Luke (Bear Shifter) (New World Shifters) (26 page)

All of a sudden, I could see again. I was back in the mouth of the Den, and Darius was standing in front of me. He was looking into the cavernous maw of his family’s home, and shadows lined his strong face. There was a deeply haunted looked in his brown eyes that made him look as if he’d been standing here and staring into the abyss for a hundred years.

He had that thousand-yard stare that I'd seen in returned servicemen, and it didn’t look like his nightmare was anywhere close to ending. From inside the Den I could hear the sounds of a battle; the yelp of pained Wolves and the angry roar of Bears as teeth and claws tore hides to shreds.

“Darius,” I said, trying to get him to notice me. “Don't go in there!”

At first he didn't hear me, but when I reached out and grabbed his arm he looked down at my hand as if I were the first time he’d felt human contact in forever. “What?”

“Don't go in there.”

“I have to,” he said, his voice sounding as if he were in a daze. “I don't have a choice. My father's in there, and so are the Wolves.”

As if summoned by the word, I heard a series of dark howls erupt from
outside
the cave. There were Wolves waiting for us to leave as well, no doubt part of the same pack that had killed his Bear and tracked us here.

“What happened in this cave occurred in the past,” I told him. “You can't change it.”

He shook his head as if the things I told him were mere flies buzzing around his ears. “I’m a warrior, Grace. I fight. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been able to do for my family.”

I yanked on his arm, trying to spin him to face the opening of the cave so that he could look outside of it. “I’m not saying not to rush off into battle. But you and I need to get out of this Den or you're just going to make the same choices you've already made over and over until your body gives out and the machines can’t keep you breathing anymore. The Wolves out there are keeping you locked in this loop. They’re the ones that need to die.”

I could never have turned him it if he didn’t let me, but he relented, shifting his weight on his feet and looking outside the mouth of the cave. I watched as he tried to spot the Wolves in the fringes of the surrounding forest. “Luke’s magic didn’t stop them from killing the Bear, which means it won’t protect us either.”

I nodded. “I have a feeling your youngest brother has enough to worry about without extending his power to keep us safe.”

Darius frowned, and it felt like he was about to throw in the towel. “But he’s the magic one, always able to keep them out, no matter how hard they pushed. The fact that this pack has slipped in here and done so much damage, it doesn't bode well… There must be something wrong with Luke. I need to find him. Someone needs to help him.”

“First we need to help
you
,” I told him forcefully. “Stop thinking so far in the future and start worrying about now. What happened back in the Den with your father is over. It's done. You can't change it, and nothing you do can make it right. But if you can defeat the Wolves that are blocking our escape, I think that might be enough to set you free from the dream.”

He smiled sadly, and it looked even more like I was watching the man I loved on the verge of giving up. “What good is it to be free of the dream, when in the real world the Bear is dead? Don’t you get it? I can’t Shift anymore, Grace. I know it. I'm as human as you now, and that's not going to be enough to beat the Wolves. We don’t stand a chance against them.”

I bunched my hands up into fists and beat them on his chest, trying to break through this fugue that had taken him in its arms. “Your Bear gave his life to protect you, damn it. What was the point of that sacrifice, if you’re just going to give up now?”

“I don't want to quit,” he said angrily through gritted teeth. “But I don't want to throw either one of our lives away, either. I believe you when you say that I shouldn't go back in the Den. I’ve relived that fight a hundred times at least since you vanished, and it always ends the same way. But what choice do I have?”

I didn't know the answer to that. I'd spent my lifetime in dreams with him, and now that he needed me, I didn't know what to do next.

Or did I?

“Darius, you know I don't really understand how this whole Shifter thing works. And I’m sure there’s a whole world of politics and history that you've never really told me, partially because I didn't think to ask. But your presence has always been enough for me, and your kisses and your body and the love we share will go right on being the one shining thing that stays with me when I wake up and the world goes dark around me. But I think I can help. I just need you to let me.”

“How?”

I planted my feet and set my jaw, doing my best to inspire him. “There's one thing I'm good at. Dreaming. It's taken me a long time, years and years of practice, but I have a hunch that I'm better at controlling my dreams than just about anyone else.”

“Does that mean you can summon up some guns or machetes or a tank to help us out?”

“Maybe,” I said, “but I'm not sure that would help. The Wolves wouldn't really be afraid of that stuff, would they?”

“Not really. Not unless it was all silver, and even then there would probably be too many of them for that kind of shit to make a difference.”

“Yeah, I thought as much. I wouldn't know how to use that stuff anyway, and even if the dream helped me, I think it would be useless.”

“So what's your plan, then? My Bear is gone, and that’s the only thing that ever put fear in their hearts.”

“I’ll do what I can to hold them off. You get out of this dream and wake up, okay? Your brothers need you,” I said, smiling up at him as I took one last look at his gorgeous, troubled face before closing my eyes and picturing the thing I needed to become.

Ten feet tall. Wide, snapping muzzle and hugely muscled bulk. Thick, brown fur. Long claws lined with silver, and sharp teeth laced with the same. A barrel chest within which beat a huge, powerful heart.

I took every ounce of my strength and poured it into the image of the Bear. I let myself become it, and when I had it fixed in my mind I let it reshape my face and my body until at last I dropped heavily all fours as the Grizzly.

I didn't think I could speak to him like this, so I hoped that words were no longer needed as I tilted my great head back and roared into the night with a ragged voice so loud it shook the very foundations of the dream.

The Wolves outside the Den had been howling once again, but their sound stopped dead when they heard my challenge. I could smell their fear on the night air, and my new eyes could see them in amongst the trees.

There were dozens of Wolves. They were slavering, drooling creatures with yellow eyes and hungry mouths, and the hatred I felt for them shot through my body like adrenaline. Before I had a chance to second guess myself, I thundered out of the Den and charged straight into their midst.

I hadn't been foolish enough to think that the battle would be easy, but once I was amongst the Pack it truly hit me how difficult, not to mention dangerous, the fight would be. I mean, there was no denying the fact that I'd never been a Bear before. My body knew how to move, but that didn't mean that my actions weren’t ungainly and uncoordinated.

The power coursing through my body helped, but as I watched the Pack pour out of the forest around me, my confidence began to waver.

Wolves are smart
, I told myself.
And Wolves are fast. Don’t forget that.
Those two things could quickly spell my doom if I wasn't careful. Even as I got close enough to one to lash out with a massive paw, it darted away and another snuck behind me and tore into my haunches with its teeth. They were hunters at heart, and after a few more missed swipes and painful wounds in return, I saw that it was a game to them.

They weren’t even bothering to close in for the kill yet. The Pack was toying with me. My roar may have scared them, but now that they’d seen their enemy they could tell that I was inexperienced and untested. The Wolves could sense that my instincts were no match for them, and they’d decided to make my end a slow and painful thing.

It doesn't matter
, I told myself.
All you need to do is keep their eyes on you for long enough that Darius can get out of that cave. Then he can escape. That's the important thing. If they tear you apart right now, even though there's a chance that you’ll never wake up, at least you’ll have finally served a purpose. Better to go out fighting for Darius than to return to a sightless body beside a sleeping man that would never hold you, don't you think?

Another of them slipped forward, dodging beneath my swiping paw and getting in close to rake down my side with his claws. The wounds they’d given me already were starting to slow me down even more, and I realized that they could end this fight whenever they wanted. They’d spent their whole lives as a Pack, and I'd been a Bear for all of three minutes.

What’s more, there were so many of them, even tracking them was becoming a difficult thing to do.

“On your left,” said Darius, and I realized that he was beside me. Without thinking, without questioning or hesitating, I lashed out in the direction he’d told me and smiled a grim Grizzly smile as I felt my claws tear through the hide of a Wolf and lay him bare to the bone. He immediately yelped in pain and hightailed it deeper into the forest, and the crimson stink of his blood lit up the night and gave all the other Wolves pause.

I growled deep in the back of my throat, and the rumble made the smaller of the Wolves back off. I might be slow and I might be ungainly, but there was a power in me that even these creatures couldn't deny.

I just had to harness it…

I had a sudden insight, a bright flash of intuition. Luke's magic had kept Darius safe from these Wolves in his dreams before, but no longer. Somewhere, in Alaska or farther abroad, these Wolves were sleeping, twitching in their dreams the way a dog does when it chases rabbits. Somewhere there were Werewolves baring their teeth in the night as they slept, the human part of them safe in their beds as the Wolf ran free to hurt me.

But if the Bear could be killed in the dream, so could the Wolves.

The Pack saw that Darius was next to me, and rather than risk the fate of their friend by fighting the Bear they went for him instead.

That was a mistake. Maybe I didn't know how to fight, not when I was thinking about it, but my new Bear body and my eagerness to protect the man I loved kicked suddenly came together, working in unison like a finely tuned machine.

Two of the Wolves charged together, and I ran forward on all fours and got in the way, meeting their snapping jaws with a smashing paw that broke them both in half in one fell swoop. They didn't have a chance to so much as yelp. They didn't do
anything
but lay motionless in the snow, and their stillness made the Pack realize that this was now a fight to the death for all of us.

The remaining Wolves pressed harder around Darius, and even though he may have thought he was just a human now that his bear was dead, he was wrong. He was faster, stronger, and far more agile than ever any human I'd ever seen. He grabbed an attacking Wolf around the throat in midair and swiveled his hips to change its direction, hurling it against a tree with bone crushing force.

If I'd thought our aggression and newfound teamwork would chase the Pack away, I'd have been wrong. If anything, they fought all the harder. I could sense in them a fury paired with a desperate, anxious need to finish us that drove them on to new heights of violence. A big, silver Wolf leapt past Darius and got underneath me, tearing open my stomach painfully and spilling my blood onto the snow.

I roared in pain and rage, and Darius whirled around to help me, grabbing the beast’s hind legs and dragging it out from under me. Before the Wolf could protect itself, I reared up on my hind legs before bringing both of my heavy front paws down on its body. The snap of ribs echoed throughout the clearing like gunshots.

The battle became a blur. The Wolves wouldn't stop, and for every life I ended it seemed another two were bent on destroying my own. They kept darting in and out at us, and it didn’t take long before I was forced to stop trying to defend myself and only able to concentrate only keeping Darius alive.

Pain was the only thing I knew. Every movement hurt, and as the bodies piled up around us I could feel my strength fading, my speed falling away.

The Wolves howled in rage, and Darius and I fought on until the only thought my head could hold was a burning, self-righteous anger. I wouldn’t let them kill me, and I roared like thunder as I fought to save my lover from the same fate as the Bear.

Eventually, a chorus of loudly beeping machinery woke me up. I lifted my head up from the bed and looked around, uncertain of where I was. On the plane, still? At home, in a pool of my own blood at the bottom of the stairs?

Outside, the howling wind beat against the window with fists made of snow and hail. I shuddered, the sound far too much like the Pack of Wolves that had just surrounded me. Where had I been? In a dream, I wanted to say, but also somewhere real…

Alaska
, I told myself.
You arrived in Alaska last night, and now you’re in Anchorage with Darius
.

I still couldn't see, of course, and so I had to reach blindly out for him. He wasn't on the bed though, and my hand closed on empty, cold sheets.

“Darius?”

No answer. Had something happened to him? I shot to my feet and almost fell over. I’d gotten used to being a Bear, and I had to smooth my hands over my body to make sure I was a person again and not the muscled, magnificent creature I’d become in the dream.

Sure enough, I was human.

I tried to carefully to turn around and make my way back to the door of the hospital room. If Sasha had been kidnapped, or if she and Brand had escaped together, maybe this place wasn’t as safe as I’d thought it would be. Maybe someone had taken Darius as well.

Or maybe he hadn’t made it through the fight with the Wolves…

I felt my heart race and tears come to my useless, unseeing eyes as my mind spun terrible visions of what might had happened to him. All of it had been for nothing. I’d tried to save him, but I hadn't been able to. The nurses had silently taken his lifeless body him away and left me here alone.

Always alone.

“Good morning Grace,” Darius said. I heard the soft swish of the door as it opened in front of me, and then the thud of it closing.

“You’re alive!” I wanted to scream the words, to jump for joy and throw my arms around him to reassure myself that he was real. I felt the heat of his body an instant before his strong arms wrapped themselves around me, and I pressed my face to his chest and breathed in his clean, sharp scent as deeply as I could.

“Thanks to you. You fought like a demon. The Pack is shattered, and the few that were able to drag their broken bodies away will never forget the night the she-Bear ended their reign. You were incredible.”

“I was terrified,” I admitted.

“So was I,” he told me, his lips against the top of my head. He was so much taller than me. It was eerie how accurate the dreams had been, even when it came to our height difference. “I was certain that I’d lose you to them. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I said without thinking, even though my body felt as if it'd been slowly backed over by a bus. “What happened? How did you wake up?”

“You healed me.”

I shook my head slowly. “But… But that can't be true. You said yourself, only a Bear's Mate can heal him. And, since you and I had never met in the real world, we couldn't be mated. That's what you said, remember?”

He held me even closer and tucked my head under his chin. His warm breath stirred my hair, and I leaned into him to hear his breathing as he answered. “Looks like I was wrong. All that magic stuff is beyond me, but I think that
you’re
my Bear now. You made me whole again. We’ll have to find Luke and ask him to be sure, but that's more healing than I've ever heard anyone do for anyone else. Once we fought off the Wolves, I woke up here. You were the first thing I saw, sleeping beside me like an Angel.”

“But where did you go?” I asked softly, trying to let the fact that he and I had been victorious against so many enemies sink in. “When I woke up just now, you were gone.”

“After I checked on you, I went to speak to the receptionist. Apparently Dr. Sasha is either on the run or someone's hostage, though she seemed to think the good doctor would be fine.”

“What did you want to see the receptionist for?”

He chuckled. “Firstly, to make sure she knew that the guy in room 301 was finally awake. Secondly, to tell her in my most forceful, don’t-poke-the-bear voice that I was not to be disturbed. No nurses, no doctors, and no annoying orderlies coming in to take my blood pressure for the next little bit. I wanted some privacy.”

“Why?” I asked, hoping against hope that I already knew the answer to that question.

“Because my Mate and I need some time to explore each other's bodies. I’ve been waiting for this moment my entire life, and refuse to wait one second more.”

I could feel myself trembling as a wave of nervousness washed over me. I realized that I was about to have sex for the first time as a blind woman. What would it change? I felt so disarmed, so vulnerable and raw. All of the subtle little hints were gone, and I started to get scared that I wouldn’t be able to do anything more than embarrass myself if we tried to make love now.

“Darius, I’m…” I swallowed hard and tried again. “I mean, I can’t…” The words got stuck and wouldn’t come out.

“Hush.”

“But…”

“I know, Grace. It doesn’t matter. I want you, and the fact that you can’t see couldn’t matter any less to me.”

I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself. “It’s so much like the first time, though. I just… I need you to show me, okay? Please. It’s been so long, and I’m so scared of doing the wrong thing.” I could hear my voice shake, but I kept going. “It’s the only way I’ll be able to give myself up to it fully.”

“You took the lead in the dream. I’m happy to take the lead out here, especially if it makes it easier for you.”

I smiled. The relief was almost palpable. Here was a man I could trust, who would listen to my words and respect my requests.

“The storm outside hasn’t backed down. If anything, it’s growing stronger.” I felt his hands on my shoulders as he spun me gently around to face the sound of the ice against the glass. There must be a window over there in that part of the room. “There’s something powerful out there, kicking the winds higher.”

“Something from the Shifter world?”

“I think so,” he said in my ear. “And I think you can help protect Anchorage.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Nothing you won’t want to. Now take off your shirt,” he said. “Show me your body.”