by Lisa Ladew
Blake laughed roughly and placed his hand over Bruin’s, peeling Bruin’s pinky finger backwards unnaturally until the pain made Bruin let go. Bruin was dense and strong and could take any wolfen in a straight wrestling match, but the wolves all had these little cop-tricks, and if you saw one, there was always another one close by. He knew their cleverness and their pack-attack would always be a match for him and he loved it. Bearen males didn’t hang out well with human males, they always had to be worried about accidentally hurting them, but the wolves? The wolves could take any ‘lickins’ a bear could shell out and always get in a few cracks of their own. What with Bruin being ousted from the fire department and his own family, he would take good friends where he could get them.
He pulled his hand out of Blake’s grasp, shot him a grin that said, ‘good one,’ then held up the little bottle of honey and shook it. “Seriously, wolf, tell me. You’re killing me here.”
Blake sat back down and shuffled his papers around, his own grin saying he knew he was the shit. “They’re selling it at the health food store downtown. I asked about it, cuz I remembered that conversation we had at the pup blessing about the local honey, and how you watch that beekeeper tend to her bees on the side of Blue River Bluff in the morning, and how you always wondered if she sold it locally or just kept her honey for herself, or what.”
Bruin swallowed hard. That woman. The beekeeper. She made his heart pound, in a good way. He’d been watching her for months. There were two of them actually, but one of them spoke to him in a way he couldn’t explain, even though she was little more than a stick figure in his telescope. He didn’t even know what color her hair was. Brown, maybe. He swallowed again. “Is it new?”
Blake nodded. “Yeah, they just started selling it two weeks ago.” He leaned forward. “Here’s the part I thought you would want to know. Rainy Bluff Honey is sold by a company that has another business here in Serenity.”
Bruin rubbed the back of his hand against his mouth, barely able to keep his cool.
Blake grinned, finally taking pity on him. “The Honey Depot. That restaurant out on ’41. The same woman who owns that keeps the bees.”
The Honey Depot. The restaurant. The delicious smells. The strains of honey he’d never smelled in person before he walked in the door. A strange sound came from him. Blake frowned and took a step backward, looking at Bruin’s chest, where the sound was coming from. In Bru’s peripheral vision, he saw Rogue whip her head around to look at him, also frowning.
“What the hell, Bru? Are you… purring?” Blake said, his face incredulous.
Bru made a fist and whacked himself in the chest, then let out a volley of coughs. He had no idea what he was doing, but it wouldn’t do to purr in front of the wolves. They wouldn’t understand… and it had worked when Mac did it.
The noise stopped on his last cough and Blake relaxed a bit. Bruin tried to cover the moment. “I really appreciate this, Blake. You’re the best.”
Blake nodded at him. “Right, anytime. Chief wants to see you.”
Bruin looked around. “All of us?”
Blake shook his head. “Just you.”
Bruin nodded and headed that way, but slowly. He knew what was coming. He was about to be banned from working with the wolves, and it would break his heart. He tucked the honey bottle into one of his pockets as he passed his friends and headed into the hallway that would take him to Wade’s office.
The door was partially closed and he knocked on it. “Chief? Wade? You wanted me?”
Wade Lombard, Serenity Police Deputy Chief, the Citlali in charge of the KSRT and all the cops in the area where the body of Rhen lay underground, waiting for her to re-enter it someday, maybe fight Khain again, looked up from his desk and waved Bruin in, beckoning him toward the chair across from his desk with a finger.
Wade smiled and Bruin tried to smile back, but knew he only succeeded in showing his teeth. Wade rubbed his eyes. “No sign of her, I heard.”
Bruin shook his head. Wade was talking about Amaranth. Rogue’s twin. Who had to be a One True Mate since she had the same father as Rogue.
Wade sighed and his shoulders slumped. “That’s too bad.” He was silent for a few moments, then dropped this bomb. “I won’t lie. I think she’s yours, Bruin.”
Bruin had to play that statement over in his mind a few times. His what? When he figured it out, the ridiculousness of it slapped him in the face like a wet towel. “My… my mate? No. She can’t be.”
Wade frowned. He shook his head. He chose his words carefully. “You really don’t think that Rogue’s sister could be your mate? What about your connection to Mac? I know there’s a reason for that.”
Bruin had thought Wade would be telling him something very different and his brain was still having trouble grasping what Wade was saying. He shook his head. “Mac is Mac. The quintessential wolf. I love him for that. But that doesn’t mean his mate’s sister is my mate. None of the bearen get a mate until The Bear of Great Insight gets one. And we don’t even know who he is.”
Wade’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve never heard this before. Your Citlali is one hell of a close-mouthed berry-eater.”
Bruin snorted. That described B3 to a T. If ever the bearen would think of one of their own as an alpha, it would be B3. Always acting like he knew what was best for everyone, always doing his damndest to be in charge of everything, even things that he knew nothing about. And spending the last couple decades of his life dedicated to indoctrinating the bearen to believe the wolven and others were somehow responsible for the bearen’s greatest indignity. Bruin shook his head, wondering if his father lay awake at night, thinking about what would happen when the wolven discovered Bruin didn’t have a renqua. They’d seen him shift a few times. But not one had mentioned yet that his left shoulder was bare. Had they noticed? He didn’t know. Only Mac had ever asked him about his renqua, but Bruin hadn’t spilled the secret.
Bruin sometimes wondered himself, if he had been so eager to become friends with the wolven so they would have to discover he had no renqua. If they did, they would ask questions. He’d feel beholden to answer, and then it would be out. The bearen’s shameful secret. Did that make Bruin a traitor like B3 said? A Bearadict Arnold, like he and his littermate joked.
Bruin sighed. Conri, his littermate, or his twin, was the one bearen to still support him, stand behind him. But it had been months since he’d talked to Conri. Did Conri still support him?
Wade raised his hand, wanting to know about the Bear of Great Insight. “Is this a prophecy?”
Bruin held his breath. What would he say? He couldn’t decide, so he left it up to his mouth. His mouth couldn’t say it, so he enlisted his head, nodding, tentatively at first, then harder, then adding the kick-in-the-head message in ruhi. The last one our Citlali ever received, sir.
Wade side-eyed him. “When did it come through?”
Bruin swallowed hard. “When I was four years old, sir.”
Wade’s eyes widened, as if something he never imagined existed pranced in front of him. A rainbow-horned rhino, maybe. “Your Citlali have not had a prophecy in almost thirty years?! Were they disordered by Rhen?”
Bruin sat stock still, not daring to move a muscle. What would happen now? What would the wolves decide to do? The bears would not be able to fight whatever edict the wolves saw to hand down, whether Rhen was involved or not. There were triple or quadruple more wolven than bearen. Bearen weren’t offensive by nature, but rather defensive. They saved lives, they didn’t take them, and that’s where the wolven had them beat. The wolven were all about the offense, about sneaking up on you in the dead of night, breaking down your door, and taking you under the blanket of dark, if that was what it took. Or they’d meet you at your office desk in front of fifteen of your co-workers, if they thought that would work better.
If the wolves said they were all out of a job, they were out of a job. If the wolves wanted to put them all in jail, that could happen, too. The police had the
military on their side, the military and the government. There was no fighting it, unless you were someone special.
Wade’s expression broke, and he stared at Bru, eyes wide, jaw slack. “They were disordered,” he finally whispered.
“Not just the Citlali, sir,” Bruin choked out. “All of us. Each and every bearen.”
Wade startled, his head jerking on his shoulders. “You don’t mean…”
“Yes, sir, we don’t have renquas anymore. They all faded when I was four.”
Bruin watched Wade do the math in his head. Wade knew how old Bruin was. He knew more about Bruin than any non-bearen. He knew Bruin had been on his way out of Serenity for good that evening when he’d met Mac in the old barn, and made a friend. They’d been attempting to end the foxen underground siege, and that job was supposed to be Bruin’s last as a Serenity firefighter. But just one joke forged a bond not yet broken by time and differences, which had made Bruin reconsider.
Wade put a hand to his head, staring at Bruin alongside tented fingers. “The year the females were killed… you… the bearen, all lost your renqua.” He stretched his neck and peered hard at Bruin. “You, Bru, you have a renqua though, right? I mean, you have to. I’ve… I’ve seen it, haven’t I?”
Bruin dropped his chin and peeled his shirt off his midsection, teeing the cloth up over his head until it was off, then he stood and turned his back to Wade, shoulders drooped. He had a few tattoos on his left arm and chest, but had stopped short at tattooing over the spot his renqua achingly was not. He didn’t know what his renqua was, couldn’t remember having seen it, so he couldn’t accurately tat around it, like the older bears had.
Bruin had once asked Conri if he remembered what Bruin’s renqua had been. The little brothers had all been too young to remember, but Conri and he had both been four when first their mother and nan had died, and then their father had lost his mind. Conri had squinched up his eyes, thought deeply, and said, “a pointy sailboat,” but he couldn’t quite tell Bruin how it had fit on his shoulder. Had the sail pointed up? Or to the side? Or down. Was it on rough seas? Or no seas? Conri didn’t know.
Bruin had never asked again. When Conri had asked what his own renqua had been and Bruin had described what he remembered, a sabored knife, almost big enough to be a sword, with a jeweled hilt, Conri had stared into space for an hour, his lip trembling, his eyes vacant. Bearen did not value fighting, the taking of life, and what else could a knife mean? Maybe Conri didn’t even wish a return of his renqua, to this day, while Bruin could think of little else.
Bruin jumped when he felt Wade’s cold finger trace his skin where a renqua theoretically once sat. Wade’s voice was dreamy, wondering. “It’s still there, Bru, just obscured. I can feel the points and edges.”
Bruin pulled away from Wade’s touch. He also could find haphazard points and edges under his own skin, but felt nothing when he’d touched Conri’s shoulder. Bru was a thinker by nature, one to believe the mind was great enough to work out any worry, if offered enough time. So why hadn’t he figured this out yet? Why didn’t he know if he still had a renqua or not, or if he did and his brother didn’t, what that meant? It pained him, sometimes making him stumble.
Wade now knew the bears’ shameful secret but Bruin wasn’t glad it was out, nor did he feel one iota better. American myths had lied forever about that. He yanked his shirt onto his shoulders and over his torso, smoothing the fabric down and stepping past Wade to sit in the chair and await his fate with as much dignity as he could muster.
Wade returned to his own chair, staring at his desk over tented fingers. His voice was sad when he finally spoke. “I’ll have to meditate on this, Bru, and abide by what comes back.”
Bruin nodded. He knew what that meant. Wade would talk to Rhen and try to interpret what she said, what her opinion was on the matter, if she was willing to say. Rhen was like that. Sometimes she wouldn’t or couldn’t say. Rhen did not often agree with punishment, although she understood it. But that was why she’d chosen wolves as one of her Animals of the Watch. (Only bearen thought of the shiften as Animals of the Watch, because the book, a sweet bearen bedtime story had been written by a bearen, and paralleled the history of the shiften in a way that was particularly flattering to bears. The wolves and the big cats thought it was a joke.) Wolves were the shiften with the mindset to police the rest of them. It was what they did. They were made to be in charge.
Wade nodded once, sharply, and his mood changed, as he shifted gears in his mind.
“I have half a mind not to tell you this last part, but because I know you, Bruin, and I know you to be a good shiften, I believe Rhen will somehow explain the inexplicable. That things will be the same after I talk to her as they are now.”
Bruin tried not to think about what that meant. He’d been trying not to think about it for years.
Wade went on. “B3 says you can’t work with us anymore.”
Bruin nodded listlessly. That’s what he’d been waiting to hear, what he’d known was coming. The fire chief refused him a foster family and would still push him out of Serenity for something he didn’t even remember doing. Banish him.
He responded with a question of his own, back on semi-firm footing. “Is there any way around it, Wade? Do you know?”
Wade shook his head. “I don’t. You could defect, I guess. But if you chose to throw in with the wolven without your Chief’s permission, I would have to check with Rhen and follow her wishes.”
“You would do that?”
Wade nodded. “Of course I would. I love you like a son. You belong somewhere, and we wolves would be honored to have you.”
Bruin couldn’t respond for a moment. More acceptance than he’d ever received in his life, and from someone he could see as a father…
Wade pressed his lips together, making Bruin’s heart trip, then pushed more words out. “I have spoken with Rhen about you. I did not ask her if you could jump ship permanently from bears to wolves, but I did ask if she could influence your Chief’s decision to make you stop working with us.”
Bruin waited to hear what Wade would say, an icy wind stealing his breath.
Wade’s puzzled tone surprised him. “She said that you knew how she felt about that, and she said it in a way that would make me believe you have more choice in the matter than I know.” His brows drew together. “Is that true? Do you talk to Rhen?”
Bruin’s thoughts fled. He could only sit and be. Did he talk to Rhen? He didn’t think so, but if not, what was the explanation for his… spells? Those times when he went blank, then knew something impossible to know. How could he know what he knew?
Running footsteps sounded in the hallway and captured both their attentions. Harlan stuck his head in the office door. “Heather’s having contractions.”
Wade’s head whipped toward Harlan. “Heather?” he sputtered. “Not Ella or Shay?”
“Heather,” Harlan confirmed. “The dragen is coming.”
Wade stood, his chair shooting backward and bouncing off the wall from the force of his movement. “I’m heading out,” he told Harlan, then looked to Bruin.
Bruin nodded tightly. “You gotta go. You know how to find me.” It was a lie, but at that moment, Bruin had to do his own thinking. He needed to get away. To curl up somewhere, maybe even run a bit.
To pull himself together.
Chapter 6
Willow strode across the field, heading for the restaurant, her long boho skirt grabbing on the wildflowers, blossoms tumbling into her boot when her strides were long enough.
She’d seen an image in her mom’s mind of where the-what had it been called? The shiftsegen-was, where her mom had stashed it, but she didn’t quite dare to head for it. First impressions were important, the ones least likely to be cluttered with her own visions and experiences. Her mom wouldn’t move it, and Willow would know when it was time to handle it. Not now.
The trail she was on sloped downhill, practically spitting her out at the restaurant.
She could tell by the cars in the parking lot that Pam, the lunchtime waitress, was already at work, and so was Manny, one of the cooks. They would be deep into setup already. Willow had slowly handed over responsibility after responsibility to her employees in the last three years, until the only thing she did anymore was make the skillet cookies and help with setup. She occasionally baked, bear claws, pies, that kind of thing, but only if they were short-staffed.
The skillet cookies, though, those were all hers. Healthy enough to be breakfast, hearty enough to last all day, she was the only one who knew the recipe.
She slipped into the back door of the restaurant as a high-revving engine sounded on the road out front. The noise made her think of men and motorcycles and horses running wild. She’d never had a date, knew very little of men and motorcycles, or even horses, but she had a TV. She was alive. She knew as much as most people.
Eh, not true. Maybe of motorcycles and horses, but of men? She knew nothing. Less than nothing. No father, only a half-solid angel who’d fathered and ran. No brothers. No uncles. No friends or boyfriends. Willow shook her head, remembering her earlier decision. The angel could show up today with wings on his back and a sign around his neck that said, Angel here, solving all your problems from now on, explaining the mysteries of your life any time you ask, and he still would have to prove it to her, to win her. She was done waiting, done operating on pure faith.
Men had shown interest in her before, here in the restaurant, the only place she ever went besides the feed store and the grocery store. Any time one had, she’d mentally gone through the files in his brain, feeling bad but unable not to do it.
Of course, she’d always found them lacking. Not an angel. Not out to save the world, but rather someone who would prefer to go ice fishing or dirt-bike riding, and so she’d gently rebuked each one of them, to her mother’s relief. Willow did believe most of what her mother believed about her, even if neither knew which parts of it the other was getting wrong.