Linc slurped noisily on his glass of grape juice and didn’t understand why all the adults turned to look at him. They all sat in Katya’s cramped living room. Ivy and Glory sat next to one another on the floor, Danil on the arm of the couch next to Dora. The age-old knick knacks that glittered around the room soothed AJ. This was as much her home as the little one story across the woods.
“We do not drink yet, bear cub,” Anton murmured and showed the boy how to hold his glass up in a cheers.
“But Gramps has been talking for so long my arm hurts,” Linc whispered back, his skinny little arm trembling and his voice carrying quite clearly through the room.
“Linc!” Ivy scolded, but Ilya merely smiled.
“That is okay. Boy is right. I am merely grateful to have you all here, on the anniversary of the day the Malashoviks come to America. The day we flee from oppression and come here. To live free and find love.” Ilya grinned at his boys and their women, raised his glass and toasted them all.
“Now we drink,” Anton told Linc and let the boy take a big sip before he slid him off his lap. Anton stood and cleared his throat. Faced his family and the woman he loved. “I have thing to say.”
AJ’s heart was suddenly in her throat. She found herself involuntarily tipping one shoulder behind Dora’s where they sat next to one another on the couch. The family had all come together for the anniversary, the way they did every year, but Anton never spoke.
He cleared his throat again. “I do not have English for everything. But I try. My brothers,” he raised his glass to them. “Who drag me from hell because they love me.”
Maxim, Emin, and Danil all gazed back at him, shock on their faces.
“To Mama and Papa,” he raised his glass to Katya and Ilya. “Who raise me from baby twice. Once when I am born. And once when Navuka almost take my life.”
Tears ran down Katya’s face. Ilya lifted one hand to his lips and pointed it at his son.
“My new family,” he raised his glass to his sisters-in-law and Linc. “Who choose to love me. When I think I am hard to love.”
Glory beamed at him, reached out for Ivy’s hand and they raised their glasses. Dora raised her glass as well, a little misty.
“And to my bahinia,” he raised his glass to AJ, who was partially mortified to have his family know he called her that. But also, nothing could have torn her eyes from him in that moment. She couldn’t believe it was happening. “Who held my heart when I had too much pain to hold it myself.”
AJ’s throat clogged and she swallowed and swallowed. The tears wouldn’t be ignored.
“And my child,” he raised his glass to her belly. “Who will never know my dark time. Only know my future.”
Anton set his glass down on the coffee table and jammed his hands in his pockets. “This decade was… hard. And I owe to you all, my life. So.” He shrugged his shoulders, cleared his throat again, and let his eyes flutter closed.
When he opened his mouth and began to sing, AJ was vaguely aware that both of her hands were covering her mouth. He sang in Belarusian, clearly a traditional folksong. His voice was low and strong and rumbled over the group, twisting easily from low notes to higher. He was effortless. Like silk over skin. His voice rose through him, like he was drawing it up from the earth itself.
AJ didn’t know what the words meant. But she didn’t have to know that he sang of gratitude, of love, of family.
When the last notes rang out over the group, Anton was immediately folded into Maxim’s arms. Then Katya’s, Ilya’s, and he was passed around his family.
“Did you know he could sing?” Dora whispered to AJ.
AJ shook her head, incredulous.
“He does not sing since we left Belarus,” Katya said, dabbing at her eyes and running one hand over AJ’s hair. “Thank you, daughter.”
“Me?” AJ asked, surprised. “I…”
She was about to say that she hadn’t done anything when she caught Anton’s eye across the room. He looked at her with such love. Such sweetness. That she immediately understood what Katya was thanking her for.
AJ rose and crossed the room without thinking twice.
“Okay!” Ilya clapped his hands and thumbed through his records. “Maxim, move couch and table. We dance now.”
AJ had made it into Anton’s arms with just enough time for a kiss when the music kicked up and Anton swung her around. She’d danced a traditional Belarusian folk dance many times over the years. Usually with Maxim, but often with Ilya or Emin. Occasionally Danil. But never before with Anton.
“You know?” Dora said to Danil as she stepped on his feet by accident. “I’m beginning to think that Anton’s darkness, whatever it was that we all sensed, was more about depriving himself of AJ than about the whole Navuka thing.”
Danil considered her words, spun his wife, dodged her stomping feet, and settled for holding her close. “Ah, but you wouldn’t have one without the other.”
Dora considered, slid her hand up her husband’s muscular back. “Well, so, what happens now? Now that he doesn’t long for AJ anymore, what’s he gonna do about his past with Navuka?”
“I don’t know,” Danil murmured back to her, pressing his lips to hers. “Hopefully move on and forget it ever existed.”
***
A few mornings later, Lana lazily switched through the channels on the horrible American television. So much yelling. So much plastic surgery.
But she was bored. She was always bored. And always in pain. Her body hadn’t been the same since she’d gone back to Belarus to receive her sentence from the President. She shifted in her seat, still unable to feel most of her left leg. She thought, perhaps, he’d been a bit harsh.
She was excited to see what he’d do to Sergei if this plan failed.
Half of her wanted Sergei to succeed. To get Anton Malashovik exactly where they wanted him. In a cage on a plane back to Belarus. Then they could all go home. And she could either continue her work, or disappear into the countryside.
The other half of her desperately wanted to see Sergei fail. She wanted him to go pay a visit to the President the way she had. She wanted to see exactly how well he’d follow orders when he got back.
Sergei lit a cigarette for himself and one for her. “Turn that off. I’m making the call.”
She hated being ordered around by such an imbecile. Instead of turning it off, she muted it and continued to watch the overweight people scream at one another.
Sergei turned his back on her and crossed one leg over the other, dexterously tapping the phone number into his untraceable phone.
“Ah. Yes. Good morning, Ms. Malashovik.”
She could only hear his half of the conversation and she was disappointed to say that it interested her; she would so much rather have remained aloof.
“Oh, I see. You haven’t officially been married to a Mr. Anton Malashovik yet, then? You’re just pregnant with his child? I’m calling from a government agency. No, this isn’t a joke. No, no. Don’t hang up. You’re really going to want to hear this. The fate of your child’s life depends on it.”
He laughed a pleasant, trilling laugh that annoyed Lana, although she imagined it was quite chilling to the poor girl on the other end of the line. Poor Autumn Jane Constance. Whose only mistake was fucking the wrong man. And now she was going to die for it.
“How did you enjoy the potato hash left in your fridge this morning, Ms. Malashovik? You ate all of it, I presume? Pregnant women can be voracious eaters, I hear. Well, you’ll be quite dismayed to learn that your father did not make that meal the way he normally does. I did. And there is something quite lovely in that dish, a nice little seasoning. Called mexatrose glycolate. Yes. I hear from your voice you know what it is. There’s a very rare antidote, my love. Most hospitals don’t have it. But if you come to me, right now, I’ll make sure you have just enough.”
Lana listened impassively while Sergei gave her the rest of the instructions and then crowed like a chicken when he hung up the phone. “Well, wasn’t she delightfully dumb?”
Lana pasted her lips closed. From what she’d seen, AJ Constance was a good deal smarter than Sergei, but she didn’t have an argument in her right now. She was tired. Just so tired. And all she wanted was to rest.
She pursed her lips as Sergei stood, zipping on his bulletproof vest and speaking fast instructions into a walkie-talkie at his hip.
“What are you waiting for, Lana?” he asked, annoyed, at the doorway. “The girl will be here in an hour. And I don’t think Malashovik will be far behind her.”
Lana sighed, rose, and started to get her own uniform ready. She felt a small thrill at the thought of seeing Anton again.
But as for the rest of it? She didn’t have it in her to care. The President had cut that part out of her in Belarus.
***
AJ’s hands slipped on the steering wheel for the fourth time in 20 minutes. She just had to get to the hangar in the Cascades. She only had to hang on for ten more minutes.
She knew how dumb this was. She knew she was driving into an obvious trap. That this whole thing was clearly being orchestrated by Navuka. But she also knew that if she didn’t get this antidote in the next hour, she and her baby were going to die. If it were just her, she might have taken her chances. But this was her baby’s life. Anton’s baby’s life.
There was no question in her mind that she’d been poisoned. There were extremely clear symptoms and she had them all. Pale gums, bruising under her fingernails, and a skip in her heartbeat.
But she wasn’t completely dumb. She’d called every hospital in a 200-mile radius for the antidote. None had had it. So here she was. Eight miles and counting from the place she’d been summoned.
Now was the moment to call someone. She knew she had to. But not Anton. If Anton knew where she was, he would come for her. She needed someone that Navuka wasn’t actively trying to trap and capture.
With shaking fingers, she dialed the number.
“Maxim? I need help.”
***
Anton wrestled with Linc in Maxim’s backyard. He had to admire the kid’s tenacity. No matter how many times he got slammed to the ground, the kid came back for more.
“Sweep the legs!” Danil called from the deck, stretching out in the unseasonably warm late February sun and loosening his tie.
Emin sauntered outside, passed a few beers around. “No, boy,” he said, observing Linc’s technique. “This is how you do.”
He lunged on Anton from behind, headlocking him and giving him a hell of a noogie.
Linc laughed in delight. He’d never seen anybody beat Anton in wrestling before.
The brothers grappled, shoving, panting, and falling away from one another. Anton grinned. He’d been doing that a lot lately. Sometimes it still felt strange. Uncomfortable almost, to be this happy. But he was forcing himself to get used to it. It was a good problem to have.
His grin fell away, though, when he looked up to see Maxim framed in the screen door, halfway in, halfway out. He was frozen, a look of horror on his face as he spoke to someone on the phone.
Anton knew instinctively from the way Maxim’s eyes found his.
AJ.
Something was wrong with AJ.
Anton was up and sprinting across the yard in seconds. Maxim said something into the phone and hung up, sliding it into his pocket.
“It’s AJ. What’s wrong with AJ?” Anton demanded in Belarusian.
“We don’t have time. Linc! Get inside with Mama! All of us in my truck now.”
The brothers responded instantly, tearing through the house and piling in to Maxim’s huge pickup truck.
“What, Maxim!” Anton screamed as his brother tore out of the driveway and headed west through town.
Maxim glanced at his brother. “She is okay. She needs help. We go to her. That is all you need to know for now.”
“WHAT?” Anton roared. “You tell me what the FUCK is going on with AJ NOW!”
Maxim had never seen his brother this enraged before and it made him grip the steering wheel tightly.
“No. Anton, you told us that you don’t have control over your shift when you’re upset. I cannot give you the details. All you have to know is that she’s okay right now. She’s fine and we’re going to her. Okay?”
He heard the sense in his brother’s words but he didn’t like it at all. But he needed to calm down. He could feel his beast rattling the bars of the cage inside him. If he shifted into the monster now, he’d be no help to anyone. He needed to get wherever they were going, get to AJ, and help her. That was his only focus.
Anton dropped his face into his hands and breathed deeply. He let the scent of his brothers in the car soothe him. He counted backwards from 500. Slowly the growling, monstrous thing inside him sat back on its haunches. Waited at the gates.
He wasn’t in control, but he knew he wasn’t going to shift anytime soon either.
When he looked up again, they’d already gone 40 miles from the city. Maxim was doing over 100 mph.
“Almost there,” he gritted his teeth, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
Danil and Emin were silent in the back seat and Anton couldn’t help but feel gratitude to them. Because of him, they didn’t know the plan any better than he did. They were going into all this as blind as he was.
A million possibilities cruised through Anton’s head, but in his heart, he knew there was only one. He knew why AJ would have called Maxim instead of him. Because she didn’t want him to come knocking at Navuka’s door.
“Almost there,” Maxim repeated, glancing sideways at his brother’s clenched fists, fast breaths. The yellow rage in his eyes.
Maxim had no real idea how they were going to do this. They had no plan and no way of talking about this without triggering Anton’s hulk out.
“Do you have ahold of yourself?” Maxim asked.
Emin clamped hands onto Anton’s shoulders from the back seat as if he could hold him in place.
“Yes,” Anton answered.
“Okay. Look. She’s inside a hangar in the mountains. We’re a mile away now. They lured her there. It doesn’t matter how right now. She thinks it’s Navuka.”
“Then I go in alone,” Anton answered tersely.
“Bullshit,” Danil responded instantly. “We go together.”
“I am an asset to Navuka. They don’t kill me. They kill you three in a heartbeat. You’re liabilities.”
“We go together,” Emin echoed Danil.
Whatever. Anton wasn’t spending time negotiating.
Maxim was pulling off the highway, swinging the car into a field. They’d have to start here and bushwhack up the mountain in their bear forms. Fastest this way. “Anton,” he said firmly. “All we do is get AJ and leave. We don’t waste time on vendettas.”
“All I want is AJ,” Anton growled, his jaw clicking as he stared straight ahead. The very second the car was at a stop, all four brothers exploded out the sides.
And a few things happened at once. The wind changed, and on it came the scent of chemicals, fear, and AJ. And a helicopter rose from behind a stand of trees, rushing toward them and letting loose a spray of bullets at the three expendable brothers.