Avenge the Bear (10 page)

The stinging slap of a hand against her face woke Reese. She sat upright and gasped at the blistering pain in her back. Her head throbbed so badly, it made her want to retch. She was in bad shape, but what was scarier was she didn’t recognize her surroundings at all. A holey dilapidated roof above her, splintered rafters, dusty light streaming in through wooden walls gone gray with age. Her eyes rolled back in her head, but Rieland slapped her again and ripped her hair back until she met her eyes.

“About fuckin’ time,” the woman growled.

Rieland had pulled her nut-brown tresses into a severe ponytail that made her face look like she’d had it lifted, and was donning the ranger’s uniform she’d had on when she picked her up. Her eyes were predatory and burning silver, and she shoved Reese back onto the filthy wooden floor she’d been lying on.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” Reese asked through a parched throat. Even at this soft volume her head felt like it was going to explode.

“Because our games aren’t through yet. You’ve been an irritating little bitch about a bump on the head, and have slept the entire night. But I couldn’t start the festivities without you being conscious. There would be no fun in burning you while you slept. I like to hear the screams, you see?”

Rieland sat on an old stool and struck a match from one of the books from the glove box. Then she blew it out with a devilish grin. Early morning light streamed in through a shattered window and illuminated the floor in soft grays. She was in some sort of abandoned cabin, but a glance outside told her nothing other than she was in the deep woods. She could be on the other side of The Goblin for all she knew.

Trying to pull her hands to the thick, caked warmth on her face, the sound of chains clinked across the floor and stopped her motion. Dread filled her as Reese realized her wrists were shackled to an exposed metal pipe under the broken floorboards. Clenching her hands, she tested its strength as panic seized her throat. Even with a hard pull, it didn’t budge an inch.

“Let me go,” she growled out. “I don’t know your reasons for killing Trent, but this will only make it worse for you. Let me go and we can find you some help.”

“Help,” Rieland asked as her eyebrows arched high. “It’s you who needs help. I’m perfectly equipped to survive what is coming. You, on the other hand, will die slowly, and painfully. It will take minutes, just like it did with Trent. Just like it should’ve taken with Bron and his bitch mate Samantha.”

“Why are you doing this?” She meant to sound tougher, but dammit, she was chained to a cabin and Smoky the Psychotic Bear was over there lighting matches and blowing them out. And the house definitely smelled like some kind of lighter fluid.

“Glad you asked. See, this is why I wanted you awake, Reese. I don’t get to share the why’s with anyone else, and I’ve been dying to tell someone. You’ve been chosen by the last Cress alpha.” She twitched her head to the side. “Or Ethan will be the last Cress alpha after I obliterate Bron.”

“You know?”

“Of course I know. All it took was a little research. He came to Seven Devils all quiet and mysterious and broken. And anyone with eyes in their heads could see his bear was a monster. He would be alpha someday, and I wanted to know where his power came from. It came from that Cress blood running through his veins. The legends say one Cress alpha a generation, and I couldn’t allow Trent and Bron to steal Ethan’s thunder, now could I?”

“You think you’re helping him? Ethan will hate you when he finds out what you’ve done.”

“Ah, but he won’t find out it’s me. And if he does, he’ll just have to listen to reason. I’m helping him reach his potential. He’ll take both clans under him when Bron is dead and everyone finds out he’s a Cress by birth. Do you know what he’s been doing for the past two days? He’s been running an inquisition on every one of his own people. He’s looking for Trent’s murderer for you, and I wondered why. I drove myself crazy with it, really. But then I thought, perhaps it’s because you’d bonded. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. He’s never cared about anyone, but now he’s turning his own clan upside down looking for answers for some shit for brains black bear shifter? You’re pussy much be magical.” She lit another match and blew it out. “Shifters do stupid things when they are unfortunate enough to bond with a mate. All of his efforts were pointless though. He didn’t even bat an eye when I lied about my whereabouts during the fires.”

“Why Ethan? Why didn’t you choose to back Trent?”

“Not Ethan, sugar.” She canted her head and her eyes narrowed with a dark smile. “My son.”

Shock made Reese draw up so fast the claw marks on her back burned. “You’re pregnant?”

“Not yet. But once you’re gone, Ethan will come back to my bed. I heard you the other night, howling his name as he fucked you in the tower. I was there, listening outside the door. You did bond, didn’t you?” Rieland shook her head and made a clicking sound against her teeth. “I can’t have him bonding with anyone when I need his seed. My child, the future Cress alpha, will secure my place in the history books. Under my guidance, we will bring bear shifters back to their former glory. We won’t be sitting on the edge of civilization, hiding from the humans anymore. We will build a fucking army of bears.”

Reese swallowed hard at the empty look in Rieland’s glassy eyes. “Why fire?” she whispered.

A slow smile stretched Rieland’s face. “It was Ethan’s parents who gave me the idea. Their deaths were an accident. Faulty wiring in the house, according to the reports. But when I was researching, I found pictures of the blaze. Ethan had barely made it out alive and stood on the front lawn with his back to whoever photographed the inferno. He was so tiny and alone, and from the looks of it, no one had offered to comfort him when the picture had been taken. But in front of him, the fire was beautiful. There is power in fire. It needs so little, yet gives so much. And once I started researching how to start a fire, and how to make it look like an accident, I was hooked. When I was little, I used to have a cigarette lighter stashed in this shed. I learned to burn things without anyone knowing, and my targets got bigger and bigger.” She rubbed a scuffed toe of her boot across a dark char-mark in the middle of the floor. “I had to stop for a few years because of my responsibilities to the clan, but that picture of Ethan’s house began my love for it again. I picked up right where I’d left off. I’ve been saving this shed for a special burn—for you.”

Reese’s stomach went cold as she spoke. Rieland’s voice had turned dreamy when she talked about fire and burning her alive. No amount of begging or pleading was going to get her off this course of destruction she’d planned. Reese bit her lip hard to stop it from trembling and swallowed down her despair. It wouldn’t do any good to go screaming and pleading. Begging for her life would only take her dignity away.

“You ready to burn?” Rieland asked, backing toward the door. An unlit match waited between her fingertips, and with a scraping sound, she dragged it across the striker. “Sweet screams, Reese.”

As the match fell to the floor, the side of the house exploded inward and a mass of fur and teeth flew through the dilapidated walls. Rieland’s scream was cut to nothing as Bron hurled into her and disappeared, crashing through the opposite wall. The roof caved, and Reese shielded her eyes with her forearm as debris fell around her.

Frantically, she pulled at the chain securing her wrists to the floor. How Bron had known to come here was beyond her, but even with Rieland likely being shredded in the side yard, she wasn’t out of this yet. The flames began slowly, then caught onto whatever starter fluid that psychotic woman had doused the place in.

“Bron!” Reese screamed as heat blistered her skin and flames licked the crumbling walls beside her. Sweat trickled down the sides of her face and between her breasts as she fought to loosen the shackles. She couldn’t change into her bear, or the metal would crush her paws. “Help me!”

A tremendous crash sounded as a half fallen wall was ripped backward. And then Ethan was there, making his way through the smoke and rubble, the fire illuminating the intensity of his silver eyes with golds and reds.

A strangled sob of relief left her lips as he jumped over a flaming pile of rubble and skidded to a stop in front of her. He was here, facing the flames that had taken his parents, facing the fear that had driven his extreme reactions to soot on her face and in his bed.

He was here for her.

His inhuman gaze traveled down her wrists and followed the chain. His thin, green cotton shirt already sported singed holes in it, but if the burns hurt, he showed no sign. “Stand up,” he growled out.

She did, though the chains kept her hunched forward.

“On three,” he said. “One, two, three.” His neck strained as he gripped the metal and pulled upward. Every muscle in his chest flexed through the threadbare material of his clothes and sweat and soot ran streams down his face and throat.

She pulled until her wrists bled. The flames were coming closer and they were out of time.

“Ethan,” she said, coughing hard. “You need to leave.”

“I’m not leaving without you. Again. Bron!” he called as he bent down and pulled the thick metal pipe.

“I can’t get in!” came her alpha’s answer. “Fuck! I can’t get to you!”

“Baby,” Ethan whispered, rubbing his thumb over her cheek. “I know it hurts, but one more time. Ready?”

Her face crumpled under her fear and she coughed over and over and nodded her head. Her skin felt ablaze under the intense heat of the flames at her back.

“Now,” he gritted out, pulling on the pipe as she gripped the chains and yanked them with all of her strength.

It gave a little.

“Don’t stop,” he yelled.

Closing her eyes, she found her inner bear and locked her legs against the strain. Metal echoed, and she fell backward as the pipe broke. Ethan jerked her forward, away from the blaze, then pulled her by the hand. Shoving her under a collapsed ceiling beam, he followed and guided her through the black, billowing smoke until she saw sunlight. He didn’t stop in the yard though. Ethan pulled her hand until they were standing near his Bronco on the other side of a clearing.

He was gasping for air and shaking badly, and suddenly, he spun and crushed her to him.

It hurt as he pressed against the claw marks on her back, but Reese couldn’t find it in her to care about that right now.

They were alive.

How did you know I was here?” The words burned up her throat and she stifled another wracking cough.

Ethan turned and threw open the car door. He grabbed a thick blanket from the back of his Bronco and wrapped it around her shoulders. With a light touch, he traced the throbbing side of her face, then shook his head. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Trent.” His anguished eyes were still silver, and above the scent of smoke was the smell of fur.

“I know,” she whispered, clutching his shirt in her closed fists. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know what to think when I woke up in a bed full of ashes. I should’ve let you explain.”

“I sleepwalk. I always have, but not as much in the last few years. Bear finds burned places. I think he’s searching for my family. I don’t burn things. I hate fire.”

“Shh,” she cooed. Heartache filled her chest cavity until it was even harder to breathe. “I know about your parents and I understand why you didn’t want to talk about them. I’m so sorry you went through that, and I don’t care if you sleepwalk, or if Bear takes over, or whatever you think you have to hide from me. I’m here.”

His arms shook as he held her and his heart pounded furiously against where her cheek rested. “I thought I was going to lose you.”

“How did you find me?” she asked again.

“Rieland lied. I was trying to find out for sure if any of my people were involved in Trent’s death. I wanted to find his murderer so you wouldn’t hate me anymore. I called her in and asked her where she’d been when Trent had died, and when Bron’s house had burned. She lied. She must have gone straight to Bron’s while I was showing you around the campgrounds, but she looked me in the eye and told me she’d been working near the cabins the entire time. I could hear the lie, and later, Unger told me he saw her leaving before we spotted the fire. I tried to call you and when you didn’t pick up, I called Bron. He said Samantha and Muriel hadn’t been able to get ahold of you either, and that you were supposed to talk to them after work. I panicked. Something felt wrong and I couldn’t find Rieland in camp or at the post she was supposed to be working. I went to your house and you weren’t there either, and your truck was still parked at Buckeyes. I knew it was Rieland who took you. We have both clans combing the mountains right now for you. I used our bond to pinpoint an area, and Bron and I saw this old road with new tracks, so we followed it in.”

“She was going to burn me alive.”

“I know. She’s gone now though. She’ll never hurt you again. I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”

Bron approached, pants on, shirt in hand, cell phone propped between his ear and shoulder. “I swear she’s safe,” he murmured into the receiver. “I’m looking at her right now. Call everyone off and tell them we’ll bring her to Muriel’s. Reese is hurt, but she’ll be all right. Tell Muriel we need something for burns too.”

Burns? She didn’t feel burned. All she felt was the throbbing, seeping claw marks Rieland had decorated her back with and a hella bad headache. But when she turned back to Ethan, he was pulling singed fabric away from an angry looking mark down his side.