly grumbled under his breath, his hot-tempered brown eyes turned to the ground at the rebuke.

Overhead something whizzed by, causing a sound like a very quiet sonic boom. Then a second whatever-it-was followed soon after by a third, before the noises finally stopped. “What was that?” she asked. “Has it been happening a lot?”

“No,” Arrow said. “Last couple of days, maybe. About as long as we’ve been watching you.”

The words hit Jill like a fist in the chest. “Following me? What is it with you guys and stalking?”

“We had to make sure,” Sly said. “There have been imposters who—“

Arrow cut him off with a nasty glare. “We had to make sure you were who they said you were, and not someone who threw a spell on the alphas.”

“Uh, okay wow,” Jill said. “Yeah, no I can see you, I have a mark, everything checks out. If it helps anything, I hate these people too, though probably nowhere near as much as you—“