Two Bears are Better Than One(34)

As the first grip of her climax shook Jill to the core, she wrapped her arms around Rogue’s massive neck and let out a whimper. He hissed as he swelled inside her, and then let his mouth drop open as his orgasm destroyed what little walls remained between them. Seconds later, just as the tension gave way to a wave of relief that ran from her neck to her ankles, King slid inside and gripped her hands as he shook.

When they all started breathing again, when muscles relaxed and hearts slowed, King flipped over onto his back.

Jill settled in between them, kissed Rogue on the cheek and then King on the chin. She stared into one set of eyes, then turned her head to the other.

An arm slid under her neck, the most comfortable pillow she’d ever felt. Another went around her midsection taking all the pressure off her ribs.

“So this is what I have to look forward to?” she asked, as she closed her eyes. Nuzzling her head in the crook of Rogue’s neck, she shifted back a little so that King’s body was spooned around her. “Us three, just like this?”

“Just,” King said.

“Like this,” Rogue finished for him, kissing Jill on the forehead.

The silence of night, the quicksilver moon, and her two bears.

That was all Jill needed, she thought, as she drifted to sleep.

*

The camera flicked on, whirring softly.

“You didn’t see them do anything you wouldn’t want anyone watching you do, did you son?” Draven asked the young soldier who stood in front of him, sharply dressed in black fatigues.

“No sir,” he said. “Just like you ordered, I only check in every so often to make sure they’re safe. I think one of them was—”

Draven raised a hand and smiled. “Don’t tell me anything you wouldn’t want me to hear about you.”

“No sir, nothing like that,” the young man said. “They bought, like, eight cases of beer.”

A huge laugh echoed through the makeshift meeting room, which really was just a trailer set up in the high desert. Draven was used to moving around, after all these years. Houses were too permanent. “Bears have big thirsts, you know,” he said.

The young man nodded, slowly. “But it was a lot. And then Rogue drank most of it. He didn’t seem too affected. King took a bunch of shots from those little bottles, and he started wobbling around like the town drunk.”

Draven cocked an eyebrow.

“Er, sir.”

Softly, he started laughing again, in the way a grandfather does when his granddaughter throws a rock through a window and makes up an incredibly wild story about how it happened. He shook his head. “They’ll learn. In time, they’ll figure out life here. And as strange as it might sound, being out in public like this probably is safer. Not safe, mind you, but safer.”

“I just don’t understand though. Madix and GlasCorp and—”

Draven raised his hand, shushing the young soldier. “You don’t have to, son. Hell, I don’t have to understand. All I know is that Madix was the result of a lot of brutality, a lot of horrific experiments. And I also understand that the rest of my clan is... somewhere. I won’t stop until I find them.”

A blip whizzed by on the shortwave transceiver on Draven’s desk. He shot a hard glance down, but when the sound passed, he relaxed. “You don’t have to stay with me, son,” he said. “I know this is a hard life for someone like you. You want a wife, you want kids, you want a stable job, you—”

“Sir, if interrupting you isn’t too rude, I’m going to interrupt you.”

Draven waited for him to continue.

“Good. I just wanted to say that I’ve had all those things, except the wife and kid bit. And after what I saw out there, I don’t think I could handle that. Not until I have some answers. I was loyal to you when we worked at Los Alamos. I stayed with you through Area-51 and all that, didn’t I?”

It was Draven’s turn to nod.

“And I’m not leaving now. I’ll see this through.”

With a long, searching stare, Draven studied the man’s face. He was young, sure, but there were lines around his eyes. He was clean shaven, but there were scars on one side of his face from something Draven had never asked about. “Dismissed,” Draven said. “Report back at seven tomorrow morning. They need their rest, and so do you.”

“Sir.” The soldier said, straightening up and turning on his heel.

Draven pulled a Camel out of the pack and struck his Zippo. The smell of toasted tobacco stung his nose. He took a long pull and exhaled as the young man’s truck door slammed.

“I’m tired,” he told his empty trailer. “I’m old and I’m tired. But I got a long road ahead of me. And I don’t envy those three.”

He hit the button to turn on his monitor, and watched Rogue, King and Jill, all heaped up in a pile, all sleeping soundly. With another drag and a heavy sigh, he switched the camera off and pushed back from his desk. The flimsy folding chair where he sat wobbled a little as he lifted himself off and walked to the door.

“This ain’t a night for sleeping in a bed,” he said as he stepped out into a cold, desert night.

Some kind of lizard flicked across his peripheral vision and disappeared. If he closed his eyes, the old man could hear the opening clarinets and the swell of drums and piano at the beginning of Ennio Morricone’s Ecstasy of Gold. He could almost see a tumbleweed roll past in front of his closed eyes.

But then he opened them again, and it was just the chilly, open desert. No cowboys dueling at sunset, no tumbleweeds, no swirling orchestra.

Just him, and the desert.

Draven took off his shirt, threw it to the ground in front of his trailer, and did the same with his pants. He crouched, and felt his muscles thicken, his bones stretch and his tendons relax. He curled his paw, dragging up a fistful of cracked dirt with his claws, and then, with a deep breath, and a shake of his head, he ran.

He ran knowing that tomorrow would bring new worries, that there wasn’t going to be peace for a long, long time, not for Rogue and King and Jill, not for their cubs, and not for him. But as ground disappeared underneath him, and his lungs filled in a way they never did when he was in human form, Draven got the feeling that somehow, someway, everything would be fine.

Someday, he thought, as wind rushed through his fur. Someday, I’ll find you.





THE END