by Zoe Chant
Melody was frozen on the edge of a reply. Ben could usually tell when people were lying; years of practice had made his panther highly attuned to nuance. And she wasn't even sure she wanted to lie, not anymore, not about this.
But before she could open her mouth and tell him the truth, Ben's phone buzzed audibly in his pocket. He raised his hand and stepped away. "Yeah?"
Whatever was being said on the other end of the line made visible shock and alarm go through him like a livewire. "Are you hurt?" he asked sharply. "Is the baby okay? Is everyone okay?"
Gunnar was on his feet now. He exchanged a look with Melody, who shook her head helplessly.
"I've found Mel, so we'll be there as soon as possible," Ben said. "I love you." He hung up the phone and turned to the other two. Taking a deep breath, eyes fixed on Gunnar, he said, "Your brother just attacked Derek and Gaby's farm."
***
Flying to the farm with two people on her back was a lot more exhausting than with one, but it was faster than taking Ben's car, and Melody wasn't about to leave Gunnar behind. Half an hour ago, she would happily have left Ben behind, but her sisterly annoyance had faded away like snow in the summer sun when things had turned deadly serious.
She hadn't realized until now that some part of her, a rather large part of her, had believed Nils was never going to show up. She'd honestly thought her brother was being paranoid. If she was on the run from the law, she certainly wouldn't head for the first place they'd look! She had assumed that Nils was probably headed for a different country as fast as he could go, and they'd deal with extra security on the farmhouse for a week or two, then go back to their normal lives.
Foolish. Naive.
Ben said that nobody was hurt, but she still pushed her wings as fast as she could beat them, and didn't start to relax until she circled over the farmhouse. The house and yard blazed with lights, an electric wall holding back the dark. Melody glided in for a landing on the open lawn next to where the cars were parked. Derek came down from the porch to meet them, carrying a shotgun, as Melody shifted back and retrieved her glasses and necklace from Gunnar.
As he approached, Derek swung the shotgun to point at Gunnar.
"Knock it off," Ben said shortly, pushing the muzzle away. "He was with Melody the whole time."
"They could be contacting each other somehow," Derek said gruffly.
"He's not a traitor," Melody flared. "Like Ben said, he was with me all day. What happened?"
Derek let out a breath. "Let's get in the house and I'll fill you in. After that, now that you're back, one of us needs check the perimeter. I didn't want to leave the women alone in the house."
The tension was contagious, and Melody felt something inside her ease as the door closed behind them and Ben locked it. The rest of the household was clustered in the living room, Gaby with a sleepy Sandy in her arms and her mother holding the baby. Tessa had been sitting beside Gaby, but she jumped up and came running to hug Melody, pregnant belly bumping awkwardly between them. "Melody! I was so worried when we couldn't find you! Thank God you're okay."
Tessa's obvious worry made her feel guilty in a way that getting chewed out by her brother hadn't. "I'm sorry, Tess. I just wanted to get away for a little while."
"What happened?" Gunnar asked in his deep, quiet voice.
Derek gave him a hard look. It was Tessa who answered.
"We think he was mainly testing our defenses rather than making a serious attempt to get inside. Something tripped the security system, and when Derek went out to check it, Ghost—Nils—whatever you want to call him tried to get in at the back door."
Ben sucked in his breath, and Derek glowered.
"What did you do?" Melody asked, glancing toward the kitchen. Its lights were on, like every other light in the house, and she could see that the back door—leading to the back deck, where she'd just that morning had coffee with Gunnar—had been boarded up.
"Tessa drove him off with an axe," Gaby said admiringly.
Tessa flushed. "You make it sound like a bigger deal than it was. I grabbed an axe that we use to chop up wood for the fireplace, and ran into the kitchen just as the door broke in and swung it at his face."
All three of the new arrivals were now staring at her. "No big deal?" Melody repeated. Ben put an arm around his hugely pregnant wife and kissed her.
"I just swung at his face and missed, though," Tessa protested, blushing hotter under the dark-caramel tint of her skin. "I was yelling, and Gaby was yelling, and Derek heard us and came running with the shotgun. By that time Nils was gone."
"Are you sure it was him?" Gunnar asked quietly, his big hands clenching into fists.
"He was shifted," Tessa said, "so, yes, unless there are a lot of polar bears around this part of the country."
"That decides it, though," Derek said. "It's not safe here. We need to move the family somewhere safe."
"Darius," Tessa said promptly. "He'll help us, I'm sure."
Ben made a faint protesting noise, but subsided. "You're right," he said, looking subdued. "I can call him."
Tessa shook her head. "I can do it. If we need is a safe place to go for a few days, I'm sure he'll let us stay with him."
Gaby looked uncertain. "Are you sure we'll be safer in the home of a dragon mob—er—" She glanced down at Sandy, who seemed to have fallen asleep in her arms, but still changed directions with the sentence. "I'm not sure we'll be safer there than here."
"Neither am I," Melody said. In her entire lifetime, she couldn't remember her dad ever having human guests, aside from that one time Ben had showed up with Tessa in tow and hadn't really given him a choice.
However, Tessa and her father seemed to have an unusual rapport. She wished she could get her dad to listen to her the way he listened to the small woman with all the cats.
"Yeah, I'm kinda with Melody on that," Derek said. "There's no need to call your dragon in-laws. We can arrange a safehouse. Probably should've done it already. My fault. I thought we'd be able to hold him off better here, but this place just isn't defensible enough."
"What on earth could be safer than a mansion guarded by a dragon?" Tessa asked. "It'll do good for Darius to have some company for a change. He can get used to having kids around before he has to deal with actual grandchildren."
Melody and Ben exchanged a look of mutual dismay, sharing a moment of sibling same-wavelength rapport. "Honey, Dad is terrible with kids," Ben said. "Including his own."
"Especially his own," Melody muttered.
"Well, that's why he needs practice," Tessa said brightly, taking out her phone.
The soft clunk of the door closing jerked Melody away from the conversation. She spun around, realizing that Gunnar was no longer with them.
"Gunnar!" She ran to the now-unlocked door and opened it. Ben appeared instantly at her elbow, reaching for his shoulder holster.
The porch was empty as Melody ran out onto it, but there at the top of the steps was a pile of discarded clothing. She couldn't tell if it was just her imagination that she thought she saw a flash of white at the far side of the pasture.
"Gunnar!" she shouted into the night.
"Damn it," Ben murmured. Melody turned as he holstered his gun. "Sorry, sis. Looks like they were in cahoots the whole time."
"They certainly were not!" She spun around, straining her eyes as she scanned the woods for another elusive flash of white. "He's going to try to find Nils and stop him. I'm sure he is. Damn it! We can't let him go alone."
"What the hell is the deal with you and this guy, Mel?" Ben asked.
"He's my mate, you idiot," she snapped.
The words fell into a sudden silence. She was all too aware of Derek and Tessa in the doorway, Gaby behind them. Not that she'd really planned how she wanted to tell them, but this sure wasn't it.
Derek cleared his throat. "Are ... you sure?"
This caused everyone else, Gaby in particular, to give him a disbelieving stare.
"Right. Y
es. Forget I said anything."
"Melody ..." Ben was looking at her with open worry now, fumbling for words. "I know what it feels like, when you look into someone else's heart like that. I know what it feels like when you think you've found your other half—"
"What do you mean, when I think?" she flared. "You've found your mate; you know what it feels like. You wanted to know why I'm so sure that there's no harm in Gunnar? It's because I can see his soul. Like he can see mine. And the longer we argue about this, the longer he's in danger, all alone, trying to protect us all."
She could see they didn't believe her. Even Ben didn't seem to believe her, and he should know better. Tessa had been her best friend since high school, but she wasn't a shifter; she didn't know, in the bone-deep way that shifters knew.
Melody turned away. "Fine," she said, storming down the steps. "I'll find him on my own."
"Melody!" Ben called, but she was already shifting. The change came more violently than her usual transformations, her dragon erupting out of her with pent-up fury. She didn't remember about her glasses until they fell off her nose. The chain on the locket was stretched tight around her scaly, silver throat, but not tightly enough to break.
Oh well. For perhaps the first time in her life, she didn't care. If no one picked up her glasses, she had a spare pair back in her apartment.
The important thing was to find Gunnar before he found Nils, and got himself killed.
She beat her wings and took off with a hard downdraft, soaring into the night sky.
Chapter Thirteen: Gunnar
Gunnar ran through the dark woods, his bear's legs pumping in time with the beating of his powerful heart, following the traces of Nils's scent.
He shouldn't have just run off without saying anything to Melody; he knew that. But every moment he waited was a moment when Nils was getting farther away. And, anyway, the only thing he'd get if he explained what he had in mind was endless arguments. Arguments from Melody's brother and friends, who didn't trust him; arguments from Melody, who would worry about him.
No, Nils was his problem to deal with. That had always been true, ever since they were young.
Last time, he'd given Nils the benefit of the doubt. And he'd gone to prison for it. This time, he had people to protect. Gunnar intended to put his own flesh and fur, claws and teeth, between Melody and Nils. If his brother threatened one hair on her head, one scale on her body—and a threat to her family might as well be a threat to Melody herself; he knew that by now—
Nils was going to regret the day he messed with the Keegan family.
Gunnar's bear didn't seem to care; his bear was simply thrilled to be out and running, relishing the smells and sounds of the dark forest. Even before prison, as an urban bear, he'd rarely gotten to enjoy this kind of freedom. He wished he could just enjoy it, without the human side of him being acutely distracted by the confrontation to come.
As he pursued the fresh, hot trail of Nils's familiar scent deeper into the woods, he began to cross other, older trails. Older by days, older by weeks—Nils must have been living back here since he'd escaped prison. Which, now that Gunnar thought about it, made all the sense in the world. They had been thinking in human terms, as if Nils were an ordinary escaped convict, making lists of his old contacts and known bolt holes and ways that he might try to get out of the country. Even Gunnar had been thinking that way.
But Nils didn't have to do any of that. All he had to do was shift into a bear, and he could live in the mountains indefinitely. A polar bear this far south was pretty conspicuous, but he had a human mind to drive his bear's habits. He could stay out of sight, feed himself by hunting, and live comfortably off the land as long as he wanted.
Gunnar suspected he might have thought of it earlier if he hadn't spent his entire life in the city. But Nils hadn't. Nils had been all over the world, working as a gun for hire on nearly every continent. He had plenty of experience at surviving in the wilderness, as a bear or a human.
And if you'd just taken off and decided to make your home in a different forest, you could have lived there for years, with no one guessing a thing, Gunnar thought angrily in his brother's direction.
But no, Nils had to come back seeking revenge on the people who'd put him in prison and their mates. And now, Gunnar and Nils were headed toward a clash that had probably been coming for a long time, maybe their entire lives.
As Gunnar ran, his childhood memories kept pace with him, surfacing in his mind in bright flashes. He remembered good times and bad ones. Memories of Nils mercilessly bullying him. Nils showing him how to hotwire his first car. Nils making sure there were groceries in the house, or the two of them playing together as small children ...
There had been a lot of childhood cruelty that Nils had made sure their mother never saw: stealing or breaking Gunnar's toys, pushing him down in the sandbox. But there had also been times when they played together happily, wrestling and laughing as little children do. And Gunnar truly believed that all the things Nils had taught him as a teenager—how to shoplift and steal cars, how to forge rent checks—had been well intentioned, if terribly misguided. Nils had believed that it was a harsh, cruel world out there, and everything he had taught Gunnar were survival skills for the world as Nils thought it was.
"You have to get them before they get you," he'd said.
And: "All we've got is each other, kid. We have to look out for each other."
Bears couldn't weep, but Gunnar felt the ghostly prickle of tears in his eyes anyway. He wanted that brother back, the brother he'd glimpsed in those rare soft moments in between all the harshness and cruelty and anger ... the brother who, he now suspected, had never really existed except in his own childhood idolization of his adored older sibling. Certainly, Nils had not been that person for many years.
All we've got is each other.
But that wasn't true anymore, was it? Into the home-movie reel of childhood memories, something new began to intrude: memories of Melody. The softness of her hair, the warmth of her laugh, the sparkle in her gray eyes. The subtle strength as her fingers curled around his. The way she defended him against her family, and listened when he talked.
They had both misjudged each other in the beginning. Like most people, she hadn't been able to see past his bruiser looks and jail tattoos—but he was no better; he'd failed to see the strength underlying her soft-looking surface. She wouldn't hurt and abandon him like Nils had. This was a mate who would stand by him no matter what the world threw at them.
Gunnar slowed. Nils's scent was very fresh now. The trail had led him away from the hilly farmland around Autumn Grove into the mountains. It was possible one of the other shifters at the farmhouse might follow their scent the same way Gunnar had followed Nils's, but if so, they had a head start; they'd have at least a few minutes before anyone bothered them.
From the rocks ahead of him came a low growl. The wind brought him Nils's scent, fresh and strong.
Gunnar bristled as his bear surged inside him, wanting to fight. Unlike Gunnar's human mind, his bear wasn't restrained by memories of their childhood. His bear knew that Nils was a threat, not a fellow cub anymore, but another big boar bear to fight.
Gunnar shifted so he could speak. "Come out where I can see you. I know you're there."
Even as a human, his slightly-sharper-than-usual senses could pick up Nils's scent. There was a faint sliver of moon in the clear sky, just enough to lace Nils's white fur with silver as the other polar bear strolled into view, his muscles rippling beneath his shaggy hide.
Gunnar had forgotten how enormous Nils was. Scars from other fights slashed through Nils's pale coat, trophies of old fights won—and, Gunnar guessed, one fight lost, against Derek Ruger.
That was what Nils could not forgive. He might not even mind the prison sentence so much as losing a fight to another bear. He'd never been able to back down or walk away.
Are you any better? Gunnar asked himself.
He shook off the doubt
s. Unlike Nils, he hadn't chosen this fight. He was here to defend, not to attack.
"I went to prison because of you," he said quietly.
Nils shifted abruptly into his human form, huge and muscular. His hair was longer now than he'd kept it when Gunnar had known him, a tangled blond mess full of leaves, and he had several weeks' scruff of a beard. "Am I supposed to apologize?" His voice was rough from disuse.
"It'd be a start, yes."
"A start on what? Renewing our brotherly bonds?" Nils sneered. "You made it clear how you feel about me when you took their side and threw in with that bunch of cowards and mixed shifters down the hill."
"They're not your enemies."
"Everyone is the enemy! Didn't I teach you anything? The only person you can trust in this world is yourself. Take them out before they take you out. That's how it works."
Gunnar shook his head slowly. "That's not how most people are. That's just how you are. It doesn't have to be that way."
"Yeah? Well, if you believe in our brotherly unity so much, then join me." Nils grinned fiercely, his teeth flashing white. "We'll attack them together. Between the two of them, I bet we can take that bear and panther, even their dragon watchdog."
Gunnar recoiled in horror. "I'd rather die!"
"Then you will," Nils growled, his words distorting as he shifted.
Gunnar shifted too. He met the other bear with a clash that shook the trees.
They hadn't ever fought, truly fought. They'd wrestled as kids, but in the half-serious, half-playful way that brothers always fought. As a younger man, Gunnar had brawled with other large-predator shifters like himself, out back of shifter bars, but those fights had been nothing more than drunk, rowdy young men bristling at each other. He'd gotten some bruises and a few scars, nothing more serious. He'd gotten into some fights in prison, but always as a human, and always with the threat of the guards not far away.
This was a no-holds-barred, knock-down, drag-out bear fight. They snarled and tore at each other, slapped at each other with their huge paws, tried to wrestle the other to the ground to sink fangs into his throat. In some distant part of his mind, Gunnar didn't know what he'd actually do if he did get Nils down onto the ground. He couldn't see himself killing his brother except perhaps accidentally, in self-defense.