CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

“That’s him.” Pamela tapped the video monitor in front of Shell’s son, Bobby, and gave her head a doleful shake. “Rat bastard looks even shadier on screen than he does in real life.”

Soren leaned over the desk and squinted at the new figure in the parking lot. He scoffed. “Who the hell wears belted slacks and a white button-down to a wildlife rehabilitation center?”

“I’m sure he has an image to uphold,” Marcella said. “You know. An employed one.” She pointed to the other new figure—the short, thin one dropping down out of a pickup truck and waving was Wes. “Is that Barry?”

“Yep,” Pamela said chuckling. “Barry the Bear. It’s okay to laugh. He thinks it’s funny, too.”

“I can see why Wes would be interested in developments coming from him. He’s quite frail, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. Had leukemia as a kid and his body never really sprouted up the way it was supposed to after that.”

“I see why he entered the study, then.”

Barry extended his hand to shake Wes’s.

Wes stared at the offered hand for so long that Soren didn’t think he was going to take it, but finally, he did, barely touching the other man’s fingertips as he gripped.

“I hope he’s not getting suspicious already,” Marcella said.

“Give ol’ Barry a minute,” Pamela said. “He’s real good at talking folks into things and taking them off guard. He does standup comedy in his free time. Pretty good, too. I think he’d really go somewhere with it if he ever put himself out there like we keep telling him to. He’s never gonna get nowhere if he doesn’t check out of this place, though.”

Barry waved toward the fields in the distance, chatting animatedly. Wes crossed his arms over his chest and nodded.

He was into the conversation—truly invested in whatever Barry had to say.

“Huh,” Soren said.

“Barry’s gonna lead him back this way. He’s gotta convince him first to go in his car rather than Wes’s.”

Bobby grunted. “Yeah, you’d better. That guy looks like he’d bolt at the first provocation. Separate him from his vehicle as quickly as possible.”

Barry gesticulated toward his truck, and canted his head—obvious signaling of “Come with me,” and Wes looked toward his car. He’d left the door open.

Barry arced around him, shaking his head and holding up a finger. “It’ll only take a minute,” he was perhaps saying.

“Come on…” Marcella murmured encouragingly to the scene unfolding on screen.

She had her forearms pressed to the table and was practically thrumming with excitement—almost like she was watching a baseball game and there were two players on base and the slugger walking up to bat had a fifty-fifty shot of hitting the ball over the fence.

He loved her energy, her enthusiasm for the work. She wasn’t a woman who did anything by half. And that probably was why she was so damned frustrating at times.

“Okay, he’s going now,” Bobby said.

Wes loosened his collar as he approached the truck, only to stop and look off at something off-camera.

“Shit. What’s Wes doing?” Soren asked.

Bobby switched the monitor’s view to that of a camera mounted a bit closer to the road. There was another vehicle on approach—an older Jeep with peeling paint and a front bumper that dangled at one corner.

“No!” Pamela said, slapping the desktop. “What the hell is she doing here?”

The first time Marcella had seen the vehicle, it’d been parked outside of Pamela’s trailer next to her station wagon, and there’d been a young woman departing from it.

“Is that Kim’s car?” Marcella asked. “Do you think she followed you here?”

“I dunno.” Pamela scooped her keys from the desktop. “But I’m gonna get out there before he says one word to my little girl. Oh my God, I’m gonna kill her when we get home.”

“Hold on!” Bobby said. “Kim blocked him in. Probably not on purpose, but he can’t get out now without hitting either of the cars beside him.”

“Not ideal, but we’ll make it work.” Soren bent and unlaced his boots. When he stood to heel them off, everyone in the room had their stares locked on him.

Grunting, he continued to undress. Shirt. Socks. Pants. He left his drawers on and padded to the side door near Pamela’s car. “This is a wildlife rehabilitation center, right?”

Shell gave a slow nod. “Uh. Yeah?”

“I’m wildlife, and I’m going for a stroll.”

“Soren, no—”

He closed the door on Marcella’s warning and rolled his shoulders back and shook out his hands.

Shifting on days so far from a full moon wasn’t his favorite thing to do, but on occasion, taking his animal form was the best way to handle a conflict. His big bear form would give him a superior edge in a fight, or the sight of him would prevent someone from starting the fight altogether.

As far as he knew, Wes had no special abilities to discern a made-Bear from a born-Bear from a natural bear. He might have been able to tell that Soren sure as shit wasn’t an American bear, though. Soren couldn’t let Wes have a good enough look at him to make him start pondering his species origin.

He stepped out of his boxer shorts and let the bear in him out. Bones cracked and stretched. Muscles and skin burned like the fires of hell to accommodate his bear length and bulk, and his skin rippled, flesh changing from smooth to furred. Posture lowering. Instincts converting from those of one kind of predator to another.

The first thing he did when he had four paws on the ground instead of two feet was to turn to the door to find his mate.

Unnecessary. Marcella was standing there, holding back Bobby, Shell, and Pamela, agape and staring.

He padded over, needing her touch. Perhaps he was stupid for wasting the time, but even in that form, he didn’t want her to be afraid of him. He’d never hurt her, in spite of their bickering. In spite of their inability to see eye-to-eye on certain important things.

He pushed his large head under her hand and nuzzled her side.

She muttered something in Creole under her breath and then expelled a nervous laugh.

Just me, draga mea. Same Bear as always.

He couldn’t wait around for her to get comfortable. That would have to come later, assuming there was going to be a “him and her” later. He’d never been less certain. He didn’t know anything anymore, but he’d thought mates were supposed to stick. His had been squirming away from him from the moment he’d first set his sights on her.

“Well, damn, I’d better go with him,” Pamela said breathily. “I reckon I’ll pad up behind him like I’m curious or whatever. I don’t think a natural lady bear would follow a male so close, but I could be wrong.”

“I’d better grab a gun and go with you, too,” Shell said, “so that folks think we’ve got things under control. I’ll drive up in my utility cart and ride to the east of you so I look like I’m observing the two of you.”

Soren didn’t wait. He didn’t need to see Pamela shift. Bears generally shifted in the same manner, though some were faster and more assertive than others. Pamela was a “young” Bear, in the scheme of things. Shifting was probably still a stop-and-start painful process for her. She didn’t need so many witnesses to that.

He gave her kudos for attempting the transformation outside of the full moon, though. Unlike born-Bears, made-Bears lacked the elastic ability to easily snap back into their human forms when they were done. They didn’t have the right magic or enough dominant power to get back on two days and walk away.

Pamela might be able to shift back, but she’d collapse soon after. No question.

She had to know that, though, so he didn’t see a good reason to warn her off.

He padded through the high grass toward the parking lot, keeping his gait comfortably slow rather than suspiciously assertive. He didn’t want to look like he was walking toward any particular thing. He was simply a bear on a rare daytime stroll.

Remember his surroundings, he put a bit of a limp into his step, mimicking a back leg injury.

Pamela hit his Bear radar a minute later. Weak Bear, his senses said. No psychic magnitude at all and her smell was typical of Bears who were turned into shapeshifters rather than having been born as them.

He arced toward the chain-link fence near the parking lot. Fortunately, there weren’t too many vehicles in that space. Most of the visitors had boarded the facility’s bus and were currently touring the farthest reaches of the property safari-style, only with binoculars and cameras instead of guns.

He was hoping Wes didn’t have a gun on him. He’d be exactly the sort of asshole who’d have a piece packed with silver bullets on the off chance one of the study subjects he’d fucked over finally got close enough to take a bite out of him.

There were so many people entitled to have a piece of him. Not only the Shrews and the local Georgia Bears, but every group Gene and his associates had gotten into and tainted. Those groups would probably need a generation to recover from the traumas greedy men had inflicted upon them, but they’d endure. As long as the Shrews knew about them, they’d make sure they thrived.

He was nearly in front of the space where he’d parked his rental SUV and could hear Kim’s indignant shouting.

He needed more time to unravel the voices talking over hers—or trying to. It was the two men, Wes and Barry. One was issuing denials. The other was cautioning that they take a peaceful approach.

“Shut up, Barry!” Kim shouted. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Your mother wouldn’t want you to do this.”

“She’ll get over it. She’ll understand that I was trying to help her out.”

“How, by getting yourself shot up with one of this blockhead’s chemical cocktails?” Barry looked to Wes. “No offense. You do great work. Great work, man.” He wrenched his head back around toward Kim, but obviously caught a glimpse of Soren in the process. He nearly jumped out of his Converses, but fortunately, Wes didn’t notice.

He was distracted by Kim because Kim was wearing a clingy dress that left nothing up to the imagination.

“You want me for your drug trial, Wes,” Kim said. “You’ve got my mom, so you know what to look for. You know what adjustments to make. I had your lab do my genome workup. You know how similar we are. Don’t you want this to be perfect?”

Pamela made a quiet growling noise some distance behind him.

Keep it together, mama bear.

“Of course I want this to be perfect,” Wes said, “but not at the cost you’re demanding.”

“We deserve every penny. I know you have the money.”

“Mmm. No. I don’t think so. So tempting, but…” He skimmed his fingertips along Kim’s exposed collarbone.

Pamela lurched forward, but Soren spun around and nudged her back toward Shell’s Mule with his head. He could make her submit and toy with her will. He had the magic, and the dominance, to do so, but he didn’t want her to forget anything she was seeing. She deserved to walk out of the mess with her memories intact and with every action cataloged. He wanted her to see what had happened so she could deal with the fallout after he’d left.

Kim had the good sense to knock Wes’s hand away. “But what? Afraid you’re in too deep now? Well, guess what?”

“What?”

“I’ve got enough dirt on you to have you thrown into federal prison for so long that your balls will turn to dust, and that’s only on the financial stuff. You gotta be careful around here about what kind of shit you pull, because can’t nobody keep a secret. I tried to be nice. I tried to help you out, and to get something for Momma for all the mess you put her through. I wanted us to go from two peas in a pod to three, but that ain’t never gonna happen, is it? She’s afraid to even be around my baby. So, either pay up or get ready for the ground to open up and swallow your sorry ass alive.”

Ah.

The possibility had never come to him—a woman who loved her mother so much that she’d endure incalculable pain and social disruption so they’d be the same. He hadn’t considered such an outcome because being born a Bear, he hadn’t experienced the turmoil of families like Pamela’s. He had his issues with his parents—most children disliked something about their families—but in the scheme of things, his home life had been pretty stable. Even with the constant moves and his parents’ careers in the paranormal shadows, he’d never been an outsider.

He’d never been different from his family. His family had been ursu—Bear—for centuries.

“This is ridiculous,” Wes said. “I’m not going to stand here and get heckled by some poor trailer trash lacking the intellectual thrum to understand the endgame here.”

“I understand your endgame perfectly fine,” Kim said.

Soren moved closer to the conflict. He didn’t like the way Wes’s hand kept darting to the back of his waistband.

Wes scoffed and edged past her. “Barry, if you’ve really got something you’d like to show me, let’s conference in my car. I can’t do anything about the setting, unfortunately, until this nitwit moves her vehicle.”

“What’d you call me?” Kim asked.

Oh hell.

No one Soren knew would have been able to leave that particular morsel of bait on the table. Tamara would have already punched the guy, but she did have a Bear’s temper at her disadvantage. More mundane things fueled Kim’s temper.

Wes looked pointedly past her. “Barry, if you will?”

Barry’s gaze flitted from Wes to Kim and then briefly past the fence to the Bears hunkering down in the grass and, ostensibly, Shell riding up in the distance. “Uh. Right. I think you’ll want to see what I’ve got to show you, but I can’t show you here. Too public.”

Wes let out an exasperated breath. “Then we’ll walk.” He strode toward the path and, after a moment, Barry made a shooing motion at the Bears, informing them to keep back.

Kim shouted after Wes, “Don’t you dare walk away from me!”

Pamela made another of those snarling sounds and bounded toward the enclosure corner near the path.

Goddamn it, woman.

She was going to be seen. There was no way she wouldn’t be, and maybe there was no way in hell she’d be able to scale that chain-link fence with a Bear’s body, but getting herself spotted would do enough damage. Wes had to have seen her in her bear form before. He’d recognize her.

He hadn’t seen Soren, though.

Kim jogged around Wes and, walking backward, shouted, “I’ve got my phone in my hand right now! You see?” She waved it in his face.

He slapped her hand away.

“All I have to do is send one text message to my friend, and you’re done. I’m not playing with you, Wes. We’ve got everything already set up and ready to go out to the sheriff, state police, and FBI.”

If she were bluffing, the bluff was a good one. Wes was obviously conflicted. He’d actually stopped walking and stared at the heckling young woman for a moment.

In Soren’s world, stillness meant redirection. It meant changing plans, not acquiescence. Wes was in the plot too deep, and he wasn’t going to back down. He couldn’t.

Soren predicted the move a second before watching Wes’s hand dart toward Kim’s phone. Her reactions were slow, but she kept the device away from him only to drop it.

They both dove for the phone at the same time, and Barry—seeming totally out of sorts—stood staring at the tussle momentarily before mouthing to the rampaging Pamela, “What do I do?”

But Pamela couldn’t talk.

Barry figured that out on his own right as Pamela threw her big bear body against the fence.

Wes jumped back, startled enough to give Barry a chance to snatch the phone from the ground.

“Traitor!” Kim swept his legs out from beneath him with a wild kick, distracted and giving Wes an avenue for attack. He grabbed her hair and at the back of his waistband again, and Pamela let out a feral-sounding growl.

Soren could see her fur rippling and her muscles convulsing, and he took off at a sprint, planning to plow her side and make her stop her planned shift back into her human form. There was a bus coming up the road full of visitors, and there’d be no way Shell would be able to explain why a naked woman was running in the field with a big, limping bear.

He head-butted her side and sent her toppling away from the fence at the same time Barry shouted, “Damn it, I’m hitting this button!”

Wes let go of Kim and swung a little silver gun wildly toward Barry, and that was all Barry needed to tap the screen.

He ducked the bullet that exploded through the chamber, and then threw the phone at Wes’s head. It missed, but Soren wouldn’t.

He could shift quickly and be out the enclosure before the bus got close enough to see him, but Pamela chomped his leg.

Shell hurried out of her Mule and thrust the butt of her tranquilizer rifle between the two of them. “So help me, if you spill blood out here and scare my donors away, I’ll chase both of you down and put tranquilizer darts into both of your butts, whether they be furry or bald.”

Soren swatted Pamela away, intending to apologize for his necessary roughness later, and spied the bus less than a half-kilometer up the path.

The vehicle was slowing, the driver obviously noticing the altercation on the roadway, but that wasn’t stopping Wes. He was no different from a caged animal. He was out of choices, except to surrender, and surrendering wasn’t an option for a shyster like him.

Barry might have reached in and pulled Kim to her feet, but that gave Wes two good targets because Barry wasn’t big enough to shield Kim completely from view.

Pamela was at the fence again, standing on her hind legs, muscles rippling beneath fur once more.

Fuck it.

Soren started the process of reversing his shift—of pulling the fur back in and letting his skin back out. The process had barely started when Shell shouted, “Pam, not here,” and fired a dart into her friend’s backside.

That gave Soren enough pause to reconsider his choice. It also gave him the chance to notice that as Wes put his finger on the trigger of his gun, that his clothing was completely soaked. Sweat darkened the fronts of his slacks and shirt, all the way up to his collar, but no man could sweat that much that fast.

And there seemed to be a puddle around his feet although there was no standing water anywhere else on the road. The liquid was seeping up from the grass, flowing toward Wes’s feet as though it were sentient.

Soren suspected that it was.

Marcella.

No!

He let rip an angry roar.

Pamela hit the ground, growling softly before passing out.

Barry gave Kim a hard shove away from Wes, and Wes squeezed his trigger again.

His hand must have been too wet because the bullet veered wildly and he had to use his other hand to fix his grip, but he needed that hand for other things.

He started to cough violently, expelling water with each convulsion, and unable to catch his breath. His skin was a mottled gray as he doubled over, dropping the gun.

The bus approached, and the driver opened the door as the water receded into the ground and Wes crumpled onto the roadway.

Soren put his nose to the ground and sniffed, searching for the familiar scent of flowers and powder, not knowing if she’d have it in that form. Not knowing if there was any way to find her.

Why the fuck did she do this?

He didn’t know what he would do with himself if she didn’t manage to put herself back together.

The bus driver stepped out and shouted to Shell, “What do you want me to do?”

She looked to Soren, but Soren had no answers.

Kim crawled to the fence, toward her mother’s unconscious form, whispering, “Momma?”

Barry blinked a few times and then kicked Wes’s gun out of his hand.

“Do CPR on that guy,” Shell said. “And call 911! Is he dead?”

The driver hopped down from his seat, and all the lookie-loos let down their windows and pointed their cameras toward the drama.

“Not breathing,” the driver said with a hand on Wes’s chest.

He started resuscitation procedures as Barry, apparently, called for an ambulance.

Soren put his nose to the ground. There it was. Her scent. Powder and flowers and…the sea. He followed the aroma in the direction of the shed.

He didn’t care if Wes lived or died. Soren cared about whether his fucking mate did.