by Amelia Jade
“You already have a plan?” Gray asked.
“Well, yes,” he said slowly.
“I sense a ‘but’ coming,” Gray said. “A big one.”
Noah smiled. “But we’re going to need the help of a certain someone else.”
Gray frowned when he heard who. “Why?”
The smile became a full-fledged grin. “Because Chase forgot one very important thing.”
“And what’s that?” the two of them asked in unison.
Noah bared his teeth. “It’s snowing out.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Angela
She couldn’t see it, but somewhere less than a foot in front of her was the line that marked the difference between the sidewalk and the grass that was the edge of Cloud Park. The snow continued to come down in thick white sheets, a winter storm the likes of which they saw once or twice a year at most. It was up over a foot now that had fallen, and the reports said another foot or more was to be expected.
There was no path through the park. At three thirty in the morning nobody was out just yet. Not even the hardcore runners or walkers had ventured forth. That left it up to Angela to forge a trail. Her boots weren’t designed for that sort of expedition, but she didn’t care. The first boot crunched through several layers of snow and the left one followed shortly thereafter. Cooper was in trouble. She would stop at nothing to get him back.
Tucked under one arm was the key to doing just that. A file folder thick with pages of information—all that they could come up with on short notice—was held there, encased in a little zippered notebook holder to protect it from the elements. Angela fervently hoped that it would be enough to convince Chase to give her back her son.
The visibility around her was down to fifteen, twenty feet at best. Anything beyond that was lost in the white. She tilted her head upward, trying to see the clouds, but that was even more hopeless. The lights of the park shone intermittently here and there, but all they did was give her enough light to walk by, and little more.
She eventually made her way to the little gazebo and paved area that marked the center of the park, moving underneath it for cover. It was empty, though she wasn’t surprised. Chase hadn’t specified where in the park to meet, but they’d all figured the center gazebo was the best bet. He would find her.
The snowbanks were huge there, drifting up nearly ten feet against the railing on the far side of the gazebo. Angela took the encased folder and held it tightly to her chest while she paced back and forth, waiting for him to arrive.
“Where are you!” she shouted impatiently after ten minutes had passed, kicking the railing hard.
As she did one of the snow drifts shivered, was the only way she could describe it. Then it moved. Snow cascaded down around her as the mound revealed itself to be a bear of purest white. A polar bear.
The thing was huge. Angela had seen bears in the wild before, but this put even the largest of those to shame. It had to be over fifteen feet long, and seven feet tall at the shoulders. She couldn’t guess its mass, but expected that it exceeded two and a half tons. Over twenty-five hundred pounds of bear turned to face her, its eyes fixated on her diminutive form. Teeth longer than her fingers flashed as it growled.
But all that was eclipsed by the sound from beneath it. A noise she would recognize anywhere.
“Cooper?” she called frantically, running to the edge and looking over, ignoring the mini dishwasher-sized head hanging above her.
Sitting in an area mostly free of snow was her son, thanks to the bulk of the massive polar bear.
“I have done my part,” a human voice said.
She looked up to see Chase, now having resumed his human form.
“Have you done yours?” he inquired casually, grabbing her son’s carseat and bringing it with him as he came into the gazebo itself.
Angela stepped forward to take Cooper, but Chase deftly swung the carseat behind his back, wagging a finger at her. “Information first,” he said coldly.
“Here,” she snapped, thrusting the file folder at him. “Knock yourself out. Now give me my child.”
Chase put the carseat down behind him and with deliberate slowness unzipped the cover and withdrew the information from within, scanning it over. She shook with barely restrained anger, wanting nothing more than to attack him and take her child. But that was a futile plan, something that would never work. Chase could use one hand to restrain her with ease. So she kept still and stuck to the plan.
“Oh, this is bad,” Chase muttered. “Much worse than I expected. So many of them.” He looked up at her, disappointment in his eyes. “I don’t know why you would help them. They’re breaking the law.”
She rolled her eyes. “They aren’t breaking any of our laws. In fact, they’ve been a boon to the community. Not that you would see that of course. You’re too blinded by the rule of law to understand the spirit of it. ‘Nobody must break the rules. They all must be punished!’ People like you will never understand,” she said with a sigh. “It’s fundamentally against what you are. No amount of trying will change that, until it comes to affect you in a personal way, if it ever does.”
Chase stared at her for a moment. “Eloquently put, though perhaps a tad heavy on the sarcasm. But, no matter. The information is good. Here, have your offspring back.” He used one foot to slide Cooper’s carseat across the floor of the gazebo to her.
After a quick check to ensure he was okay, she picked him up and then carefully walked around Chase, who was still looking over the details.
“You’re just going to stand there?” she asked, genuinely confused. “Isn’t this the part where you run?”
He looked up at her. “Run?”
“Yeah. I have my child back. There’s nothing stopping Noah from attacking you now.”
Chase pulled out an electronic device from his pocket and tapped it a few times. “Well, nothing other than the fact that he’s still back at the embassy.”
She froze. “You have a tracker on him. But I didn’t think shifters used technology?”
“Some of us are a little more progressive than others,” he said with a smile. “But you’re right. Why risk anything?” He closed up the file folder and started walking toward her.
“What are you doing?” she asked, backpedaling down the stairs and out into the snowstorm, flicking the cover down over the carseat with her free hand, then reaching into her pocket.
Chase watched the movement. “What are you going to do, pull out a gun and shoot me? It won’t stop me. All it will do is make me angry, and ensure that you’re forced to watch as I kill your son.”
Angela shook her head and removed her hand. It was holding a flashlight. “I’m not that dumb,” she said, thumbing it on. “I just need to see.” She started backing away.
The Cadian Intelligence agent just laughed. “Oh, right. I forgot your human vision is quite pathetic. But, a word of advice?” he said, still chuckling as he descended the stairs out of the gazebo.
“What?”
“You might try pointing it at the ground, instead of up into the sky.”
“Oh, you think so?” she asked, rotating the flashlight a few times so it made circles in the sky.
“I’m quite positive,” he sneered. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got what I need, and must be going.”
“No,” she said in a whisper. “You’ve just gotten what you wanted. Now you’re about to get what you deserve.”
She lowered the flashlight until it pinned him in its light.
“What are you doing?” he asked, coming to a halt. The flashlight was extremely powerful, and it cut through the snow with ease, casting a huge shadow behind Chase.
“Just following the advice you gave me,” she said with a sweet smile and started backing away.
Chase turned to face her fully, anger on his face. “You’re up to something, aren’t you?” he snarled, and took a step in Angela’s direction.
Something very loud, and very lar
ge-sounding shrieked overhead, a noise that could be mistaken as nothing else besides what it was: the hunting call of a bird of prey.
“Well,” she said, still backing away. “What a great choice of words. You’re right,” she said, hatred pouring into her voice, mixing with grim satisfaction. “I was up to something. But as I’m sure you know, what goes up, must come down.”
The ground beneath them rose up and sent her stumbling as a mammoth figure slammed into it between the two of them, obscuring her view of Chase.
Angela didn’t stick around to watch as two growls filled the air. Holding Cooper tight to her, she turned and ran from the park as fast as she could in the snow.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Noah
“There,” he pointed, but the shifter beneath him had already seen the light, shining high into the snow-filled sky like a lighthouse during a violent storm. They homed in on it, waiting for the signal.
“Come on,” he said, “come on. Do it.”
The light started swirling around, and then it dropped to face straight. They were on the exact opposite side of the bearer of the flashlight, but now they knew where to go. Everything had been worked out ahead of time. Chase would know if he followed on the ground. So Noah and Gray had gone and talked to Andrew. Mostly Noah had talked; it was his plan after all. Everyone thought he was crazy, but Andrew had agreed to help him out.
So now he was high in the air about Cloud Park on Andrew’s back, waiting for the flashlight to drop in the direction of Chase. Andrew banked around and they flew toward the spot. He could only guestimate where Chase would be, but although he wished him to know death was coming, Noah wouldn’t shed a tear if he happened to land on the other shifter.
Once they were there he stood up on Andrew’s back and the shifter gave the pre-arranged warning signal to Angela, a fierce cry from the mouth of his half-eagle half-lion body even as he swooped low, diving toward the ground before pulling up just short. Without any further hesitation Noah stepped off the side and plummeted to the ground. As he went he called forth his shifter.
His body exploded outward in a mass of light-brown fur, powerful jaws, and eyes that were filled with red-lined hatred. Noah landed amidst the snow, sending out a near circular wave of it that rose up and slammed into everything on its way out.
Chase was standing about twenty feet from him and slightly to his left. His eyes went wide with surprise, but even then he didn’t hesitate, his training taking over. Noah growled out a challenge and leapt forward, but the gargantuan polar bear was already ripping from beneath his skin.
You’re going to pay for what you’ve done, he thought, slamming into the snow-colored bear before it could truly set itself for battle, knocking it back and opening up a long line of cuts on its underside from his front foreleg before Chase tumbled out of reach. Noah didn’t let up, charging forward and then to the side, avoiding the donkey-kick from Chase’s rear leg and trying to sever its tendons. He missed, but his claws still opened massive rents in the pelt. Blood streamed out, and the snow began to gain a reddish tint in places.
The polar bear snarled in pain, righted itself, and then darted forward. Noah blinked. In the span of a second he’d gone from being able to see the massive creature, to losing it amidst the snowstorm. Angry at himself for not anticipating that tactic, he backed away from the spot he’d last seen him, hoping to find something solid to put at his back so that Chase couldn’t creep around him.
He needn’t have worried. The SUV-sized polar bear came charging out of the snow to his left, striking Noah square in the ribs and bowling him over. Pain erupted in his belly as Chase ripped and tore at it, and then as swiftly as that he was gone, disappearing back into the snow again.
Grimacing in a tooth-baring bear grin, Noah levered himself back to his feet and continued to look for a secure space. His rear bumped into something solid and he spun, raising a paw to strike Chase down, but it was only a statue. He breathed a sigh of relief and turned back.
Chase took that moment to strike, coming at him straight on. The two bears collided, and the momentum of his enemy’s charge sent both of them through the statue. The concrete construct simply exploded around them as they went down, rolling over until Noah managed to get his hind legs under him and fling Chase free. Trees snapped and broke as the colossal beast simply snapped the trunks in half instead of rebounding off of them. Pine trees came crashing down around him and Noah only barely missed taking one to the head as he went after Chase, determined not to let him escape again.
The polar bear was ready for him, however, and they met in another shockwave-inducing collision. Both rose up on their hind legs and swatted at each other, sacrificing their own bodies in an attempt to land a fight-changing blow. By the time they both backed away, neither party was victorious and both were streaming blood.
Chase tried to pull away and lose himself in the snow, but the near mix of red and white on his fur made it easy for Noah to track him this time, and he charged after the wounded polar bear. They fought their way across the park, neither side gaining an upper hand. Trees, benches, fences, and more were left strewn behind them, a swath of destruction cut almost right through the middle of it all.
It couldn’t last forever though. The ending was rather anticlimactic, after the tenseness of their entire fight. Noah slammed into Chase as he had done a dozen times before, forcing the huge bear to the ground. Only this time they landed on a section of ruined fence. A three-foot-long length of steel slid into Chase’s neck and out the other side, narrowly missing Noah’s face as he jerked his huge head back in surprise.
The polar bear bellowed in pain and struggled to rise, but it couldn’t. The steel had effectively pinned it in place. Noah saw the sudden fear in Chase’s eyes as he realized he was unable to protect himself. Only a slight feeling of remorse entered him as he tore the neck from the polar bear. Noah hated the spy, but he wasn’t going to make him suffer. Even he wasn’t that sadistic.
With his foe defeated, he changed back to his human form, taking a knee as his lungs heaved from the exertion of the fight. There were a thousand gashes on his body, each one shooting knives of agony deep into him. He stayed like that for five, then ten minutes, just recovering next to the corpse of the polar bear.
Eventually he rose and headed for the southwest corner of the park, the agreed-upon meeting area. There he found Gray standing sentry while Angela and Cooper huddled beneath the wing of Andrew’s gryphon, using his body heat to stay warm.
“You should have gone back,” he admonished as she emerged after Gray said it was all clear. “It’s freezing out here.
“Andrew kept us warm,” she said. “There’s no way I was leaving until I was sure that you were okay.” Then she slapped him.
“What the hell was that for?” he asked, stunned.
“That’s for being a cocky dick and doing this on your own. Both Gray and Andrew would have helped you, ensuring that you didn’t die out there, leaving me and Cooper alone!” she said as tears began to fall. “You are not to take any stupid risks like that again, understand me? You had plenty of time to arrange backup, but you had to go and be all macho, as if you had something to prove. Well you don’t, okay? You’re a big bad bear and I know it. You don’t need to keep proving it to me. What you do need to do is come home to me and to our family, okay? Your son needs a father in his life.” She began to shake.
“I love you too,” Noah said, and kissed her harder and more passionately than he’d kissed a woman before. She came up off the ground as her arms locked around his neck and he straightened.
“That’s not what I said,” she muttered between kisses.
“Yes it is. I love you, Angela. I love you so much.” He kissed her some more, feeling her succumb and kiss him back with renewed intensity.
“I love you too, you big idiot,” she whispered into his ear. “But I swear if you do something stupid like that again I will castrate you. In your sleep, so you can’t stop me. Got
it?”
He knew she wasn’t being serious about hurting him, but that she was serious about him not doing that again.
“I will,” he promised. “Now let’s get you back to the embassy and some warmth, shall we?”
“No,” Gray said, stepping forward.
“Excuse me?” Noah said, wondering if he was in danger, if he was going to have to fight another shifter this evening.
“Relax,” the huge figure said, lifting a hand palm outward. “I simply meant that we aren’t going to the embassy.”
“We’re not?” he asked, Angela snuggling up next to him as he wrapped an arm around her to keep her warm.
“No. I have a better idea.” The head of the embassy guard smiled. “Let’s go north.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Angela
Two Weeks Later
Things returned to normal with an almost shocking ease. Andrew, Charles, and Braden dealt with the dead polar bear, removing it so that no civilians would have to see. They’d also cleaned up the park the next day, along with help from Noah and some others. It would be impossible to fix it until the spring, but another source had stepped forward and offered to do that.
Koche Konstruction, the company founded by the five Koche brothers who had first taken up residence on the north side of the city after their destruction of the Institute, had volunteered to fix everything. The park had been in need of an overhaul to begin with, and from what she understood, the promise to completely revamp it and keep it clean and in working order had been generously accepted not just by the Cloud Lake town council, but also the population as a majority. There were some who still opposed having shifters living there at all, and they had gotten more vocal, but for now she felt everything was going okay.
With that settled, everything else had sort of just…relaxed. Noah was brought into the fold and introduced to everyone who lived in the forested community on the north side of town. There were the five Koche brothers, alongside an identical number of shifters who were the last known survivors of the former shifter territory of Kronum, which had been wiped out by the Institute. There were also folks like Gray and Hector who had settled out there, as opposed to staying within the embassy itself.