Between a Bear and a Hard Place(54)

“There’s more to the story,” Rogue said. “More to what happened. While you three were drugged out of your brains, I was taken to an office and showed the man who was behind all this.”

Eckert? The thought crossed Claire’s mind, but it was absurd. He’d had his head bitten halfway off by Fury during their escape. She’d seen the tendons and flesh hanging there limply. She’d seen the mess he left.

“Someone named Eckert,” Rogue said. “He had a scarf or something wrapped around his throat. He kept asking strange questions and going on and on about things that made no sense. And,” he looked between the bears. “I’m guessing from the looks on your faces, you know who he is?”

“Was!” Stone growled, standing up and sweeping one of his feet backwards through the leaves. “Fury murdered him. He was our captor, he was the one who experimented on us so brutally, he’s the one who did such... horrible things... to the rest of the clan.”

There was a roughly softball-sized lump in Claire’s throat when he confirmed the awful truth. “But,” she stood up, too, “how’s that possible?”

“There were... whistles. Mechanical whistling noises, they came from his neck, you said?” Fury asked. Rage flashed in his eyes. “If I have to kill him a thousand times for him to stay dead, I’ll do it. And I’ll love every second of his suffering.”

“There’s something else, though,” Rogue said. “That soldier. I don’t know what to call him really. The black-clad gas mask wearing things. The one that took me to him seemed different from the rest. He was joking with me, or teasing me or something. Seemed like he had a mind, and the rest were just ants.”

A quiet fell over the camp. Not even Draven, who’d been busily stirring a pot of collected tubers, mushrooms and small animals, made a sound. He just listened, as though he was as intent on the conversation as everyone else.

And then, of course, they’d just been freed. Just let out the front door with no questions and no repercussions. Just let free to walk out the big, metal doors that separated that curious laboratory from the rest of the world. And then, once again, he remembered nothing until he saw Jill.

Rogue’s voice was faltering, but he was still talking. He still had something to say. “I... he just let us go. He told me – and I fully believe – that if he wanted us dead, or the rest of the clan exterminated, it would have happened. He just... he kind of smiled, in that slack-jawed way, as he let us go.”

“Why does it have to be like this?” Claire pushed to her feet again, evading both Jill’s grasp and Draven’s. “Why can’t we just get on with living? We all have what we want, right? What we need? We’ve all got mates, and Draven has that pot of stew and he’s got his mysteries solved. Isn’t that good enough?”

“Nowhere near.” The old bear narrowed his gaze. “I need answers. I need to know what happened to my mate, to my cubs. I need to know everything.”

“Everything isn’t worth knowing!” Claire was beside herself. She couldn’t stand that she was watching, right before her eyes, a rift opening up between all of them. And it was happening right then. No matter how much she wished, there wasn’t a damn thing in the world she could do about it. “You all have a place in Santa Barbara, right? Jill told me about it. Why can’t we just forget about all of this and go on with our lives?”

“Because,” Stone said with a snarl, “you might be fated to us, and we to you. But there are thousands of years of a clan that are now being held in that goddamn lab. They have to be freed. My people—“

“Our people,” King cut him off. “His and mine. We are the alphas.”

“We, too, have the marks,” Stone said. His eyes flashed rage, as did King’s. “We’re every bit as entitled to the clan as are you. We’ve suffered more than you could possibly imagine.”

Before King had a chance to respond, Rogue took a step back. “That was... not the right thing to say,” he said under his breath. “Best to just...”

Stone narrowed his eyes. Fury was apparently of the same mind as was Rogue and took his sworn brother by the shoulder at the same time that Rogue grabbed King. “We mustn’t fight,” he urged. “We have to figure out some way to—“

“The way is to kill this bastard,” Stone snarled. “Kill both of them and retake the clan.”

Claire tried to step in the way, as did Jill. Draven grabbed both of them though, his grip so firm that it hurt either shoulder just a bit. “They won’t kill each other. They can’t,” he hissed. “But if you two get in the way things might get really out of hand. This is... well it’s completely stupid, and makes no sense at all, but this kind of alpha posturing is pretty normal, if I’m going to be totally honest.”