Two Bears are Better Than One(25)

A hand, one on each shoulder, squelched the words in Jill’s throat. The scent that struck her nose was achingly familiar. She knew without even turning. Closing her eyes, Jill let her head slump forward. She didn’t know why, but if these two were around, nothing much seemed to matter. She just felt safe.

“Rogue,” she whispered, crossing her arms over her chest and putting one of her hands atop the ones on her shoulders. “King.”

Saying their names was like release after days of tension. Feeling their touch, having their aromas fill her nose, Jill had apparently missed them more than she knew. And she really missed them.

“So you found your way home,” Rogue whispered before brushing his fingers along the side of Jill’s neck.

“The welcome fire was hard to miss,” she said. “I don’t know how to explain it, but I felt pulled toward this place.”

The two alphas exchanged a knowing look, but said nothing. “We’re leaving,” King announced flatly.

“For how long?” Arrow asked. Jill had almost forgotten he was there. “How long this time?”

“We won’t be coming back,” King said, his eyes sweeping the intricate paintings on the cave walls. “Not to live, anyway. Maybe to visit.” He flattened his hand against one of the walls and closed his eyes, breathing slowly through his nose as he stroked the wall. “Thousands of years of tradition, gone in an instant.”

Rogue grabbed his brother’s shoulder. “Not gone,” he said. “Living on. Traditions are what they are, right? The past is what it is, it doesn’t change. But we can keep those traditions alive somewhere else. Somewhere with... less fireballs and bombing.”

How can one of them possibly be so different from the other? Jill wondered, and not for the first time. It’s like they’re from different planets. For a second the idea that – holy shit they may actually be from different planets – occurred to Jill, but she somehow banished that thought as ridiculous.

“What changed your mind?” Jill said, grabbing the bigger alpha’s hand and making him look her direction. “And what are we going to do about all this?”

“I can’t bear to see my cubs, my mate... and maybe even my brother,” he grinned slightly, “killed for tradition. Rogue was right. There’s no place for us here anymore. This is a place for the wolves and for these greedy humans, whatever it is they want.”

What they really want is YOU, Jill wanted to say. And anyway, it wouldn’t help anything. So instead, she just nodded. Rogue, she noticed, had absolutely no look of smug satisfaction on his face.

“I know this is hard, brother,” he said to King. “You doing this – issuing this order – takes more courage than I probably have in my entire body. I know it hurts to leave the past. I know it hurts to leave the memory of our mates, and everyone else. But we can start again. We can start new traditions, new families.”

King’s face was nothing but hard lines and sharp angles, but Jill sensed a little softness behind his eyes. When he closed them, the droplets of moisture accumulated in his eyes disappeared into his eyelashes. “We don’t have time to sit around and reminisce,” he said. “We take nothing except what we have on ourselves. Cubs, I would give you until the morning, but we’re not safe. We have to do what is best for the clan. Get the things most dear, we leave now.”

The vast majority of the cubs, along with King, disappeared into the shadows in the deepest part of the cave. Rogue remained behind. “Some of us don’t have much,” he said, without turning back to Jill. “Except the things most dear.”

That was punctuated by a squeeze on her shoulder.

“What convinced him?” she asked.

Her bear shrugged. “The fire I think. Or it might’ve been the lupines. I’ve never seen them like this. Either way, something did. I pretty much promise he’ll never say exactly what did it, but you take what you can get. Anyway, we should be thankful. Except now there’s another question.”

“Where to go?”

Rogue smiled instead of speaking. That was answer enough. “It’s a tricky thing. Some of us can control ourselves well enough to live pretty easily right next to humanity.”

“Let me guess, you’re one of them?”

“I’ll just say I’d much rather sleep in a bed than in a cave. I spend a lot of time wandering. I’m far more comfortable with the rest of the world – with the reality outside this forest – than my brother is. But at least as far as that goes, instincts aren’t something you can blame him for. He’s always been wilder than me, but far more connected to his actual nature than I guess I am. Good and bad to everything.”

It was Jill’s turn to nod. “Well,” she said a moment later, “I’ve seen your home. You interested in a trip?”

He smiled as a handful of cubs began to emerge from the back of the cave. King though was still nowhere to be found.

“Alpha,” the straight-backed young bear named Arrow said, his tone amazingly deferential after the confidence he’d shown before. “I think we’re ready. But I found this.”

He handed a pendant to Rogue, who took the strange, hooked shape in his hand and closed it in his fist. “Where?” he asked. “This was a long time ago. A memory I thought I lost.”

“I stole it from you,” Arrow said. “It was my mother’s, the only thing she left. But I know you and she were...”

Rogue grabbed the young man’s shoulder and forced the claw pendant back into his hand. “We might have been mates, Arrow, but you were her first son. She was so proud of you. I know that the next time you see her, she’ll be proud of the man you’ve become.”

The look on the younger bear’s face told Jill he may not actually believe that she was coming back. But Rogue wasn’t wavering. She knew the look in his eyes. She’d been around him and his sworn brother long enough to know what determination looked like on their faces. Maybe it was belief? A necessary one that kept him sane?

Maybe it was willful ignorance? Something he had to make himself believe so he could keep facing the day?

She shook her head. Jill knew that whatever theory she came up with didn’t matter. The only reality was the one inside her alpha’s head. And then there was King, who continued to be a mystery that she could hardly pierce.

Was his distance and guarded caution the same as Rogue’s belief that all of their people were coming back? That everything would work out okay in the end? Just a defensive mechanism to keep the world – and the pain that he surely felt – at bay long enough to focus on leading this group of cubs and half-grown adolescent bears?

Back in the cave this far, there was no glimpse of the outdoors, no way to see the stars and the moon she knew were out there, spilling their light on the forest. When King emerged from the deepest part of the den, Jill grabbed his forearm, he looked down at her with eyes softer than she’d ever seen. They stared at each other for a brief moment that burned into Jill’s mind. The lines on the alpha’s face had never been more apparent. The worry, the fear that she knew he must feel, was on the surface just then instead of buried in the background.

“Are you okay?” she whispered, already knowing both the truth, and how he’d answer. The handful of cubs with their meager possessions filed past them, to Rogue, who was inspecting each of them to make sure they weren’t carrying too much for the trek ahead... to wherever they were going.

He flinched. His burning eyes went left and then he looked at the floor for a moment. “I’m... sad.”

That hit her like a truck, right in the chest. “I know this is the only thing we can do,” he said softly. “But I don’t like it. I don’t like leaving home and everything we’ve built. I don’t like leaving everything our ancestors made behind, I don’t like—”

“Everything changes,” Jill cut in. “You can’t keep the world the same just because you don’t want to deal with getting used to something new.”

“Two weeks, two and a half, and she’s already telling me things I should know. Things I should believe.”

“You know,” Jill said with a little smirk. “You aren’t even talking to Rogue about me over my shoulder. So I’m pretty sure that means you’re nuts.”

King cocked an eyebrow. “Nuts?”

“Crazy,” she said. “You’re talking about me, to yourself, and referring to me as ‘she.’ You, aside from being big, gorgeous and nearly always shirtless, are just about to go crazy pants.”

An arm slid around Jill without her seeing it, and dragged her to King’s solid chest. “I don’t wear pants,” he said, bending to kiss her throat, and then her chin.

Jill ran a hand down the line separating the muscles in his chest, letting it fall to his thigh as she searched for the huge thickness she’d dreamed of, that she’d needed so badly for so long. When she found it, every inch of her body, every tiny muscle between her legs clenched as King’s cock thickened, hardening underneath the wrapping he wore.

“I think I finally figured out why you wear these things,” she said, curling her fingers around his shape and stroking him through the fabric. “Don’t have to fumble around with buttons or zippers or anything else, huh?”