by Selena Scott
***
There were four bears on the field. One of them horribly terrifying. The others were beautiful in their own rights.
A hawk swooped over top of them and caught the sunlight. Martine was so beautiful in her hawk form, Caroline thought as she watched the bears in the distance. Beautiful, but alone. She couldn’t communicate with the bears the way they could with one another. She was perpetually on the outside. Lonely.
But her attention was drawn to the bears as a blue light pulsed out from Arturo, almost invisible in the bright sun. It flung itself over all the bears and landed in a tent over top of them—they were inside the sphere of it.
“Wow,” Celia and Thea whispered from beside Caroline.
Arturo had no idea why he was doing this. His anger at the group had burned out. He hated that they’d made him tell his story. Riled himself up enough to speak about Amelia. But why had he insisted on showing anyone this rotted, torn away part of himself?
He’d been keeping it locked up for so long that opening himself up to them was like trying to open a door that had been grown over with a century’s worth of ivy. It was like digging himself out of his own coffin.
He just wanted to stay buried.
But as he watched his energy tuck in around them all, he figured that they’d come this far. These people were convinced that he had answers for them. Maybe, when he showed them who he truly was, they’d back off.
None of the bears enjoyed the feeling of being surrounded by Arturo’s energy. It created a buzzing tension within each of them. It made Jean Luc want to fight. Made Jack want to find Thea and make sure she was a million miles away from all this. It made Tre want to sprint for miles. If they were being honest, it wasn’t a terrible feeling. It was just a strange, semi-out-of-control feeling.
“Alright,” came Arturo’s voice in their heads, complete with the horrible screeching static that always came with it.
The bears stood three in a row, all facing Arturo. It was Tre who stepped forward, swung around to form a half-circle with Arturo. Jean Luc did the same on the other side until all four bears were connected in a circle, the blue energy pulsing all around them. It was hard to read the face of a giant monster death-bear, but Tre thought that Arturo looked a little surprised by the move.
Regardless, Tre could feel the other two reaching out with their feelings toward Arturo, and he did the same. And came up against the exact same wall they’d been feeling for weeks now. All at once, though, with a downward contraction, like it caused him great pain, Arturo brought down that internal wall. And he let them in.
Tre’s eyes slammed shut as he felt what Arturo was feeling. Anger, that was the first and foremost. And pain. Arturo experienced a kind of low-level constant hum of cosmic pain that Tre couldn’t imagine having experienced for all these years. It almost made sense why the guy was such a dick.
Tre shifted through Arturo’s emotions and felt Jack stiffen suddenly beside him. A second later, Tre knew why. Because he’d found what Arturo was talking about. Deep within Arturo was the ragged edge of his soul where the demon had torn it away. It was noxious and toxic, like opening the door to a room where a corpse had lain in decay. There was something within Arturo that was rotting away. But never fully dying.
Tre fought hard not to recoil and he could feel his two brothers doing the same.
“This is what I am. This is what you seek help from. I’m not a man anymore. I’m half monster.” A moment later, the wall resumed. Arturo snapped it back into place. And his bear form was gone.
He fell to all fours in his human form, naked and trembling. Arturo hung his dark head and slammed one fist on the ground. “Why won’t you just let me be? Just let me be.”
***
Arturo had already disappeared back into the house when the three others communicated in their heads with one another. It horrified them to see what the demon had done to Arturo’s soul. Jack and Jean Luc shifted back into their human forms. Tre, however, stayed in his bear form. He ambled alongside his human brothers until they got to the porch of the homestead where the women waited for them.
“I think he’s hoping you’ll join him, darlin’,” Jack said to Caroline.
Wide-eyed, she stepped off the porch and took a few steps toward Tre. He huffed out a deep breath that made her jump a little and then giggle at her own reaction. She jumped again when Jean Luc hoisted her upwards.
She suddenly found herself about six unexpected feet off the ground. “I’m riding a bear,” Caroline said in a tone as delighted as it was perplexed. Beneath her, Tre chuffed in amusement and slowly turned to amble towards the woods lining one side of Thea’s property.
“Don’t go far!” Celia couldn’t help but call out behind them.
Caroline nodded, turning around to wave at everyone, and then just sort of snuggled in to Tre’s long fur. It was thicker and coarser than she might have thought, but no less inviting. He was kicking off just as much heat as he did in his human form. Caroline couldn’t help but just sort of scratch at him, like he was a big…
“Teddy bear!” she chirped. “Oh my gosh, Tre. Your mom used to call you Teddy and now you’re literally a bear!”
She clapped her hands together and laughed. A noise rumbled out of him and Caroline could have sworn it was a chuckle. They got to the edge of the woods and Tre kept going. He seemed to know exactly where he was taking her. Caroline marveled at the beauty of his animal side. The grace and natural rhythm of his gait. He was perfect as a bear. She loved it.
They walked quietly for another twenty minutes before they came to a clearing in the woods. She hadn’t realized that they’d been going uphill, but she hadn’t been paying much attention to their surroundings, either. Tre slowly sat down and she slid off of his back. When she turned, she realized that he’d taken her into the hills, to a rise that overlooked Thea’s homestead and the miles of rolling landscape that surrounded it. The afternoon sun was bright and they were dappled with the shadows of the leaves that canopied over them.
“Wow,” she breathed and only turned back around when she heard a sound behind her.
It was Tre, back in his human form.
“It’s beautiful,” she told him, turning back around to the view. “Is this where you come when you disappear for a while?” He often did. She’d noticed that he needed more alone time than the rest of them did.
“Yes.” He came up behind her and plastered himself to her back, his arms going around her waist. They were quiet for a long minute, just watching the view. “Caroline. I’m always going to be a bear shifter. From here on out.”
“I know.”
“And who knows what the hell that means, right? Am I going to have to move out of Brooklyn? Probably. To someplace where I can shift regularly without anyone noticing. God. I have some money, but not very much. And if you really want me to, I’ll try to find a different line of work, a more legal one. But… that’ll mean I have even less money.”
She tried to turn and look at him but he held her fast, facing away.
“My house—” he gulped, as if the things he was saying were extremely difficult to get out. “My house isn’t great. I never needed anything special. So it’s just a little two-room apartment in Bushwick. My neighbors are kind of loud. It’s a bachelor pad, you know?”
“Okay,” she said slowly, carefully.
“I never see my dad. Like, never. I spoke to him on the phone about eight months ago. The conversation was probably 45 seconds long. And I hadn’t spoken to him for a year before that. As far as I know, he’s still living in Queens. But if he’d moved, I don’t think he even would have told me.” He paused and squeezed her a little tighter. “I never celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas. Sometimes I’ll get drunk on New Year’s with a few friends. I never go on vacations.”
“Tre.” She turned and this time he let her. She was very disturbed by what she saw on his face. He looked broken.
“The only thing I can give you, Caroline, is mys
elf. And I don’t even know how to do that. I’m obviously bad at it. I’ve been trying so hard the last few weeks to show you how I feel and you still looked shocked when Arturo told you how much I care about you.” His voice broke for a second and she realized he was squinting so hard because he didn’t have his glasses on. “Is it selfish to want you? To inflict myself on you when you deserve somebody without all these hang-ups? I don’t know. But I know that I can’t make the decision for you. Isn’t that what Arturo did with Amelia? He made the decision for her and made both of them miserable. So, I just want you to have all the information. And then you can decide.”
Caroline blinked up at him, taking in that face of his that she’d come to care so deeply for. She loved his coppery facial hair, his thick eyebrows. She loved the winging lines at the corners of his eyes. She even loved the deep concern and worry that was radiating out of him right now. It was very, very Tre.
“You haven’t given me all the information,” she told him after a long minute of studying him.
“What do you mean?”
“You left out a really big part.”
“Which part?”
“The part where you love me,” she told him.
Now it was his turn to blink. She watched panic flit across his face. He tamped it down with a strangely neutral expression that gave way to something like bright fear. He took a ragged breath. “I love you?” he asked her, his voice hoarse and torn off at the edges.
“Pretty sure,” she nodded. She bit her lips to keep from smiling, but it was hard. “I’m pretty sure that’s what this is.”
“Huh.” He was trying to play it cool, she could tell. But then he audibly gulped. She could see his pulse banging in his throat and she wondered if he realized just how tightly he was gripping her hips. Like he was hanging on for dear life.
“You freaking out a little bit?” she asked him gently.
“Ah. Yeah. Just a little bit.”
She anchored her hands at his elbows and helped him down to a seated position. Which she enjoyed, considering he was butt-ass naked. He put his elbows on his knees and she watched while his hands shook. Caroline gently took Tre by the back of his head and guided his head between his knees.
“Just give it a minute,” she told him and then occupied herself with the gorgeous view.
After a few minutes, he spoke. “This has got to be the least cool thing I’ve ever done. Seriously, this is humiliating.”
She laughed. “Why?”
“Caroline, in a perfect world, I would have figured out I loved you on my own and then told you on top of the Eiffel Tower, or at a candlelit dinner, or like, on a gondola or something. But instead, you had to tell me what the fuck was going on. And now I’m naked and hyperventilating on the side of a mountain. I’m a complete dork. And an idiot. I’m an idiot dork.”
“An idiot dork who loves me.”
With that he finally lifted his head and looked at her. His voice was still a little shaky but his eyes were steady as he locked gazes with her. “An idiot dork who loves you.”
She couldn’t stop her smile then, or the happy laughter that came with it. She immediately crawled onto his lap and flung her arms around his neck.
“Caroline, everything else I said still stands. I don’t consider myself a catch.”
She reared back and pinned him with an annoyed stare. “I wish you would. Because from where I’m sitting, you absolutely are. You’re good at your job. Loyal, funny, kind. You’re brave. You want me. You pay attention to me. My God! Tre, you listen when I talk, no matter what I’m talking about. I mean, you’re everything that I want. But I can’t believe in you for the both of us. You have to help me carry that burden, okay? Self-confidence is extremely important.”
“Self-confidence,” he repeated, as if he’d never quite considered the concept before. “I’m a confident person when it comes to almost everything.”
“Except for your ability to love,” she finished the thought for him. “But I figure some therapy will probably fix you right up on that front. And some time. And a relationship with me. Give it a couple years, you’ll be right as rain.”
“Therapy,” he repeated, as if it were yet another concept he’d never even considered.
“I think I probably need some, too,” she told him. “Hey! We’ll go together.”
He laughed at the expression on her face and at the entire situation. “I love you,” he told her and this time it was with certainty. He still felt like someone had unplugged a bathtub in the middle of his belly, but he figured that feeling was bound to subside sometime or another.
“I love you,” she told him. “Very much.” She nodded her head once, as if she were putting punctuation at the end of her thought. I love you very much. Period. Full stop. No asterisks. No room for any sidebars or parentheses. It just was what it was.
Tre took a deep breath and just let his heart race itself into the future. “What if I’m bad at it? What if I bring you pain and heartache?”
“Well,” she bit her lip. “I guess that’s just life, right? And I’m capable of getting over pain and heartache. Are you?”
“Capable of getting over you if I have to?” He thought for a second. “No. Absolutely not. If I wrecked things with you, it would wreck me.”
She shook her head. “If we broke up, I wouldn’t let you get wrecked, Tre. Just like you wouldn’t let me get wrecked. Right? You’d never abandon me?”
“Of course not. I’ll always, always be here for you, Caroline. In any capacity that I can be.” He held his breath for a second and then let it out on a bit of a laugh. “Wait a second, are we arranging our break up right now?”
She laughed too. “I guess?”
“I don’t want to break up,” he told her, pressing his forehead against hers and staring into her eyes at such close range everything was just a honey brown blur.
“Me neither.”
“No, love,” he told her quietly. “I don’t want to break up ever.”
“Me neither,” she repeated in a hushed voice.
His hands shook at her back so he flattened his palms against her. “If we survive this thing, I don’t want to break up.” He was really having trouble verbalizing this feeling that was trying to bang its way out of him. So, he found himself just repeating the words. “Like, ever.”
She laughed at him, at herself. At their naked, hyperventilating, unexpectedly romantic declarations to one another.
“I’m in,” she told him. “I’m in for not breaking up ever.”
“Okay.” He let out a long breath. His pulse still jumped like crazy in his throat. She could see the green leaves of his tattoo seeming to beat with life. “I guess that makes you my girlfriend?”
“You have to ask.”
“Will you be my girlfriend?”
“Yes,” she nodded that punctuation nod again. And kissed the hell out of him.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
That evening, Arturo sat alone in his room in the dark on the floor. His back was against the wall and his feet were stretched out in front of him.
He should leave. He knew he should leave. It was his only chance. He’d disoriented the demon when he’d been kidnapped so suddenly. And then even further when the other shifters had severed his connection with the demon. But he wasn’t lost anymore. The demon knew where he was. Just like he knew where the rest of the group was. Arturo could feel his eye on them. He knew that it wasn’t long before he struck at the group. And when he did, he would take one of their souls. And he would reclaim Arturo as his slave.
Unless… Arturo was gone. Lost again. In the wind. If Arturo left, he could just keep running. And he’d never have to do the demon’s bidding again. One of their souls would be lost, sure. But at least he wouldn’t ever be the demon’s plaything again.
He willed himself to get up. To go. To save himself.
But the hours marched on and he didn’t leave. He stayed.
He’d shown the humans his ragged, torn
soul and they hadn’t recoiled from him. They hadn’t been disgusted. They’d been saddened. It had been the last play in his book to keep them away from him. To show them exactly what kind of monster he really was.
It hadn’t worked.
He’d left that moment feeling a strange kinship with those three bear shifters. The bear shifters that he’d created. The same way that the demon had created him. He’d turned those men into shifters, cemented their brotherhood with one another. And today, whether they realized it or not, they’d extended that same brotherhood to him. They’d let him into their emotions the same as he’d done to them.
That either made them wildly foolish or wildly loving. Or both.
He supposed it didn’t matter what they were.
The door to his bedroom flung open and there Thea stood, her hands on her hips. “Jeez,” she said as she looked around his dark room with a slightly curled lip. “Who died?”
She strode in and thrust a hand down toward him. “Come on. It’s taco night.”
“What?”
“There’s margaritas, too. Let’s go.” She impatiently wagged her hand around, willing him to take it.
He slapped his palm to hers and let her drag him up. “Why are you being nice to me?”
She shrugged and led him into the hallway. “The boys said that now that they’ve seen what the demon did to you, it’s probably not your fault that you’re such a dickhead.”
“Oh, did they now?” he said, attempting a dry tone and failing.
“Sure did. And apparently I’m the only one who still hates you so that’s why they sent me to get you.” She turned to Arturo in the dim hallway and crossed her arms over her chest. “To make friends.” Thea said that last word like it smelled bad.
Arturo looked at her for a moment. After a second he placed a finger under her chin, tipping her head from one side to the other. She ripped her head back and narrowed those ice blue eyes at him. He sighed, supposing it was time to tell her. “I’ve been here before, you know.”