by Lola Gabriel
“Stay,” Axel half-growled. “Or we can run away. Who else do we need?”
Keira’s heart leapt at this idea. She leaned back and ran her thumb along his cheekbone. “I want that so badly. But you know Chance would come looking for me. And it’s not about what you need, it’s about your pack needing you. You’ve known that from the moment you were chosen. You’d resent me. We’d resent one another.”
Axel sighed. “You really have to tell him?”
Keira nodded. “I’ll leave today,” she said. “And I’ll be back as soon as I can be.” For a moment, she curled herself into him, her head nestling on his chest. He kissed her head.
“The eggs are cold,” he said.
“It doesn’t matter.” She stood up straight and smiled. “You make toast, and I’ll heat up the coffee.”
They sat across from one another to eat their cold eggs. The sun behind Axel lit him from behind, his mess of hair becoming a halo.
“Do you do crosswords?” he asked. There was a pile of newspapers on the table. This was, Keira thought, adorable. A dorky alpha…
“Uhm… I mean, now and then. I have the NYTimes app.” Axel looked comically aghast.
“No way! It’s not the same.” When she raised an eyebrow, he added, “What? I’m three hundred years old, I can’t hang onto a few traditions? Come over here.” Keira stood up, and Axel pulled her down onto his lap. “Wrap-around garment for old Roman…” Axel traced the clue lightly with a pencil. “Four across.”
“Toga, obviously!” Keira took the pencil and wrote it in. “See?” Axel kissed her shoulder. She leaned closer to him. Even that gave her butterflies. She turned her attention back to the crossword and began writing down from the ‘T’ of ‘Toga.’
“Woah, woah! Across first and then down, you animal.” Keira laughed, pointing to the corresponding clue.
“A public house, particularly in the old west,” she said. “It’s tavern, so I’m putting it in.”
Axel let her finish writing, then kissed her shoulder again. “See, I knew you were clever. You were too mean and funny not to be, yesterday, when you arrived.”
Keira turned to face him. Her heart was filling and growing and breaking all at the same time. “And you’re not a sleaze. You are the sweetest man. I want to do crosswords with you every day.”
Axel kissed her lightly. “We’ll do that, I promise. It just… might take a while for Chance to accept this. And, I can be a sleaze. Probably.”
She stroked his stubbled chin, which made him look less boyish than he had the day before. He looked in his late twenties with this five-o’clock shadow and furrowed brow, like a man who could lead. “Ax, I don’t think we can expect any kind of acceptance. If I try to leave, to come back here, he will come after me.”
“I know,” Axel said.
“And he’ll do what he can to hurt you. I mean that in every way. From finding Leonida and welcoming her to Juneau, to coming here and facing you. I’ll try not to let him hurt you, but…”
“Keira, I can handle myself. Just tell him as soon as possible, okay? Because I need you back here with me. Already, it’s going to feel wrong without you. Tell him, and then get back here? Whatever he says, can you promise me that? And if I don’t see you in a few days, I’ll come there. I’ll come and get you.”
“I don’t need rescuing, but thanks for the offer.” Keira wasn’t fond of the grandstanding. It reminded her of Chance. And if the two of them did end up in the same place, she knew there would be trouble. If she wanted Axel safe, she should just walk away, tell her brother some bullshit story about Leonida, and get on with her life. Shouldn’t knowing he was safe be enough? Him knowing she was safe?
As if he’d read her mind, Axel said, “I know you don’t. You’re one of the strongest women— Sorry, that was dumb, you’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. I know that after one night and day, from darts, drinking, talking, and you tricking me into not even knowing your name. Then, fighting in the snow and making love. And now that I’ve had you… now that I know this feeling, know you, I won’t be living if you aren’t by my side.”
Tears were threatening to fall from Keira’s eyes. She kissed him, hard. She twisted around and swung a leg over him so that she was straddling him and they were face to face. She dropped the pencil on the kitchen floor, and it rolled under the table. She mumbled between kisses.
“I need to feel your skin against mine before I go.” Axel tugged her shirt off her, then his lips were on her breasts, brushing lightly. “That feels good, Ax,” she moaned.
Axel stood and carried her to the living room, her legs around his waist. He laid her gently on the sofa, but she flipped over on top of him and began removing his shirt, then undoing his belt. She leaned down and kissed his neck.
“I’m scared,” she whispered in his ear. “I’m scared for you.” He pulled her mouth to his, kissing her aggressively. Keira tasted blood and didn’t know which of them it belonged to, but she didn’t care. “But it’s for us, right? It’s for this.”
“Maybe I should come back with you?” he suggested, but she pulled off his jeans and her own, stroked the hair from his forehead so she could look into his eyes. Axel let out something like a little squeak, trying to hold back his desire. Keira could see the want in him, though, and feel it below her. As she slipped him inside her, all the electric storm energy from the night before hit her at once, and she gasped, arched her back, moaned his name.
Axel guided her with his hands on her hips. She wanted to freeze time. She wanted to stay in this perfect moment forever, but soon, he was gasping and moaning, too. Then they had somehow rolled over and were on the floor, giggling, still connected, and he was holding her hands down again, playing with her while he was inside her. Her elbows were being burnt by the carpet, but she didn’t care. She felt so fully exposed to him, laid out like this, and it felt perfect.
Axel slowed down and kissed her neck, then came close to her and pushed himself in deep, again and again. It almost really was like time had stopped, like they would be there surrounded by their protective bubble of pleasure forever, until finally, Keira’s legs shook, and Axel shook and groaned, and they were spent.
They lay on the rug in front of the sofa for a long time. Silent. It was long past dark when Keira rolled over, kissed Axel, and raised herself on an elbow.
“There’ll be a flight at five,” she said.
“You’re going today?”
“Ax, I have to. You know I do.” She got up onto her knees and stretched. He was looking at her, at her body, as she did so, but she had never felt more comfortable with someone watching her. “The sooner I leave, the sooner I can come back.”
Still lying down, Axel picked at the rug. “Or not come back. What if he locks you away?”
Keira laughed. “I’m not a fairytale princess.”
“I just have a bad feeling.” Alex sat up as Keira gathered her clothes, pulling them on.
“Of course you do. This is a mess… I don’t know what Chance will do, Axel. My brother can be unpredictable—” Axel interrupted her with a quiet scoff. “Okay, my brother can be many things. I don’t think he’ll be throwing us any kind of a party. I may be banished, or—”
“Or I may get a summons?” Keira nodded. This was what had been hanging in the air all day: a summons, a battle, something not seen by an Alaskan pack for a generation. Winner takes all. It was how they used to solve disputes, gain territory. Keira hoped against hope that she would be able to persuade her brother out of it, but he was fiery. And there was no one Chance hated more than Axel and the Fairbanks pack.
“Let me drive you to the airport?”
Keira shook her head, and Axel didn’t argue.
9
Keira
Keira had seen her brother angry plenty of times, but never like this. Chance was pacing the room, his thick arms crossed, his face tight. Occasionally, he would mumble, “You’re so stupid,” or something similar. “Keira, you
’re so fucking stupid.”
Keira was sitting on the sofa, looking out the window more than at Chance. She was waiting for him to calm down, though she had already been waiting a while. The siblings were in their parents’ old house, which Chance, of course, had claimed for himself when he became alpha. The floorboards creaked at every one of his angry steps, and the sound was starting to irritate Keira badly, adding to the tumult inside her.
“Chance, he’s my mate. He just is. What am I supposed to do about that? I only get one. You want me to live without him?”
Chance turned to her. He was tapping his foot. He shook his big blond head. “You’re so emotional, Keira. I shouldn’t have trusted you to do anything for me.”
“Jesus, Chance, I’m not a child! I didn’t want to participate in your idiotic little feud in the first place.” Keira leaned back on the sofa. Her brother was the most stubborn person she knew, and she was settling in for a long argument. She was surprised when Chance stepped forward, grabbed her shoulder, and tried to pull her up off the sofa.
“You’re calling him and telling him it’s over. You’re doing it now, and you’re doing it in front of me, and then you’re unpacking and staying in the spare room until I can trust you again.” Keira recoiled. She held onto the arm of the sofa.
“What the hell?” she yelled. “Get off me! Are you insane?”
“It’s not my little feud. It was passed down to me, to us. This is about respect. History. This is about living the way we’re supposed to live! Bonding yourself to a Fairbankser…” To Keira’s utter disgust, Chance spat on the floor. Even he looked a little surprised afterwards, but he carried on. “I mean it, Keira.” He tried to grab her again.
“Chance, you aren’t my father. And even if you were, I’m two hundred and ninety years old.” She was still wriggling out of his grasp, using her hand to try to get his strong fingers off of her.
“No,” Chance said, finally letting go and stepping back, “but I am your alpha. And I forbid you from seeing him again. You’re not going back to Fairbanks, and there’s no way in hell he’s coming here.”
Keira also stood up. She didn’t want to be near him. Honestly, he was scaring her a little. He was just her big brother, right? Surely, he wouldn’t actually hurt her. She was telling herself this, but she was checking she had a clear path to the door at the same time.
“He’s using you, you know?” Chance said. “To get to me. Did you tell him? Did you tell him I sent you?” Keira nodded. Was Chance just trying to unsettle her, or did he believe what he was saying?
“Yes, I told him in the morning. We’d already felt it. We spent the night together. Then we had sex on his living room floor. It’s nothing to do with you. He hates you, but he loves me. We’re in love.”
Chance scoffed. “You’ve known him two days, Keira. Have you spoken to him since? He wants me, not you. This is pretty much a declaration of war. I mean, what would Dad do in this situation? This calls for a summons. I’m taking it to the council. And then I’m going to kill him.”
Again, Keira was taken aback. Chance had a temper. He’d had a temper since they were kids, when he’d lock her in her room because she’d eaten the last of a batch of cookies and push her down the stairs for breaking a wooden toy soldier he loved. But she’d never heard him threaten murder. And it sounded like he meant it.
“Chance, listen to me!” She grabbed at his sleeve, yet she wasn’t fast enough to stop him from leaving the room. His face was dark with rage.
Keira followed her brother down the dark wood of the hallway. The house had been built by their grandparents, and it had been added to by every generation since. Chance was the first to live in it alone. It was a family home, and full of history. Chance had turned his childhood bedroom into a workout room and taken over their parents’ master suite. When he mentioned the ‘spare room,’ Keira assumed he meant her own room.
Chance was heading for the kitchen, where there was still an ancient home phone, curly cord and all. It was strange how time passed. It felt like forever ago, because time didn’t pass exactly differently for the shifters. At the same time, it felt so recent, because she remembered what had been before. Trumpets and scrolls and pomp and circumstance. But they had a damn phone for this kind of thing. All kept their home phones for it, despite the fact that snow knocked out service a month each year and that shifted, they could run to one another’s homes more quickly. Now everyone, except for the oldest and most stubborn, had a smartphone.
And so, Chance lifted the receiver. Again, Keira grabbed him.
“Chance—” She tugged his sleeve, feeling so much like a little sister. “Chance, please, I won’t forgive you for this! Chance, for me. For me!”
He looked at her. Their eyes were the same almond shape and color, but his were a darker green, flecked with brown. He was breathing hard, as though he was fighting something.
“I have to,” he said. “This is what he would have done.”
Unwanted, a few tears leaked from Keira’s eyes. “You aren’t him, Chance. You decide who to be.” Chance shook free.
“I’m the alpha. I’m carrying on for him.” He typed in the first number and began putting out the call. It was a summons.
The next part would be old school; it had never changed and could never change. Their fastest would be sent to gather the Fairbanks pack to the battlefield. The Fairbanks pack would have less time to prepare, while Chance and his people would have to decide when to head out into the cold, how to time things. Keira dropped to the floor beside her brother. Chance knelt down, receiver to his ear, and grabbed the phone she was fishing from her pocket. She hadn’t had much hope of reaching Axel, anyway. She was going to have to go with her pack and try her best to stop things there.
Keira had never been angrier with her brother than she was right then, but more than anything, to her surprise, she missed Axel. She needed Axel. She had to make sure he was okay. She didn’t want either of them hurt, but it wasn’t even a contest anymore. She had to find a way to warn Axel, or at least to save him.
10
Axel
It wasn’t like Axel wasn’t expecting it. The messenger didn’t bother coming to his home, even, just stopped at the edge of the village and scratched at the first door. Byron was four-hundred years old; he knew what it meant. He let the grizzly bear respectfully retreat, then shot out the front door of his house, not bothering to undress, his clothes splitting and ripping and falling from him as he ran on two legs and then four. Or that was how Axel assumed it had gone down, from the way Byron arrived panting huge wet steamy breaths into the icy air as he scratched at Axel’s door, the sleeve of a shirt still hanging from him almost comically. In any case, it would have been comical if not for the way Byron was showing teeth.
Axel didn’t bother pulling his boots on. Soon, he wouldn’t need them.
“Okay?” he asked Byron, a hand in the fur over his heaving shoulder. Byron let out a grunt, an affirmative, and Axel pulled himself up and over the greyish-colored bear. He was soft, not as young as he used to be, but Byron could still run. Before Axel could apologize for using his friend as a vehicle, his breath was ripped from his lungs as Byron bounded toward the church. They were on the old system here in Fairbanks, the one set up for them generations ago when the witches had helped them relocate to the farthest-flung states. And what witch didn’t love an ominous bell tower? Enchanted, obviously, so that the sound traveled. It should be audible to whoever Axel intended, though it could still be covered by other noises or ignored, of course.
Axel was deposited at the bottom of the steps. It was a short tower; the weather would allow nothing else. He took the stairs two at a time, wishing for the boots he’d abandoned in his hall as his feet gathered splinters. He knew the transition would push them out, though. At the top, he grabbed the rope. It was old, wet, and it slipped from his hands a couple of times before he could ring it three times. A pause. Clang, Clang. Another pause. Clang once more. He wondered
if the newest shifters understood, those who had passed their fifteenth moon and begun to exist in their other bodies since the last time it had rung like this. He wondered if the older were listening.
It took only moments for the huffs and growls of his packs to begin. And then they began to run, a trip that would take a couple of days—a trip it had been years since they’d taken, those of them who knew the way south along the coast. To the halfway point, between their enemies’ home and theirs, knowing the rival pack would be waiting for them.
As he shifted, as he ran, Axel could think only of Keira. In all honesty, he didn’t know Chance well; only as a distant enemy. He should have urged her harder to be careful. He should have asked about Chance’s temper, their relationship, her safety. Would Chance hurt his sister? Would he banish her or lock her up? Axel realized he had no idea, and he felt a huge guilt and a wash of love and protectiveness, even as his muscles burned and his breath came in gasps and his four paws churned up the snow.
It was just over a two-day journey. At night, the shifters whose wives had strapped them with packs provided clothing for everyone, and they set up camp in the traditional way, lighting fires. They ate jerky and camping food, strangely guilty of the fact that their ancestors would have stayed changed to hunt and forage and become even more spent in the process. Axel could barely say a word, and he was circled around by most of his pack, who knew he would be fighting for all of them tomorrow. They trusted him enough not to ask questions. Only Byron, skinny and brown-haired again, looking in his twenties (as they all did in human form, despite their bear-selves slowly aging), sat down beside him.