Wolves howled far behind them.

If Justin had to guess the distance, he’d put it at over two kilometers back, which was slow going in these mountains. He’d spent many hours roaming Glacier National Forest and specifically Heavens Peak.

He hoped those wolves weren’t as familiar with the other side, where a line of timber undulated all the way down. 

Staying in bear form, Justin continued to lead Eli’s bear higher and higher, fighting the waning sunlight.

Once he got them out of here, he’d find some place to call the Guardian, but that would not happen tonight.

Justin would normally suck it up and figure his way out of this mess on his own if he were alone. He’d definitely double back to hunt his pursuers, but not when it put Eli at risk.

If he were doing this with his Gallize teammates, Justin wouldn’t hesitate to consider every potential route or counterattack. He and his teammates worked as one when dealing with the enemy. He suspected Eli’s bear could hold its own in a battle, but his insides kinked at the thought of her in any danger.

Was this what having a mate would be like? 

Yes and no, he figured.  He would never stop being on alert to keep her safe, but once they bonded he could share his power with her. That would add another level of protection.

A human might die while bonding with Gallize power, but Justin had never heard of a shifter that couldn’t handle the blast of energy.  Eli might need time to adjust to the surge, but she packed her own power, and he couldn’t wait to find out more about it. 

Still, he would discuss it with the Guardian first and be very sure.

Justin trusted the Guardian to assess Eli’s power and strength.  If anything, his boss erred on the side of caution when it came to protecting his Gallize shifters.

That included the women they chose as mates.

Damn. Justin grinned.

He was getting used to the word mate. 

Herc leaped over a fallen log and paid for it with a dizzy wobble sideways that took the bear to his knees.

Justin grumbled, Stupid jump.

Eli’s bear came around quickly and locked gazes with Herc, who immediately forgot about any pain. 

His bear stood up on all four legs so fast Justin snarled at him.  Fuck! Don’t jump up so fast!

Ignoring Justin, Herc sniffed Eli’s bear and licked her cheek.

Justin warned, We don’t have time for flirting.

His bear said, My time. All good.

No, it’s not, Herc. We need to get to safe ground.

Soon.

Dammit, Herc. Don’t give me a hard time about this.  Let’s get moving.  Didn’t you hear those wolves?

After licking Eli’s bear again and allowing her bear to snuffle along Herc’s jaw and neck, Herc made a heavy sighing sound, then moved out.

Padding along like the king of the woods he was, Herc didn’t slow again until Justin had him alter course.  Justin hoped the path hadn’t changed much in all these years. 

He had Herc angle east and head uphill again, climbing higher with every few steps.

Herc went in that direction, but asked, Lost?

Justin told him, No. We need to get those wolves off our trail before we get to a cabin.

He didn’t add if the cabin was still there. 

Good.  Herc added, Or kill pack.

You and I could, Justin assured him.  I just don’t want to risk our mate, because I don’t know that she can handle herself in a fight. We can’t do our best if we’re distracted.

I like.

That was as close as Herc came to saying Justin’s ideas were solid, but Justin knew his bear well and appreciated the vote of support.

They wound their way up, then down, the backside of the mountain and kept moving until they reached timber again. Moving deeper into the forest, Justin was relieved to find a wide, but shallow and partially frozen, stream he’d played in as a cub. He’d been to this spot many times in the years since.

Due to the shallow water in stretches, this part of the stream had never been a good area to find fish or they could find something to eat while traipsing through the stream.

He had Herc turn to Eli’s bear and lift his jaw.

She moved her head up and down, letting Herc know she understood to follow exactly in his steps. 

For the next thirty minutes, they walked up and down the wide stream, drinking their fill, and stepping out on both sides. In and out, walk more, in and out.

When Justin felt they’d done it enough, he instructed Herc to wade upstream two hundred yards to where water spilled across boulders and rocks. The walls on each side could be climbed, but only by a skilled climber with professional gear. Justin had spent afternoons letting Herc laze in the sun, then making a game of figuring out how to reach the narrow plateau above the waterfall by letting his ten-foot-tall bear climb the boulders.

Herc leaped out onto a massive boulder at the side of the water. 

Then he climbed up to the next tall rock and turned so they could watch Eli’s bear make the same leap.  Herc chuffed approval as her bear, slightly shorter but amazingly agile, made a sure-footed jump. He kept picking his way up the rocky incline, which rose over forty feet.  At the top of the rock pile, Herc dropped down on the other side where snow had accumulated on the forest floor, though there wasn’t much timber at this point.

When Eli’s bear landed right after him, Herc pounded the ground twice with his paw.

Eli’s bear sat.

With Justin directing Herc, his bear spent the next fifteen minutes pushing huge rocks down the incline until it was not passable for either wolf or human.

The wolves would have to backtrack a long way to reach this elevation, and that was only if they knew this mountain well enough to locate the exact point to turn uphill again.

At each little sign Justin recognized as familiar territory, his worry lifted more and more.

The woods had changed in the three years since he’d been here, but not so much that he couldn’t find his way.  Now to see if anyone else had been in the cabin he’d discovered many years ago.  Public hunting wasn’t allowed on these protected lands, but a backpacker might have happened on the spot. Justin had never seen it marked on any map, and even satellite images seemed to miss it because of the heavy tree cover.

A lone wolf’s howl echoed.

Herc paused. He and Justin listened for the direction.

The howl came again, but this time in duo, which meant there was definitely a minimum of two as Justin had suspected. He judged the sound to come from far down the mountain, back before the spot where he’d cleaned his wound and they’d first shifted.

Satisfied, Herc kept moving.

That escapade would throw the wolves off their trail for now, but it was only a temporary delay.

If those wolves had enough reason to kill Justin, they wouldn’t quit at the first obstacle. If they were trained as he was in black ops, they would have high-tech tracking devices to use in addition to their noses. 

Justin’s head was no longer on fire, but the dull ache that should be gone by now was not a positive sign. He had no way to purge that metal from his body. He only hoped he could fight off the titanium effects long enough to keep Elianna safe until he could get in touch with his people.

Herc paused. Den?

Justin saw what had stopped Herc.

The cabin where he’d been hoping to keep Eli safe tonight had been burned to the ground.  Some charred trees had also fallen, but new sprouts were evident, so it had been a while.

Justin’s best guess? Unlike the Guardian’s cabin, this did appear to be caused by a lightning strike. Acres of woods hadn’t gone up in flames along with the structure, though, probably due to the wide space he’d cleared around the cabin.

He told Herc, That’s gone, but let’s find somewhere around here to bed down.

Safe?

Justin considered all they’d done to cover their tracks.  We should be good here for the night.

Herc angled his head around and made a low huff at Eli’s bear, the signal that they were safe.

Eli’s bear’s ears pricked up.

She ran past Herc and pounced on the pockets of snow, then began to play and prance around.

Herc took off to catch up to her with Justin cursing him every step.

When he got his breath back, Justin stopped yelling at Herc and eased back, letting his bear do as he pleased. Justin enjoyed the vision of Eli’s bear happily playing in the snow.  The pretty bicolored bear snapped at snowflakes drifting down. The joy in the bear’s face made him wonder when her bear had last been free to run.

That peninsula in Russia where she came from had plenty of snow. Wouldn’t she have taken her bear to romp there?

He let the bears have a moment of downtime, but Herc was slowing down. He might be fascinated by Eli’s bear, but the titanium was affecting him as well.

Justin suffered a wave of dizziness.

Herc shook his head, feeling it too.

Nudging Herc to get walking again, Justin had him check on Eli’s bear. She was right behind him, so they plodded through occasional piles of snow. If the wolves found this place, tracking them would be no trouble.

Justin racked his mind for a second option.

The only caves he knew of were too far away going west, but they had wolves between them and safety if they headed east. Nope, neither direction offered a better option. The nearest camping was Avalanche Campground. With dark closing in, he wouldn’t risk either of them falling into a hole.

There were drop-offs that didn’t stop for hundreds of feet.

Enough to mangle even a shifter, or bash a head. 

With a slim amount of moonlight building, he and Eli would have some night vision, but not as sharp as a wolf’s. 

Herc’s sense of smell topped his vision by a long way. 

Justin searched everywhere, but couldn’t find a place with enough shelter to allow him to return to human form so he could keep an eye on both of them tonight. In bear form and with the wound they had, Herc might go into a deep sleep and Justin would not be able to wake him fast enough.

But his human form was not resilient enough to go through a night here in the cold without any gear. He’d probably survive, but he didn’t like the probably part of that equation when it came to protecting Eli.

She could remain a bear.

He wanted her rested. She had to be exhausted and would need her strength tomorrow, because they had only power bars for food tonight. That wasn’t much for rebuilding their strength.

Looking through Herc’s eyes, Justin searched ahead, then backtracked to fallen trees he’d seen downhill. 

Herc slowed at the crest of the hill, waiting for direction. 

Justin guided his bear to where trees and branches knocked over in a storm had piled up in one spot. He nosed around, pushing debris out of the way. 

With a little work, that could be a makeshift lean-to large enough to shield even two bears their size if Justin had to shift for short stretches to stay warm. 

Justin had Herc back up and shake off the clothing pack looped over his head, then he called up the change.

Cold air bit his skin.

He told Eli’s bear, “Don’t change yet.”

Snow continued to float down. Not heavy, though.

Rushing to unpack the bundle, he dressed in record time, hoping nothing got frostbite.

Monty topped that list.

Dressed, he wrapped his hands in Eli’s clothes and dug out the snow piled under the angled cover. When he backed out, there was a small bunch of branches inside which he started tamping down for a mat to keep them off the ground. 

He looked around and Eli’s bear was dragging more evergreen branches over.

Justin took them as she made a pile, adding some of the branches at the top to create a slanted roof that went from tree to ground. When he finished with that, he used the other branches she’d found to cover the inside floor.

It would be cold, but that gave them a little layer of insulation between their bodies and ice-cold ground. 

Just fine for a pair of bears.

Who was he kidding?

He might have an internal furnace that ran far hotter than a human because of sharing a body with Herc, but if he stayed in human form tonight he would freeze his nuts off. Sleeping next to Eli’s bear, they could generate heat, but they had nothing to hold that heat in close. 

He hadn’t seen new branches in the last ten minutes.

Where the hell was Eli?

He didn’t want to yell because sounds carried out here.  If she didn’t show up soon, he was shifting to Herc and tracking her.

He waited thirty seconds.

That was enough.

Just as he unbuttoned his shirt, he caught the sound of Eli’s bear huffing on her way back.  Damn, but she had scared him.  He had to remind her that although she was part polar bear and part grizzly, she didn’t know these woods.

She shouldn’t go anywhere without telling him first.

He buttoned up his shirt and crossed his arms. Yes, he was getting ornery, but he was tired and still had the headache from hell. 

The closer she came, the more he realized she was dragging something again, but not tree parts. 

When she reached him, her bear grinned around a mouthful of nasty canvas that trailed behind her fifteen feet. It looked like what was left of a tent from a storm. Maybe the same storm that had taken down these trees and blasted his cabin with lightning.

He’d seen blizzards out here with winds blowing uphill, which were powerful enough to flip a ship in the ocean. That tent probably came from the campground, but from the looks of frayed edges and holes, it had been blown here a long time ago. 

Justin dropped down and hugged her bear.  “That’s a hell of a find, babe.”  He wanted to use her bear’s name.

They would fix that next.

Eli’s bear rubbed all over him. He loved this woman and her bear. Loved them more than he’d ever thought possible. 

The only family he’d known had treated him as a leper.

It had taken a woman from across the ocean to tear down his walls one word at a time, to see past his constant joking and find the man inside. 

Her bear bumped his head and nodded at the shelter.

Justin stood up. “I get it. Finish my chores first then I get some lovin’.”  He reached for the canvas.  “What you got here?”

It had tears and no sign of structure, but it looked to originally have been ten by fifteen feet.  Now that he thought about it, a hunter might have had this tent. He’d get word out to scout this area for someone hunting illegally once he was back to a phone.

On the other hand, it could be wildlife photographers. He’d run across his share of those, too.

Darkness had set in completely before he figured out how to create a free-form tent structure using the slanted roof, but shafts of moonlight offered enough illumination for their bear vision. In the end, he used thick limbs to prop up the inside in different directions.  He gathered all the excess canvas inside to pile on top of the branches.

All in all, not too damn bad. 

The canvas wouldn’t have been as good without the lean-to construction and vice versa.  A beneficial combination.

“Good place.”

He swung around to find Eli butt naked.  “Damn, woman. You’re gonna freeze.”  Not that he wasn’t enjoying the best view he’d had since the last time she’d been naked, but he didn’t want her suffering frostbite on one inch of that body.

“Polar bear blood. Strong in cold.”

She dressed and put her boots on, then stood up and faced him with her arms crossed.  Her nose was red and her cheeks were pink, but she’d made her point.

She was no fragile woman. 

She arched an eyebrow and leveled a challenging look at him.

“You are so damn hot.”

That sent her into a fit of laughter. When she caught her breath, she said, “You funny.”

His heart started beating like it wanted to join a marching band. “You’re beautiful.”

She ducked her head then raised those big blue eyes at him.

He knew the first time he saw them he was in deep trouble, but he wouldn’t change a thing about her.

“Night here. Get in,” she ordered.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Not old woman. Not ma’am,” she complained as she climbed through the opening created when he pulled overlapping flaps back.

“We say ma’am out of respect whether you’re five, twenty-five, or a hundred and five.”

“Oh. I like.”

She made it to the opposite side of their accommodations for the night.

Justin stood there thinking about how she’d just used Herc’s words of compliment. 

This was the perfect match. 

He and Eli could spend a lifetime getting to know everything about each other, but he knew all he needed for now. She was loyal to a fault. She said what she thought.  She was a woman he could trust with his heart and his future. 

He would never settle for anything less than her. 

Easing inside, he closed the flaps and tried to prevent upending their shelter.  His headache was down to a dull throb, but he could feel the poison seeping into his body.  The cold might be helping him since his blood flow would slow down. 

He’d watched a Gallize shifter die in a war zone.  Losing one of their shifters was rare because they were so tough. 

But titanium affected all shifters adversely, including Gallize.  Justin’s unit had a medic that could have saved the shifter, but they didn’t reach him in time to irrigate the multiple wounds and apply a neutralizer to offset the effects.

The warrior had shifted into his mountain lion form. By the time they found him, his tail and one leg had rotted off.  He couldn’t shift back to human, which left the bullet holes not lined up, because he’d been shot in human form. Even if the medic could irrigate every opening, too many areas had moved during the shift and some had healed enough to close off access.

Eli was on her side, curled up and watching him.

Justin pulled her to him, kissed her sweetly, then rolled her over so he could bring her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms and legs around her, shielding her every way he could.

Tomorrow was critical.

He had no idea how much titanium was still influencing him or the amount of damage it would do overnight, but he’d always been warned not to go beyond twenty-four hours with that crap in his system.

He had to get them off this mountain tomorrow and find a way to contact the Guardian. He couldn’t risk Eli being left alone up here facing those wolves if the titanium won the battle and killed Justin.