Silver Mine (17 page)

It meant the land around them felt endless. Nothing to close them in, to contain them. If she could shift, she could turn toward the north and run until she hit the Arctic Ocean.

This was so vast a land her worries and concerns shrank to things of lesser consequence. If she could tame this land? Survive here?

She could do anything.

“You want to walk a little longer?” Frank asked.

She laughed. “How long you think the guys need to talk before we head in?”

He snorted. “A walk to the point and back should do it.”

The path was wide enough she didn’t have to trail behind him, remaining at his side instead. “You never answered my question, about why more men would show up.”

“Hoped you’d forget, but you aren’t the stupid kind now, are you?”

“I hope not.” A touch crazy, perhaps, as she looked around her and considered exactly what she’d jumped into without thinking. “Is it serious? You really worried?”

“Hell, yeah.”

“Yet you deal with the unknown all the time. It’s dangerous living out here.”

“We can face just about anything if it makes sense. Men gone missing? Don’t sit right.”

“Could they have just left the north?”

Frank wandered to the edge of the woods where there was a fallen tree. He arranged himself on the smooth section where the bark had slipped off.

“Maybe. Even the loners usually tell someone they’re cutting out.” He stared at her. “You’re not a typical wolf. You seem different.”

She shook her head. “Can’t turn furry. There’s something wrong with my shifter, and the wolf’s never come to the surface.”

“Hell of a thing,” he offered with a sympathetic headshake. “Bears don’t have that trouble, you know. We’re bears, no half-blood, no full. You got bear, you got bear. No needing to be triggered like you wolves, mother’s milk or otherwise.”

She’d never gotten a chance to talk to a bear shifter like this before. The bits and pieces she’d been taught by her mentor regarding bear shifters had tweaked her curiosity, but knowing how to patch someone up didn’t require total knowledge of the species’ secrets. This was a golden opportunity to learn more.

She dug for the most important tidbits. “Really? Doesn’t matter how much blood, you can always shift?”

He wavered for a moment. “Always got the ability to shift. Whether they do or not is up to the person. You’ve got to talk your animal side to the surface then convince them it’s okay to come out. Not everyone does. Not everyone wants to.”

She couldn’t believe that. “No way. Why would someone not want to shift?”

“Family lives in the city, wants to leave behind the wilderness. I don’t know, but it happens. Also means there’s none of this worry about leaving behind babies with a mixed family. You know, if a man gets someone pregnant, there’s no ‘surprise-you-can-turn-furry’ when the kid becomes a teen. Can’t shift unless you decide to, and you sure can’t decide to if you don’t know you’re a bear.”

Shelley thought for a moment. “Your family units are different. You don’t mate for life.”

“We do, if we choose. It’s not usually the bear side doing the bossing about like your wolves do.”

“That seems so strange to me,” Shelley admitted. “All I’ve ever heard and known about is the mating for life of the wolf.”

And she’d always been devastated by that knowledge because she really didn’t see any happily ever after in her future.

Frank shook his finger at her, his big thick beefy digit in her face. “Now you’re going and letting your prejudices show. Wolves take life mates based on their wolf side, and make their human sides catch up. Bears use their human brains along with the attraction the animal side feels. Cats are the same way. Hell, most of the shifter breeds I know use their brains more than some
mate-mate-mate
thing. Sorry, wolves are the whacked-out fools of the shifter kingdom.”

“Some would say they’re the only ones that have it right.”

“Because that
my mate
makes wolves all so accepting all the time?” Frank poked at a still-open wound, and Shelley cringed. “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

He rose to the full height of his six-foot, seven-foot whatever.

“You ever have a girl, Frank? Or a family?” Maybe it was a dangerous topic, but she wanted to know.

He looked her over for a moment. “Yeah. Had a girl. She passed away and I came out here. Didn’t like to stay where there were too many reminders of her.”

Shelley laid her hand on his arm. It wasn’t sympathy; it was just a touch of understanding. “I have so many bad memories of Whitehorse. But I’m being stupid and running right back to the same place. There’s a saying about that. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.”

“It’s also brave.”

She shrugged. “I don’t feel brave.”

Frank gestured her down the path back toward the cabin. Obviously figured they’d given enough time for the serious business to be discussed. “You got family there?”

“My older half-sister. She’s human.”

“Whoa, that’s different. She know about shifters?”

Shelley bit her lip to stop from snorting. Sharing that her sis was sleeping with the wolf pack Alpha—
nahh
, she’d keep it general.

“She knows. Manages the Moonshine Inn for the Takhini Pack. She’s rather good around shifters. Probably better than me.” The last confession snuck out grudgingly. Then she reconsidered. Caroline did do well. More than well. “Actually she’s the reason it’s worthwhile coming back to face the memories. She’s strong and accepting. And giving. I need people like that in my life, and the fact she’s my sister makes it even more vital.”

“Sounds like she’s important to you.”

“I guess you could say she’s one of my heroes,” Shelley confessed.

Frank escorted her back up the steps of the cabin and knocked on the door. “She’s got to be damn cool, because you’re pretty impressive yourself. For a wolf.”

Shelley laughed. He tweaked her nose before swinging the door open and gesturing her into the cabin. He rambled easily down the stairs then disappeared between a couple of tents.

Watching Shelley leave with the big bear appeased Chase’s discomfort a little. He knew she would be safe with Frank.

The question still remained if Frank would be safe with Shelley.

He turned to face his remaining friends. “Spit it out. Details, dreams. I want to know fast.”

“Don’t think it’s an immediate thing, Silver, just—”

“Fast because I’ve promised to take Shelley out again in the morning to gather information, and if you’re going to go all mystical and hairy on me, I want to know now what to expect when we get back in a few days.”

Mark nodded. “There’s men from out Townsend way who ain’t been seen for a couple months. Someone found a collapsed mine opening and the smell of death around it. Plus there’s a cabin, well more of a lean-to, that burned to the ground, but that would only account for a few of the missing.”

“There’s that bear gathering in Dawson. Their once-in-a-while redistribution of territory, or some such nonsense. We figured it wouldn’t affect any of the crew out in the bush. Frank ignored the summons when it came, as did most of the other bear shifters.” Delton pushed back his chair.

Chase frowned. “How do they get all the bears to gather in one spot? Send out mail? How do they even know where to look?”

Delton cleared the plates off the table as he talked, seemingly unable to sit and stop working. “Hell, you know the Pony Express wouldn’t work up here. No, it’s freakier than that. They got some kind of connection that they set off, and the bears get the urge to gather. Don’t ask me for more than that. Frank said it felt as if someone tapped him on the shoulder. He ignored it.”

Freaky indeed. “Glad we don’t have that with wolves.”

“Or cats,” Delton agreed. “But if I remember correctly, the last time there was a call like this they didn’t stop at the polite shoulder tapping. They tried to round them up.”

“You remembering correctly, old-timer?” Mark asked. “How long ago was the last?”

“Who you calling old? The last call was only thirty-five years ago or thereabouts, so, hell yes, I remember correctly.”

Chase scrubbed his fingers over his brush cut. “If they’re going to try to round up outcasts and haul them into Whitehorse, they’re stupider than we need to worry about. You seriously think Frank could be herded anywhere he didn’t want to go?”

“Maybe Frank won’t, but he’s about the biggest and sanest of the bunch. There’s going to be isolated killing happening all over the north if the bears try to make someone involuntarily move—and it could be either side dying, ours or theirs.”

Their men.

And that was the truth. These men were his, in some strange and undefined way. Part of the pack of outcasts.

“It’s not just the bears, Silver.” Mark shook his head, worry in his every move. “Something’s off. The wolves are howling with it. The regular animals are making scarce like there’s a snowstorm ready to descend. You add the two things together, hell. I wasn’t able to convince the men to just relax. They wanted to see you.”

Chase sighed. “I understand why they gathered. You’re right, Mark. You did the right thing. I won’t be doing any ass kicking, not of the men who banded together here for protection. Bears or whatever the hell.”

Mark tilted his head in respect.

Chase looked up at his oldest friend. “But you. What’re you bringing to the mix, old man? Dreams to scare little children in their cozy beds at night?”

Delton waved the cast-iron pan in his hand as if it were a feather. “You’ve never discounted my dreams before.”

Which was more the pity. Under the midnight sun, there were more unusual and unexplainable situations and things than Chase was willing to try to explain away. “And you see death?”

The old man nodded. “Shifter deaths.”

“Maybe it’s the bears fighting, like Mark talked about.”

Delton hesitated. “No. Yes. Both.”

It was still early, but hell if Chase didn’t need a drink. His shoulder ached, his head ached, and if Shelley didn’t get back soon he was going outside to find her because his body ached from maintaining his composure with her away from his protection.

He rose and poured three tumblers of alcohol, gesturing for the men to join him in the living room. “If we’re going to talk about death and dying we may as well do it like real Yukoners.”

They clinked glasses and tossed back the first round. The alcohol burned as it went down before smoothing into a heated ball in his gut. He poured a second round before making himself comfortable on the couch. His friends settled and the room grew quiet. Peaceful. Chase took a deep breath. Now he was ready for this conversation.

“Other than the bears, what kind of death, Delton?”

His friend hesitated. “Yours.”

Chapter Fourteen

The inside of the cabin smelt like shifters and booze. Shelley wandered in cautiously, but there were only the three men sprawled on the furniture in the main open area, glasses in their hands and a nearly empty bottle on the low coffee table.

Chase grinned at her sheepishly. “We left you a little.”

Oh boy.
“I think I’ll be designated driver tonight. You all done talking about scary things without little ol’ me around?”

Mark nodded twice. Huge head motions that threatened to topple him to the floor. “You sure a right smart woman. How the hell did Chase manage to snag the likes of you?” The wolverine hiccupped then slid to the floor. “’Cuse me.”

Delton shook his head. “Don’t mind him. He’s an ass.”

“Am not. Am a wolfer. Wol-
ver
.” Mark straightened up best he could and pawed the air with his fingers spread wide. “Scary dude with sharp claws. Only I got much better hair.”

He hiccupped again.

Delton sniggered.

Shelley glanced in disbelief at Chase. “Mark knows about X-Men? And what did you give them to drink to get them so wasted in the half hour I’ve been gone?”

“Sourdough thermometer.” Chase blinked innocently. “Perry Davis’s Patented Painkiller.”

She sucked in a quick, shocked breath. The old-timer’s method of knowing how cold it was. The glasses of liquid set outside the window of their trappers’ cabin would freeze in sequence. The mercury would be the first to go at minus forty, then the coal oil, then the Jamaican Ginger extract. By the time the Perry’s turned to slush, they knew it was time to stay indoors or freeze their lungs just breathing. “I’m so glad you’re all taking your responsibilities to the pack seriously.”

Mark snorted. “Lady, I think I love you. You said I was pack.” He lifted his head and pursed his lips in her direction.

Chase kicked out a foot, knocking the leg of the chair Mark was propped against, which sent it flying. Mark collapsed to the ground and lay there smiling at the ceiling for about ten seconds before he started seriously snoring.

Shelley rested her fists on her hips and stared down at where Chase sprawled on the couch. “Well, that wasn’t very nice.”