At that, Draven cocked an eyebrow. “Their eyes? What about them? Is there anything... strange about them?”
“They both have opposite colored eyes.”
“Is that so?”
“Stone, his left is green and the right is gold. Fury’s the other way around.”
“Well, I’ll be damned. I’ll be goddamned.”
Claire was waiting for him to say more, to explain what it was, exactly, that had him so damned. Instead though, he just sat back on his heels, rocking slightly back and forth, lost in thought.
It wasn’t until Jill burst through the trees, waving her arms around in a full-on panic that the old man came back to himself. “What is it?” he asked, clearly not understanding the frenetic panic of the situation. “What’s going on?”
“They’re here,” Jill said. “Rogue, King, and the other two – they’re...”
“Hello, Draven,” Stone said, his voice smooth and sweet. “Been a long time,” Fury added.
Claire shot Jill a sidelong glance, and the two drew quickly together. “Where did they come from?”
“I have no idea,” Jill whispered. “They just... appeared. Rogue said he’d been looking for us. But... something’s not right. Something—”
A roar split the night that was so strong it shook the trees.
The next second, Rogue had Fury by the throat. Stone had leapt, pinning King to the ground.
Jaws snapped, dagger-like teeth dripped with rage.
“No!” Claire shouted, charging forward – for what purpose she had no idea. “No! They’re your friends! No!”
Draven caught her around the waist, forcing her to stop. “No,” he hissed between his teeth. “Something’s wrong. I know them. All of them. Or at least I did at one time. Just be careful, okay? And you four,” he turned to the bears, “calm the hell down. We’ll work through this. But no killing. Got it?”
Grumbling, the four bears slowly released their holds on one another, and relaxed into an uneasy peace.
Cleo, for her part, sauntered up to Fury and licked him twice, then barked, and nudged his hand with her bowling ball shaped head until he took the hint and scratched.
-16-
“You know that saying – united we stand? The second part should be ‘divided, we’re stupid.’”
-Rogue
“There’s not a single reason this has to happen.” Rogue looked back and forth between King, Stone and Fury. “We’re the same blood, the same clan. Why not just suck up the fact that we don’t all look the same, and,” he turned to King for the last bit, “maybe there aren’t just two alphas, and get on with life?”
“Because we can’t,” King said with a snarl. “It isn’t right, and it isn’t us. And unless you’ve forgotten, brother,” he hissed, “we don’t have any reason to believe anything they’ve said.”
Rogue looked at his sworn brother, and then at Jill and Claire who were sitting off to the side, watching and confused, about what the two of them were doing. He couldn’t admit to her that he thought the two other alphas were imposters at best, and GlasCorp monstrosities sent to kill them at worst. Not with the way she and Claire had taken to one another. It was almost like the two of them had come to terms with each other existing far easier than had the bears. Which... okay, maybe wasn’t that hard to believe, come to think of it.
“What would you have of us?” Stone hissed between clenched teeth. “Fealty?”
Rogue stared at him for a moment. “I’m not sure what that means. I think you made it up. But also, no, I—listen, I need to tell you all something, and I’m not sure you’ll believe me.”
Listening to the exchange, Claire started chuckling, for which Rogue was vaguely grateful.
“The hell do you think he’s going to say?” Rogue heard her ask Jill, out of the side of her mouth.
Jill just smiled and shook her head.
“We are the alphas,” King asserted again, for what seemed to be the eighth or ninth time. “And you are untested youths who were raised in a cage.”
“Okay,” Rogue said, “that’s not exactly fair, it’s,” he trailed off remembering the way King had reacted when he finally woke up from the drug-induced stupor back at the lab. He’d been confused, disheveled, angry and distrustful, which was all fairly normal. But then, he’d attacked Rogue once, and then when that didn’t go very well, waited until he was asleep to try it again. That wasn’t like him – not at all. But at the time, Rogue thought maybe it was captivity stress.