by Riley Storm
“The Queen sent you?”
Kirell snorted. “No. She simply suggested this area would be a beautiful place to take a walk tonight, and that since I might be out here for a while, I should bring some extra clothes. You know, just in case. Here.” He shoved a bag full of sweaters at Kincaid, and a smaller one he tossed at Haley.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Just help me find some proof, any proof, that will lead to whoever the remaining traitors are. I’ve not been able to find a single shred of evidence. You’re my best hope. I can’t fail at my job, Kincaid.”
He nodded, knowing exactly where the other shifter was coming from. “I’ll do my best,” he promised.
“Now get the hell out of here. I couldn’t change the guards on the outer perimeter, not without them knowing anything, but I do know their schedule,” Kirell said, glancing at the watch on his right wrist. “In about seven minutes, they will be directly between you and your escape. Then you’ve got twenty minutes to make it from the edge of the lawns to the SUV. So, don’t delay.”
Then he was gone, heading into the House via the door Kincaid and Haley had just emerged from, pulling it shut behind him.
“Come on, let’s go,” Kincaid said, reaching out for Haley’s hand. “We’ve got seven minutes to walk across the lawns to the forest edge. Then we have a run in front of us. Be prepared.”
Haley took his hand and together, they stepped out into the light around the house. With every step, he tensed slightly, expecting a shout to ring out, but it was far from rare for mates pairs to go for late-night strolls, and generally they preferred to be unchallenged about any…activities…that might occur while out and about.
“This is taking too long,” Haley whispered, leaning her head against his shoulder. “We’re never going to make it.”
They were barely halfway across the lawns when the seven minutes was up, and the twenty-minute countdown began. After that, the border guards would be back in range of this particular area, and would spot, or worse, scent them. Kincaid knew that once they were under the cover of the forest, they would have to change tactics.
“Just keep going,” he urged.
Haley was not going to like his lead. Not one bit, he suspected.
Another six minutes passed before they reached the cover of the trees. Kincaid breathed a sigh of relief. “We’re going to have to run,” he said.
“How far is it?”
“Two miles.”
Haley gaped at him. “I won’t make it three miles in—” she did some quick math, “fourteen minutes. Are you crazy?”
“I know. So…you’re going to have to hold on.”
He tossed the bag of sweats to her and even before she grabbed them, he was pushing the change through his body as fast as he could. Pain seared across his vision, worse than usual. Every second mattered, and he felt his body wrench itself into unnatural positions as it altered.
“Get onnn,” he said, the words becoming deeper and twisted as his skull cracked and shifted, the snout emerging from the previous flatness of his face.
Haley backed away as he grew tremendously in size. White fur sprouted down his spine and then wrapped around to encase him in its protective warmth. Fingers became claws and his hands tripled in size.
As gallantly as he could manage once the pain faded, Kincaid dropped his forelegs to the ground in a mock bow, holding out one of them toward Haley to act as a sort of bridge or ladder. Hopefully.
The only way for them to make it to the border in time would be for her to hop on and hold tight to his fur as he charged through the forest. The noise would surely bring someone to investigate, but he hoped to be long gone by the time anyone realized just what the hell had happened there.
He’d not had time to explain the plan to her, and now that seemed to be backfiring as she stood staring at him, taking slow, tiny steps backward. Away from him.
No. Stop it. Get on! We have to run.
Gently, slowly, he lifted his paw from the ground, turned it over and did his best to beckon her forward.
“Y-y-you want me to get on?” she asked, her voice cracking.
Repressing the desire to express his frustration, he nodded. Slowly. The last thing he wanted to do was scare her off even more. There simply wasn’t time. Haley took a tentative step forward, then another.
“Y-you’re sure I’m safe?” she asked.
Kincaid lifted his giant head up and down some more, trying to smile, but keeping his teeth hidden.
“This is crazy,” Haley stated.
This time, he shook his head. It was, in fact, perfectly fine. She was in no danger from him. The other shifters on the property though, he couldn’t speak for them. Kincaid didn’t know a lot of them, not after being gone for so long. Many of them were newer, and a lot of those he’d grown up with were dead, killed in the uprising that had shaken his House to its core.
At long last, Haley took in a deep breath, approached him, and with a swiftness that surprised Kincaid, scrambled up his fur and onto his back, seating herself with her legs astride him as best she could, gripping his fur tight with both hands.
Not wasting any time, he got to his feet and started off. He moved slowly at first, giving Haley a chance to get used to the motion. She had the bag of clothing looped around one wrist, but both her hands were plunged deep into his fur, tiny fingers holding on as hard as she could.
Here we go, he thought to himself, ratcheting up the speed a little. Above him, Haley grunted—something he wasn’t going to inform her he’d heard—but then she settled in once more. The initial fear she’d felt was gone, and now he could sense her buckling in. Her legs squeezed tighter and he felt her hunch over him more, streamlining their approach.
Kincaid started to pour on the speed. Most normal bears couldn’t keep up the pace for this long, but then again, a shifter bear wasn’t anything like a modern-day bear, except in general shape and genealogy. He was bigger, faster, stronger, and far deadlier than any predator that walked the earth.
“Is this all you’ve got?” Haley growled fiercely into one of his ears. “We’re never going to make it if you’re plodding along like a turtle.”
Reconciling the tone with the Haley he knew took a few seconds in his mind, but when it did, he shot forward, hurtling through the forest at full speed. He dodged trees, leaped over bushes and plowed right through any shrub he deemed wouldn’t hurt Haley.
At one point, a thick tree-limb loomed across their path, but Kincaid just lowered his head and they went right through it, his powerful form leaving nothing but kindling in their wake.
He heard a startled yip from Haley, but she quieted herself down quickly. That was one thing he had to give her credit for. She was breaking the rules, something she was so adamantly against, for reasons he’d yet to discover. But when she committed to something, she committed.
They reached the edge of the forest with perhaps a minute or two to spare, and the stone wall loomed up in front of them. The ten-foot high construct spanned the entire property, running for miles upon miles, and it was now their final barrier to freedom, to clearing their names from this insane plot they’d been accused of masterminding.
“Kincaid,” Haley said as he didn’t slow down.
Instead, he sped up.
“Kincaid?”
He lowered his head and accelerated to sprint-mode. It wasn’t as impressive as it might have been if he’d not just run two miles, but it still would have caught anyone off guard to see a bear that size moving at over fifty miles per hour in a short dash.
“Kincaid!” Haley shrieked as he reached the wall and leaped over it.
They cleared it and landed on the far side with a heavy crash as he scrambled to keep himself upright. Haley somehow held on through it all, only sliding off when he came to a halt and indicated he needed her to get off.
Reaching into himself, he triggered the reaction once more, and his body returned to human proportions. Although in a hu
rry, his system was exhausted from the run, and he didn’t push it. The pain was enough, and he grunted several times as it lashed out at him while his body reshaped itself.
Eventually, it passed and Kincaid stood hunched over in his human form, breathing heavily. Steam curled up from his skin in the cold air as he bled the excess heat from his naked body.
“As interesting as that sight is,” Haley said wryly, walking up to him. “What’s the plan now?”
“We go to a safe house,” he said between breaths, trying to straighten out. She was right, they weren’t safe yet. Someone would have heard their passage, and they needed to go before they got closer.
“Right. Um. How?”
“We drive?”
“What?”
“That SUV Kaelyn was talking about, the one her guard so conveniently forgot about,” he explained, starting to walk toward where he assumed it was parked. “That was for us.”
“Oh. Right. Well, in that case, here,” she said, tossing the bag of clothes at him. “I know how much you hate driving naked, so put those on first.”
He snatched them out of mid-air and stuck his tongue out at her. They weren’t safe, and they had a long journey ahead of them to prove their innocence, but Kincaid was sure of one thing.
It was going to be a lot better with Haley at his side.
26
Kincaid turned off the road and into an apartment complex that had seen better days.
“Did you say safehouse or crackhouse?” she asked, looking around at the rundown walkups and the four-story building in the center of it all. “Because I must have misheard you.”
He parked in front of one of the units. “We’ll be safe here. I disabled the GPS tracker before we left, and this isn’t one of House Ursa’s. This is one of mine. I set it up a long time ago…just in case. Nobody knows about it.”
“Is it even still here?” she asked, wondering just what he’d needed to set this up for. What had Kincaid been involved in, in a past life?
“Yes. Now stop making a scene. We need to get inside. The rest of this place isn’t the greatest, and I’d really rather not have to deal with any of the locals getting an eye on you.”
Haley blinked. “Me? What do you mean?”
“You’re obviously not from around here,” he said, glancing at her up and down. “You sort of stand out. Your clothing, hair, mannerisms. It makes you a target. Come on.”
Without asking, he took her hand and guided her toward one of the walkups, down the lane and across from where he’d parked. Haley didn’t protest. After the moment they’d shared in the hallway, holding his hand no longer seemed like a big deal. If anything, she was worried about what might happen next between them.
Things were starting to confuse her, that was for sure. First, she was accused of turning against her employer, betraying them by working with the enemy. Then she broke the law—though that was a gray area, since nobody who’d arrested her was actually the police—and finally, she’d engaged in a passionate and blood-boiling makeout session with the guy who, for all she knew, could still be a criminal!
Now they were on the run, in an area she would never have visited on her own. It was confusing on so many levels that it threatened to make her head spin. Factor in the bit about him being able to change into a massive polar bear, and they had the makings of one hell of a made-for-tv documentary.
If they could not only survive but escape detection and somehow expose the real enemy... Oh yeah, an enemy that could be related to a mage. A magic user. Forgot about that little tidbit of information. As if the day couldn’t get any worse, or more confusing, they just had to throw that in!
She waited while Kincaid slipped a brick out of the wall and took a key from it, fiddling with the locks, then pushing the door open.
“Careful,” he said. “The door’s heavier than it seems.”
She pushed on it, trying to hold it open as she entered after him, only to find herself sliding back across the tiled entry. “Holy shit, what the hell is this thing made out of?” she asked, ducking out of the way as it closed with a solid thump.
“Solid steel plate armor,” he answered casually.
“Well, okay then. Is this entire thing encased in that?”
Kincaid—still barefoot after losing his clothes during the transition, she realized as she doffed her own—walked into the house and toward another door. “No, just underneath the floor to protect the basement. The rest of the house is kind of a shell.”
She followed after him, deciding to grab her shoes, just in case. The door led into what appeared to be a storage closet, but Kincaid reached down and slid the floor out of the way. The casual ease with which he slid the panel compared to the heavy grinding it made told her that he was perhaps even stronger than she’d thought.
“How strong are you?” she asked curiously as she followed him into the basement, pausing as he slid the panel shut behind them and secured it.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re stronger than a normal human, aren’t you?”
Flicking on the lights, he waved a hand at the illuminated area for her to see what they were working with.
“Yes,” he answered, following her down the stairs, to an area suitable for leaving her shoes and a jacket if she’d had one. “Much.”
“Oh.”
“I heal faster too.”
For the first time, Haley realized that many of the marks and bruises she’d seen on his face had faded since he’d first been deposited into the cell next to her. “Holy shit!” she gasped, reaching up to touch him, to examine his skin. There were still some areas that were purplish or yellow, but the swelling was gone, and many of the marks were completely gone.
“It’s a nice feature. Comes standard,” he joked, then suddenly wobbled, reaching out for the countertop of the kitchen that ran down the middle of the room, parallel to the stairs on the far wall.
“Kincaid?” She rushed to his side, wondering if she could support him if he fell.
“Fine,” he said, his voice unsteady. “Just…low energy. That run. Took a lot out of me.”
“What can I do?”
“Cupboard. Food.”
“I hate to break it to you,” she said, “but none of the food here is going to be any good after ten years.”
Kincaid rolled his eyes at her, as he slid to the ground, his face growing wan. “It’s not been that long. Probably some tuna, some soup. Things like that. Energy bars.”
Rummaging through the cupboard, she grabbed a selection and then dumped them in his lap for him to choose from, while she sat down next to him, munching on a trail-mix bar of some kind that had an expiry date still six months from then.
“Listen, Kincaid,” she said after a few minutes of silent eating. “I think it’s time we discussed why I came with you.”
The huge shifter turned his head to her, lifting an eyebrow. “You mean it wasn’t just to help me out?”
“No.”
He didn’t look surprised by her answer. Haley hadn’t expected him to be.
“I’m going to take the keys now,” she said, standing up and taking them from the counter where he’d dropped them. “You’re safe, you do you.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the authorities,” she said. “The proper ones. Ones that won’t arrest me for not having done anything wrong. I’m going to tell them that Kvoss has threatened me and imprisoned me in his house. I won’t say anything about the shifters or anything. But I’m going to have him stopped. I’m going to follow the rules, Kincaid.”
Even as she spoke the words, delivering the speech she’d practiced in her head over and over, Haley couldn’t help but question her own motives. Was this really the right move, involving the human authorities? What could they possibly do against a family as powerful as the Ursidae? Anything? Or would she just be putting herself in danger?
“You can’t do that,” Kincaid told her. “It won’t work. There’s no proo
f, and the authorities are rather unwilling to touch us. We…provide a lot of donations and funding.”
“You bribe the fucking cops, you mean,” she said dryly, understanding the implication. “Is there anyone in this town you don’t own?”
Kincaid, his features already looking better as he finished off his second can of tuna, nodded. “Yes.”
“I swear, if you say ‘you’, I’m going to lose it.”
The big man just shrugged, then stood up, facing her. “Haley, I want you to answer me something.”
She eyed him up and down, instantly wary at the soft tones, and the way he took a step closer to her. But only one.
“What do you mean?”
“I want you to tell me why you’re so scared?”
Another step.
She backed up this time, trying to keep distance between them. “What do you mean?”
“I want to know.”
“Know what?”
They both moved again, him coming closer, her backing up. Haley knew she was running out of real estate, and a moment later her shoulders bumped up against the wall. Kincaid was between her and the stairs. She doubted he would stop her if she was determined enough to leave, but for now, he was back in her personal space.
Just like he’d been in the tunnel…
“I want to know why you’re so scared of breaking the rules. What happened to you Haley? Let me in there,” he said softly, reaching up to caress the side of her head. “Let me help.”
She looked away, crossing her arms in front of her. “What makes you think you can help?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, taking one of her hands and peeling it back without letting go. “But I want to try. I want to…I want to be there for you. You’ve done so much for me. Let me do something for you.”
Looking the other way as he took her other hand, Haley stayed quiet. She didn’t want to let him in. To tell him why. It was so embarrassing.
“Please.”
He was right on top of her now, looming over her even as he held both hands tight. Nothing about it threatened her, however. If anything, she felt safe with him nearby. Safe and comfortable. Kincaid might be guilty, though she was beginning to heavily doubt there was any truth to that, but one thing she believed strongly was that he would never let anything bad happen to her.