by Zoe Chant
It was so desperately frustrating.
But one thing she did remember was ... bears?
Maybe she was just getting the revelation about Gannon mixed up with her actual memories. Her dreams weren't necessarily a direct window on her past. She might be dreaming about bears now because she'd seen Gannon and the Tanner brothers in their bear shapes earlier.
But it hadn't felt like that. It felt like she was remembering things. She tried to clutch at those memories, and suddenly her eyes snapped open with a gasp.
She did remember.
She remembered crawling out of the tent in the chill light of dawn, startled—but not frightened—by the presence of a massive bear in the middle of her campsite. She'd known there were bear shifters in these woods. It was one reason why she was here, though the exact connection continued to frustratingly elude her.
Looking around her campsite, on her hands and knees beside the cold ashes of her fire, she watched more bears come out of the woods. They surrounded her now, and she was starting to feel afraid, although she told herself not to be. These weren't real bears. They were shifter bears, which meant they were people, just like her.
"Hi," she ventured. "It's nice to meet you. My name is—"
But she didn't get any further, as one of the bears lunged forward, his big paw slapping her to the ground.
Daisy stared up in shock and fear. Another bear loomed in her field of view. This was a smaller bear with an unnatural-looking hump on its shoulder—a small pack, Daisy realized as she stared up at it, with the straps extended to go all the way around the bear's shaggy body.
Even as she noticed this, the bear changed. The dark shaggy outline dwindled into the body of a young woman with long dark hair. The pack, its straps absurdly long, dropped off her shoulder, and she caught it with practiced ease.
The other bear jerked his head at her and grunted.
"I'm sorry," the woman said as she took something out of the pack. It was a case. She opened it and took out a needle. "This will only hurt for a minute, I promise."
Daisy tried to scramble backwards, but she ran into the shaggy bulk of another bear behind her. They were all around her. Great furry paws pushed down her arm so the woman could press the needle into the crook of her arm ...
Her eyes snapped open, and she sat up in bed, shocked.
The bears had kidnapped her.
It was all coming back now, in bits and pieces. Everything was still so mixed up that she couldn't untangle it—memories of her childhood mixed up with recollections from college, snatches of songs she'd heard and books she'd read ... it was all a giant mess. But it was there, all of her memories, with more coming back every minute. It was almost too much. Daisy pressed her hands to her temples through the tangled mass of her hair, trying to get the cascade under control and focus on the most recent and important memories.
"Why was I in the woods?" she asked aloud, as if questioning her own mind. The only answer that came to her was the red-haired woman, Felice, smiling at her and saying, Be careful, Daisy.
Daisy. So people really did call her that. And memory served up an answer: it was a childhood nickname, because of her love of flowers and bright colors, and she'd always preferred it to her real name. Her father still called her Jenny, but everyone else called her Daisy, and she used the name Daisy for the articles that she wrote.
Articles ...
I'm a writer!
But there was no time for that. The important thing was, she knew who had kidnapped her, even if she still didn't know why—and she was pretty sure she hadn't known even before she lost her memories. The bears had taken her and held her hostage, and she'd escaped ... with the help of the young woman who'd drugged her in the first place, who had started feeling sorry for her. All those memories were still very hazy and confused, and she wasn't sure if she would ever get them back, because of the drugs. But she remembered the dark-haired woman ripping off her bonds with inhuman strength, and whispering apologies as she helped Daisy's wobbly steps out of the cabin where she had been held prisoner.
"I'm sorry," the woman's voice whispered in her memories. "My name is Sofia. I didn't want to hurt you. All I can do is try to make it right. If you go in that direction, you'll leave my clan's territory and find humans like yourself. But hurry—hurry before they catch you!"
And she remembered running, as the twigs and brambles snatched at her bare legs. Running, until she came to Gannon's cabin, and safety ...
Daisy threw off the covers and began to dress quickly. She had to find Gannon and tell him. She scrambled back into her borrowed clothes, putting on the flower-print skirt, which she knew now was exactly the sort of thing she would have worn before losing her memory.
She wasn't sure if she would ever be exactly the person she had been before. But that was all right. A lot had changed in her life. She'd met Gannon, and she wouldn't take that back for anything.
She opened the door and hurried out into the living room. She got there just in time to see the front door bang shut, and catch a glimpse of someone she thought was Charmian disappearing through it.
Daisy opened the door quietly and peeked out. Her breath seemed to freeze in her throat.
Charmian and Alec were on the porch just in front of her. Alec had stepped in front of his mate, keeping Charmian behind him.
And the yard was full of bears.
For Daisy, it brought back her newly rediscovered memory of the bears surrounding her at her campsite. She'd thought at the time that she had never seen so many bears together. But that was nothing at all compared to this. There had been perhaps six or seven bears in her campsite. Here ... she couldn't even count them all. There were large bears and smaller bears and absolutely huge bears. Most were grizzlies, though she also saw a number of black bears and even some more unusual kinds of bears, including a polar bear, shockingly pale among the darker bears, and a sun bear with a white chest patch.
The sight of all of them together was so staggering that she forgot to be afraid. All she felt was wonder. It seemed to Daisy that she was privy to something magical, something that most humans couldn't even imagine. There was a hushed and expectant feeling of awe in the air that brought her another sudden, unexpected memory, of her mother taking her to church on Christmas Eve—the hugeness of it, with the candles all lit up, and the air filled with a sense of shivering expectation and delight.
Distracted by the gathering of bears, Daisy didn't even see Gannon until his deep voice broke the silence.
"I'm here," he said, his slow quiet tones somehow carrying to every corner of the yard—and that was when she saw him, at the foot of the steps. He'd walked out a little way into the moonlit yard. The bears were arranged in front of him in a loose horseshoe like spectators at a sporting event. They were crowded around at the sides, too, some of them having climbed on top of trucks or pieces of farm equipment. Daisy couldn't help thinking of little children at a parade, clambering onto garden walls or their parents' shoulders to see better. The thought made her smile, but it dropped away slowly as she became aware of the undercurrent of menace in the air.
There was wonder and magic, true. But these bears were not here for a benign purpose. When Gannon spoke, a hostile ripple seemed to flicker through them. Hackles went up, and round furry ears were lowered against their skulls.
A gigantic bear strode through the gathering. He—and Daisy could tell somehow that it was a he—was so enormous that the other bears, huge as some of them were, seemed small next to him. He moved with a slow, rolling stride, and she could see in the moonlight that his glossy, silver-tipped hide was marred with old scars.
Gannon was a big guy, but the giant bear dwarfed him. On the porch, Daisy was frozen. She couldn't move as the bear stopped in front of Gannon and loomed over him.
Then, suddenly, it shifted into a man as mountainous as his bear. He must be seven feet tall, standing a full head taller than Gannon. He was so broad and muscular that he seemed to be carved out of
granite. His hair cascaded over his shoulders and almost to the middle of his back. It was streaked with silver, which made Daisy realize that he wasn't a young man. He must be in his fifties or perhaps even his sixties. He was as fit and strong as any twenty-year-old she'd ever seen, though—and a whole lot more so than most.
"Gannon," the huge man rumbled, in a voice like boulders grinding together.
"Uncle Zeus," Gannon said, his deep voice even.
Daisy stared, trying to recognize Gannon in the other man's face. Maybe there was a slightly resemblance. It was hard to tell; she'd gotten so used to Gannon with the scar that she wasn't even sure, and didn't care, what he might have looked like before he got it.
"Do not claim kinship with me, Gannon," the big man returned. "Not if this is what you've come to."
Gannon didn't flinch, at least not outwardly, but Daisy could somehow sense his pain and shame at those words.
"I—" he began, but Zeus's voice rolled over his.
"Don't try to defend yourself. You were the best of your generation once. I thought you might even succeed me, in time, as the Guardian of the Mountains, the alpha among alphas. And look at you now." His voice was like a whipcrack. He reached out and seized Gannon's face in his massive, callused fingers—and Gannon let him, though Daisy saw Alec tense up. There was nothing gentle about that touch. Zeus tilted Gannon's face so that the moonlight lit up his scar, and the watching bears reacted like predators confronted with prey, some of them lurching eagerly to their feet, others snarling.
"Now you aren't even an alpha. You are an exile, forced to beg for scraps from the weak clans of the valleys, who bow and scrape to humans. Do not dare claim kinship with me. You are no blood of mine. Your father would be ashamed—"
"Be silent!"
The voice that rang across the yard, cutting Zeus off in mid-bluster, was Alec's. Daisy gasped aloud as the alpha of the Circle B bears took a slow step forward. Charmian started to follow him, reaching out to catch at his hand. Alec reached back, gave her hand a quick squeeze, and then walked down the steps, slowly and deliberately, stopping at the bottom.
It made Daisy aware of what a contrast there was between Alec and these wild bears. Alec was a big, outdoorsy country guy, a rancher—but he also looked ... civilized, she thought. His hair was neatly cut, and he wore a plaid shirt with the cuffs rolled up, mud-splattered jeans, and tall ranch boots. He might not be human, but he looked like he was. He could move easily in the human world, raising no eyebrows. Not like these wild bears, most of whom Daisy thought had probably never spoken to a human or seen a town. The ones standing on the trucks might not even realize what the trucks actually were.
Gannon, standing halfway between them, seemed caught between the two worlds in his borrowed and ill-fitting jeans and his bare feet, his hair falling loose in a tangled mane around his shoulders. He'd walked out of the world of the wild bears ... but he didn't fit anymore. He couldn't go back. He was more a part of Alec's world now than theirs.
Showing no sign of fear, Alec stood straight and tall, a rancher in his plaid shirt and boots, with an alpha grizzly just below the skin.
"That's some nerve you've got, Zeus." Alec's voice was cold, which somehow made him more terrifying than if he'd been raging and shouting. "You claim that Gannon has no right to claim kinship with you, but look at what you've done. You trespass on my clan lands without permission, threaten the members of my clan, and have the audacity to insult me while standing in the stronghold of my territory. You're right, your brother and all the former Guardians would be ashamed, but Gannon's not the one who has shamed them."
It amazed Daisy that he could be standing there fearlessly, with all those bears glaring at him with hostile intent. The world had paused in a frozen and waiting stillness, and for that moment, no one moved: not the watching bears with Zeus at their head, his eyes glittering in the moonlight, not Gannon and Alec standing in the middle of that semicircle of death.
Charmian took a step backward, and then turned and pushed past Daisy into the house, with a murmured "Excuse me."
Had she lost the nerve to watch? Daisy hadn't thought anything could rattle the alpha's tough-willed mate, but if Alec was about to be torn apart by bears, she didn't blame Charmian for not wanting to watch.
She couldn't just stand here and do nothing, though. She looked around the porch for anything that could be used as a weapon, and picked up a stick of firewood. It was a pathetic weapon against even one bear, let alone dozens of them. But she couldn't just stand here and watch them tear Gannon and Alec apart.
Zeus moved slowly, taking an ominous step forward. "You lecture me? You, whose clan has betrayed all of us by making deals with humans?"
In the moonlight, Alec seemed to grow—not shifting yet, but his shoulders looked broader, head hunched forward, hair shaggier. His anger was almost a palpable thing, shivering the air. His voice, however, stayed ominously calm. "Humans know about us now. Hiding in your mountains, clinging to the past, is only delaying the inevitable. We have no choice but to deal with them."
"Then you admit you've sold us all out." Zeus's snarled words were taken up in a low chorus of snarls and growls from the assembled bears.
For the first time, Daisy saw Alec falter—not backing down, but pausing, anger beginning to give way to puzzlement. "What do you mean, I've sold you out?"
Zeus's only answer was a roar. His bear exploded out of him, fur rippling down his shoulders and his jaw widening grotesquely as fangs erupted where human teeth had been a moment before.
"You idiot!" Alec snarled. "What the hell do you think I've done?"
He hadn't shifted. Still human-shaped, dwarfed by the enormous bear, he stood immobile in the face of Zeus's charge. Daisy had no idea what he would have done, but she never found out, because Gannon's bear slammed into Zeus and knocked the bigger bear to the side. Gannon had shifted so quickly that the shreds of his borrowed jeans were still fluttering to the ground.
The unexpectedness of the attack left Zeus reeling, his anger momentarily diverted. Gannon lowered his head and roared. Around them, the watching bears bellowed their rage and disapproval, but none tried to interfere.
Alec stepped forward, stripping off his clothing with the speed of practice, and shifted into his bear.
It was all happening so fast. Daisy was frozen, her heart pounding. She could only watch as Alec shouldered Gannon aside. Gannon turned on him, snarling, so caught up in his bear's instincts that he seemed to have forgotten Alec was his alpha. Alec roared in his face—and Gannon, possibly just through sheer habit, backed down ... leaving Alec to face the bear-mountain of Zeus alone.
Across the yard, the others had appeared. Remy and Saffron stood on the porch of their house, with their arms around each other. Tara and Axl had come out too, and Cody was up on the roof of the barn. Watching, all of them—just watching.
For the first time, Daisy began to realize that shifters really were different from humans. She felt as if she'd been transported back to a wilder and fiercer time.
And yet, she felt no fear. If anything, she felt energized. She gripped the stick of wood, and felt no regrets. If we go down, I guess we'll go down together.
Alec roared, the roar of an alpha boar grizzly challenging a trespasser in his domain. It was enough to silence most of the other bears. Zeus's ears flattened to his skull, his head lowered, and the two bears crashed together like colliding semi trucks.
They were both so enormous that the fight seemed to happen in slow motion. And yet their movements when they actually went in for the kill were lightning fast. Hanks of fur floated in the air, torn from both combatants.
Alec had the upper hand at first, driven by sheer rage at the intruder's audacity. But Zeus's bigger size began to wear him down. Daisy saw him score a dozen hits, but nothing seemed to be able to get through Zeus's thick fur. Zeus's powerful blows seemed to bounce off at first, but as Alec tired, he began to stagger. Blood glistened on his fur in the moonlight.
<
br /> He's losing, Daisy thought in horror. God help us, he's losing.
And yet no one moved to interfere. Even Gannon stood still, his shaggy bear's head down and his massive shoulders hunched forward. He seemed to be on the verge of leaping into the fight, and yet he stayed out of it.
The watching bears were silent. The only sounds were the huffs and grunts of Zeus and Alec, the slap of their paws on the trampled ground, and Daisy's own heartbeat pounding in her ears.
Why doesn't someone do something?
It was like they couldn't. And, she thought, maybe that was exactly right. Shifters didn't quite work like humans. They were different. It seemed that all they could do was stand and watch the two alphas fighting in the moonlight.
She wasn't close enough to see the expression on Axl or Remy's faces, but she could see their tension in the way they were standing and the way they held their mates close as they watched from the porches of their houses.
But they didn't interfere.
Zeus's paw connected so hard with the side of Alec's head that Daisy thought for a horrified instant his neck had been broken. He went down hard to the ground. For a second or two, he was completely still, and then he began struggling to rise.
Zeus dived in for the kill—literally. He sank his teeth into Alec's throat.
Daisy could see the desperation on Gannon's face, easy to read even on the face of his bear. Why doesn't he do something?
Zeus shook Alec like a terrier with a rat. Alec was totally limp now. Daisy had thought at first that he was going to rip out Alec's throat, but a sudden memory came back to her of an article she'd read once about the way that wolves hunted, seizing their prey by the throat and suffocating it. Were bears the same way?
Do something! she wailed inwardly.
The sound of a rifle shell being chambered was very loud in the stillness of the night.
"Step away from him," Charmian's voice said calmly.
Daisy looked up. Charmian was leaning out of a window on the second floor, with a scoped hunting rifle resting on the windowsill.