Authors: Eve Langlais
Tags: #paranormal, #romance, #bear, #shifter, #werewolf, #magic, #adventure, #military, #fantasy, #milf
She did a mental wince and dove a bit lower to check on him. Splayed out on a pile of small stones and hard dirt, he appeared none the worse for wear; no pooling blood evident, his chest rose and fell evenly. For the moment, he seemed safe enough. However, the same couldn’t be said for the rest of their group judging by the roaring and screaming echoing from the other side of the hill.
Flapping her wings, creating her own current to soar, she popped over the edge, no higher, lest she make a tempting target. She landed on the surface of a pockmarked boulder, a perfect perch aloft where she could view the unfolding events.
Bleak.
Whilst she checked on Travis, even more men arrived for the wrong side. Frederick among them.
You treacherous bastard.
If she needed further proof of his perfidy, she now had it. No doubt remained now. The raven had shown his true colors, or color. Black, like his reputation, his heart, and, soon, the color of his blood when she spilled it and let the hungry sands of this place soak it up.
Would she feel guilty about taking his life given all the rules and morals he’d broken? Maybe a touch for the man she once knew who changed so much. Jess understood war could forge a person’s beliefs, not always for the better because of the exposure to atrocities, but how could someone who’d always seemed honorable and, if not perfect, at least decent at the core when it came to people, have changed into a traitor both to his wife and his kind?
And for what? What exactly did he fight for?
That proved most baffling of all.
While these thoughts flitted through her mind, fluttering questions and feelings that spun in a vortex she wished she could bottle, she tried to see a way she could help.
How? I’m not a solider.
She didn’t have a gun or, really, much skill to use one if she did.
Not that one lone gun would have helped. Surrounded and felled by tranquilizers, her clansmen collapsed while Layla hung limp over someone’s shoulder.
The good news, they weren’t killing them. The bad, they were taking them who knew where for who knew what. And the worse news, she heard shouts of “We’re missing a pair. The other bear and the doctor.”
Time to duck—or should she say hawk—out of sight.
The sun projected from her back, so while her perch provided a great view, unless one of the men below wanted to blind himself staring toward the sun, they probably couldn’t see her. But she wouldn’t assume.
Because you know what happens then, they’ll make an ass out of me.
Never had she felt so useless. All her skills and knowledge wasted in this situation.
How can I help?
She needed to call for aid. Yay for the phone still in the bag hanging around her neck. But before she dialed for help, she needed to see if she could aid the only other person not yet captured. A certain sleeping bear who would prove way too easy to capture if anyone came across him.
Which could happen soon given the yells and sounds of men climbing the hilly ridge over which Travis had toppled. She had to move. No more wasting time.
She pivoted and toed across the rocky peak until she hit the edge of the incline Travis had rolled down, and then she shifted shapes for better traction and balance, the bag still strung around her neck.
It didn’t contain much. A change of clothes, a canteen and power bar, plus a basic first aid kit. Her emergency sack, which she always wore around her neck when she went out. First rule of survival in Alaska and anywhere else.
Although time was precious, she took a moment to slap on a shirt and her sandals, not boots—which meant she hoped she didn’t startle something with her painted red toes. A vanity she splurged on once every month.
She also drew on underpants and shorts because, with her luck, Travis would wake just as she stood over him with her stuff hanging out.
Light thoughts helped her to keep focused. No use panicking. Panicking wouldn’t get her anywhere other than caught.
She couldn’t allow that to happen, not with so many lives at stake. People she cared about.
I can’t let them take Travis.
The big grizzly still lay where he’d landed. Snoring.
Loudly.
Good grief, the man made a lot of noise.
Especially grunts of annoyance as she tried to rouse him.
Shaking his furry shoulder had no effect. “Travis!” she hissed. “Travis. Wake up. We gotta go.”
His muzzle twitched. He rolled his head and continued to blow air hard out his nose.
Realizing she could possibly get her face chewed off, but desperate, she grabbed his furry cheeks in two hands and shook while loudly whispering. “I can’t have you passed out like this, Travis. We are in deep doo-doo. And our friends are in danger. We need to go, but you’re too heavy for me to move.” And no way in hell was she leaving him behind.
Rumble. Snort. Whistle
. He slept, completely oblivious.
What to do? She needed to counter the effect of the sleeping darts; however, only time could truly do that. If only she could wake him for a few minutes, enough to at least move away from the area and find shelter so he could sleep it off.
A light bulb went off, and she could have slapped herself for her mental lapse.
I have a way to rouse him, long enough that we can maybe conceal ourselves in that split in the rock that I saw when I was flying earlier.
At the worst it was an alcove, in the best-case scenario a cave. So long as no one followed their scent trail, they’d at least be out of sight.
But first to rouse a hibernating beast, which meant she needed to jab him with a needle in the heart.
And then hope he didn’t wake up roaring and biting.
One minute Travis was chasing butterflies because they were hiding his view of a naked Jess running through a field of flowers, and the next he was rolling to four feet, shaking his big, shaggy head and about to let out an epic roar when…
A hand slapped over his muzzle as someone hissed, “Don’t you dare, or they’ll hear us and find us.”
Let them find me. I’ll tear their limbs off.
His body practically vibrated he had so much energy to expend.
“We need to move and hide.”
Hide? No hide. Wanna play.
The bear had no interest in running away from the danger. On the contrary, it craved it. But his bear could also smell the anxiety pouring off Jess.
Jess.
Safe for the moment.
Unlike the others, as she quickly related. “The others have been caught. There’s too many for us to fight, and the adrenaline shot I gave you will wear off quicker than I’d like, especially given how much energy your bear form requires.”
Conserve energy. He caught that part and, with a mental shove, because someone wasn’t moving his hairy ass out of the driver’s seat, took over his body again, letting it contort back to his man shape.
His naked man shape.
“Hey, Doc. What’s up?”
Not his dick, thank god. This wasn’t a really appropriate time to have dirty fantasies about Jess.
“Move.” She looped her arm around his and tugged him to follow the dry riverbed, his bare feet not just having to contend with the sharpness of stones but also the baked-in heat.
Here I thought asphalt in summer was hot.
Not!
While adrenaline coursed through his body, he noted it wasn’t a natural energy. At the edge of it, pushing and shoving, was fatigue.
But he couldn’t give in to it, not with Jess in danger. A danger that peaked when he heard a hollered, “There they are! Down in the ravine.”
Spotted, but not caught.
Travis took the lead, increasing his speed, his hand dropping to lace his fingers with hers. Jess breathed in and out evenly alongside him, her slender shape fit and light, a characteristic of avian species. Or so he’d learned. He knew a lot about the different castes of shifters, all part of his fount of knowledge when it came to learning, and defending himself.
He also thought the facts he discovered were cool. He just never told anyone about his fetish for study. He didn’t want to see it used against his man card. He still wasn’t sure how the whole man club worked, if it graded a guy on a point system or not. Did certain actions result in a deduction of points?
And his mind was wandering.
Probably not a good idea, especially since—
Zing
. The bullet hit the rock just ahead of them, and shards of stone spattered, narrowly missing them both.
“What the fuck! They’re shooting at us. What happened to let’s not kill them, and those fluffy red darts?”
“I think they’ve reconsidered and classed us as expendable in the grand scheme of things.”
“Yeah, I don’t think I like your assessment.”
He hip checked her sideways, a quick arm around her upper body preventing her from bruising against the rock they hit. But a scraped arm on him was better than a hole from the bullet that narrowly missed them.
Thank you,
Star Wars
.
Perhaps he didn’t have a Jedi power, but Travis had spent enough time meditating—while in his bed or the hospital after some injury—to learn how to open his senses and truly have a sixth sense for the world around him. Especially danger.
“Duck!”
She obeyed without question, and the next shot whistled harmless overhead. However, their luck wouldn’t hold forever. Not with the number of enemy firing on them.
“We’re sitting ducks out here.” Which was a comparison that made a certain grizzly bear chuff in his head.
“There’s an opening in the cliff over there.”
“A cave?” Better than sitting out in the open, but also a tomb if caught in there.
Options grew limited though, as more and more bullets hit the rocks. A few of the blasted shards caught them, stinging cuts along exposed skin, of which he bore plenty. His shoulder, which had gotten hit by a bullet earlier, didn’t sting, not yet, but oozed sluggishly.
I might have been better off wearing my fur.
Except his wide ass would have never fit through the slit in the rock that Jess skimmed into. Latched still to his hand, she yanked at him.
For a moment, he didn’t budge. The hole was small. Just enough for him to squeeze in. But then what? Wait for those attacking to get close enough and shoot them like fish in a barrel?
I’d prefer to go out fighting.
About to pry her fingers loose, a strange rumble made him pause. An ominous tinkle of rock and sand sprinkled his head. He peeked upward in time to note the wild gunshot that hit an overhang of rock.
When he’d left Alaska to come here, if someone would have said watch out for an avalanche, he would have laughed. Out here, in a land of sun, sand, and rock? As if.
However, as he noted the cliff side atop him literally shear off and begin tumbling down, he couldn’t help but think,
Holy fuck, betcha that hurts more than snow
.
It also curtailed his options.
Actually it really left only one. He threw himself into the crack, with a yelled, “Move. Avalanche.”
“I hate this place,” Jess grumbled, but miracle of the day, she could slide farther in, and a good thing, too, because the light extinguished as tons of debris came bearing down the cliff.
The lack of light sucked, but not as much as the dust that poured into their cramped space.
Travis hacked a dirtball that sucked the moisture from his mouth. Jess emitted a smaller girly sound that he’d mock later.
Later because, dammit, he wasn’t going to let them die, not here, in a mountain, in the dark, and with him naked but not buried inside the woman he loved.
I won’t die before I make her mine.
Despite the dust-filled air, Jess’ breathing quickened, and he could practically smell the panic rolling off her.
“What’s wrong?”
Her admission, made in a tiny voice so unlike her usual confident one, “I don’t like small places.”
“It’s not small,” he soothed. “Not if it can fit my big shoulders.”
“And your ego,” she replied with a giggle that was borderline hysterical.
“Can you go farther?” he queried. Because despite the fact that the mountain no longer shook and nothing seemed determined to bury them alive, it didn’t mean they shouldn’t look for a way out. Jess wasn’t the only one not crazy about their small rocky space.
“I think we can keep going. I can’t really tell.” She moved slowly, taking measured steps, but to his relief, the slit they’d found extended into the mountain, and the air, while stale, didn’t choke them.
He couldn’t have said how long they traveled thus, nor did he want to recall the terrible anxiety that embraced him as the tight walls brushed against his wide shoulders. But he couldn’t give in to panic, not when Jess clutched at him and looked to him for reassurance.
It could have been hours, or minutes, but eventually the space widened, and while slow due to a lack of light, Jess kept moving, onward, somewhere, hopefully to a room with a bed.
Travis yawned. “Can we stop for a nap?”
“Oh no you don’t,” Jess said, squeezing his fingers. “You can’t go to sleep yet.”
“But I’m tired.” Surely that plaintive note didn’t come from him?
“We need to keep moving, as far as we can just in case the tunnel behind us caves in because of the land slide.”
“Can’t I have a little rest?” His jaw cracked at the wideness of his next battle with the sudden encroaching fatigue. His adrenaline had peaked, and he was now crashing.
“I think I feel an air current from up ahead. Looks like we might get lucky and have a way out.”
“You know bears need a lot of sleep,” he confided, his steps slowing further.
“Maybe when we get out of this, you and I can find a bed and you can show me.”
“You mean share a bed?” That perked him up for a moment, and he shoved at the sluggishness.
“If that is what it takes to motivate you. Then yes. A bed with me. And you.”
“Naked.” He didn’t ask. He stated.
“You are such a man.”
“Yup.” And proud of it. No point in sugarcoating it. He also made sure he got her to say it. “You. Me. Bed. Naked.”
A rueful chuckle left her. “If we survive this, then yes, anything you want. Just keep moving for me. I think I see a sliver of daylight ahead.”