He felt completely different about it now.
Life was far too precious now. He had a new family and they needed him and perhaps less importantly, though it didn’t feel like, he had an entirely new world to discover in Jessie and these six cubs. He wasn’t about to go drifting off into the great beyond any time soon, even if he was more than willing to lay down his life if he had to in order to protect them.
He was in daze as Jessie leaned against him, holding his hand, and he was a little started when she quietly said, “You know what I’ve been thinking about?”
“What’s that, love?” Cody said.
“Sometimes in the evening or on my days off, I’d be with the kids just coloring or playing games or reading,” Jessie said softly. “Or making dinner. Jason was so scared and shy in the beginning. It was two weeks before he said a word to me. Chris was just as scared but he’d try to be so tough and Molly... I’ve never met anybody as strong as Molly. And Sophie and the twins were sort of freaked out without realizing why they were freaked out and then they were okay. And then they were all so... delightful. Not always perfectly behaved, of course. And some of that is because of how they were treated before. It was really hard. But they’re so sweet and so... they’re so fascinating to watch as they learn things or make up silly stories and games. And I couldn’t figure out... if their sleuth was going to treat them so horribly, beating them and making them scrounge for their own food and live in that cave and acting like they had no real parents, what was the point?”
Cody’s heart cracked in his chest as she spoke. Sometimes his mind did wander to the cubs’ life before Jessie had found them and he hated imagining it. Anything he thought of was likely to be even worse than the reality. “Did you figure out the point?”
“Well, they just wanted numbers,” Jessie said. “They don’t care about the cubs as individuals, they just want to add more bears to their sleuth. They think by treating them that way, they’ll grow up mean and tough. This means the adults running the sleuth now probably grew up that way too. They think that’s the only way it can be. Brutal, cold, unloving. It made me want to protect them even more, not just for how they’d be treated now but to protect them from becoming like that someday, that kind of brutal person.”
Cody thought about that and was sort of happy to find he somewhat disagreed, although he couldn’t blame Jessie for thinking that way after what she’d seen. “That doesn’t always happen though,” Cody said. “People can break out of those cycles. I’ll bet some bears have left that sleuth or run away as kids. Maybe that’s why they’re so intent on getting the kids back. They probably lose the ones who manage to break free and know that it doesn’t have to be this way. I mean look at Molly and Chris, they’re already twelve and ten. Those two don’t have a violent bone in their little bodies.”
“That’s true!” Jessie leaned against his shoulder and turned her head to kiss his cheek. “You’re right. Thanks for saying it. They’re special, our cubs.”
Our cubs.
“Yeah,” he said. “They are.”
The house the cubs were being held in now was a huge old shambling place in the middle of nowhere. Connor spotted it from half a mile out and there was an incline in the road up to the place where a couple other houses sat nearby but very little tree cover for them to hide out in if they were going to sneak an attack. He parked as far away as they could stand and five of them just sat in the van for a minute, silently glaring at the big old farmhouse in the distance that looked like it was about to crumble and which housed the cubs.
If they’ve hurt them...
The end of that sentence involved a lot of blood in Cody’s mind.
“We’re not going to be able to sneak up,” Connor mused. “We’ll have to shift and just run at em’. Ambush.”
“The house is at ground level,” Nathan said.
Everyone waited for him to expand further and when he didn’t, Eric prodded him. “And... ?”
“I mean there’s no porch and the foundation looks really shallow. There’s an incline down to it too.”
Connor said, “Where are you going with this?”
“We ram the house,” Nathan said. “Full speed down that incline. You can tell it’s the living room side because the chimney’s right there where the fireplace would be but it’s way on the left giving us a nice gap. The house is a shambles. Let’s say most of them are in the living room. We might take out a bunch just ramming em’ or any way we’ll do a lot of damage. And the cubs are probably locked away in a living room, right? If history is any judge.”
“That's a big probably,” Cody said darkly. He glanced at Jessie, who was sitting very still in her seat, squinting down the road at the house in the middle of a hilly field backed by green mountains. She looked like she was trying to move something with her mind or hear a frequency that he couldn’t.
Finally, Jessie nodded and said, “Let’s do it. Nathan’s right. Let’s ram the goddamn thing.”
“Are you sure?” Cody squeezed her hand.
She met his gaze and nodded once. “Positive.”
“What about those other elders?” Cody said. “Could they be there? If we kill a bunch of elders, that’s it. There will be a war with their sleuths and we’ll lose.”
“They won’t be there,” Connor said. “They’re still at the lodge.”
“Well, Connor?” Eric said.
If Connor decided against the plan, it just wasn’t going to happen no matter what kind of fuss any of them put up. That was just the way it was with alphas.
Connor was quiet and Cody looked into the rearview, catching his eye. Connor raised an eyebrow at him and Cody nodded.
“We’ll do it,” Connor said. “Here’s the thing. Everyone’s gotta keep their head. I’m gonna charge right through the wall and stop. The second I stop everyone’s gotta move and jump out and shift, start attacking. As fast as possible. The element of surprise here is all we have.”
Eric looked at Nathan and said, “This is the craziest shit I’ve ever heard of.”
“It’ll work,” Nathan said under his breath. “Trust me.”
Everyone nodded at each other and Connor started up the van.
There was no countdown and nobody was precious about it. The most nerve-wracking part to Cody’s mind was everyone unbuckling their seatbelts so they wouldn’t have to fumble with them when they jumped out of the car. But they were shifters, and strong.
We can do this, Cody thought.
Connor revved up the van for about three seconds and then he hit the gas and the van began charging across the field toward the house.
22
Jessie
Jessie saw her life flash before her eyes as the van charged toward the shambling old house. She shut her eyes and Cody held her hand, her heart pounding in her chest. All five of them were quiet, except for Nathan who, despite his confidence, was muttering obscenities under his breath.
When Nathan had spoken the plan aloud, it had sounded like the stupidest and most dangerous idea she’d ever heard of, only because there was no guarantee that the cubs weren’t in the front of the house. Jessie had flashed on an image of herself hanging out with the cubs in the cabin, reading aloud to them with Sophie in her lap as she reached out and grabbed for the book and Molly whispered for her to stop. Molly had mentioned that a couple of times, some of them had lived in an actual house. The set-up really wasn’t much different than the cabin except that they were never allowed to come out of their rooms. They had been squatters, Jessie realized. Eventually, the sleuth had returned to the woods.
They’ll be upstairs, she thought.
She had to sit with the idea for a moment and think about how sure she was and what she was really willing to risk on that sureness.
They’ll be upstairs.
So now they were careening toward the house.
The crash, when it came, felt like the collapse of a world. The house looked so small from far away. It looked fragile, as if
made of cardboard. But when the van crashed through the wall, it felt like they were all in the middle of an explosion.
The one thing Jessie was not sure of was how fast she could move. As it turned out, her body was more confident than her brain was. Or else, it was her bear taking over. The second the van stopped with a lurch that made them all pitch forward and then get thrown back in their seats, they were all moving. Nathan and Cody lunged for the van doors, throwing them open.
It was chaos.
The van had definitely slammed into some bodies that were now on the floor and everyone else was screaming and shouting. Just as quickly, Jessie and the Strauss brothers shifted into the bear forms and went on the attack, tackling anyone they saw with tooth and claw.
The blood spilled freely and Jessie tasted more than one rough woods bear in her mouth and took more than one hit, once the shifters left standing from the van’s charge had the presence of mind to shift themselves. There would be little left of the house as they wrestled across the floor, splintering furniture, the roars of all the bears thundering in the confined space and claws getting caught in dusty old carpets and shredding upholstery and wood alike.
It was a blur of a battle. Jessie had little sense of who she was fighting at any given time. But she knew what the Strauss brothers smelled like and that was how she avoided accidentally attacking any of them. The rough woods bears all had a pungent type of scent to them that was so sharply different from the pleasantly musky fragrance that Cody and his brothers gave off or from the unmistakable and distinct sweet scent of the cubs, that it offered a kind of protection as she swiped with her claws and threw herself at any bear giving off the wrong odor.
Somewhere in the distance, Jessie heard another car and a couple minutes later, two much older bears came charging in to join the fight. Those were the two elders sympathetic to their cause, Jessie supposed and she felt a flash of pride and gratitude for them.
They had taken out most of the sleuth, all either knocked out or too badly injured to fight or dead on the floor, when Jessie saw one of the last standing shifting into human form and ran up the stairs.
The cubs.
Jessie didn’t think before she lumbered up the stairs after a tall, older woman with silvery gray hair. She had heard the woman yelling to the sleuth’s alpha who Connor was fighting now. This woman was one of the leaders.
This woman had hurt her cubs.
The stairway was far too narrow for her huge frame and some of the fragile old steps collapsed under her feet but she made it to the landing and to the shifter who screamed as she lunged and turned her head to take his neck neatly in her vise of a jaw. Jessie didn’t hesitate, sinking her teeth into the tender flesh and wrenching the shifter back and forth. She could feel the woman trying to shift, her pushing at the soft casing of her human skin but in seconds, it was too late.
Jessie dropped the still warm body from her jaws and clamored over it, bumping into the wall as she followed the sweet scent of the cubs.
She didn’t shift back until she found them all, having knocked down a rickety bedroom door with one swipe of her paw. Inside, the kids were in various states. Jason and Chris were shifter, standing protectively in front of Molly in her human form who cradled little Sophie in her arms, the tiny bear cubs of the twins shrinking back behind them, quivering.
“Jessie,” Molly murmured, and ran to her. Jessie knelt down and ducked her great head and Molly wrapped an arm around her, sinking her little hand into Jessie’s thick fur as she clutched the crying baby.
Downstairs, the ruckus had died down.
The fight was over. The cubs were safe.
On the drive back to the lodge, Jessie held the twins in her lap. Jason and Chris were squeezed between her and Cody and Molly sat up in front with Nathan and Eric who were doing their damndest to make her laugh despite the cubs’ traumatizing ordeal. They stopped for burgers on the way back and Jessie could only chuckle and shake her head as the kids were immediately transfixed by french fries and milkshakes as if everything must be fine now because there was ice cream. Kids were deceptively strong she supposed, and most especially bear cubs. But that was why you had to be so careful with them.
“We’re okay now,” Cody said to her as she poked at her onion rings. “I swear, we’re okay now.”
Jessie wasn’t inclined to completely believe that yet until things were cleared up with the other elders and they all agreed that cubs would be better with her. And why would they do that, when she and the Strausses had just taken out most of the sleuth?
“We have those two elders on our side though,” Connor told her when she expressed her concerns. By then, they were driving up to the lodge and Jessie’s heart was pounding in anticipation, worrying about what came next. “Those elders really put themselves on the line. If we go down, they have to go down with us and the others aren’t going to like that. The others will fall in line. They just have to be convinced.”
“I hope you’re right,” Jessie said, and held both twins a little tighter in her arms.
Back at the lodge, they all attracted some attention. Nobody was too badly injured, Connor had taken the worst hits but insisted he would heal quickly, but they were all a bit beaten up and scratched and in no shape to get back to work right away even if they didn’t have this business with the elders to attend to.
Jessie saw the elders as she lingered near the dining room with the kids. Cody told them they’d go up to his suite. For once, the kids would be treated to some luxury. Jessie held one twin on her hip, the other at her side, grasping her hand. In the dining room, the elders got to their feet, already yelling as Connor approached in his bloodied shirt with the other two elders in tow.
“C’mon,” Cody said in her ear. He patted her shoulder. “Connor will take care of this. I promise. Let’s go up to my place. Rest up.”
It didn’t even take very long before Connor had apparently taken care of it.
Cody was exhausted but he couldn’t seem to sit still. He took Jessie and the kids up to his suite and just as quickly drove up to the cabin to pick up clothes and Sophie’s pull-ups and wipes and anything else they might need.
The kids were hyper. Jessie was on the verge of falling asleep on her feet but she made a pot of coffee and rallied as the kids bounced off the walls of Cody’s place, absolutely bewitched by all the luxury. Molly, who could often be shy, kept begging to get more crushed ice from the machine, she was so fascinated with it, until Jessie told her she didn’t need to ask for permission and handed her a bucket.
Jessie made Jason and Chris take baths first and they left the bathroom in a mess, though later Cody laughed at the very idea that he might care, and then Jessie bathed the little ones. The cubs had cable and internet on a big TV and there was room service happy to bring more french fries right to their door. They were exuberant and they worked themselves into a frenzy that Jessie could not stop but eventually just observed while slumped on the couch. But eventually, they tired themselves out and all fell asleep in a heap on Cody’s big bed.
Jessie didn’t mean to fall asleep on the couch, but she woke up late that night under a fluffy throw blanket, Cody on the other end of the couch with her socked feet in his lap as he read something on his iPad. She poked his knee, yawning and rolling over on her back.
“How long have I been asleep?” She murmured.
“A few hours. You missed all the excitement.” He patted her feet. “Guess what?”
“What?”
“Couple of the hold-out elders came by to talk to the cubs-”
“What?” Jessie sat up with a start, her heart already racing and Cody shushed her.
“Whoa, sorry. It’s okay, it’s all good. They just wanted to talk to Molly and Chris, get an idea of their history from them which they should’ve done in the first place. So Molly and Chris start talking about being trapped in the cave all the time, not knowing who their parents are, getting hit and starved... Pretty soon everybody is crying. Long st
ory short, you’re a hero and they’re our kids now. Your kids... cubs. I mean.” He cleared his throat, looking a little nervous. “Anyway. We’re gonna be fine. I wanted to tell you that.”
Her heart was soaring. It threatened to beat out of her chest and she lunged forward and threw her arms around Cody. “Oh my God... ”
“I know!” Cody laughed as she peppered his face with kisses. “Oh my God, Cody! This means they can finally go to school and they don’t have to hide and I can take them to the park! I can take them anywhere!”
“We can?” Cody said hopefully.
She kissed him on the mouth. “We can. We can take our cubs anywhere.”
“You’re my mate,” Cody said, his voice cracking as he returned the kiss. “And you guys are my family. I hope that’s cool with you.”
“I think I’ll live,” she whispered, and didn’t let him go until she’d fallen asleep again.
Epilogue
Jessie
Three months later...
“Wow, you really fixed the place up!” Nathan clapped Cody on the back, his baby daughter in a carrier on his chest. His mate, Alanna, stood at his side in the foyer of the house on Everly Street that Jessie was still getting the hang of.
“Jessie!” Alanna said. “Wow, you look great!”
They chatted and Jessie led Alanna to the kitchen where Molly was at the kitchen table listening to earbuds as she poured over math homework. She worked so hard at school, it sometimes worried Jessie, but then Molly’s eyes would light up as she explained to Jessie some new thing she’d learned. She genuinely loved school and had never been given such a stable environment to learn in. So Jessie let her throw herself into her schoolwork to her heart’s content and just made sure she took a break to play or relax from time to time.
Cody (Strauss Bear Shifter Brothers 0f Colorado Book 3) Page 12