Page 144 of Choose the Bears

“What needs to happen?” The old witch’s smile widened at my hastily snapped question. “What?”

“No communication between siblings?” she asked. “That is a bad business. Families must always talk, but no matter, the ritual has already begun. Now we have your input?—”

“What ritual?” Hands slapped down on my arms and I glared at Rye and Todd, promising a long and bloody death at the end of this. “What fucking ritual?”

“Be careful, bear boy,” Mama purred. “You are in sacred space now. Intent is what matters, that and power. Your sister came to me, as she thinks I am the only way she can get her heart’s desire.”

“You should’ve come to me, Urse.”

I stared at that familiar face, able to see the little girl she was, but she stared me down as a woman, not a child. Unending, uncompromising, she made clear she had done things exactly how she wanted, just like she always did.

“This is the way it has to be, Ash,” she told me, her hand moving slowly, glacially slow, right before Mama’s snapped out to take a hold of it.

I felt the press of Mama’s knife against the back of my hand, her grip unearthly strong as she began to mumble in a language I didn’t understand. Words of power, they had to be, because I felt them prickle across my skin. Foxes yipped and cried out as the wind picked up. Embers from the fire went spiralling into the sky, and right as Mama’s voice rose, so did her knife.

She stabbed the point into my fingertip, and as the blood welled there, she did the same to Ursula. Our fingers were pressed together, held tight by Mama’s grip as my sister turned to face me.

“You found your strength when you killed our foster father,” she told me. “I just found pain and weakness.”

“You of all people know that’s not true. He was the weak one, preying on a child!”

“Telling me I’m strong isn’t the same as feeling strong.” Tears pricked at my sister’s eyes, and my heart broke all over again, because it’d been so long since I’d seen them. Not afterwards, not when I had blood on my hands, not even when I went to visit her months later. “Neither is training, honing my reflexes, or building my skills. None of that makes me feel strong, and I’m sick to fuck of feeling weak. Give me this, just a little bit of your strength, Ash. Just one little bit. It’s all I’ll ever ask for, I promise. I know I should’ve asked you, but?—”

“Choose.”

Mama cut through my sister’s speech, her voice a feral growl.

“Choose what?” I shouted.

“Your bear spirit is strong. It’s why you are the perfect candidate. Too strong. Give some of this to your sister and be at peace, Asher. Be at peace.”

I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, and right now I wanted a twenty point PowerPoint presentation outlining the proposal along with a cost-benefit analysis, but I knew I wouldn’t get it. Instead, I had to trust. A tear slid down Ursula’scheek because she knew just how hard that was for me. To me, the world seemed full of people with shitty motivations that they hid behind a smooth veneer, and that killed me.

But if someone I loved asked me for something, I gave it, every time.

I drew her close, remembering the way I did last time. There was blood on my hands then, but so much more. I’d been sticky with it, tainted by it, and had shrank back from marking my sister with it, but not this time. I pulled her in and pressed a kiss to her forehead, right as Mama said the words.

“Release the power within you and give your sister what she needs.”

I didn’t know what that was until I saw it.

Hums went up around the crowd, and three men stepped forward to watch the process closely. Their eyes shone with green fire and red, reflected from the bonfire, as my sister fought for her life. Ursula’s muscles leapt on her bones, twisting and turning her in brutal directions, her joints going to strange angles.

“What did you do?” I snarled, feeling the bear shift inside me. He could burst free and lay waste to this entire gathering in seconds. That bloodlust I lived with every damn day since the moment I first shifted pounded in my heart.

And hers.

Ursula was shifting.

Her eyes went wide and staring, the previous brown bleeding away to the most perfect blue, right before her bear shoved forward.

Women didn’t shift into bears, that was our collective wisdom. No one had been able to explain why, but now I knew. It took a special kind of rage to want to become one of the largest predators in the world, and my sister possessed that in spades.Her roar split the night, sent fox shifters running off into the darkness, all but Mama and several of her grandsons.

“Well, look at you.” My voice quavered like a child’s as I held my hand out, the massive polar bear chuffing as I got closer. Her muzzle extended, her nose working, as she sniffed at my fingers. “No one will ever mess with you again.” Her growl made clear what she thought about that. “Come back to skin, Ursula. Show me you’re not lost to me. Show me you can.”

The bear fought it, stamping its paws and rearing back on its back legs, but not before it melted away and my sister dropped down to the dirt below. One breath, then another, one of Mama’s grandsons rushed in with a blanket, handing it to her as she rose.

“The bear elders are saying you have too much bear in you,” she croaked. “That’s why you revealed us to the entire world. Well, not anymore.” Her smile was shaky, yet triumphant, like a woman who’d just birthed a baby and in some ways she had. A new version of herself. One that could defend herself just as violently as I could. I sucked in a breath, wondering if I could even shift anymore, but I felt the bear inside me. Calmer, an easier presence to live with–something had been taken from me, but it wasn’t anything I missed. “I took the extra bit.”

---