Chapter Ten: Jorah

 

J orah had to admit, today was officially the strangest day he’d ever lived through.

Now, as Jorah brought Nyssa under his wing and led her back to his secret cave with the other three still in their bear forms, the dark began to set in, dusk unwilling to wait for the five of them to make it safely back. Though, the dark had been the least of Jorah’s worries. First he traveled down to the foot of the mountain and stepped into the Oldwood for the first time ever, only to find monsters of Seer legend attacking two wolf shifters, one he saved and the other sacrificed to see Jorah and Nyssa safely up the mountain, and now that this Nyssa girl was safe, healed and awake, they’d be able to talk to her...about anything.

He’d be able to speak to a real member of the Pack! Actually make contact...though this was never how he imagined a first meeting would go, holding the naked shifter in his arms as they walked back to the cave. This was the second time in the past hour that he’d pulled her naked body to his, and this time he found it hard not to stare. But, of course, Jorah liked to think he was a better man than that, so he somehow managed to keep his eyes relatively on the path ahead.

Reaching the cave mouth, Jorah let Nyssa walk in first, her body shivering, frosty from the never-ending wind chill. Following quickly, he left the other three to shift back and stumble inside on their own. It suddenly hit him he’d be the only clothed shifter in the cave at first, sighing when he further realized all his spare clothes will most likely be gone by night’s end. Jorah had spent a full week making the clothes he wore to hide in this cave.

Because of Nyssa’s unease, she stood off to the side as Jorah rummaged through his pile of clothes for something of her size. Not finding anything small enough, he chose the smallest garments he could find and threw them at Nyssa. Despite her teeth chattering, her reflexes were on point, and she caught the clothes no problem. “There’s nothing else here your size,” Jorah said. “Maybe next time think before you shift and tear your clothes apart.”

“What the hell else was I supposed to do with three bears running me down?” She retorted, her voice both stinging and calmer than he’d ever heard it. This girl...was she used to surprises like this to be able to adapt so quickly? Whatever the case, Jorah found himself staring again, which earned him a deep frown from Nyssa, so he averted his gaze to the cave entrance where the trio of misfits were stumbling back in. At first the trio were arguing and bantering, but upon seeing Nyssa in her human form again, they simply shut their mouths and watched her. As they watched, Jorah threw them three separate bundles of clothes, though he was missing a shirt.

“Sorry, Keanu,” Jorah said. “Don’t have anything that’ll fit you right now.”

Keanu nodded, but the shifter’s gaze never met his, instead still plastered to Nyssa, who was just finishing pulling on the oversized jerkin and trousers.

The garments hung loosely on her limbs, showing the big difference in her slender figure compared to Jorah’s broad physique. She looked over herself, tugging at the parts that hung loose, even accidentally popping her shoulder out of the hole for her neck. The fair skin that glistened in the tiny fire that still raged made his heart pulse and his throat parched, but the sensation quickly dimmed the moment Nyssa fit her shoulder backside the shirt.

“It’s made slightly different from the clothes we have at Gray Creek...furrier and tougher,” Nyssa said almost absentmindedly. He wasn’t sure whether she was commenting to herself, or to them. “Cozy, even if it is bigger than my size.”

“That’s goat-hide for you,” Jorah said, rising from his crouching position and waltzing over. “Skinned and wove it together myself. We need to have clothes sturdy and warm enough to handle the cold up here.”

Letting out a breath, Nyssa’s eyelids drooped. “And here I thought I knew cold...”

“Nope, you still don’t!” Finn said, practically leaping over to Nyssa. Extending a hand and wide smile, Finn rooted himself to the floor in front of her. “I’m Finn, by the way. Sorry about chasing after you like that, it just gets a little dangerous out there for someone who doesn’t know their way around the mountains.”

“Thanks...Finn. I didn’t mean to run off...well I did, but-”

“But you knew you wouldn’t be able to fight all of us off, and knew we’d probably have dragged you back here anyway,” Nyx said, scoffing and leaning cross-armed against the opposite cave wall. She wasn’t necessarily frowning, but there was a deep, serious expression on Nyx’s face, her hair no longer neatly pulled back, but fringing and sticking out all over the place. “I don’t blame you for getting scared of us.”

“Nyx,” Jorah growled low.

Shrugging, Nyx glanced between him and Nyssa. “What? It’s the truth. Right now, she’s pretty much our prisoner, right? I mean, it is true you’d probably slip and accidentally fall to your death out there without our guidance, but we still couldn’t have let you go.”

“That isn’t why she’s here,” Jorah reiterated, coming over to stand beside Nyssa. Remaining quiet, Nyssa watched him. “You’re our guest, no matter what Nyx might say. I’m not keeping you here as some sort of prisoner, I genuinely do want to talk to you.” Scowling, Nyx glanced away, tapping her fingers along her arm rapidly.

“Not to interrupt…” Nyssa began. “And I know this is a dumb question, but I just need to hear it from one of you. You’re all bear shifters, right? Of the Bear Clan? The very one the Vampires decimated and threw out of the Blackwood?” Everyone nodded in unison, much to Nyssa’s surprise. “Heh, so the rumors were true after all.”

“Rumors?” Jorah asked.

Nyssa nodded. “Rumors going around my clan, about some seeing bear shifters at the fringes of the Oldwood, near the Northern Mountains. For years we’ve heard tales of what happened to your clan, with many believing you were still alive, surviving up here. I never dreamed it was all true. My father used to…” Nyssa’s head hung a little. “He used to tell my brother and I stories about how the Vampires massacred you all.”

Jorah’s heart strings tugged inside his chest at the painful expression on her face. He wondered if something might have happened to her father.

“Well, as you can see, that isn’t true in the slightest!” Finn exclaimed. “Right, Keanu?” Looking back, the hulking bear shifter nodded as he plopped down on the floor, grunting at the rough ground. “All of us you see here have been surviving up on this mountain range our whole lives.”

“There aren’t many of us left, but enough to be called a clan, anyway,” Jorah chimed in. Nyssa glanced up at him, and Jorah forced himself to smile. For some reason he felt the urge to do everything in his power to make her more comfortable around him. “We still have a few members that are old enough to remember the old days. Some of them are even our leaders, who we call Seers, though those old men are stuck in their ways.”

“Seers, huh?” Nyssa said, relaxing her body a bit. The unease that radiated from her stance before now barely lingered. “We don’t have anything like that. Just Alphas, for both the Pack and the Pride.”

“Oh, I heard about that from the Seers,” Finn said, scratching under his chin. “They mentioned how your clans are ruled by the strongest fighters.” His face lighting up, he leaned forward. “Hey, why don’t you tell us all about your clan and the world below? What’s it like down there? Are there really Changelings? Do the Vampires bother you like they did us? How many shifters reside in both clans? What does it smell like? Are there hogs and other creatures roaming the forest?”

Jorah placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder, chuckling. “Okay, easy on the questions now. We’re trying to not overwhelm her.” He glanced at Nyssa, who mouthed a quick thank you.

“So, tell us,” Nyx said from behind Jorah. “Tell us all about the world we’ve been kept from. You have the time now.”

As much as Jorah didn’t want to pressure the pretty female shifter standing in front of him, he also desperately wanted to know what life was like beyond the mountain as well, so he simply waited for her to answer. Nyssa glanced between all of them, her eyes landing on Jorah, the reflection of the fire dancing in those blue orbs and opened her mouth to tell them. She started from what her own father had told her about the disappearance of the Bear Clan and the Vampire invasion, how after that the Vampires took over the Blackwood and now lived there, leaving the Oldwood relatively alone while the Pack and Pride fought amongst each other. Apparently, the Bear Clan were the group that held the peace between the Pride and Pack together, and once they were gone an almost endless war erupted between the two. She spoke about how her father, the previous Alpha of the Pack, was slain by another to end the war. Jorah was so intrigued he forgot to breathe for a minute, his focus so intensely caught on Nyssa’s moving lips.

“Darius is his name. He’s a good Alpha, and a friend to me and my brother.” Her voice quivered when she named him a friend. “Caring towards his people, and thanks to him and a cat shifter, the war came to an end two years ago, though more out of necessity to stop a Vampire invasion of our homes.”

“That can’t have been easy, to slaughter all those Vampires who entered your home,” Finn commented.

“Only three actually did. Their leader, Orpheus, brought along an army of Changelings,” Nyssa said. “No other Vampires cared enough to join. If they had, we wouldn’t be talking here today.” Nyssa paused for a moment, squeezing her hand. “Actually, if one of the Vampires, a woman named Bronwen, hadn’t turned against her master then we still might not have survived.”

“Turned?” Nyx said, “What does that mean?”

Curious, Jorah kept his eyes trained on Nyssa. Seemingly unsure of whether to continue forward or not, Nyssa sighed. “Bronwen, a Vampire, joined our side in order to kill Orpheus and the other Vampire under him. To this day, she’s been helping us retain a peace with the rest of the Vampires, acting as our voice in the Blackwood.”

Suddenly the fire flicked lower, and it was like the eerie dark finally managed to creep into the cave. All their shadows wiggled and undulated across the cave walls, each and every one still as stone, their eyes wide and mouths nearly hanging open.

“Are you saying…” Nyx began, shaking her head in disbelief. “That your clans are...allied with the Vampires?”

“Well, allied might be a strong word for it,” Nyssa continued, as if she wasn’t aware of how significant that sort of information was. “It’s not like most of the Vampires really care about us shifters, according to Bronwen, anyway. They just don’t think it’d be fun to hunt us all to extinction...yet.”

Her final words on the subject were bone-rattling, and Jorah could practically hear the others being shaken to their very core. Nyx groaned, Keanu ran a meaty hand down his face, and Finn remained like a statue, unable to process what Nyssa had just told them. Jorah was the first to actually react to Nyssa, a huge grin forming on his face. He leaned back and laughed like a madman. “Okay, now that was so much better than what I expected you to say.”

“Better?” Nyx said, her voice riddled with spite and roaring anger. “How is that better in any way? Didn’t you hear her, she said they were allied with Vampires, you know, the group that invaded our homeland and massacred our people.”

Jorah shot Nyx a look. “That was over half a century ago, Nyx.”

“Yeah, and we still have people alive that remember the horrors of that day!” She practically shouted. “This isn’t good, or right!”

“It’s how we move forward!” Jorah said optimistically, his whole body practically beaming now. Without meaning to, Jorah startled Nyssa slightly as he stepped forward and clamped her shoulders with his hands. Even with the jerkin on, he could still feel her shoulder bones poking up beneath. But he didn’t care about that right now, instead all he wanted was her. Blushing profusely at the strength of his gaze and smile, Jorah thought Nyssa would glance away under his pressure, but instead she remained staring into his eyes. Her words lit a spark deep within him, made his whole being ache in her presence. Beautiful, with a voice bold and sweet enough to tell stories about the world beyond, Jorah found himself getting lost in the oceans residing in her eyes.

“Hey!” Nyx said as she forcefully jerked him off of Nyssa. “I don’t know what you plan on doing with her, but she isn’t our friend.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Jorah asked, annoyed at the sudden tug. He massaged his shoulder where Nyx had dug her nails in. “Nyssa is telling us that it’s safe to travel down. That means we now have proof that we have valid reasons for venturing down!”

“Safe?” Nyx growled, her face twisting. Nyssa flinched at the bear shifter’s tone, but Jorah remained frowning and tall in front of her. “The sole reason why we’re even able to speak to a wolf shifter is because she was about to be mauled to death by Changelings! That isn’t safe in the slightest.”

“To be fair, I mentioned they aren’t common anymore,” Nyssa interjected, causing Nyx to whirl on her.

“Be quiet!” Nyx said.

“Enough, Nyx! Don’t be so rude to her,” Jorah said.

Carefully, Finn rose from his seat on a chest nearby. “Okay, I think it’s time to cool it with the arguing, you two.” He stepped up between Jorah and Nyx, trying his best to keep his cheerful smile in sight of them both at all times. “How about we sing a song together? I know one that never ends. It’ll grow our bond as friends! Right?”

Backing up Finn, Keanu rose and lumbered over, placing on a hand on a steaming Nyx. She quickly threw his hand off and stormed away. “Either way, we need to go to the Seers. Let them decide what we should do.”

“I think that’s a great idea,” Jorah said, smiling. “Let’s go show them that our lives no longer need to be restricted to these forever-frozen peaks.” He left his smile on, whether to frustrate Nyx or because he was genuinely excited to show off Nyssa to Dallan and the other Seers, or maybe both, he wasn’t sure, but moments later, Nyx threw up her hands in defeat and left the cave. Keanu quickly followed after her, his torso still bare. Finn glanced between Jorah and Nyssa, chuckling nervously as he ran out.

Sighing, Jorah’s nerves finally settled back down. To tell the truth, he hadn’t been expecting Nyx’s harsh reaction. It sent his mind for a loop. Didn’t she want to be able to travel freely down the mountain like he did, like they all did? Or did she simply say that to remain close to his side.

Glancing back over to Nyssa, he found her watching him, her arms wrapped tight around her chest.

He smiled weakly. “Are you okay with this? I want to bring you before our Seers, tell them what you told us...I won’t force you, and I know you probably just want to get back to your brother and friends, right?”

“I’ll go,” she simply said, a fire alight in her eyes. “You’re right, I do want to get back, but this is all just so strange, like something out of a tall tale my father used to tell me. If all I need to do is speak to your leaders, then let’s go, I can leave afterwards.”

Her last comment sent a cold shiver down his spine. He didn’t exactly want her to leave, but he supposed they’d cross that bridge when they came to it. “Well, thank you. Ladies first.” He motioned to the cave entrance. Nyssa smiled and took the offer, with Jorah following suit.

Jorah couldn’t stop grinning as they left his secret cave behind.