Page 60 of Choose the Bears

“The usual fucking shit.” I said that between gritted teeth and he knew exactly what I meant, resulting in Kyle looking at the two of us in incomprehension. He went with Asher sometimes, was good at kicking in doors, but me? I kicked open digital doors, much more quietly and with less fanfare. Kyle was Superman all the way, using all his considerable strength for good and never wavering from his moral centre, but some of us… I stared at the computer screen, seeing it, but not really able to focus. Some of us were forced to get our hands dirty to achieve our goals.

“No one’s been pastyour girl’s place since,” Rye told us as Todd and Wyatt dropped down from the crumbling jungle gym they were perched on. “Your cleaning crew did good work. Barely smell the piss now.”

“Cat shifters,” Asher told him. “No one’s more meticulous. But Phil?”

“I put word around, even took a sample from the apartment to circulate through our colony,” Rye replied. “Everyone there knows if they see any evidence of this fucker anywhere, they’re to report that back to me.” He grinned slowly. “Even put a bounty on his head, to incentivise some of my more unruly… colony members.”

“You tell me how much and I’ll cover it,” Asher said.

“No need. Our mate is proving to be… resistant to the idea of forming a bond. We have not always acted with honour and she knows this.” Those green eyes glittered like cut glass in the moonlight. “Consider this part of our redemption arc. Perhaps ifwe help you find your way to your mate, the goddess will smile down on us.”

“We follow the ways of the bear gods,” Kyle said, “but if this will help… I’ll send up a prayer for you.”

“I would assume Phil’s not in the city. I can reach out further to the wild clans that live in the bush, but that will take some time. Our colonies are ruled by matriarchs. I can’t just approach the mother of another colony. My grandmother must make the connection.”

Mama Lisica was a notorious figure in the shifter community. Neither a force for good or ill, she was fiercely protective of her colony and would stop at nothing to keep its members safe. Previously her amorality offended me, but now? I could understand the method of her madness.

“And I suspect she will be a lot less generous in her favours.” Asher stared at Rye. “Tell her we’ll pay it, whatever it is. There is nothing I will not give the mother of foxes to keep my mate safe.”

“Be careful of that.” Wyatt looked surprised that he had spoken, but he pushed himself forward anyway. “She… she will take full advantage of that offer.”

“Let her.” I knew the look in Asher’s eyes, the one that made me think he wasn’t Batman, but a superhero far more reckless, far more self-sacrificing. The Punisher, that was him–brutal, reckless, suicidal. “Let her ask for whatever she wants because I will give it to her. A monster hunts my mate, and I must bring him down before he can get within ten feet of her. Tell Mama Lisica that.”

“So, what now?”Kyle asked, staring at the moon when we got back to the car.

“I don’t know about you, but I need to take fur.” Asher’s hand formed claws against the car window, scratching the glass. “He’s been pressing hard on the bond between us, and I?—”

“We’ll go to the pine forest just outside of town,” I replied. “Let the bears out, buy us some time because…” That’s what I hated about the job. Abuse, violence, rape, they were all words I could shy away from, but videos? I couldn’t erase them out of my head once I’d seen them, my guts turning. “What we have to do, it's going to push our control to its limits.”

At that we all got inside the car, driving in silence to an abandoned pine plantation. It was easy to jump over the sagging wire fence, to tear our clothes off the moment we reached the trees. The bear had never shoved forward so fast, his paws landing in the pine needles, his head turning back towards the car.

No, to her.

He saw it in his mind, the long, slow amble back towards headquarters. I tried to turn him around, to make clear what a mistake that would be. Images of being tranqued, of being shot made no difference, but this did. Imogen’s look of horror as a grizzly bear advanced upon her. He huffed at that and then shuffled forward, into the forest.

Chapter 32

Imogen

Later that night, I dreamed of the bear again.

Actually, make that bears.

The big, white polar bear of the other night’s dream ambled through the forest, but this time he brought friends. The grizzly bear was considerably smaller, almost cute, even though a sensible part of me knew he would tower above me if he reared up on his back paws. Then there was the Kodiak. I think that’s what he was, the bear almost as big as the white one, but his fur was the lightest. Almost looking like he’d sat in a hairdresser’s chair to get a balayage between blond and brown, he started to really move, loping through the forest with a rocking gait. The other bears instantly responded.

The hunt was on.

The grizzly bear nudged the polar bear as if to saylet’s go, and off they went.

And so did I.

Floating free like a bird above them, I watched them get faster and faster. They were like freight trains, taking a while to get to speed, but once they did, I was tugged along with them.The polar bear was the one that I thought would take the lead, but it was the brown bear that did. The gap between him and the Kodiak began to close, and then as the bigger bear looked up, the grizzly shoulder charged him, right as the polar bear rushed in.

This was all a set up. My heart beat too hard, too fast, wondering at what I was about to see. I always looked away when the predator tore apart the baby animal in the nature documentaries, something that had Mike roaring with laughter, but I needn’t have worried. Despite the roar of the polar bear, his jaws snapped on the space just in front of the Kodiak’s throat, then jerked away.

They were… playing?

That was the only way to describe the way the polar and grizzly bears nipped at the Kodiak, right before he leapt to his paws, then rose up on his back feet and started swiping at the others. In my bed, I stifled a giggle as I watched all three of them spar with each other. Bears were powerful, but graceful wasn’t a word I would use. There was something almost slapstick about their fighting, likeThe Three Stoogeshad taken fur.

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