by Liza Street
The sound of a snap, like a twig cracking, reached Nolan’s ears. He froze. Something was out there, approaching downwind.
It could be a black bear or a grizzly, wandering around its territory.
Or it could be one of Bronson’s people, hunting Tamryn.
“Get down,” Nolan mouthed at Tamryn. He pointed to a couple of downed trees nearby that might provide some cover so she and Illary could get out of sight.
While she and Illary moved to the logs, Nolan yanked off his shirt, boots, and pants. Whoever was approaching was getting closer, but it sounded like they were far enough away he would have time to shift.
Grunting, he fell to all fours and let his polar bear take over his body, sprouting fur, building extra muscles and longer limbs, turning him into a true giant. When the shift was over, he stood on two legs and listened.
The sounds he heard were many. Tamryn’s and Illary’s breathing. Far-distant birdsong. The slow, stealthy approach of someone else. A large animal, such as a bear, would be stopping periodically to search for food or follow tantalizing scents. This beast’s progress was steady and full of intent. It was a shifter, no question.
Nolan ran forward, his large paws crunching sticks and leaves. He leaped over the fallen logs where Tamryn and Illary huddled.
A grizzly was running toward him, hump visible on its shoulders, mouth open and teeth bared.
It was no ordinary, wild grizzly. If Nolan had held any doubts before, they were gone now. The ferocity in the bear’s gaze signaled it was a shifter.
Nolan and the grizzly both went up on their hind legs as they reached each other. Nolan roared, smashing his paw against the grizzly’s face.
Growling, the grizzly countered with an attack of his own. Nolan blocked it, but only partially. The grizzly’s claws grazed his chest.
Then the grizzly turned around and ran. Pulse thundering in his ears, Nolan chased after him. How dare this asshole hunt them down like this? Trees and brush whizzed past. Roaring, Nolan put on a burst of speed. The grizzly in front of him did the same. Their paws pounded earth.
Nolan had to find out who the shifter was and how many more could be with him.
How many more...
Nolan skidded to a stop, his paws sliding against leaves and grasses. The grizzly had come this way after not much of a fight, as if he’d wanted Nolan to chase him. And the only reason another shifter would want to be chased was if someone else was out here, waiting for Tamryn and Illary to be left unprotected.
Nolan had been lured away.
Spinning around, Nolan raced back to their spot on the lake shore. They hadn’t set up their tents yet. He could have them grab their things and be fleeing to a more defensible spot in sixty seconds. As long as he wasn’t too late.
If only he hadn’t followed that grizzly.
No time to berate himself for falling for the grizzly’s trick. He had to get back to Tamryn and Illary.
“Shift,” Illary was saying as Nolan reached them. “Please. You can save yourself if you take your dragon form. You can fly to safety.”
“I—I can’t,” Tamryn said, tears in her voice.
“You must,” Illary said.
No, she didn’t have to shift. Not if Nolan was here. He could help them, now.
As he came over the fallen logs, he saw two grizzlies and a wolf facing Tamryn and Illary. They hadn’t attacked the women, but were standing at attention, as if awaiting instruction.
Nolan doubted he could win a fight with two grizzlies and a wolf, but he could distract them long enough for Tamryn and Illary to get away.
But before he could barrel forward, Illary stood up. She shouted, “Go—take the queen and go!”
Tamryn scrambled to grab her hiking pack. Nolan scooped his own up in his jaws.
One of the bears took a running lunge toward them, but Illary held up one hand, palm out. With her other hand, she hit the back of the other. The grizzly fell to the ground and landed on his side. He shook his head, stunned.
“Go!” Illary shouted again.
No time to watch, no time to argue. If she wanted to sacrifice herself for Tamryn, he’d have to allow it. Besides, it looked like that more-than-a-witch had some extra tricks up her sleeve.
Tamryn darted forward, along the northwestern side of the lake. Nolan easily outpaced her, then stopped. He jerked his muzzle backward, to point at his own shoulders.
Tamryn understood his meaning immediately. “I can’t ride you,” she said. “You’re not a horse.”
He huffed in impatience and pointed again with his nose.
Growls and roars came from behind them, and Tamryn nodded once. “Fine.”
He dropped his pack on the ground, and she picked it up along with hers. Then he lowered himself to the ground, belly down, so Tamryn could climb onto his back. As soon as she was up, he tore off through the trees. She pressed herself against Nolan’s back, gripping his fur. He felt the hiking packs, looped around her arms, bang into his sides. It had to be an uncomfortable ride for both of them, but he couldn’t waste time getting them comfortable. Sounds of fighting filtered through the trees.
Then he heard a long, protracted scream.
Tamryn gasped. Nolan stopped short so they could listen. The fighting had stopped. Gone were the growls, snarls, and roars. The woods were silent.
“We have to go back,” Tamryn said. “Please.”
Nolan hesitated. Returning to the place would only tempt danger.
Tamryn was heaving great breaths, almost sobs. “Please. She’s the only person left from my past.”
He lay belly down to the forest floor so she could climb off. Then he shifted back into his human form.
“You make it look so easy,” she said when he was fully human in front of her again. She kept her focus on his face.
“For me, it is. I’ll go back for Illary.” He didn’t say Illary’s body, which was what he was thinking he’d find. “But only if you stay here, and stay hidden.”
Tamryn looked like she would argue.
“If you could shift into your dragon,” he said, “I’d tell you to come with me. But you can’t, so you can’t defend yourself.”
She nodded.
He said, “I’ll be right back.”
He shifted back into his polar bear. It was painful this time, forcing the change so soon, when his body was tired and tapped of adrenaline. Hurrying through the trees, he wondered what he would find. Illary’s body, likely, given the scream they’d heard. Hopefully the bodies of some of the shifters who had attacked.
When he reached the pebbled beach, however, he saw nothing. No evidence of a struggle. No bodies. No footprints. Not even the scents of the shifters or Illary. Even Tamryn’s scent was gone. It was as if they’d never been here. He knew he was in the right place—there were the two fallen trees where Tamryn and Illary had huddled while he’d run after the first grizzly. A few yards away was the place in the lake where he’d washed, and where Tamryn had spied him in the water.
Magic was the only explanation. There was no other way everyone could have disappeared, with all traces of them gone.
Nolan rushed back to where he’d left Tamryn, half-worried that she would have disappeared, too. The tightness in his chest eased when he saw her sitting on top of her hiking pack and leaning against a tree.
He shifted into his human form and retrieved a set of clothes from his pack. “They’re gone,” he said as he dressed.
“Gone, where?” Tamryn’s voice held a thread of panic.
“Gone, nowhere,” he said. “There’s nothing there, no scents, no footprints.”
“That’s impossible.”
He laughed, although he didn’t find any of this funny. “You were in a big old egg for two hundred years, then you came out as alive as ever, not having aged a day, right? I don’t think ‘impossible’ is a word Illary would recognize.”
“True,” Tamryn said, biting back a rueful grin. “What do we do now?”
; “We head toward the mountains where Illary was taking us. We find Charles.”
Tamryn gave him a look, one he couldn’t decipher. He tore his gaze from her violet eyes and shouldered his pack, then waited for her to do the same with hers. They’d walk another hour and make sure they were far from the place Bronson’s shifters had attacked. Then they’d make camp for the night.
And Nolan would have to try, more than ever, not to touch Tamryn.
Chapter Eight
Every time Tamryn tried to quiet her mind and reach for the dragon inside of her, she heard her mother’s screams.
Only now, she heard Illary’s scream as well.
She should have been able to shift and protect herself and Illary. Nolan, too. The deep scratch on his chest had healed, but he’d been hurt.
Their progress was fast, now, with Nolan hurrying her along even when she was tired. A grim expression had come over his face, and she felt his drive, his intensity bleeding through his aura. She had the intensity driving her forward, too, but not as strongly as he did. There was something else there, and if she wasn’t so exhausted, she might have thought he cared for her.
It wouldn’t be appropriate to dwell on that possibility, anyway. They were marching through the forest without a chaperone.
They were going to meet Charles, her betrothed.
Nolan held branches aside for her, but he didn’t treat her like she was incapable. He simply seemed ready to help, as if he was anticipating what she might want.
Her mother would have loved this man.
She wanted to know more about him. She wanted to know why he was hurt, who he had lost. He looked so warm, his body so inviting, and yet they hardly knew each other.
Tamryn wished to talk to him, but she didn’t know how to give voice to the thoughts jangling around in her head.
The tension Tamryn sensed in the forest seemed to have relaxed more and more as she and Nolan put distance between them and the attack. They were long past the lake where they had washed, and had crossed several streams. With each stream, Tamryn had taken off her boots and socks without being asked and they’d walked for a while in the cold water. The terrain became steeper, the ground rockier. Pines, old and young, grew in clusters.
As Tamryn scrambled over a boulder, she heard something. The sound was quickly swallowed in Nolan’s movement on the boulder behind her.
“Wait. Quiet, please,” Tamryn said.
Nolan froze.
The noise came again, a pitiful bleating sound.
“What is that?” Tamryn asked.
“Sounds like a deer.”
Sliding off the boulder, Tamryn took slow steps toward the noise. It came again.
“Tamryn, wait—” Nolan started.
Waving him away, she hurried forward until she saw it—a small fawn, stuck between two trees. It had likely tried to squeeze through and been unable to make it.
“Do you see the mother anywhere?” Tamryn asked.
Nolan looked around. “No. I don’t smell her, either.”
“She must’ve had to give up,” Tamryn said. “Here, you tug on that trunk, and I’ll tug on this one.”
The fawn bleated in earnest. It had large, black eyes and reddish-brown fur covered with white spots. Tamryn’s heart melted at the panicked noises it made.
“It’s okay, little one,” she said.
Nolan dutifully tugged on the trunk she’d pointed to, and she pulled on the other. The tree bark bit into her palms, but she ignored it. In seconds, the fawn was free. It leaped away and then turned to gaze at them.
“I think she’s thanking us,” Tamryn said.
Nolan raised his eyebrows doubtfully. “We need to get going.”
The fawn turned its head this way and that, as if searching for something.
“She can’t find her mother.” Tamryn felt her throat fill with emotion. She knew what that felt like, having just lost her own mother. “We’re taking her with us.”
“What?” Nolan said.
“She’s coming with us.” Tamryn took a few steps back toward her and Nolan’s original route, and the fawn did the same. “See, she’s already following.”
“We can’t take it with us,” Nolan said, exasperated.
“Why ever not?”
“It’ll slow us down. This fawn is a wild animal, and it’s best to leave wild animals in the wild. Let the forest take care of the creature, in whatever way the forest wants to.”
“I am a being in this forest, am I not?” Tamryn demanded.
Nolan’s eyes grew wide. “You are, I guess.”
“Then, as a being in this forest, I am called upon to care for the fawn. I’m naming her Jubilee.”
Nolan’s mouth fell open in surprise. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“We shall have to disagree on that point,” Tamryn said.
Nolan followed her in silence. The fawn remained at her side. Tamryn wondered about Jubilee’s mother and where she’d gone. Something must have really terrified the doe in order for her to abandon the fawn.
“It’ll be dark soon,” Nolan said, stopping in a tiny clearing. The area was flat, but it was barely big enough for a one-person tent, and it definitely wouldn’t hold two tents.
“Are we setting up camp right here?” Tamryn asked.
He dropped his pack on the ground. “Yep.”
She waited for him to explain, but he didn’t. Jubilee wandered to the edge of the little clearing and nibbled on some grasses growing through the rocky terrain.
“Do you want me to set up your tent?” he asked.
“No, I’ve got it,” she said. The past few nights had given her ample practice with configuring the slippery fabric and the odd, jointed poles.
“We shouldn’t do a fire tonight,” he said. “I don’t know what alerted them to our location before, but best not to chance it.”
“All right.” She didn’t relish the idea of being cold, but her creature comforts meant little at the moment. Illary was out there, somewhere. Maybe injured. Hopefully she was alive, but Tamryn had no way of knowing.
She fumbled with her tent, trying to scoot it as far to the side of the clearing as possible. Nolan looked over at her.
“Doesn’t matter where you put it. I’m not setting up my tent.”
Her fingers paused on the pole she held. “Where—where will you sleep?”
“I’ll be in my bear form, guarding you.”
“All night?”
“All night.”
That hardly seemed fair. Clearing her throat, she said, “Wake me at midnight, and I’ll take a turn keeping watch.”
His gray eyes narrowed. “I thought I was the knight in this situation. You’re the queen.”
“I have heightened senses, just like you. I’m easily capable of hearing anyone approach us. This way, we’ll each get rest and we’ll be better able to travel in the morning.”
“Fine. I’ll wake you around midnight.”
She finished setting up her tent while Nolan pulled some protein bars from his backpack. He tossed one to her, and she unwrapped it before sitting in the opening of her tent and facing him where he sat on a rock.
The wind picked up. Jubilee trotted back to Tamryn’s side and curled up. Her fury warmth was welcome. Tamryn had already decided the fawn could sleep in her tent if it so desired. She wondered if Nolan would have anything to say about that, and she sent him a glare.
“What?” he said, holding up his hands.
“You’d have just left this little fawn to fend for herself?”
“Sometimes that’s necessary,” he said. “Circle of life and all that.”
Tamryn stroked Jubilee’s soft ear. “But would you have left her?”
Nolan shook his head. “Nah, I wouldn’t have left her. I’d have freed her, like we did. I don’t know that I’d be carrying her around, but even if you weren’t here, I’d have let her follow me.”
“Good.” Tamryn nodded, satisfied.
“
But I don’t know what you think will happen to the poor creature when we leave the forest.”
Tamryn decided not to think on it. She had to trust that everything would work out all right—both for Jubilee, and for herself.
“What is your role in the Rock Creek Clan?” she asked. She couldn’t explain why, but she wanted to know more about his life. Asking about his work seemed less personal than some of the other questions on her mind.
“Same as everyone,” he said. “I patrol the territory.”
“That’s all?” she asked.
“What more is there?”
“Is there a hierarchy of some kind? There’s the alpha.”
“Jameson,” Nolan said.
“Does he have a second-in-command?”
Nolan thought about it. “Nothing really formal, no. Maybe Nina, his mate. Or Rex. Rex has been in the RCC with him since the beginning. But the way Jameson runs the clan, his command is enough.”
Tamryn nodded. Jameson had been in complete control of his people. Not because he was powerful—he likely was—but because he had their respect.
Nolan shot her a surprised look. “Here I am jabbering away at you. But I don’t usually talk much.”
“No?” she asked.
“No.”
He finished his protein bar while she waited for him to explain.
Finally, he said, “I usually listen. I like to think. But with you for some reason, I want to share the things I’m thinking.”
The way he said the words was brief and matter-of-fact, but Tamryn could feel what he was feeling. He did care for her.
She didn’t know what to do with that information, so she said, “Don’t forget to wake me at midnight.”
Then she climbed into her tent. She left the flap open to see if Jubilee would follow, but the little deer opened a single eye, sniffed, and turned back around. Apparently, there were limits to what Jubilee was willing to do to stay with Tamryn.
“Goodnight, Nolan. Goodnight, Jubilee.” Tamryn let the tent flap fall, then she spread out the sleeping bag she’d stashed earlier and snuggled inside it. She slept fully dressed, not entirely trusting that someone wouldn’t come for them in the middle of the night.
As she slept, she dreamed of skin-hunters. They peeled the scales from her mother, one by one, while her mother bled in front of Tamryn’s eyes. Tamryn cried out, struggling to reach her, but the blood hardened at Tamryn’s feet, holding her in like immovable clay. All Tamryn could do was watch and scream.