by Amelia Jade
Evan stormed off, and out in the dark they heard a tremendous crash. But Garrett relaxed several moments later, his body language telling her that she wouldn’t have to worry, at least not for the night.
“He’s going to be a problem,” she commented.
“I’ll deal with it,” came the growled response.
“Please do, so that I don’t have to.” There was no threat in her voice, and they both knew it. Emma was politely pleading for him to handle Evan.
“Good night, Miss Labelle,” Garrett said formally, though there was no missing the slight emphasis he made on the second half of her last name.
“Sweet dreams,” she replied lightly, stepping into her room and closing the door behind her.
Chapter Five
Garrett
“No no no!” he yelled as he approached the end of the tunnel.
“What the hell do you mean?” Russell snarled back, stepping away from the rough-hewn wall, his pickaxe hanging lazily over one shoulder.
“I told you, this area needs be made structurally sound before you mine here! You’re going to fucking kill yourselves you morons,” Garrett growled, his temper getting the better of him.
It seemed justifiable, because he had told Russell—the idiot—that this part of the shaft was off-limits until they got more supports in place to ensure there were no cave-ins. But of course Russell thought that it was the perfect place to dig for another stone. After all, the Jade Crew had only found the one stone so far. Whoever found the second would inevitably receive a few days' worth of fame from the other miners before everyone forgot about him again.
But that thirty seconds of fame was all that Russell seemed to care about. Garrett, on the other hand, could not tolerate him having put two other members of his crew into danger. Cole and Joel, the two junior-most members of the crew, were busy hammering away at the wall still, chunks of rock flying as they picked away at it.
“How can they be so careless?” Emma asked from behind him. “I thought the stones were easily breakable?”
Garrett sighed. While he appreciated her attempt to change the subject while seeking an answer she didn’t have, it could not have come at a worse time. He enjoyed having Emma around, and the past two days she had been perfect, staying back at the mobile-trailer office outside of the Jade Crew’s mine shaft.
Today, however, she had bullied her way into coming down into the shaft to see what was going on. It was also the reason he had discovered what Russell was up to. Otherwise, it might not have been until it was too late. The "guided tour" he had given her had shown that the area Russell was supposed to be in was unoccupied, so they had set out to find him.
“The stones are rather brittle, and a pickaxe would likely do irreparable damage to them. It’s happened before, but not often. The main reason for that,” he said, explaining patiently while he continued to stare daggers at Russell, while the two of them labored to keep their bears in check, “is because the stones emit a lot of heat.”
“Ah,” Emma said, as if that made perfect sense.
Both the men turned at that, neither of them having expected that reasoning.
“What?” she said casually. “You’re bear shifters. You can see in the dark and detect heat sources fairly easily because of it. I’m not a moron,” she finished, turning on her toes to go, leaving the two men standing there dumbfounded.
“I need to stop underestimating that woman,” Garrett said to himself admiringly.
“Got a little crush do you?” Russell sneered.
Garrett surged forward without warning, his hands grabbing fistfuls of Russell’s shirt as he slammed him ruthlessly into the wall, his face inches away from the other man's.
“Show some respect,” he ordered, his voice thick with command, letting it flow through him.
“To whom?” Russell replied, not backing down.
Garrett realized out of the corner of his eye that both Cole and Joel—what a rhyming pair that was he thought, rolling his eyes internally—had stopped what they were doing and were watching the confrontation. He swore, knowing that word of it would get back to Evan before the day's end. That meant he had to be more violent than he would prefer.
Still hoisting the not-tiny Russell on the tips of his toes, Garrett yanked him away from the wall, then slammed him back into it. Hard. Russell’s head hit pure rock, rebounding off it quick enough to stun even the bear shifter.
“Both of us, you idiot. Now take your team and go back to the area you’re supposed to be mining before you get them killed. I think you’ve seen enough death over the past few weeks to sate even you for awhile, don’t you think?”
Garrett felt bad, hitting him that low, but that didn’t change the truth. Russell knew as well as Garrett did what had happened to his last crew, and he saw the point hit home, despite the sullen resistance that was still splashed across his face.
With a sigh of exasperation, Garrett released Russell. The other shifter almost collapsed to the ground, but at the last second managed to turn it into taking a knee. Then he stood back up, slowly patting the dirt from his clothes.
“Can’t you see?” Garrett yelled, frustrated. “It’s shit like this that got us all into this in the first place. Yes,” he said as realization played across Russell’s face, “I said us. We’re in this together, as a team. Or we will be, once we start acting like one,” he said, slamming a massive fist into the wall to emphasize his point.
Emma was gone by this point, but Darren, Evan, and Corey had heard the arguing from several hundred feet up the tunnel and had come to investigate. Garrett was tense, knowing that if things went sideways, it was going to get very bloody, very quickly.
The groups integrated seamlessly as they all considered Garrett’s words. Corey came to stand by his side, not caring what that said about him to the others. Evan, Russell, and Cole were in one group, while Darren and Joel had formed another, standing slightly closer to Garrett, but still maintaining some distance.
“What the hell did you do this time, Russell?”
“Fuck off,” came the terse reply.
The two shifters, Darren and Russell, had constantly been at each other’s throats, practically since the day the crew had been formed. Garrett was tiring of the continued bullshit, which until then he had let resolve itself. At one point, when the crew third was still undecided, the two had gone at it to try and resolve it. He suppressed a chuckle as he remembered how it had been resolved quite nicely when Corey, who had until then refrained from anything, waded into the fray and dispatched both of them, securing his own place.
“If you two insist on acting like children, it won’t be Corey you have to deal with,” he growled into the silence, hoping they would take the threat to heart.
Unfortunately for him, Russell was already too wired up. “I’ll behave if this incompetent fuck minds his own business,” he spat at Garrett, though his eyes were focused on Darren instead as the other shifter stepped forward slightly, his lip curling upward.
“Coming from the moron mining in an unsecured area because he can’t abide anyone else finding the next stone, that’s rich.”
“Damnit,” Garrett sighed, stepping back abruptly as Russell’s yellow-golden bear erupted from his skin, slamming him down on all four paws as it charged across the distance at Darren.
The mine shaft was only twelve or so feet wide, making it a tight fit widthwise, but there had still been a good twenty feet of open shaft between the two. That was plenty of time for Darren’s bone-white grizzly bear to come to the surface, exploding out from within him to meet the charging animal in a bone-crunching collision.
The other shifters began to yell at each other, but so far he noted that none of them had shifted to join in the fray. That, he hoped, meant that none of them were thrilled at the prospect of fighting in such an enclosed area, especially when the titanic bodies colliding created an unlikely chance of a cave-in.
The two bears hammered into each other once more,
blood beginning to mat their fur in several places as claws swung and teeth gouged. The rapid fire slaps as their paws whaled away echoed up and down the shaft, reverberating deep within the stone itself.
It also knocked a little stone loose that hit Garrett right on his head.
“Fuck this,” he swore, annoyed both at his own lack of control, and the dangerous situation his crew was putting them all in.
“Enough!” he shouted, but the fury had overtaken the bears, and they barely hesitated.
“It’s not working,” Corey commented from his side.
“No shit. I guess I have no choice, the fucking idiots. I hope they realize this is going to hurt,” he replied angrily.
“What’s going to... oh,” Corey said in surprise as Garrett shifted into his bear, the massive, pitch-black grizzly charging straight for the other bears without pause.
Dimly, Garrett was aware of Corey chuckling. “Yes,” he said, “yes this is going to hurt.”
But most of his attention was focused on the other two bears, who were now within grasp. He slammed into the side of Darren, picking his target politically. Darren was nominally considered to support Garrett, so by showing Evan and the others that he wasn’t picking any sides, he hoped to drive home his point that he was simply putting an end to things.
Darren turned to bite Garrett, but he only received a massive paw across the side of his face instead before Garrett stepped heavily on one of his rear legs, a bone crunching beneath his massive weight. The howl of agony from Darren evoked some pity, but only for a second as Garrett turned his attention to Russell.
The golden-brown bear was still on its feet, but he was exhausted and in no condition for another fight.
Well, too bad. Should have thought of that before acting like a moron.
Garrett contemptuously knocked Russell’s lackluster defenses aside, his shoulder making contact with the other bear's head, sending him careening up and over until he hit the ground hard on his back, and made no further attempt to move.
Shifting back, Garrett growled loudly at the others. “Get them up. Set their fucking bones before they heal broken.”
The other shifters moved to help their comrades as the Alpha stormed off, heading for the surface. Despite the quickness of the fight, he had still taken several scratches himself, though most of them were already beginning to heal. That hadn’t stopped him from bleeding all over the now-torn clothes that made the shift with him.
Not for the first time Garrett wondered if it would be easier if the magic of his shifting, such as it was, didn’t preserve whatever clothing he was wearing. At least that way he would be naked and free to get clean and put on a new set of clothing, instead of the blood-soaked rags he was currently in possession of.
Damn them anyway for getting him to the point where he lost his temper. Damn them for not behaving and ignoring the rules. Damn them for refusing to work together. Damn them—
Garrett cut himself off. He stopped walking away as well.
Inhale.
Exhale.
Repeat.
He followed his inner mantra several times, allowing him to regain his cool, to push his beast farther inside, so that the rational, logical part of him could come out.
Damn.
"Did anybody have any fun just now?" he asked, turning back to face the two separated groups of shifters.
"Watching you kick Darren's ass was entertaining," Evan commented smugly.
Garrett could have strangled him. Wanted to strangle him, even. The shit-disturber had known full well that his Alpha had intended that as a rhetorical question, not wanting an answer from anyone. True to form, however, he had made a comment, simply to try and drive his own point home.
"You know Evan," Russell mumbled, not speaking very clearly through what Garrett realized must be a broken jaw, "one of these days, if you don't shut the fuck up, you're the one that's going to be getting your ass kicked."
Garrett didn't say a word, forcing his eyebrows not to slam into the ceiling. All of the other shifters had suddenly gone still. Clearly they had not been anticipating any sort of confrontation between Evan and one of "his" shifters. Hell, even Garrett hadn't been expecting it. Perhaps being taken to task had knocked a bit of sense into Russell, though he wasn't going to hold his breath over it.
"You know," Garrett said conversationally into the silence, "I didn't sign up for this either. I didn't ask to be saddled with all of you."
"So why are you still here then?" Evan asked nastily.
"Because you don't run out on your family. And as fucked up as we are, we are family. I've seen it, in all of you," he said, pointedly staring right at his closest rival for Alpha. "Hell, you three idiots were mining in an unsafe section, but you were mining as a team."
"Like a crew," Russell said again.
Well shit, maybe he was coming around.
"Not just any damn crew. Like the Jade Crew," he replied. "I know there's the ability to be productive within you guys, to work together as one unit. You just have to realize it yourself, and to want it."
There was no more affirmation from any of the others, and Garrett knew it would take more times like this before they began coming around. But it was a start, at least, though he felt the need to say something more. To bring something out into the open they hadn't yet talked about.
"We are the same crew now," he said.
"Do you really expect m—us—to believe that bullshit?" Evan asked incredulously. "These fuckers murdered half my family. The only family I have left are these two," he said with a gesture at Russell and Cole.
"Bullshit," Darren spoke up for the first time. "It was your ego that started that damn fight. You couldn't let it slide that the woman chose Michael and not you! He was trying to leave the bar, but you threw that first beer bottle. We all saw it. How you didn't end up in front of the Kedyns is a marvel to this day."
Evan stared daggers at Darren, but didn't move.
He couldn't, because Darren was right. Evan's old crew, the Onyx Crew, had gone up against the Amethyst Crew in a bar fight. The only reason that Evan had escaped alive was because he hadn't killed any humans, only Michael, the rival Alpha. It had been the rest of his crew that had done that, just like several of Michael's bunch.
The remnants of those two had been folded into the Ridgebacks, along with Corey, where they had become the Jade Crew.
"I get it," Garrett said into brittle silence. "Each time you look at each other, you see those you lost. That's understandable. To a degree," he finished, his voice harder than the strongest steel. "But at some point, you have to move on. To accept that what has happened, has happened. None of us can change the past. We can, however, change the future. Make it better. Instead of fighting against each other over memories, fight alongside each other to make more of them. Because if we don't start doing a better job down here, we're all going to end up in front of the Kedyns."
Garrett knew that nothing more needed to be said. Enough was enough. "Lunch break," he said, turning and heading up the shaft once more, the soft yellow lighting guiding his way back to the surface as he ascended. The spot of light grew brighter, hopefully mimicking the light he may have seen from Russell and his crew down below.
"Oh my God! Are you okay?" Emma shouted as he walked into the daylight, blinking his eyes rapidly to adjust them to the brilliance of the sun.
"What? Huh?" he said, momentarily caught off guard, until he noticed where her eyes were focused. "Oh, yeah it's fine. Just a scrape or two. They're all healed now anyway," he said, brushing off her horrified look.
"That fast? I mean, I knew it was quick, but already?" she said in surprise, her fingers poking at several of the newfound breathing holes in his clothing to see if he was telling the truth.
"Careful," he joked, "these are extremely expensive, fashion-forward clothing articles, straight from the runway. I've heard that paying more for pre-mangled clothing is coming back into style."
Emma's eyes went w
ide before she grinned and broke out into peals of laughter, resting her head on his shoulder as her body shook with barely-controlled giggles. It felt oddly comfortable to him to have her within his personal space like that. He found himself wishing she wouldn't move once she straightened up.
"You're horrible," she gasped, only finally beginning to recover a minute or so later.
"Nonsense. Trust me, they were worth the money. I'm going to be the hit tonight in Origin," he joked, referring to the main town in Genesis Valley. Gesturing toward the trailer where his lunch was stored, they moved off. After a half-day's worth of work and a fight, he was famished.
“Oh, and just who are you trying to impress there?” she asked, falling in alongside him as they walked.
Garrett looked over at her, his eyes narrowing. Had he detected a hint of jealousy in her words? Or had he imagined the slight bit of hurt in her voice just then? The look on her face betrayed nothing, but he knew that didn’t mean a thing.
“Well, there is this one girl,” he said very carefully.
“Oh?” came the measured reply.
“I’m not sure if she’s going to be there. Probably not, because she works a lot, and is very focused on her career.”
“Sounds like a smart young woman,” Emma replied in the same cautious tone.
“Oh, very,” he assured her. “The most beautiful woman I’ve ever met, though I don’t think she knows it.”
“She might, but take it from me that any woman likes to be told they’re beautiful,” Emma told him, though they both clearly knew that he was referring to her, and that she was thanking him in a roundabout fashion.
At least, Garrett thought that was what was happening. He wasn’t completely sure, however, not enough to the point where he was willing to do something about it. Despite the burning desire to.
His fist made contact rather heavily with the door to the trailer before his fingers closed around the handle, yanking it open as he stood to the side to allow Emma to go in first.