by Lola Gabriel
“Grandfather,” Axel muttered. “Please, just let us down and let us explain? There are four of you and two of us. Tie our hands behind our backs. Just let us sit by the fire?” Ingar stepped back, looking hard at Axel.
“When you say Ambrosia sent you,” he said, “what do you mean, exactly?”
Chance, exasperated, answered from the next tree. “Time. Travel. We’re from the future, dude.”
The three men still placed at equal points between the fires began to laugh. Ingar turned to them. He shushed them, waving a hand at them. They stood up straight and were silent again. Ingar swirled back to Axel.
“Well?” he asked. “Explain.”
“Let us down,” Chance repeated, “and we will.”
“Your friend is rude,” Ingar said.
“He’s in pain,” Axel replied. “Various kinds of pain.”
“Who are you?” Ingar asked. “Is that an easier question? Name?”
“Axel Lingdson,” Axel said, and he took a deep breath. “Alpha of the Fairbanks pack, initiated June 1980.” Then he looked to Chance.
“Chance Harstrom,” he said. “Juneau alpha since 1984.”
Ingar was shaking, but it could have been from anger. Or it might have been a trick of the firelight. He turned to his men.
“Darion,” he said, cold and commanding, “bring me a torch.” The middle of the three men, who Axel could only assume were the three bears who had knocked them out so brutally, ran toward one of the fires. He was a little chubby, and he ran with a bounce, so the lit end of the torch coming toward them danced like a bug or a loose spark. Ingar held out his hand covered in its deerskin mitten.
“Thank you,” he said, taking the torch. Darion stood for a moment before he scampered back to his two companions. Ingar lifted the torch and took a step toward Axel. It lit up Ingar’s face, too, the long nose and the striking blue eyes Axel had inherited. He really didn’t want to cry. He really didn’t want to whisper, “Grandad,” but he mouthed it anyway. Ingar’s hard face softened a little.
“You look like him,” he said. “You look a lot like him. Is it magic? An enchantment?” Axel shook his head as best he could.
“No,” he answered. “No. You are Ingar Lingdson, born somewhere in Northern Europe, though you would never say where. Or you wouldn’t know where that was in a modern map. Modern as in about a hundred years in the future when I ask… when I asked you. You remembered some strange dances from your childhood, with the men painting their faces. You came on a boat to the Americas, were in one of the first packs to move north as the center of the continent became crowded. You never spoke much, really. I don’t know what to tell you. You would let me sit on your knee sometimes, but not often. Now I think it was probably when you’d had a drink. You would tell me things about leadership that I was too young to understand.”
The bonds were really beginning to tug at Axel’s skin. Ingar approached him, holding the torch closer.
“Hey, Axel!” Chance cried. “Nylon’s pretty flammable!” Ingar looked over at him, annoyed. Axel didn’t know whether Chance just wanted attention, but he wasn’t wrong.
“It is,” he agreed. “Hold it up to my face, not my clothes. Look at me. I’m Alasdair’s son.” Ingar held the torch beside Axel for a long time, his eyes searching Axel’s face.
“You look almost as he does now,” he mumbled. “Almost exactly. Who’s your mother?”
“Uh…” Axel hesitated. “I don’t know if I can tell you that. I don’t want to change anything.” Ingar nodded, his thumb stroking at his beard.
“Good answer,” he said, “I shouldn’t know.”
From the other tree, Chance called out again, “You believe us, then? Can we please come down?”
Ingar looked questioningly at Axel, his face still stern. But Axel’s grandfather had always looked stern, always in play. Even his big, grey bear form seemed to somehow have a furrowed brow.
“Keira is his sister and my mate,” Axel said. “If you could help us… if you even half believe me… please cut us down, let us sit by the fire?”
“Do you know your grandmother?” Ingar questioned.
Axel didn’t say anything, but he knew his eyes were giving him away. He couldn’t keep looking at Ingar. The older alpha sighed.
“Right.” After a pause, he spoke again. “We stay here, by these fires. If you or your companion try to run off, you’re dead. If you start to shift, we’ll cut you down before you’re halfway through. Do you understand?”
His threatening tone was the same now as it ever would be. Axel couldn’t help it. “Yes, Grandfather.”
Ingar summoned the three shifters still waiting behind him with a flick of his head in the torchlight.
“Get them down,” he ordered. “And don’t hurt them too much while you do it.” He took long strides toward the slightly closer fire and stood in front of it, his arms crossed. Waiting.
20
Chance
The ropes were, at this point, hurting Chance so much that he’d forgotten about feeling sick. Or perhaps he felt better. It was impossible to tell. The discomfort level was too high.
The three shifters standing behind their alpha were mostly wrapped in darkness. He kept trying to squint, to see if he recognized family traits of the Fairbanks pack he knew or of anyone else. There had been mixing.
Mixing. Chance was beginning to regret his haste in calling the summons. He had been so angry. Chance’s father, Graeme, has instilled in him the distrust of any Fairbanks shifter. And it had been mostly a cold war; avoidance, but still a lineage of deep distrust.
Maybe he’d been wrong, trying to sneak in a hit with Leonida. He’d never heard anything about her other than a kind of bland distrust. She was the lover of the Fairbanks alpha, so she was respected. No one ever mentioned anything about her character.
Graeme had told Chance—and Keira as well—that every Fairbanks bear was a liar, a sneak. Their morals didn’t align. Chance realized now that this was all he knew of the dispute between the packs, the centuries of bad blood, the skirmishes in the woods that left members of their packs dead or wounded. And now Keira. He was responsible for every member of his pack who was wounded or killed, but he was more responsible for Keira. And this time, quite literally.
Chance’s stomach turned over as he remembered the feeling of his claws tearing her flesh. And now he’d let the scroll go, too, the thing that was supposed to protect them here, in a time a hundred years before their first breaths. He should be fixing it. He should be part of the peacemaking conversation, but all he could hear were small floating pieces of dialogue. All he could do was shout responses and try to make his voice vaguely heard.
When the chubby shifter came toward him, Chance tensed, ready to shift even if it meant being impaled, or to kick and punch and, if necessary, bite in his human form. But when the blade of a knife flashed, Chance almost lost it. He prepared for the burn of icy metal through his flesh, but it was the ropes that were slashed. Chance was caught by the surprisingly sturdy little man and pressed to the tree trunk until he was standing on his own two feet.
“Thanks,” Chance muttered. The short shifter nodded toward the one Axel seemed to know. A relative, Chance assumed, given what he’d managed to overhear.
“Thank him,” he said. “Any other chief, and we would’ve ripped out your throats hours ago.” The tall alpha was sitting by the fire, where it had melted the snow. The shifter shoved Chance in that direction.
“Alright!” Chance cried. “I get it, I’m going. Hands to yourself.” The shifter laughed.
“You don’t get a say.” He pushed Chance again, and it was all Chance could do not to turn around and whack him with a gloved fist. At least his feet felt steady now.
Chance was walking faster than the small shifter behind him, hoping to avoid more provocation, when he felt a hand on his shoulder. He jumped.
“Jesus, Axel,” he said as the slighter man pulled Chance toward him. Chance tried to resi
st, but Axel was rough and surprisingly strong.
“That’s my grandfather,” Axel hissed in his ear, “Ingar. Let me do the talking? I mean, mostly. I think he believes us.” Chance was still holding himself stiffly.
“Does he know what the cure is?” he asked. “We’re here for one thing, and it’s not family reunions.” Axel let out his breath in a hiss between his front teeth.
“I don’t know, Chance, I’ve been busy gaining his trust. Agnes sent us here, though. Here and now. I’m sure this is a part of things, and I’m sure you’re needed.”
Axel kept up with Chance as they made their way to the fire and let him sit down first. They were all cross-legged in the dirt, but the fires must have been burning a while, because the snow was melted, the ground nearly dry. There was the smell of burning evergreen.
To everyone’s surprise, Ingar addressed Chance first. “So, you’re here to find a cure? For your sister?”
Something in the authority of the bear, already in his own time older than either Chance or Axel, and leader in a time of far more blood and harsh survival, made Chance deferent.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “I— We— Our packs don’t get along, mine and Axel’s. She wanted us to stop fighting, I suppose. She was stupid—”
“We were stupid,” Axel broke in. Ingar had his head in his hands. His fur hood pooled behind him, deep and dark.
“My goodness,” he moaned. He lifted his head. “Go on?” Chance took a deep breath.
“I called it,” he continued, “the summons. I was so angry. I’ve never been so angry. I thought Axel was trying to get to me.”
Again, Ingar sighed, waving the story on.
“It doesn’t matter,” Axel said. “This conflict has been going on a long time, and we allowed it to continue. It’s on both of us. We just need a cure. Please, Ingar, what do you have that we don’t? What’s your secret? What have we lost? No one is around to tell us anymore.”
“Yes,” Ingar said, looking up and into the fire, a little absent, as if it had only just occurred to him that if these two were the alphas of Fairbanks and Juneau, he must be gone. “Well, we use the spit of a mother bear and the leaves of the forest to close wounds: nettles, grasses, thorns.”
Chance flinched. “You close wounds with thorns?”
Ingar nodded. “I suppose, in your future, you have moved beyond such barbarity?” Chance felt himself warming in the face, though maybe it was just the fire.
“Yes,” he confirmed. ”I mean, we’ve learned new methods.”
Ingar looked between the two men. “Our best antidote to any kind of strife is the Ambrosia Coven. And they have sent you here.”
“So the cure must be here, right?” Axel pressed. Ingar shrugged in response.
“It must be, I suppose.” He turned to his men. “Bring us liquor,” he called, “and whatever you have in the way of food.”
21
Axel
Ingar’s men brought a clear, throat-ripping spirit and a cloth bag of jerky. Even Chance, despite his earlier sustained sickness, now seemed hungry. The jerky was spiced and savory, and the alcohol hit hard. Axel watched to check that Ingar was drinking, and he seemed to be. This wasn’t a party, nor was it any kind of trick or double cross.
“So.” Ingar addressed Axel. “You found your mate? When?” Axel bit his lip. He was worried he was about to sound ridiculous.
“A few days ago… but I know—” To his surprise, Ingar smiled.
“Those first weeks,” he said, “they feel like the best thing that will ever happen to you, eh? But they’re only the beginning. What does it feel like, Axel?” Axel wasn’t sure he wanted to describe the intense pull of Keira to his grandfather—the feel of her warm mouth, the rightness of him inside her, his hands on her. “Not that!” Ingar said, his eyes flashing with a glee Axel had never seen in them. “How are you different? What do you want?”
Axel faltered. Then he said, “There is nothing I want more than for her to be okay.” He paused. “And I want time with her. I want calm. I want, more than ever, for my pack to be happy, and I know her being beside me would help that. I can’t say, now, what I want, because it’s like a whole new world, like a whole new…. me has opened up.” Axel almost had to hide his face in his hands. He was admitting some of this to himself only now.
Ingar hummed. “Yes, that’s some of it. There’s more. The bond grows. You’ll never lose those things, though, or that curiosity about her. Assuming she lives.”
That last comment cut Axel to the bone. From what he remembered of his grandfather, he was hyper-rational. And correct. Keira may not live. If they didn’t find this cure, his time with her would only be a memory.
As if reading his mind, Chance said, “This is a lovely chat, family reunion, whatever, but we were sent here for a cure. Do you have a cave? A treasure chest? A chalice? Anything that might be hiding what we need? I assume Agnes isn’t as batty as she appears.”
“Oh, Agnes?” Ingar let out a raucous laugh. “I see. No, Agnes is the best of them, but her methods are… sometimes unorthodox.” Then he became more somber. “Chance,” he said, “are you bonded? Have you found your mate?” Chance huffed a little.
“No,” he said. “I haven’t really looked. It seems a little old fashioned.”
There was silence for a while. Chance was looking at the three shifters who had been standing guard, eating around the other fire. Ingar gave Axel a look, and so neither said anything.
“I’m not even sure my mother and father were mates,” Chance added. He stared into the fire.
“It’s possible,” Ingar said after a while. “I can’t say what Lindan does next. I don’t know who he has you with. Now he’s barely more than a boy. I believe it would be disruptive if you were to see. But you’re an alpha, right? It seems unlikely you didn’t come from a bonded union. And we only bond mates.”
Chance turned to Ingar. “You know my father? You don’t want him dead?”
Again, Ingar laughed. “There is almost no one I want dead. Even the two of you, intruders, trussed up on those trees. It’s the role of an alpha to act as though he would claw you through in a heartbeat, but you both know that’s a very, very last resort, no?”
Chance shifted uncomfortably. Axel realized he had never really thought about it. His father had died suddenly, in an accident. There had been few lessons after the half-remembered ones from his grandfather.
“Have either of you ever killed anyone?” Ingar asked. “Shifter or human?”
“No,” Axel said without hesitation. “Never.” Chance shrugged.
“I don’t think so,” he responded. “Hurt badly, yes.”
“So you do know, then.” Ingar sighed. He took another sip of the hard liquor, “You both must have had chances. Now let’s just hope you haven’t killed this poor girl.”
This was worse than the paw to the head had been for Axel. He imagined, not for the first time, the breath leaving Keira’s body. He imagined how he’d blame himself forever. He shook his head to himself. He couldn’t imagine that life, the man he would become.
“Please,” he said, “can you take us to Fairbanks? To the village, whatever there is now. Can you look with us for the cure?” Ingar smiled.
“No,” he said. “My son is there. He’s probably out drinking and being foolish as we speak. I don’t think you should see him, Axel, not as he is now. And he shouldn’t see you. And I don’t want to see you react to anything else you might see.” He turned to Chance. “Juneau, tell me more about this sister of yours. Tell me why you don’t trust her to know her own mate.” At the shocked look on Chance’s face, Ingar screamed to his men, “More food and drink, boys!” There was some grumbling from the other fire, but dark rye bread and another bag of jerky were brought over.
Chance took some of it all. He had thrown up everything inside him earlier, Axel recalled. And he had to agree, the alcohol was making this whole strange situation easier. When he was done chewing and had thrown back the
liquid, Chance cleared his throat.
“I suppose she was always Dad’s favorite.” He stopped for a while. “Why do you need to know this?” Ingar rubbed his beard.
“How will I know what the cure might be if I don’t know who is to be cured?” Axel and Chance both looked at him. “We’re close to the Ambrosia Coven,” he said. “Agnes may well assume I’ll remember something that I don’t in fact recall. But I could…” Another pause. “So, Chance, go on.”
Chance closed his eyes for a moment.
“She was younger,” he began, “so she was special. She was born very small. Always very blonde, always beautiful, even as a tiny undersized thing. I… I was big for my age. I sometimes resented the attention she got. I always loved her. Sometimes I got angry. She was my sister, is my sister, and when she was babied… I thought it would spoil her.” He sighed, proffered up his glass to be filled, and drank. “Or maybe I was jealous, I don’t know. She’s cleverer than I am. As it turns out, I guess she might be tougher, too. Or at least, she might know her mind more.”
Chance was drunk, just beginning to slur his words. Certainly he was being the most honest Axel had ever heard. Axel didn’t know whether he wanted to punch Chance or hug him. He didn’t seem like the same guy who’d been squaring up to him earlier. Ingar saw it too, catching Axel’s eye.
“So,” he said, “you both want what’s best for her? You both want her happy?”
“I never said any different!” Chance exclaimed.
22
Chance
Chance noticed, even in the dancing firelight, even after the drinks, that Ingar and Axel had the same eyes. Axel had a softer face: Ingar’s cheekbones, but the heart-shaped face of his mother, whom Chance had glanced at only a few times when he was young. Ingar’s questions raised Chance’s hackles just a little, but the warmth and the drunkenness and the fear for his sister meant he spat out honesty.