by Zoe Chant
As far as Gannon could tell, Daisy seemed to be really enjoying herself. She was a little shy, but she joined in the banter, and she seemed to particularly like holding Saffron and Remy's cub.
As darkness began to fall, Alec touched Gannon's shoulder and motioned him aside.
"I've already talked to Axl," he said quietly. "When it's fully dark, we're going to go searching for Daisy's back trail and see if we can figure out where she came from, and who might be after her. Cody and Remy will stay here to keep an eye on the women and the cub. You can stay with them if you like, to defend your mate, but I thought you'd want to come with the hunters."
Gannon's lip curled back to expose his teeth—blunt human teeth, but when he ran the tip of his tongue over them, he could feel that the points had lengthened slightly. "Hunters," he said.
Alec's smile was brief and feral. "Thought so."
It was about a half hour later when Alec kissed his mate and rose quietly to fade into the darkness, followed a moment later by his brother Axl. Gannon had been hanging around at the edge of the firelight, content to listen to the conversation without really joining in, so it was easy to step back and let the darkness claim him.
He heard Daisy say, "Where is everyone going?"
"They'll be back soon," Tara told her. "Who wants marshmallows?"
Still, he couldn't help looking back. The circle of firelight in front of the cabin seemed warm and homey, and the way the light struck gold and orange highlights from Daisy's cascade of blond hair made him want to go back and touch it.
He couldn't believe she was his, couldn't believe he'd found something so precious and rare. And she wanted him.
He and his bear were in perfect accord: no one was going to hurt her, not ever again, and if someone had hurt her, they were going to pay for it.
The sound of low voices led him to Alec and Axl, who were undressing under a clump of pine trees down the hill. When Gannon had first come to live on the ranch, he hadn't realized they were brothers until Alec told him. They were both large, muscular men, but the resemblance stopped there. Axl was blond, cheerful, and friendly, while Alec was dark-haired, cool, and reserved.
Still, the sibling connection was more evident seeing them like this, especially since they were arguing in quiet voices when Gannon approached.
"If we do find evidence of a crime, I can't just forget the fact that I'm the county sheriff," Axl was saying.
"You're a shifter first," Alec replied, with a hint of alpha dominance in his voice. "We deal with threats to the ranch. The law can't be involved."
"Look, man, I have the same instincts you do. I get it. Our mates are here. Our clan is here. But if the threat to Daisy comes from the human world, then we can't just wade in as bears and start attacking people. Humans tolerate us, but they won't keep doing it if we pull crap like that."
"Funny thing," Alec said mildly. "You didn't have any problem with bears attacking people when Tara was in danger."
"That was a unique situation and you know it."
Gannon didn't bother to announce his presence. Alec, at least, knew he was there; the alpha was always aware of the presence of other members of the clan. Without speaking, Gannon stripped off his clothes in the darkness and got ready to shift, while the brothers continued arguing.
"The important thing is that if we have to fight, I'm in charge," Alec said. "We have to go in united, as a clan. And that means the alpha calls the shots."
Axl was silent. The brothers had gotten into a dominance fight over Tara, Gannon knew, and it had been interrupted before they could finish it, which meant it had never really been resolved. Axl had never deferred to Alec the way their cousins Remy and Cody instinctively did. Alec was the older brother and therefore had taken on the mantle of clan alpha after their parents' deaths, but Axl, like Alec, was an alpha by nature; he disliked taking orders. Luckily for Alec, Axl was a laid-back guy and didn't particularly want to be in charge. In the old days, or in a more traditional clan like the one Gannon had grown up in, Axl would probably have left to start his own clan somewhere else. Most alphas, traditionally at least, didn't like having other alphas around.
Alec was unique in that he not only tolerated one other alpha in his clan—Axl—but also a second one. Gannon was an alpha too, or at least he had once been. He'd put that part of himself aside a long time ago, abandoning it along with his old life, and although his bear instinctively bristled at deferring to Alec, Gannon overrode his bear's protests. Accepting life under the rule of another alpha was the cost of living here. The closest he'd ever come to challenging Alec was today, over Daisy. But he didn't think it would have come to an actual dominance fight. He didn't want to fight Alec, and most particularly, he didn't want to beat Alec.
When he had come to the ranch alone and bleeding, driven out by his clan, Alec had taken him in. Gannon's bear might react instinctively to Alec's alpha nature, wanting to challenge him, but Gannon had no intention of doing so. He owed Alec too much. If it had come to that, he would simply have left, along with Daisy.
Axl, however, had no such issue. He loved his brother, but he didn't owe him the way Gannon did.
None of them needed an alpha challenge right now, though. The night was slipping away, and they weren't getting any closer to uncovering the mystery of how Daisy had come to be on the ranch. Gannon shifted pointedly into his bear, and huffed impatiently at them.
"I'm in charge," Alec told his brother.
"You're in charge," Axl admittedly reluctantly. "But I'm telling you right now that I'm not going to do anything that goes against my oaths as a law enforcement agent."
"Fair enough," Alec agreed, and he shifted. His bear was a huge chestnut-brown grizzly. Axl shifted a moment later to a dark blond grizzly, its shaggy fur a few shades darker than his hair as a human.
Gannon's bear was dark brown, and he knew that his dark fur made him all but invisible in the night—just how he liked it. Axl's blond bear was visible as a pale blur in the darkness. Next to him, Alec's eyes glinted in the starlight. He swung his head toward Gannon, giving him permission to lead the search.
Gannon was already scenting the night air. He began to lumber down the hill, sniffing at the dew-damp grass in the high mountain pasture. Even in his human shape, his senses were sharper than human, but as a bear, he could pick out the individual scents of different kinds of grass. Bears had sharper noses than bloodhounds. The fresh trail left by Axl and Alec when they'd walked down the hill on human legs stood out so clearly that it might as well be marked with paint. Older and fainter scent trails crisscrossed the pasture by the hundreds: squirrels and foxes and deer, cattle and dogs and humans.
The cattle were bedded down for the night, their scent hot and fresh in Gannon's nostrils. The presence of the three huge bears caused a ripple to pass through the herd, but they were so used to bears—at least these particular bears—that none of them bothered to get up.
Daisy's scent was a faint, elusive tickle in his nose. He entered the edge of the pine forest that covered the mountain's slopes like a skirt draping down from the high, treeless peaks, and almost immediately hit upon her trail. She must have wandered up the mountainside from here, eventually coming out into the cabin's yard. Right now he was concerned with where she'd come from.
The three bears followed Daisy's scent trail through the open pine woodland. Her trail wound gradually downslope, passing high above the ranch house and continuing onward. They must be getting close to the edge of the ranch here, Gannon thought, approaching the boundary of Alec's territory. He noticed Alec pause to rub himself on a tree, leaving clumps of coarse brown fur caught in the bark. It wasn't merely the satisfying scratching of an itch, but also a signal to any other shifters or ordinary bears who might be in the area: This place is mine. I've claimed it.
The difference in Alec was visible when they crossed the invisible boundary of his territory. He became tenser and more alert, his head raised to scent the wind, while Gannon kept his nos
e down to follow Daisy's trail. Not that he needed to. It had been less than twenty-four hours since she'd come this way, and there had been no rain to wash scent away. But he didn't want to miss any clues.
When he'd first picked up her trail, she had been moving in something very close to a straight line, as if a beacon was drawing her to the cabin. The farther back he followed her, the more erratic her tracks became, a meandering ramble rather than a purposeful line.
And Gannon could smell occasional whiffs of her blood. He was fairly sure it was only from scratching her feet on brambles and rocks, but it still raised his temper, making his bear want to lash out at the people who had done this to her.
He was surprised at how far she'd come. She had been walking for miles. It must have taken her most of the night to get to his cabin. They were traveling into truly wild country now, heading away from the road and farms, ever deeper into the mountains.
A shudder ran through Gannon as he realized the direction they were going. If they kept moving, they would soon be in the clan territory of his old shifter clan, the Black Mountain bears.
There were not very many truly wild shifter clans left in North America. Most of the ones that still existed were bear clans and wolf packs deep in the Canadian wilderness. But Gannon's clan was, or had been, one of the old clans, the ones who clung to the old ways in the most remote patches of wilderness they could find.
The scar across his face seemed to burn. The pain wasn't real, he knew—it was only memory that stung him, the reminder of claws tearing across his muzzle on the day he was stripped of his alpha status and cast out.
If he went back into the Black Mountain clan's territory, they would kill him. And they'd have every right. He didn't even think Alec would stand in their way. It was shifter law, and Alec was traditional enough to respect it.
Maybe they won't know, he thought. Maybe if we skirt the edge of it, they'll never have an opportunity to discover us ...
They came to an old logging road, little more than a narrow, overgrown track between dark ranks of pines. Gannon smiled grimly, pulling his lips back from his sharp predator's teeth. He knew this road. It was a remnant of one of the human world's few attempts to log these mountains. They'd been driven out, for the bear clans had been guardians of the mountains since time immemorial; only the road and a few rusting hunks of equipment remained as a testimonial to their failure.
And this old road also marked the edge of the Black Mountain clan's territory. If Gannon set a paw in the woods beyond, his life would be forfeit.
Fortunately, Daisy's trail didn't cross the road; instead it turned, coming down the road out of the mountains. Gannon thought about what it meant that she hadn't continued following the road, instead turning off into what to her must have looked like deep woods. But that was the direction of Gannon's cabin, and she'd walked unerringly through miles of forest to get there.
He needed no stronger confirmation that she was his true, fated mate.
Gannon, Alec, and Axl followed the road up a steep hill. Each step brought back memories to Gannon. He'd patrolled the edge of this territory many times as a young alpha. Just up ahead, the road would take a sharp jog to the right, crossing a fast-running mountain stream—the headwaters of one of the tributaries of the Pinerock River—and then it would enter Black Mountain clan territory.
And here was the turn. The road entered the water, crossing on the shallow sand and gravel with no bridge, and came out the other side. Old ruts remained from vehicles driving through the water and digging into the soft bank in years past.
Gannon stopped at the edge of the stream. He set a paw in it. Water churned around his massive claws. It's only water, he thought. It can't hurt you. But what was waiting for him on the other side, in those dark woods, definitely could hurt him.
Beside him, Alec shifted abruptly to his human shape.
"Gannon, if you turn back, no one will think less of you," he said quietly.
Of course Alec knew they were entering another clan's territory, and he knew which one. As the clan alpha, he would be familiar with all the other clans in the mountains.
Gannon shifted back to a man, crouching in the edge of the water with his hand resting on the gravel bottom. The night seemed suddenly much colder and darker. "I'm not scared," he said.
"I never thought you were. But we all understand if you can't continue."
Still bear-shaped, Axl nodded.
Gannon shook his head. "It's for Daisy. I'm going."
He shifted back, effectively putting an end to the argument, and waded into the water. After a moment, Alec and Axl followed.
On the far side of the stream, as they proceeded cautiously along the old road, Gannon's nose brought him an array of smells that he wasn't expecting. He smelled freshly cut timber, diesel exhaust, and the damp, musty smell of freshly cut sod. Smells like a construction site or something, he thought, and then they came around a bend in the road and found a brand-new road cutting across it, like a gash through the forest.
Gannon stopped in shock. Of all the things he was expecting to find in the home territory of his very traditional clan, a fresh-cut road was so alien that he thought at first he'd taken a wrong turn. But no—he knew these woods even better than he knew the territory of Alec's clan. He was home. Except ... home had changed.
The road was very recent. It must have been cut this summer. Bulldozers had ripped a gash through the woods, pushing trees and stumps and ragged hunks of sod into heaps along the edge of the standing forest.
Alec looked at Gannon, his bear's eyes glittering in the moonlight. Gannon could only shake his head. He'd known nothing of this.
Cautiously, the bears ventured across the open expanse of the new road. Daisy's trail picked up on the other side, where the old road seemed even more overgrown and narrower. Eventually, they padded into the overgrown yard of a tumbledown cabin.
Gannon remembered this cabin back when it was still in relatively decent shape. It had belonged to a wolf pack who were on good terms with the Black Mountain bears, and used to come out here to hunt occasionally when they got bored with their regular hunting territory. But even back in Gannon's day, they only came rarely, and the cabin was starting to show its age. Now it was on the verge of falling in, the roof covered with moss and the windows broken and boarded over. Weeds and grasses had grown waist-high in the yard.
Mashed-down trails through the weeds indicated that the yard had been traversed by different kinds of animals over the course of the summer. Gannon's sharp nose smelled a variety of scents: deer, rabbit, bear, even some human traces. He couldn't tell if any of them had been shifters. It was hard to smell anything but Daisy, though. Her scent was very fresh here.
Although some of the other smells were recent, the cabin did not seem to be occupied at the moment, by humans or anything else. The door stood a few inches ajar. Gannon shifted and reached for the handle, then paused, staring at it. The wood of the frame was splintered. It looked as if it had been recently broken.
He got himself together, and opened the door.
The inside of the cabin was pitch dark, with only a few thin spears of moonlight able to penetrate around the plywood sheets covering the windows. The door let in enough light for Gannon to be able to see a mattress on the floor with some pieces of rope scattered around on it. Daisy's smell was everywhere. Even with his human nose, he could smell her. When he shifted back to a bear, the smell leaped out so strongly that it almost seemed as if he should be able to touch her.
Gannon snarled, and then roared loud enough to shake the timbers of the cabin. Dust sifted down from the ceiling, and a startled bat took flight from under the eaves.
He shifted back, shaking with fury. "They kept her prisoner," he snarled. "They kept her here!"
How could his clan have allowed such a travesty to happen? They weren't perfect, far from it, but protecting the mountains and everything in them was supposed to be what they did. Standards must have fallen very badly
since his time, Gannon thought with fury, if they hadn't even known that their ancestral clan lands were being used by a kidnapper.
New roads on his clan's land, and now kidnappings ... what was happening to the clan he'd once protected?
Alec shifted, and gripped his arm. "Settle down," he said harshly, with an alpha's bite to his voice. "We aren't supposed to be here, remember? We need to look at everything, and then go."
Axl had his big, shaggy head thrust under the edge of the cabin's porch. He pulled it back with something clutched in his jaws, which he dropped on the edge of the porch before shifting human again. "Smells like your mate," he said.
Gannon pulled his arm free of Alec's grip and leaned down to pick up what Axl had found. It was a backpack, and he knew at first glance that it was Daisy's, even without his bear's confirmation. It was a very girly hiking pack printed with a pink camo pattern. From the visible wear and stains, it had seen a lot of use. One of the straps had been neatly mended with pink thread, and there was a smiley-face charm dangling from the zipper pull.
A deep growl rumbled in his chest.
"That's clear evidence of a crime, right there," Axl said. "She was brought here and held against her will."
"Yeah, and what are you going to do about it?" Alec demanded. "I don't know the details of the law like you do, but I doubt if you can get a search warrant by telling a judge that you were out for a naked stroll and just happened to stumble across evidence of a crime while trespassing."
"I'm with Alec," Gannon snarled, griping the backpack tightly. "This is a matter for shifter justice, not human justice."
Axl opened his mouth to argue, then broke off. "Guys," he said quietly. "We have company."
A bear had come out of the woods, and was watching them silently from across the clearing. It was a black bear, large for its kind, but small compared to the grizzlies.
Anger at Daisy's kidnappers made it hard for Gannon to think clearly, but he had a startled moment of realization: it was a female bear, and she was young. Just as he was thinking that, she shifted to her human shape, a slender young woman with long black hair.