Chapter 1
Kaiser Cunningham pulled back the bolt of his 30.06 hunting rifle, inspected the chamber, shot the bolt back and locked it into place. He cast a quick glance at his three grown sons who were standing in a circle around him. “We’ll lay traps for them all along our northern boundary. If even one of those Farrell scum crosses our boundary, they’ll get what’s coming to them. I can tell you that.”
His oldest son, Walker, shouldered his shotgun. His full beard moved when he passed his tongue from one side of his mouth to the other. “You got it, Pop. We’ll make sure they pay.”
The youngest son, Dax, spoke up where he leaned against the corner by the living room door. A 12-gauge shotgun rested against his leg. “We ought to take the fight to them. No more pussy-footing around. That’s what I say. You care too much about keeping the peace, Pop. We ought to attack outright and drive the Farrells clean off this mountain. Then we’d never have to worry about them again.”
The middle son, Shaw, chimed in. “I’m with you, Dax. Let’s go.”
The two brothers made for the door, but their father stepped into their path. “We can’t just wipe them out. For a start, they’re as strong as we are, if not stronger.”
“You don’t know how strong they are,” Dax countered.
“That’s exactly my point. If we knew for certain we could drive them out, I would say ‘Go for it’, but we don’t know how strong they are. We could be walking into a death trap attacking the Farrells. I don’t like molly-coddling them any better than you do. That’s why I say lie low and wait until we know for certain we can seal an alliance with the Kerr tribe. Then we’ll show the Farrells what’s what.”
Dax batted away his father’s hand. “Leave me alone, old man. All you care about is keeping the peace, and I’m tired of waiting around and lying low. I’m gonna bust some Farrell heads, and woe betide to anyone who gets in my way.”
He tried to push his way past his white-haired father, but the sturdy old mountain man jammed his hand against Dax’s chest and sent him stumbling two steps back. “Stop right where you are, youngster. As long as I’m Alpha of this tribe, you’ll do as I say. You don’t really want to tangle with me, do you?”
Dax curled his lips back from his teeth, but he didn’t try to push forward again. He retreated and lounged against the corner where he was before.
Kaiser took a deep breath and surveyed his other sons. “Does anybody else have anything they want to say to me?”
A crash interrupted them from the other side of the room. Kaiser’s twenty-two year old daughter Star slammed her glitter-cased phone down on the coffee table and jumped off the couch where she sat cross-legged on the other side of the living room.
“Can’t you talk about anything besides the Farrells? You’re obsessed with them.”
Kaiser turned around to face her. “Now, honey, you know we only want to keep the neighborhood clean and safe for you and Aurora. You can’t blame us for that. You know these Farrells are the lowest trash that ever walked the Earth. You heard how they attacked Rita Kerr in the dead of night when she was on her way home from the movies. We couldn’t let that happen to you,” he said coaxingly.
Star threw up her hands and stormed across the living room. “That’s all I ever hear, morning, noon, and night. Farrell, Farrell, Farrell, Farrell. I swear to God, if I hear the name Farrell one more time, I’ll hurt somebody.” She jabbed her finger at her brothers. “Who wants to take the chance and see what I’ll do? Go on, Dax. Say the name Farrell one more time and see if you like what happens,” Star ended belligerently.
Dax screwed his toe into the carpet and said nothing. Walker shifted from one foot to the other and chewed something behind his thick beard.
Star swept the little group with flashing eyes and humphed. “That’s what I thought. You chumps are more scared of me than you are of the Farrells. You’re nothing but a bunch of chicken-hearted talkers. That’s all you’ll ever be,” she said lowly with disgust.
She spun away and yanked the front door open.
Her father called after her. “Hey! Where are you going?”
She snapped back over her shoulder, “I’m going up to the look-out. I need some air.”
Star heard her father mutter under his breath. “She’ll be all right when she’s had some time to cool off.”
Her mother, Rena, set her hand on her hip. “Why did you have to go riling her up for now? You know how she feels about you boys talking strategy. You could at least take your powwow out to the woodshed to make your plans.”
Kaiser scratched his head. “I didn’t think she’d get so touchy about it. We’ve been fighting the Farrells for generations. You’d think she’d be used to it by now.”
Star couldn’t hear them anymore. She marched away from the big log cabin she shared with her family. She didn’t bother opening the garden gate, but vaulted over the split-rail fence and headed for the woods.
Towering trees surrounded Cunningham Homestead on all sides for hundreds of miles. Ten tribes of Bruins called these mountains home. Bruins’ Mountain rose out of the trees to protect the Cunningham’s northern boundary from their old nemesis, the Farrell tribe.
Most of the other tribes tried to stay out of their ancient feud, but one or the other occasionally got pulled into the conflict. Now her father had hatched the hair-brained scheme to form an alliance with the Kerr tribe to gain enough strength to defeat the Farrells once and for all.
Star hit the trail winding up the mountain to the look-out at Bruins’ Peak. Nothing cleared her head like the open air. She could look out over the mountains and valleys to the rolling countryside beyond. She could pretend, at least for a little while, that these ridiculous conflicts did not exist.
Somewhere on this planet was a country where Farrells did not exist. Somewhere on this planet lived people who didn’t know her name was Cunningham. To them, it was nothing but a name. It didn’t mean she was a Bruin princess with the fate of a whole tribe hanging on her every decision.
She shook her argument with her father out of her head. The tall trees closed over her head and blocked out the warm sunshine. Star quickened her step. The exercise warmed her until she broke out of the trees into the bright sunshine approaching the Peak.
Her spirits soared into the clear blue. If only she could fly away from here, she would never have to think or worry again. She couldn’t really escape herself, though, as much as she might want to. She was a Bruin, not a bird. Only humans didn’t know the name Cunningham made her a Bruin princess: they were the only people on God’s green Earth who didn’t know the truth, but once they did, would never accept her.
She would never find her heart’s true love anywhere but here. Whatever way she found to escape the beastly reality of the Farrell-Cunningham feud lay right here in her own home, under the shadow of Bruins’ Mountain.
She climbed higher, and her cares floated off her shoulders into the thin air. She looked forward to relaxing on the look-out bench. Her father and brothers had annoyed her so much that she had left her phone behind, but she didn’t even mind that.
She had no one to talk to, or text, or email, anyway but her friends in the other tribes. Dana MacAllister talked nonstop about her imaginary romance with Barton Kerr. She wanted to believe he loved her when he never even noticed her existence. Marla Dunlap didn’t want to think about guys at all. She thought of nothing but the Dunlap’s upcoming alliance with the Dodds out west.
Why did Bruins have to be so infuriating? Why couldn’t they go about their business like normal people? Why did everybody have to know and be interrelated to everybody else?
She caught sight of the bench framed by the empty sky and the distant mountain peaks behind it. She knew every single person in every tribe in the whole forest, especially the ones closest to her in age. She would have to go a long, long way to find one person who didn’t know the name Cunningham.
She flexed her legs to walk faster. She would leave her family behind, at least for a little while. She would think about the times she roamed the forest as a bear. She fished in the rivers and climbed the trees, and none of these tribal politics entered her head.
She crested the Peak and crossed the summit toward the bench, but when she got near it, her steps slowed to a crawl: she saw a head sticking over the top of it. Close-cropped brown hair covered that head, and when it turned around at her approaching footsteps, she saw rough sideburns angling down over distinctive cheek bones. Stubble of sandy whiskers darkened his jawline, and his green eyes flashed when he saw Star.
He stood a head taller than Star, with broad, cut shoulders and washboard abs showing plain as day through his tight T-shirt. Black-blue tribal patterns tattooed his arms and swirled up around his neck, and a black leather belt cinched his jeans in tight around his narrow waist. Beaten steel-toed work boots stuck out under the frayed cuffs of his jeans.
Star only paused for a moment before she braced herself and marched right up to him. He rose to his feet when she came near. “What the devil do you think you’re doing here? You’re Brody Farrell, aren’t you? I recognize you. You have no right to come up here. This is Cunningham territory.” Star pronounced in a strident voice.
“The hell it is.” Brody firmly replied. “Learn to read a map, little lady. This Peak has been inside our boundary for three hundred years. Turn around and run home to your Mama before you get into trouble,” he said as if speaking to a toddler.
“You don’t have the balls to give me trouble, son. If this Peak has been inside your boundary for three hundred years, how come I’ve been coming up here practically every day since I first learned to walk? The Farrells don’t dare come up here,” Star responded sharply, knowing she was right.
“Oh, really; yet here I am, a Farrell. What are you gonna do, drive me off with your eyeliner pencil?” Brody stated sarcastically. “This is Farrell territory, and you’re trespassing. Get out of here if you don’t want to start a war” Brody continued in a no-nonsense tone that almost anyone would recognize.
However, Star was not in that category. “You’re the one trespassing, Farrell. How would you like me to call up my father and brothers to string you up from the nearest tree as a warning to the rest of you Farrell cubs to stay inside your own boundary?”
“I am inside my boundary, and if you or any of your rotten Cunningham family lays a finger on me, this mountain will be drenched in blood by morning. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you? Go home while you still can.” Brody said, his tone becoming more menacing with every sentence.
“I have as much right to be up here as you, and I ain’t backing down for any stinking Farrell cub,” Star responded loudly, digging in for a fight.
“Who are you calling a cub? I’m older than you are, last time I checked,” Brody said while shaking his head in disbelief.
Star bared her teeth at him. “If someone is going home, it’s you. Get out of here. I came up here to get away from you. You’re ruining my whole day. I can’t stand the sight of you.” Star almost growled.
“You didn’t come up here to get away from me. I was nowhere near you. I was minding my own business when you came along and started throwing your weight around. I was here first. Take off and get out of my face,” declared a weary Brody.
“You were here first, so that means you should take off and let me stay here alone. This is my bench, not yours.”
“Why don’t you sit down and we’ll share it?”
“You know that’s impossible. You’re a Farrell and I’m a Cunningham. I wouldn’t sit down next to you if you were the last man on Earth.”
“Then you have no choice but to hit the road, and don’t let the doorknob hit you in the backside on the way out.”
Star narrowed her eyes at him. “I should have known the Farrells would spoil this place, just the way you’ve spoiled every other good thing about Bruins’ Mountain. This was the last place in our territory I could come and get some peace, and now I can’t even do that.”
“What do you need peace for? You’ve got your own territory. It’s the Cunninghams who ruin everything.”
She threw up her hands and spun away, but she didn’t head back down the mountain. She addressed her complaints to the broad mountain ranges. “I come up here to think. Is that so bad? Can’t a girl get out of the house and get off by herself without some hillbilly breaking in on me with his loud music and shooting his guns off? This is the only place I can get away and think over my problems.”
“What problems do you have? No one expects you to go off and fight somebody else’s war for them.”
“Oh, I have plenty of problems. I have a lot bigger problems than you do. I’ll bet you don’t have any bigger problem than scraping up a few bucks to put gas in your truck.”
He snorted. “That’s a good one. You’re pretty good at coming out with those witty wise cracks, but you still haven’t told me one real problem you have. If I’m not mistaken, it’s your father and brothers and cousins that want to fight the Farrells. They probably filled your dizzy little head with fairy tales about how they’re doing it for your protection. Am I right?”
She growled at him under her breath. “You’re a damn bastard!”
He hooked his thumbs in his jeans pockets and shifted his weight onto one foot so his hip stuck out. “I’ve heard it all before. My father tells my sisters the same stupid yarn. They’ll come up with any excuse to blame the Cunninghams for every problem they can think of.”
She eyed him. He was the first person she had ever heard talk about the feud this way: besides herself, of course. No one else seemed to comprehend the futility of it all. “Well, that doesn’t mean the Farrells aren’t dangerous.”
“Are you saying I’m dangerous?” He chuckled.
“How do I know you won’t attack me and take advantage of me right now?”
“Ha! You’d probably like that, wouldn’t you?” he replied laughingly, “You shameless tramp!”
Star took three rapid steps toward him, but she stopped herself just short of actually attacking him. “How dare you? You’re just as much a monster as my father says you are.”
He waved his hand. “Listen. No one’s stopping you from thinking up here. Do you want me to leave? All right; I’ll leave you alone. You can think about whatever problems you say you have, but I don’t believe it. If I had to guess, I’d say you’ve probably got the least number of problems in the whole country.”
“You don’t believe I have problems? I’ll prove it to you. Do you really want to know what my problems are? All right, I’ll tell you. I must be out of my mind for even talking to a Farrell, but here goes. If telling you the truth will get you to leave me alone, I’ll do it. My father wants me to mate with Hyatt Kerr. There. I said it. He wants me to marry Hyatt to seal an alliance between the Cunninghams and the Kerrs so he’ll have the strength to defeat you in an all-out war. Are you happy now? Good. Now leave. See you later: so nice talking to you. Try not to break your neck on the way down the mountain.”
Brody watched her with his sharp eyes, but he didn’t laugh or make fun of her. “So that’s your big problem? You’re gonna marry Hyatt? What’s the big deal? He’s a nice guy.”
“Oh, I know he’s a nice guy. He’s the nicest guy on Bruins’ Mountain. He’s been my good friend since we were little kids. Any girl would be lucky to marry him.”
“So what’s the big problem?”
“I don’t want to marry him. There. Now you know more about me even than my own parents. I love Hyatt, but I never felt anything romantic about him. Marrying him would be like marrying my brother. I could never get excited about touching him or having him touch me. I could never get butterflies in my stomach at the thought of seeing him when he comes home from work. I would never be happy marrying Hyatt. It would be a living death.”
“So don’t marry him. It’s that simple.”
“Simple is what it’s not. I have to marry him or leave my father and my tribe twisting in the wind. My father’s worried if I don’t marry Hyatt pretty soon, the Farrells will cement an alliance with the Kerrs, and then they’ll be the stronger tribe. Oh, Jesus, what am I telling you this for? You are a Farrell. You’re probably laughing all the way to the bank with this stuff.”
“Do you see me laughing here?”
She turned away. She couldn’t look at him. She talked to herself and to the wind instead. “I wish none of this stupid feud was happening at all. I wish no one on Bruins’ Mountain had any last names, and the Farrells and the Cunninghams never existed. I wish we were just Bruins – nothing more.”
Brody watched her in silence, but his silence only annoyed her more than ever. She glared at him over her shoulder.
“You said if I told you my problem you would hit the trail. Go on, chump. Make yourself scarce.”
His head shot up, and the muscle along his jaw rippled. “You don’t have to get nasty about it. I’m sorry you’re in that situation. I only wish there was something I could do to help you.”
“Help me! You? Don’t make me gag. You can help me by never coming back up here again. You’ve done enough to ruin my life.”
“I didn’t ruin your life, and I’m not the one pressuring you to marry someone you don’t love. Don’t sharpen your claws on me, kitten.”
She spun around. “I wouldn’t be in this situation if the Farrells weren’t threatening our boundary.”
“Your boundary? The Cunninghams started this feud; and if you mate with Hyatt the way your father wants you to, the Farrells will be an endangered species. You’re the enemy here, not the Farrells.”
“If the Farrells become an endangered species that would be my dream come true. If mating with Hyatt will speed up the process of wiping you vermin off the face of the Earth, I better hurry up and do it. That would be the icing on the cake.”
His eyes narrowed to murderous slits. “Is that so? Then run along home and trim your wedding dress, honey, and I’ll go home and load my shotgun. Maybe, just maybe, you’ll get your wish and you’ll wind up married to a corpse. How would you like that?”
“You sick piece of dog meat. I should have known better than to give you the time of day. I hope you get your head blown off and the rats make a meal of your peanut brain.”
He jabbed the air with his finger. “Do yourself and the rest of the Cunninghams a favor and don’t set foot on Bruins’ Peak again. If I see you up here again, you’ll get what’s coming to you and Hyatt will be going to your funeral instead of your wedding. Do you hear me, or are you too stupid to understand the words coming out of my mouth?”
She whirled away on her heel. “I’m going to get my brothers right now. Don’t let them find you up here, or they’ll feed your balls to their terriers.”