Bear Necessities (Bad Boy Alphas): A Post-Apocalyptic Bear Shifter Romance (39 page)

Ivy glanced behind her, but there was no one there.

The forest was as quiet as it got, just the birds and the wind and the rustling of leaves. And the distant sound of thunder.

She stopped to lean her back against a tree—trying not to think about the last time her back had been against a tree that afternoon—just to rest her ankle. It was starting to throb a little. Not too bad, but it might be swelling slightly. She’d have to put some ice on it again when she got home.

Home.

That’s home.

Blinking in shock, Ivy straightened, shading her eyes and squinting through the cover of trees. She saw a flash of a metal roof, red painted wood sides underneath. She couldn’t quite believe it, like a thirsty man crawling across a desert seeing the mirage of water in the distance, but her eyes weren’t good at deceiving her.

Just as she had to acknowledge that she’d seen Caleb change into a bear, she knew that was her father’s barn in the distance. Which mean the house—home—wasn’t far away.

Ivy, no. It’s too dangerous.

That was Caleb’s voice in her head.

She wanted to heed it, to listen to him. That part of her that had grown to rely on him, to trust him, knew he was right. He’d been trying to protect her—the same thing he’d done when he changed into a bear to keep her safe from danger in the forest.

But… what if they were gone now?

There was no harm in looking, was there? She could be nearly silent in the woods, if she wanted to be. Her father had taught her how to hunt, how to walk quietly and carry a big rifle. Okay, so she didn’t have a rifle now, which made what she was contemplating even more dangerous—but her curiosity was slowly getting the better of her.

She crept closer to the image in the distance, the sun glinting off the barn’s metal roof. The sound of the rain on that roof in the summer was amazing. She smiled, fantasizing about spreading a blanket up in the hayloft and bedding down there with Caleb during a rain storm. How awesome would that be? She could almost hear Blitzen chewing her cud, the barn cats running after scurrying mice, the rain making it feel like they were lying inside a kettle drum…

Ivy was so lost in her fantasy, she’d reached the edge of the woods before she even realized it. And there it was—home. She saw the back door thrown wide open and frowned. That would let flies in the house. Indignant, she took a step forward, and her gaze fell onto the garden. Her heart lurched in her chest, seeing her trampled cucumbers, squashed tomatoes, and the squash—they were beyond squashed.

The fish barrels her father had carefully cultivated with worm castings—one was full of rainbow trout, the other with perch—were open and upended. All the fish were gone. The barn she’d seen in the distance stood open, just like the house. That was the place where they kept the cow, and sometimes the chickens and rabbits in the winter. Ivy glanced around the yard, listening. She didn’t hear anything, so she ventured forward.

Maybe the animals were still…

Ivy covered her mouth with both hands to keep in her scream.

Inside the barn was as red as the outside. There was blood everywhere. The cement floor looked like it had been painted with it. And it wasn’t just blood—it was gore. She didn’t know what, exactly, she was looking at splattered on the walls, even on the beams of the high ceiling, but she was sure it had been viscera meant to stay inside something that had once been alive.

“They’re monsters,” she whispered, feeling her bladder contract with fear, and she almost peed herself at the thought of being confronted by the men—the monsters—that had done this.

Run, Ivy! Hide!

She turned and ran blindly toward the woods.

She knew the way back to the bunker.

She would wait there for Caleb.

He would come—maybe he was there already, waiting for her—and they would—

“Where do you think you’re going?”

The rifle that shot out from behind a tree clotheslined her and she flipped over it like a gymnast. Unfortunately, she wasn’t one, and she landed flat on her back, her head gashed from the edge of a sharp log, her side screaming in pain—something was jabbing her in it—and the wind completely knocked from her lungs.

“Wondered where you were hiding.” The man who looked down at her was oddly familiar.

She almost placed him in her memory before his combat boot came down and she forgot everything again.

“Where are you going?” Jonah grabbed his brother’s arm, stopping Caleb, but just barely.

Caleb tried to shake him loose, but Jonah added another hand to his arm, putting all his weight behind it, then pinning his bigger, older brother to a tree. In bear form, Caleb outweighed him by two-hundred pounds, but in human form, he didn’t have quite the same advantage.

“I have to find her.” Caleb’s eyes scanned the clearing. He could smell her scent, but it was faint, fading. He would be able to track her, though—of that he was sure. As long as it didn’t… “It’s going to rain! I can smell it. Come on, we have to go.”

“Caleb, wait!” Jonah got in front of him again, a forearm over Caleb’s collarbone. He could have broken his arm, but this was Jonah, not an enemy or foe. “I’ve been tracking Vaughn. He’s holed up at a farmhouse through those woods—about a mile from here—and he’s got at least a dozen men with him. We won’t live through it.”

“I know!” Caleb snapped. “And neither will she, if I don’t catch up to her!”

“That’s one of his men.” Jonah nodded at the lifeless body at the edge of the clearing.

It was the man that had been holding a knife, sneaking up on Ivy from behind, the one she never would have seen and likely would have been on her before Caleb had a chance to get there, if Jonah hadn’t charged into the clearing. Caleb had gotten one shot off—he’d hit the man in the side, but it wouldn’t have been enough to take him down—before Jonah attacked, protecting Ivy from the interloper.

“I saved her life once, brother,” Jonah told him softly. “We’ll do it again—I promise you—but you have to stop and think!”

“We don’t have time,” he choked, the thought of Ivy in danger making him see red. “I’ve already lost enough time, fighting with you. You don’t have to come with me—but I have to go.” 

“All right.” Jonah let him go with a resigned sigh and a shake of his head. “Christ, I’ve been bear for almost two years… I’m almost afraid to shift back. But we’ll be faster if we shift.”

“More than two years,” Caleb growled. “How long did they have you in a cage before I freed you?”

“I don’t know.” Jonah’s eyes shifted away, into the distance.

It was the direction Ivy had gone and Caleb’s heart hammered in his chest, keeping time. With every beat, she was getting further away.

“Why did you run?” Caleb asked. It was the question that had been on the tip of his tongue, the one he’d been waiting to find his brother to ask. “I opened that cage and you were gone. Do you know how long I’ve been looking for you?”

“You never should have let me go.” Jonah turned his face away. “You should have just let me die there.”

“They’d already killed our parents,” Caleb reminded him, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I wasn’t going to lose you, too.”

He put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, feeling it shake. Caleb couldn’t imagine what he’d been through, locked up in that goddamned lab. He had no idea what experiments they’d subjected Jonah to, what tortures he’d undergone, but Caleb’s imagination had run wild for the past few years while he’d tracked Jonah from somewhere deep in the Colorado mountains. The trail had gone cold several times, and for a while, he thought he’d never see his brother again.

“Jonah.” Caleb put one big arm around his brother’s shoulder, giving him a side-arm squeeze. “Listen—it’s not your fault, man. He—”

“Fuck!” Jonah shoved him away, hard. If it had been anyone else, Caleb probably wouldn’t have felt it at all, but his brother was a shifter—he was inordinately strong. But Caleb wasn’t going to let him go, not now, not after finally finding him.

“Don’t you understand?” Jonah croaked, looking down at his hands, palms up. There was blood on them still, from the man he’d disemboweled in the clearing.

That reminded Caleb again of Ivy and he glanced into the woods. Was she out there, hiding, the way he’d told her to? Run and hide. That’s what he’d said. He knew, wherever she went, he would be able to track her. But the presence of one of the men from the farmhouse all the way out here—what did it mean? Were there more of them out there in the woods even now?

“It is my fault!” Jonah cried, turning his bloody hands up to his brother. “I have blood on my hands! That man—he was never, ever meant to be like this. Like us. None of them were!”

“I know.” Caleb nodded, the pained look on his brother’s face almost enough to break him. Had he been living this way, the whole time? Thank God he’d been stuck as bear, instead of human, or he might have killed himself. “But Jonah, listen to me. It isn’t your fault!”

“Yes!” Jonah roared, his hands clenching into bloody fists. “Yes it is! It was me! Me, Caleb! Whatever this fucking feeding plague is, you let me loose on the world, and I fucking infected them all!”

“No, you didn’t!” Caleb grabbed his brother’s shoulders, shaking him as hard as he dared. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! It was Vaughn! He infected himself!”

“What?” Jonah’s word was barely a breath. His eyes—dark, like their mother and father’s—stared back at him, dazed, full of confusion. “But… no… I was the carrier. He… he said I was… he said…”

“He lied.” Caleb shrugged one shoulder, shaking his head at the time he’d lost with this man, the only family he had left, all because of Vaughn. “Vaughn’s always wanted to be one of us, Jonah. Fuck developing shifters as military weapons—that was just his excuse. He took that serum he developed because he wanted to be like us. And it turned him into…”

Caleb stared at the man staring lifeless up at the darkening sky. The sun had disappeared behind thunderheads.

“He turned them all into that,” Caleb finished, meeting his brother’s eyes. They were filling with unbelieving tears.

“It wasn’t me?” Jonah swallowed hard, his lip curling in anger. “All this time… it wasn’t my fault?”

“Unless you let Vaughn kill our parents and kidnap you, little brother—and I’m pretty damned sure, given the scar Vaughn’s got on his face, you put up one helluva fight—it wasn’t your fault at all.” Caleb pulled Jonah to him in a hug, feeling his brother’s shoulders shaking with emotion.

“I thought it was me,” Jonah whispered. “I’m going to kill him.”

“That’s the spirit.” Caleb smiled, clapping his brother on the back as they parted. “Listen, I’m going after my mate. You coming?”

Jonah nodded, then sighed. “Back to bear?”

“Why couldn’t you shift all this time?” Caleb wondered aloud, puzzled.

“I don’t know.” Jonah shrugged. “But it was when I bit your shoulder that I felt it—I knew I could shift back. I tasted your blood, and…”

“Blood, huh?” Caleb wondered at this. “This virus, whatever it is—they said it was blood borne. Back when the news was still reporting. Like AIDS, I guess. Blood and saliva.”

“I wouldn’t know.” Jonah snorted. “I’ve been living bear the whole time.”

“Just like Mom and Dad always wanted us to,” Caleb said, hearing the sadness in his own voice.

“Come on, let’s go find your girl.” Jonah gave a giant shake of his head, and he shifted, his hands going to the grass, turning to paws in an instant, his thickly muscled body blurry with the change.

It happened fast—almost too fast for the human eye to see. Most wouldn’t even be able to register it. They would see a human standing there, and the next—a bear. And they’d probably think they needed a good stiff drink at that point—or, conversely, that they should probably stop drinking too much.

Just as quickly, Jonah changed back, and Caleb looked at him in surprise.

“Just wanted to make sure I could change back.” Jonah gave him a lop-sided grin before shifting to bear again.

Caleb shifted, too, and they both put their noses to the grass, searching for Ivy’s sweet scent. It made Caleb’s heart beat faster when he caught it, and the thought of her alone and frightened—probably frightened of him—killed him. But the thought of her coming across Vaughn or one of his men was even worse.

He had to find her. Overhead, thunder cracked and Caleb roared. Jonah roared back, and the two bear brothers took off in the direction Ivy had gone.

It had been so long since Caleb had tussled with his brother, or even run beside him, he was elated as the two of them covered ground together—and the same time, he was so worried about Ivy he felt sick with it. Jonah might have felt the weight of it, but it hadn’t been his fault.

Caleb blamed himself. It was his fault he couldn’t be content to live the way his father and mother wanted him to—bear, instead of human. They’d wanted him to stay home, in the caves, to hibernate in the winter like a good bear, and fish and hunt in the summer. Never mind that they could shift into human form whenever they wanted to—just because you could, his father argued, doesn’t mean you should.

The human world was too complicated and harsh, according to his father—to heartbreaking and hard, according to his mother. But to Caleb, it was beyond exciting, and far too tempting for a young shifter to resist. He had to taste the human world, from its divine cooked foods to its luscious, fleshy women. And, he discovered, in human form, he was like a god. There was nothing he couldn’t lift—his strength was unsurpassed. He could see at night—humans couldn’t do that. He could smell a meal cooking a mile away.

Shifting was the best of both worlds—why would you choose to stay bear? Not that he had anything against living in caves and fishing in streams. He liked those things, too. That’s what he tried to explain to his parents when he’d left the cave with Vaughn.

Because Vaughn had been his fault, too, hadn’t he? Vaughn had been Caleb’s friend, had learned his secret—a fact that had, ultimately, cost Caleb’s cautious and suspicious parents their lives. And they’d been right, all along. But Caleb wouldn’t listen. He had to go off on his own, and while he thought he was taking advantage of Vaughn’s privileges—Vaughn’s ability to get Caleb everything from a driver’s license to a school record and a traceable past—Vaughn had been taking advantage of him, planning all along.

He should have known it, he realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, that summer Vaughn had been vacationing up north with his family and suggested they become “blood brothers.” Caleb had refused at first, but Vaughn had persisted. Even then, Vaughn was experimenting, trying to find a way to become shifter, like him. His experiments had just grown more involved and complicated over time, until he’d finally succeeded.

At least, partly.

He’d managed to get hold of shifter blood, anyway, after Caleb had finally cut ties with him five years ago. He still couldn’t believe Vaughn had thought Caleb would jump at the chance. He could be part of something big, Vaughn kept saying. They would make super-human soldiers for the military—Caleb was already notorious and sought out in the Marines for his strength, speed and skill—part human, part shifter. Didn’t he want to be part of making history?

Caleb had ended his “friendship”—if that’s ever what it had been—with Vaughn then. Caleb’s time in the world had taught him exactly what his parents had wanted him to learn—and he wanted nothing more than to go home, find a mate, and live free for the rest of his life. His brother, Jonah, had never left, not like him. He would go home, he would find them, they would be a family again.