by Lynn Red
“No,” Craze said. “Well, I suppose I am. Not what you did, just how you did it.”
He paused for a moment, and I expected some kind of violence to erupt, but none did. Instead, the two just stared at one another, meeting each other breath for breath. When nothing happened except them taking steps closer, Craze swallowed and continued. “Look,” he said patiently, or so I thought. “She doesn’t know anything about the wolves. She doesn’t know anything about us. She didn’t even know that bears get yellow and blue confused sometimes.”
“I don’t,” Grave said stolidly. “And how can she not understand the danger of wolves, she—”
“That was the first time she ever saw an overlord, Grave. Damn it, man, she’s not from the same place we are. She’s not from the same world. How can you not understand that?”
I regained the few steps I’d taken backward. “Wait,” I whispered, placing a hand on each of their arms. “I didn’t mean to—”
“No.” Grave turned just enough for my hand to fall from his muscled arm. “No, this isn’t the way this works. You belong to us. To me. If you die, if we fail, then…” he trailed off, stared at me for a moment longer and then turned his head with a bit of dramatic flair. “It doesn’t matter. You don’t need explanations. You don’t have to understand how you’re going to save us anymore than I need to understand how you are.”
His voice was so final, so uncaring, that it made my guts twist into a knot. Once again I reached for him, but he batted my arm away effortlessly. Craze wasn’t so easy to turn away though. He took Grave by the wrist, forcing him to turn back. “Listen to what you’re saying,” he hissed. “You sound like one of them. Hell, you sound like him.”
Whatever that was supposed to mean, it must have been something bad. Grave lashed out a backhanded fist, cracking Craze in the jaw. Blood flew, and then the smaller bear’s head twisted painfully like a boxer who took an unexpected haymaker. Craze fell, but was back to his feet with inhuman quickness. Instead of delivering a fist, he raked Grave across the chest with outstretched fingers that I just noticed had grown claw-like nails.
“She doesn’t need to know!” Grave recoiled, hissed in pain and clutched his chest. “The more she knows, the more dangerous it is!”
“She deserves to know,” Craze loomed large over the bigger bear. He took a few cautious steps forward, not willing to open himself up to a counterattack, but at the same time, not all that sure one was coming. “If we’re going to take her away from her own life, if we’re going to shove her into a world she doesn’t know, then I can’t believe you’d keep her in the dark.”
My chest was thudding heavily. I felt like I’d just walked into a doctor’s office and was about to get my blood pressure taken. I can’t ever seem to do that without my nerves ruining any sort of chance I had at getting a good reading. Anxiety bubbled up in my chest, and the sour taste of bile crept up my throat. I knew I wasn’t going to be sick, but damn if it didn’t feel like I was right on the verge.
I was vaguely aware of a squelched yelp coming out of my mouth, but I had no idea I’d been as loud as I was.
“See?” Craze pointed backward toward me. “She’s scared, Grave, and she doesn’t have to be. She doesn’t have to worry or think that she’s trapped. You don’t have to keep her in a damned cage!”
“Wait,” I said, “the cage is… I thought he put me in there for…”
“Safekeeping,” Grave said, letting his eyes fall to the ground for just a brief moment. It made me think that he didn’t like what he was doing, even though he wasn’t going to stop. “You can’t be hurt, not if we’re going to save the clan.”
“And you,” he hissed, spinning back toward Craze. Grave caught a fist that was aimed straight at his jaw and squeezed the hand hard. “Who do you think you are?”
Suddenly, the sheer power of this man… this animal… struck me. As big and strong as Craze was, and as Wild must be, Grave made them look like frightened children. As he crushed Craze’s hand in his, the bigger bear only stared straight at the smaller. There was no malice in his gaze, but also not even the smallest shred of care for the pain he was inflicting.
“How dare you try and cross me? You know who she is to us. You know the importance of keeping her safe.”
Craze lifted his other hand, grasping pitifully at Grave’s forearm. He scratched uselessly, and tried to pry apart the fingers, but there was nothing doing. As she watched, the hair on Grave’s forearm grew thicker and harder. She knew from seeing before what was happening as he transformed, but even after watching this process a handful of times, it never failed to grip her with something riding the line between terror and excitement.
With his free hand, Grave clutched Craze by the throat and tightened his fingers.
“What are you doing?” I ran to the pair. They were only about fifteen feet away, but it felt like it took forever for my feet to slowly pedal over. Maybe it was that I really didn’t want to be between them, or maybe it was that I could hardly contain the grinding in my guts. Either way nothing felt real. “Why are you choking him?”
Grave growled from somewhere deep inside his chest. “To keep him in line,” he said without taking his eyes off Craze.
“In line?” I asked, trying to come up with any stupid excuse to keep talking, and hopefully, to help Craze. “You’re both alphas! The three of you are, at least that’s what you said.”
He snorted a laugh. “Much more complicated than that,” he said. He ground his teeth and grinned sardonically. “They take over if I die. If the wolves overwhelm us, they’re responsible for rebuilding the clan. As it is now? As things are? No, they’re not my equals.”
Grave held fast for a moment longer, lifting Craze off the ground so that the other bear was wheeling his feet in a grimly comical way. He smiled as he was doing it. “Have you learned your lesson, cub?”
He spat the word ‘cub’ like a human would call another ‘son’ to demean him. Craze just kept kicking his feet.
“She’s,” he squawked, “not like the… the others, she’s…”
Grave narrowed his eyes into angry slits. His nostrils flared with fury. “If you think I won’t choke you to death, keep talking.”
“Please!” I begged, finishing the distance and scrabbling against Grave’s hand. I tried scratching, and then pulling at his fingers just as Craze had, but it was no good. “Please, stop! You’re hurting him! Why are you doing this?”
Grave turned his huge head toward me and glared into my soul with those piercing, burningly cold, eyes. “Because, girl, this is my lot. This is my purpose. We all have them, and we’ll all complete them, no matter what.”
As he stared, I felt my chest constrict tighter and tighter with each breath I drew. Without warning, he released his hand and Craze collapsed to the leaves at my feet. He coughed and sputtered, and when I bent to help him, Grave caught me by the chin and held me up.
“If he can’t get back to his feet without his mate to help, then I want you to kill him,” he said. His voice was so cold, so driven, that I almost understood why. Almost.
“We can’t have anyone this weak and pitiful on our side, not if we hope to succeed against the beasts. I’m sure you won’t kill him though, so at least get him some yellow root as well before you make your way back to the cave. I don’t want him bellyaching all night. And don’t forget your spear,” he said.
I hardly remembered the thing he’d dropped at my feet. “The spear?” I asked. “But why?”
“Because you did well enough against the wolves both times you fought. And you’ll need something to get back to the cave, should you come across any more of them. And,” he added with something approaching a grin, “your mate is going to need you to protect him, I think.”
A rattling, painful sounding laugh shook Craze. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing—after that horrible display of whatever it was, dominance or rage, or whatever, he was laughing?
“You’re seeing to Wild, then?�
� Craze asked, rubbing the sides of his neck as he stood. “Or is that to us?”
The steely-eyed, gray bear stood stock-still for a moment. “You see to him,” he said. “He’s wounded, but as I saw, not too badly. The wound will heal but he’ll need yellow root for—”
“Keeping him from bellyaching?” I asked.
Grave turned toward me and smiled, slowly. “You’re getting the hang of things,” he said with an air of mystery. Or maybe it was just my utter, absolute confusion that made it seem mysterious. He turned, crouched, and vanished into the forest.
“What in the hell was all that?” I asked Craze, who was just then getting his feet underneath himself. He leaned heavily against a tree trunk, and let out a long sigh. “He went from just about to kill you, and talking about how I was some sort of meat… to you laughing? How is all this supposed to make sense?”
“Bears,” Craze said. “We might have a slightly odd sense of humor. But no, there is a lot to explain, and he certainly won’t be doing any of it. Seems like it’s up to us,” he finally said, a few moments later. “That is, if you actually want to know. He does have a point about if you were in the dark, you’d be under less danger. But—”
“No,” I cut him off. “I’m going to know what I’m into. I don’t think I’m gonna be taking off anytime soon, so I’m going to know. If you decide to try and protect me from… whatever the truth is, then you’re gonna have a lot to answer for.”
I bent down and grabbed the spear off the ground.
He was laughing when I leveled the blade at his throat. He swallowed, hard.
“I’m not anyone’s meat,” I said as dangerously as I could manage. “I do what I want, and unless I know what I’m into, you’re minus a mate. Got it?”
Craze smiled and slid down the blade. It nicked him just slightly on the underside of his jaw, but in the next second, he moved the weapon to the side and enveloped my mouth in a kiss. He thrust his tongue into me, hungrily, desperately.
“I understand,” he finally breathed, when he pulled away. “Trust me. I understand.”
5
“What do I do with this stuff?”
Craze was obviously hurt more badly than he let on, but he was still playing the part of the brave soldier. Looking toward me, he shrugged. “Chew it up into goo, and smoosh it wherever it hurts.”
“That’s… somehow pretty much what I expected,” I said, grimacing as I stuck the woody, fibrous root into my mouth and crunched down. “Oh, not bad. Kinda like a carrot with more, uh, strings?”
Craze smiled. “Yeah, they’re not the worst. But just count yourself lucky that you’re not trying to make blueroot liquor. That is a very unfortunate process.”
“Just go to a store,” I said, chewing more. As my teeth worked through the tuber, the vaguely sweet flavor gave way to some bitterness, and then a biting, almost stinging sort of sensation. Wild must’ve noticed my expression from the way he was grinning.
“She’s getting to the good part,” he said weakly, clutching his side. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“Oh my God! What is this? My mouth feels like I just took a bite of some really raunchy blue cheese and washed it down with sour milk!”
“Out of that I understood ‘sour milk’,” Craze said. “But that’s the healing part. It hurts because it’s healing.”
Somehow, that made sense. It was one of the things I remember my grandma saying whenever I’d get a big cut on my arm, or skin up a knee and she put some mysterious, dark-red liquid on the wound. Oh sit still, that just means its working, she’d said. I remembered grabbing hold of whatever was near, gritting my teeth, and trying to keep from crying.
Every so often, back in those days, a tear would slip out of my eye, and instead of being snippy and critical, she’d just smile and keep on with the gunk. I later figured out that’d been some kind of iodine serum, of course, but I’ll never forget—she called it ‘tiger’s blood’ and forever I was fascinated with the stuff.
“You can quit chewing whenever you want,” Craze said. “Once it starts tasting horrible you can stop, but we let it go on and on because it was funny. Only then, you got all steely-eyed and it wasn’t funny anymore.”
“She’s too brave for all that,” Wild said. “I got that feeling the first time we saw her. On the one hand, it’s sad that we can’t convince her to chew yellowroot until her mouth gets all pinched up and funny looking, but at the same time, she… well, she’s too brave for that.”
I swallowed, hard. Of all the things I expected right then, compliments weren’t really on the top of the list.
“Where’s Grave?” I asked, not really caring, especially after his recent jag of inexplicable cruelty, but something in the back of my mind still tugged. “Shouldn’t he be back by now?”
Craze shrugged and Wild just stared at me, eyes half-closed like he was in some kind of blissed state. “He’s doing whatever he does,” the golden-eyed bear said as he reached out and brushed the dirty hair from my face. “We can’t keep up with him.”
“If we try,” Wild joined in the conversation, “it just makes him more secretive. He’s the chief alpha, so you know, we kind of just go with it. Takes less energy.”
“And makes less drama,” Craze finished for him. “Besides, there’s something that I’ve been wanting to—”
“We’ve,” Wild cut in, “been wanting to do.”
A hot flush burned through my chest. I felt the goosebumps wash over my back and cover my chest in warming prickles. My nipples hardened against the soft cotton of my shirt. At some point soon it was going to need replacing, I thought, but that was just a sad attempt to distract myself from the desire burning hot and fast through my body.
As the two bears, glorious in their muscular nakedness, drew near enough that I could smell the sweat and the remnants of grime on their bodies, another trill of excitement coursed along my nerves.
“And what’s that?” I asked, smiling as I arched my neck to accept a hot, breathy kiss from Craze. “Something you’ve both been wanting to do?”
I curled my fingers into a fist, feeling his soft curls crunch between my fingertips and palm. “Is it something that… maybe… I’ve been wanting too?”
Wild drew his body around mine, pulling me gently to the floor of the cave. The thick blanket of dried grass, pine straw, leaves and furs greeted me and before I really knew what was happening, the shirt slipped off over my head. I closed my eyes and let the pleasure wash over me.
When I opened my eyes next, Craze was inches away, his breath sliding softly around my throat. But that wasn’t what made me gasp.
Wild’s teeth dragged a soft, hot line down my naked chest, between my breasts and then lingered just above my jeans. He tugged, and slipped the button free, and in the next breath, his tongue slid down my panties, curling into a hook as he warmed me through them.
The wet heat from his tongue met the desire seeping out from deep inside me, and he let out a soft groan as he inhaled my scent. “You make me crazy,” he breathed. “You make all of us crazy. How did it take so long for us to find you? Why can we not just have you?”
“It’d make this whole,” Craze joined him in the entranced, breathy speech. “The clan would be whole again, the alphas would have their mate and…”
Craze’s lips brushed my chin, and then my neck as Wild’s enveloped my sex and his tongue pressed harder, more urgently, against my entrance. The stretching cotton panties straining to keep us apart, felt like they were wearing thinner by the second, and I didnt’ want anything more than to feel his warmth inside of me. Somehow though, his eagerness and the cloth between just made the sensation stronger.
The ache inside me yearned to be let out and satisfied. “Can we… can I have all of you this time?”
Wild’s tongue slipped underneath the side of my panties and as he tasted me, and groaned his pleasure, I lost the ability to speak, and hell, even to think for a moment. Craze ran his tongue down the line of my neck, su
cked gently at the hollow of my throat, and then trickled kisses lower, until he had one of my nipples between his lips, and the other between two of his fingers as he cupped my breast, squeezing hard and desperately.
“We can’t,” he whispered. “Not yet anyway, although if you keep arching your back like that and making those faces and those whimpering sounds, I might not be able to control myself.”
I bit my lip hard, both grinning and moaning at the exact same time. Wild sucked a kiss on my labia, slid his tongue between, and tasted me deeply. His fingernails grated my skin, raising hot tracks of pain that melted slowly into body-warming pleasure moments later.
I had a thousand questions, a thousand things I wanted to ask, that I wished to know, but right then, as a finger slid inside me, turned slowly, and was matched by the pulses of Wild’s tongue against my aching clit, I couldn’t think of any of them.
Pressing the back of my head into the furs, I lifted my hips off the ground and turned my face toward the fire that always burned in the depths of our cave. It warmed my face the same way their kisses, their hungry licks, did my skin. I reached down, expecting to grab handfuls of hair, but instead found something much warmer, and much… thicker.
“Mmm,” I moaned in a breathy whisper. “I’ve wanted to get my hands on these for as long as I’ve been here,” I said softly. I giggled, thinking they’d join in, but they didn’t. The two bears only drew in closer to me, warming both sides of me with their bodies. I closed my hands around both of their cocks, squeezing gently, and sliding my palm along their length.
I drew a deep breath through my nose, letting the scent of the men and the forest, and my own sweat and sex fill me. Tingling fingers of electricity ran down the insides of my arms and seemed to radiate out from my belly button, and loop under me. Where Wild’s finger still pulsed, he slipped a second one, stretching me with aching sweetness in a way that made me want nothing more than to have him—all of him—right then.