Chapter Nine

 

For several minutes, the walk back to the tunnel was uneventful. And then, all hell broke loose. Axel was listening, watching, and sniffing the air, but somehow the soldier still managed to sneak up on him. One second, Axel was carefully walking along, cautious but confident. The next, the muzzle of a gun had been shoved into the side of his face.

“You! Stop, now!” bellowed a deep, mocking voice. For a second, Axel did stop. He froze, wondering how the heck he hadn’t noticed the Gilt Hollow soldier sneaking up on him. That second almost cost him his life. He knew there would be other soldiers around, and he didn’t have much time to react before the soldiers had Whisper and him hopelessly surrounded. Luckily, he regained his composure in the nick of time.

“Run, Whisper!” he yelled. In that same moment, he reached over with lightning speed and jerked the gun’s muzzle away from the side of his head. He had just managed to get the muzzle pointed behind him instead of at him when the soldier reacted and pulled the trigger. Axel’s hands shook and burned from the reverberation of the bullet traveling out of the gun while he was holding it, but that was a small price to pay for the fact that he’d just saved his own life.

“Hey!” the soldier shouted, apparently shocked by the fact that his bullet hadn’t killed Axel. “Don’t touch my gun!”

“Then don’t point it at my head,” Axel growled over his shoulder, already running deep into the forest after Whisper, who had wisely taken off as Axel had instructed. Behind him the soldier shouted again, then fired another shot. The shot was horribly aimed and missed Axel by several yards at least. But the noise of the shouts behind him was growing louder. More soldiers were joining in the chase, and even with their poor aim, if enough of them were shooting, their odds of hitting him were pretty high. Whisper had a bit better of a head start, but even she wasn’t completely out of the danger zone. They had to move faster if they were going to escape with a comfortable margin. The sound of boots pounding the ground behind him was growing louder, not softer. That meant those bastards were gaining on them. And that left Axel and Whisper only one option.

“Shift!” Axel called out at the top of his lungs, hoping that Whisper would hear him above all the other noise. “We have to shift and get out of here.”

Behind him, the noise was beginning to sound like a war zone. There were far more soldiers than Axel would have ever imagined. How the hell had he missed them? They had to have been downwind from him, and they must have been traveling without making a single sound. The soldiers were wizening up to how shifters detected them, which wasn’t good news. That meant the raids on Bear Hollow were going to get even worse.

But Axel couldn’t worry about that right now. First, he had to worry about making it out of this situation alive. Up ahead of him, he heard a telltale popping sound as a rush of energy emanated out from Whisper’s body. Good, that meant she had heard his desperate, screamed warning and had begun to shift. It meant he could shift, too, since he wouldn’t need to yell out his warning again.

Without slowing his running pace, Axel let his snow leopard form begin to take over. He hoped that none of the soldiers were able to actually see him at this moment. Snow leopard shifters were rare, and if they saw his snow leopard form, they might be able to actually track down who he was in human form. He didn’t think anyone in Bear Hollow would purposefully out him, but someone might accidentally give his identity away if the soldiers were tricky enough in their questioning.

Axel would have to worry about that possibility when it arrived, though. Right now, his most urgent priority was getting himself and Whisper away from those guns.

He felt himself speeding up as his slower human form faded away. His larger, more stable snow leopard paws, and his thicker, stronger animal muscles, quickly gave him the boost he needed. Within moments, he had caught up to Whisper, who was now running in bear form. She gave him a low growl, and he understood that she wanted him to take the lead. She wasn’t sure which way to go. Axel wasn’t sure either, but he didn’t think it mattered where they ran as long as they were running deeper into the forest, and not toward the city of Gilt Hollow itself. If they could just lose this huge group of soldiers, they could figure out later how to get out of the forest and back over to Bear Hollow.

Axel breathed in deeply, smelling the air. To his right, it smelled faintly like buildings and people. To his left, it smelled like pine and wood. He turned toward his left, and ran as fast as he could. This would be the way deeper into the forest. He glanced over his shoulder once to make sure Whisper was following him and keeping up okay. Of course she was. She really seemed to have gotten faster with age instead of slower. He wasn’t sure how that was possible, but he didn’t care. Right now he was grateful for her speed. With the two of them running in animal form, the noise of the soldiers’ shouts and gunfire quickly began to fade away. Still, he didn’t slow down for a long time. For at least a good ten minutes after the noise had completely stopped, he continued to run. Finally, convinced that they had lost their pursuers, he slowed to a jog, then a trot, then a walk.

He looked behind him at Whisper, whose bear was breathing heavily. Other than being a bit winded, though, she seemed fine. Axel nudged her nose with his, and she nudged back, her way of saying she was fine. Axel breathed a long sigh of relief, then stopped walking completely and turned around, sniffing the air. He could not detect any scent of soldier, and they definitely wouldn’t be downwind from him at this angle. If they were coming toward him, he would have known it. But from the lack of noises and scents, it seemed they must have given up the chase way further back.

Axel looked around the dark forest, trying to take stock of where they were. The forest here was heavy with pines, but other than that he didn’t see any distinguishing characteristics. He started ambling forward slowly, trying to find any sort of rocky overhang, hollowed out tree trunk, or thick growth of bushes that he and Whisper could use for cover. There weren’t many hiding places to speak of, though, and finally he settled for a small grassy patch that was big enough for two humans to lie down on and was surrounded on two sides by tall, thick bushes. He would have preferred somewhere sheltered on all four sides, but apparently that wasn’t happening here. This would have to do.

With a tired grunt, he began to shift back into human form. Whisper followed his lead, but as soon as she was human again she looked around suspiciously.

“Are you sure we’re safe here?”

Axel shrugged. “One can never know for sure. But I don’t smell any soldiers and we ran really, really far. I have a feeling they aren’t going to bother coming all the way up here. They’re more likely to go take their anger out on Bear Hollow itself, unfortunately.”

Whisper winced.

“I know,” Axel said, lying down on the grassy patch and closing his eyes as the frustration of the last half hour caught up with him. “I’m not happy about that either. But everyone in Bear Hollow knew we were coming out here tonight, and they knew there was a good possibility a raid would be happening. They’re as prepared as they can be for a visit from the Gilt Hollow soldiers.”

Whisper sighed and came to lie beside him. Axel tried his best not to think about the fact that both of them were naked. If he started thinking about her naked curves now, he would end up with a stiff erection—a stiff erection he would have no way of hiding. But the fact that they were both naked couldn’t be helped. They’d lost their bags and clothes when they shifted, so nakedness it was. Luckily, the night was on the warmer side for September. Axel still would have preferred a blanket or some warm clothes, but their current situation couldn’t be helped, and they would survive. It’s not like it was winter temperatures, where they might lose fingers and toes to frostbite.

“So what do we do now?” Whisper asked. She sounded weary, and Axel wished he could reach over and pull her into his arms. But she would undoubtedly push him away if he did that, which would only make this situation much more awkward. So he kept his hands at his side and kept staring up at the starry night sky instead.

“We wait,” he said. “This spot isn’t perfectly sheltered, but it’s good enough that we’ll have plenty of warning if anyone is approaching. I don’t want to make an attempt at getting back to Bear Hollow right now. The first thing the Gilt Hollow soldiers did when they gave up chasing us was send people to guard the perimeters of Bear Hollow itself. I guarantee you that. Trying to get in right now would be the stupidest thing we could do.”

“Okay,” Whisper said slowly. “But how long do we wait? We have no food or clothing. We can’t just stay up here forever.”

“Of course not. But we both have full stomachs right now, thanks to the huge meal that Otto and Leo brought us. And we’ll be fine without clothes during the day. At night well… we’ll just have to keep each other warm.” Axel looked over at Whisper and winked, earning himself an eye roll from her.

“You’re impossible, you know that? We’re stuck out here in the middle of Gilt Hollow forest with no supplies and soldiers possibly trying to track us down, and all you can do is make jokes.”

Axel sat up on one elbow and looked long and hard at Whisper. “Maybe I wasn’t joking.”

She blinked back at him, her eyes going wide for a brief moment before she regained her composure and rolled her eyes again. “Oh, come on. You were joking. You joke about that sort of stuff all the freaking time. We both know you don’t mean anything by it.”

Axel flopped back onto his back for a moment. His head screamed at him to leave things at that. Let her think he was joking, and keep things between them the way they were. It didn’t matter how attracted he was to her. The two of them couldn’t possibly be lifemates. He would have realized it a long time ago if that were the case.

He took deep breaths, trying to calm himself down. But his heart wouldn’t let his head win this argument. His heart told him that if he didn’t kiss Whisper right now, he was going to regret it forever. His heart told him that as impossible as a romance between them seemed, there was something there. Perhaps there had always been something there, and he’d just ignored it by pretending that any feelings of affection for Whisper were platonic.

There was no writing off his current feelings as platonic, however. He was growing stiffer and harder between his legs by the second, and although Whisper hadn’t noticed yet, she would. The funny thing was, Axel suddenly realized that he wanted her to notice. He wanted her to know that she meant something much deeper to him than he’d ever admitted out loud.

Axel decided in that moment to listen to his heart. Perhaps it wasn’t the best decision. Maybe it would make things more awkward between them, and maybe she wouldn’t want to work at his bar after this. But he didn’t care about all of that anymore. All he cared about was that he was finally admitting to himself that Whisper was much, much more to him than his friend’s little sister. For the first time in his life, he let his eyes wander freely, hungrily over her naked body. She noticed his gaze, and the heat in his eyes, because she looked at him with uncertainty.

“Axel?”

Instead of answering her question with words, he answered with his lips. He leaned in and put his mouth on hers, reaching up at the same time to put his hand behind her head. Her hair was silky soft, and her lips were even softer. He felt a rush of impossible heat and electricity shooting through him, and his dick was now completely rock hard.

He wanted her. Whatever the fallout or consequences might be, he wanted her now. He wanted to lay her down in this grassy alcove and make love to her until both of them had no energy left. But none of that mattered, if she didn’t want it also. He half-expected her to pull back and push him away in shock. After all, what right did he have to just kiss her like that?

For a second, she did pull back. She squeaked in surprise, and looked at him with wide eyes. His heart started to sink. She didn’t want him. She was going to think he was crazy now, and their friendship would be ruined. But most of all, his heart would be ruined. How was he ever supposed to care about any other woman after caring for Whisper? He was slowly realizing that she was the reason he’d barely dated all these years. He’d had girlfriends here or there, but nothing had ever grown serious, because no one had ever made him feel like he came alive. After a while, he’d stopped even trying.

In this moment, right here, right now, he felt alive. No other woman had been able to make him feel that way, because no other woman had been Whisper. No other woman had her smile, her laugh, or that adorable twinkle in her eye. No other woman was as beautiful as her, as clever, as funny, or as kind. She was all he had ever wanted. How the hell had he not realized that before this moment? And how the hell was he going to survive her rejection?

“Whisper…” he said, his voice low. Pleading.

Her eyes went even wider, and his heart filled with even more desperation. And then, she kissed him back.

She closed her eyes, leaned in, and put her lips back on his. And in that moment, Axel knew desire as he had never known it before.

He knew love as he had never known it before.