Page 34 of Omega's Bears

Chapter Twenty

Jack carefully propsRyan up against a rock and hands him a water skin. He drinks, moving carefully, wincing as he does so. Some of the color is returning to his face now, but it still upsets me to see him like this. Ryan is the strongest of us, the best in a brawl. It’s horrifying that the wolves were able to neutralize him so easily. And it’s heartrending to see him in pain. I rest my hand on my midsection without thinking about it as my thoughts turn to our unborn children.

“He’ll be all right,” Luka says, his voice tight with stress. “The wound wasn’t too deep. It should heal quickly, as long as he doesn’t exert himself.”

“I am right here, you know,” Ryan says, a note of exasperation in his voice. It’s a relief. If he has the energy to be annoyed, then Luka must be right. The wound can’t be all that bad. I breathe a sigh of relief. Whatever happens next would be infinitely worse if we lost Ryan.

“What happened?” Luka asks. “You said something about wolves?”

“It’s a clan of shifters,” Jack clarifies. “Five of them. They got the drop on us. We smelled them, of course, but we thought it was just wild wolves. We gave them a wide berth, and we didn’t think they’d bother us either. Our hunting paths hadn’t crossed. But they changed direction and came right for us, even though we were in bear form at the time. It should have been enough to keep them away. It would have, if they’d been regular wolves. They wouldn’t have wanted to tangle with another predator who wasn’t in competition with them for food.”

“And that’s how you found out they were shifters? Because they changed their target?” Luka frowned. “That doesn’t seem conclusive. Maybe they were tracking something you hadn’t picked up on.”

“They were definitely shifters,” Ryan says, and hisses a little with the effort. His eyes slide closed, his face tight with pain. “One of them shifted in front of us.”

Luka stares. “You mean, shifted back to human form? While everyone else was still in their animal form? Why would they do something like that? It’s inviting trouble.”

Jack shakes his head. “There were enough of them to keep the human one safe. The others stood in front of him, protected him. He was never in any danger.” He sighs. “They outnumbered us too greatly. Five to two? We didn’t have a chance against them. It’s a miracle we even made it back here, especially once Ryan was injured.”

He still hasn’t looked at me. None of them are looking at me. They’re telling the story as if I’m not in the room. It’s terrifying. I haven’t felt like so much of an outsider since my first week with the Bears. I can feel my breath coming too fast, my head starting to spin. This isn’t going to end well.

“What did they want?” Luka asks.

I know Jack knows the truth before he speaks, but the words are still a punch to the gut. “Cami. They’re here for Cami. As soon as he’d shifted, he asked for her. ‘Where’s the girl?’ he said, and when we didn’t tell him, he clarified, ‘Where’s the omega?’”

Luka glances at me now, frightened, confused. “But what do they want with her? I don’t understand.”

I have to tell them. I have to tell them everything, right now. I don’t know how much Jack knows, whether the story he’s gleaned from his encounter with the wolves will reveal the depth of my betrayal. But if there’s even a chance of it, I know that the truth has to come from me. If the others are ever going to forgive me for what I’ve done, they’ll need evidence of how deeply I regret it. They’ll need to see that I didn’t wait to get caught, that I gave myself up, even if I only did so in the eleventh hour. It’s better than nothing. It has to be.

And if, by some miracle, Jack doesn’t know the whole story, I still want to tell them. I feel a rush of unearned pride at the realization. The safest possible course of action now is to make sure everyone is fully informed. They can’t fight the wolves unless they know why the wolves are here. If learning the truth makes them decide to run away together and leave me to my fate...well, then that’s what I get. The idea makes me shudder. But I can’t let my bears sacrifice themselves for my sake. I love them. I love them all. I have to do this.

So, I speak up. “They’ve been following me since before I came here,” I say quietly, surprised that my voice is steady. I keep eye contact with Luka as I speak—he’s the easiest to talk to, the least frightening, but even his eyes are hard right now. “They killed my clan. I lied to you. When I told you my old clan died of a disease, it was because I knew you wouldn’t take me in knowing I was being hunted. I needed protection. I needed a clan. So, I lied to save myself.”

Nobody speaks. I’m not surprised. What can they possibly say? They’ll never forgive me for this. I’ve put them all at risk. I feel sure at least one of them is contemplating hauling me out of the den and handing me over to the wolves right now. Maybe they’re all considering it. Maybe it’s about to happen. My stomach turns over at the thought.

Finally, Jack breaks the silence. “Why are they hunting you?” he asks. His voice is frighteningly cold.

“They knew I got away,” I explain. My mind feels like soup, a boiling broth of fear and guilt. I wish I could lie down and close my eyes for a minute. “I wasn’t home when the others were killed, and then I went on the run...they knew they missed me.”

“They’ve been tracking you all this time to kill you?” Jack shakes his head. “That doesn’t make sense, Cami. Why would anyone want to kill you that badly?”

I can feel something offensive in his words. There’s something about me specifically that he doesn’t think would be worth pursuing and killing. I don’t think he would be asking this question if the wolves had been tracking him all this time. He would accept that his own life was worth the pursuit, worth the effort to end. I want to object, but the fact of the matter is that he’s right. I’m probably not worth that much trouble to kill. At least, that’s not the motivation behind the wolves’ behavior. And I have to come clean.

“They’re not trying to kill me,” I say, and now I find I’m not able to maintain eye contact even with Luka. This part of the story is just too upsetting. I look down at the dirt and rock floor of our den, the place that has become my home. “They want to kidnap me. That’s why they killed my clan in the first place. That’s why they’ve been pursuing me all this time. I hoped they’d give up when they saw I was with you, or that maybe they would lose me on my way here. So much time went by, I let myself believe I was finally safe. That they weren’t coming back.”

“Why do they want to kidnap you?” There’s something strange in Ryan’s voice, a sort of strangled sound I’ve never heard there before.

“They want to breed with me,” I explain. The sheer horror of this idea feels somehow distant from me, enabling me to talk about it flatly. I could be handed over to the wolves at any moment, and yet my feelings about them are somehow deader the more I talk. It’s as if I’m surrendering myself in advance, dissociating my mind from my body, so I won’t have to be present for whatever happens next. “They want to cross-breed, creating a generation of...of I don’t even know what. Whatever happens when wolves and bears breed.”

A snarl rips out of Ryan, more animal than human.

“That’s sick,” Luka says, sounding revolted. “That’s really sick.”

Jack’s face is set. “Okay. We need to decide what we’re going to do about this.”

“I lied to you,” I say quietly. “I put you in this position. I’m so sorry. I never should have come here. I’ll leave. I have a bike now. Maybe I can put some distance between myself and them. I’ll lead them away from you and...and maybe I can hide....” I know, even as I’m offering the plan, how futile it is. There’s no way I’ll be able to keep away from the wolves, not if they’ve followed me this far, not if they’re willing to engage with the Hell’s Bears to get to me. I won’t stand a chance on my own.

“Absolutely not,” Ryan says. The snarl is still in his voice. It sounds like he’s ready to rip something apart, and for a moment, I’m actually terrified of him. But his eyes don’t linger on me. He turns to the others. “We’re not giving her up.”

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