Between a Bear and a Hard Place(60)

It was a sound that Claire hadn’t heard in weeks – and one she wished she could go the rest of her life never having to hear again.

The first thought Fury and Stone had was to begin a treacherous descent along a fairly jagged rocky wall. At the bottom of the climb was a riverbed with a healthy pile of dead leaves, which they clambered underneath as the chopper circled overhead.

For a second, Claire had the vague hope that Jacques and Draven found them, and they were going to finally convince the other two bears that maybe this weird clan war wasn’t the best course of action. But instead of friendly shouts, the blades just churned off into the distance.

“Do you think that... maybe it’s them? Maybe it’s Jill and the bears? Jacques?”

She looked over to Fury, his eyes hard and his mouth a solid, grim line. His response was an angry grumble.

“Why can’t we just go look for them?” she asked.

His arm was around her shoulders, warming her skin against the winter chill. He pulled her tight, looked at her for a moment before kissing her forehead, and then sighed. “You know why,” he said.

On the other side of Claire, Stone ran a thumb down to the nape of her neck, and kissed her sweetly on the inside of her elbow. “We can’t,” he whispered. “It’s the way we have to follow.”

“Yeah,” Fury said with another sigh. “There you go. If you ever start wondering again, you’ve got a ready-packed answer. “We can’t because we can’t. But I’m wondering something a little more important – why have the helicopters suddenly picked up again? It’s been weeks since we saw one.”

Claire wasn’t about to admit that she’d used her phone again in those early morning hours before anyone else stirred. She wasn’t about to admit that she’d done anything wrong – partially because she didn’t’ think she had, not deep down in her heart, and partially because she didn’t know how the hell she could have done anything wrong. Especially not how she could have called down a bunch of helicopters on them. GlasCorp had plenty of resources and plenty of men, sure, but magic? That was one thing they couldn’t quite manage.

Claire shrugged. “Maybe they’re just patrolling? Maybe they’re starting to get desperate?”

“That would actually make sense,” Stone said in his deep, super-serious voice. “They’re starting to regret letting us go. They’re starting to worry – what if we weren’t meant to get so far away? What if we managed to accidentally escape a trap? It’s worth considering.”

“How does that affect us?” Fury asked. “Suddenly we have some sort of value to Eckert and the rest? Suddenly we’re not just biding our time running from one place to the next?”

But then all the activity came to a screeching halt just as suddenly as it had begun. The woods fell silent, the birds started chirping, and all was well. Except for something that Claire only happened to catch out of the corner of her left eye – which happened to be her weaker one by far. She noticed that when she looked at Stone, not only was he ever so slightly paler than he had been in her recent memory, he was also kind of... clammy looking?

And my mark isn’t burning. The mate mark isn’t tingling. That’s gotta mean something, right? I mean, that’s how we feel each other, that’s how we know that I’m meant for a Broken Pine bear instead of a Four Sixes bear, or whatever.

She made a quick mental note to ask Fury what could cause the sudden lack of tingly feelings in her chest. The funny thing was that she’d grown so used to the sensation that she hardly noticed it at all anymore, except, like right then, when she didn’t feel it. But, magical crests and chest-marks notwithstanding, something was definitely not right with the taller of her mates.

“You okay?” she asked, standing up and poking Stone with her bare toe. On the one hand—foot—whatever, she kind of hated how Jane of the Jungle she’d become. On the other though, she felt more confident than she had in her entire life, bare feet or no. Three months ago she would have been paranoid as all hell about pinworms, or this sort of tick or that sort. That transition was another she’d not noticed until it was complete.

Sorta like, you know, turning into a bear. Thinking back about it, she wasn’t sure which one was more traumatic and less like her: getting used to being a were-creature, or getting over ticks. Probably the ticks.

Yeah. Definitely, definitely the ticks.

Stone, she realized, still hadn’t responded to her question even though she’d been prodding him with her toe for about thirty seconds. Usually he was fairly quick to irritate, either he had been replaced by a vastly more patient clone, or something really was wrong.