Homecoming (11 page)

It was a very comforting thought to have right before she finally passed out.

~*~

She woke up in her own bed, sandwiched between Cal and Daniel. They were wearing sweats and t–shirts, and somehow, someone had wrestled her into flannel pajamas. Bracelet had calmed down to a low throbbing, not really painful but still very angry, although someone had also cleaned her blood off of it. Her skin where it rested against her showed a few small burns but nothing too serious. Her whole body felt bruised. Groaning, she tried to sit up.

“Wuhmahey.” Cal rolled over, slapping her away. It was comforting to know he was as prickly in his sleep as he was when awake, and she almost giggled. Almost.

“Good morning.”

Of course Daniel was bright eyed and perky tailed, sitting up as if he had not actually been asleep three seconds before. He went to help her sit up but she pushed him off. “You guys really can't take a hint.”

“That thing attacked you, and when you woke up you passed out,” Daniel said defensively, although he looked angry.

“It didn't 'attack' me, for fuck's sake.”

“I don't know how else to describe it.” Daniel glared at Bracelet.

“It's just angry. Let's say we were having an argument.”

“You were arguing with a piece of jewelry? Should I be disturbed by the fact that it won?”

Sula leaned against the headboard. Next to her, Cal rolled on to his back, fully awake now and glaring at her.

“It's more complicated than that. And trust me, it didn't win. If it had, you would both be dead.”

Daniel froze up. “It wanted you to kill us?”

Cal's expression bordered between horror and fury. “It wants to take everything from you? To kill your
pack
?”

“It wants to protect…not really protect me, but what I am, I think. You hate it because you think it controls me, but it has kept me safe and before me it was my mother. We're alive because we listen to what Bracelet warns us about.” She rested her face in her hands. “I've never fought it before. I've never wanted to.”

“But you did, for us,” Daniel stated, running a hand up and down her leg. Even through the pajamas his skin was hot and soothing.

Cal propped himself up on one elbow. “You fought it for us?”

Sula nodded. “Please, stop asking me about it. I've got a headache.” She rubbed her temples, startling a little when Cal's broad, warm hand soothed over her shoulders. “Guys.” Sula sighed.

Cal shot up out of the bed. “We get it. Unwelcome.”

Sula looked up at him, the word “no” on her tongue, but Bracelet sent out a small shock just then, reminding her of everything: who and what she was, what happened to her mother, all the stories she ever heard of werebears being hunted down and viciously murdered just for straying into someone's territory.

“What I want doesn't matter,” she replied weakly, clutching her wrist. “I can only fight it so far. Bracelet is trying to protect me. That's all.”

Daniel removed his hand and slid off the bed. He stared at her, his expression bordering on angry, his body held tense and tight. “What you want does matter, and that wicked thing on your arm does not have your best interests at heart. I doubt it ever has, and certainly not now. It's dangerous and will kill you one day.”

Sula blinked up at him through the pain of her headache. “My mother gave it to me. She wore it all her life, or at least as long as I remember, and she said it was part of our family. It's
old
, Daniel, old and powerful magic that has protected my family for generations.”

“Which is why you're the last one? Because it 'protected' you guys so well?” Cal snarled, jabbing the air in her direction.

“I'm here, and that's more than can be said for any other line of bears. No one I know has ever met one. Neither have I, and if I'm the last of my kind, it's because Bracelet's watched over us, kept us from doing the things that would get us hunted down and shot.” She closed her eyes. Cal walked out of the room, stomping purposefully down the stairs. “Well, we always know what his opinion is,” Sula sighed.

“He's not wrong, Sula.” Daniel leaned against the wall, his arms crossed but a soft expression on his face. “What happened last night was because we were dancing together?”

She nodded.

“That bracelet works against you, no matter what it has you believe.” He sounded as if he was choosing his words carefully, trying not to start an argument.

“That's kind of a matter of perspective, I think.” Sula kept rubbing her temple with her eyes closed, frowning at the headache which was not going away. She felt the bed dip, then Daniel's soft, gentle fingers replacing her own. In too much pain to argue about it, she sighed and let him help. They sat quietly for a while as Daniel massaged her temple and jaw, saying nothing and simply relaxing into the moment. Bracelet was quiet for a change, perhaps sensing how much pain Sula was in already, so Sula took a risk and reached out to put a hand on Daniel's thigh next to her. He did not react but he kept up the massage, and that was good enough for her.

“How is she?” Lisbeth asked from somewhere to the side, probably from the doorway.

“In pain. Headache?” Daniel asked, and Sula nodded.

“Here, Sula. Open up.”

Sula opened her eyes when Lisbeth walked in to see a glass of water and some aspirin in front of her. “Oh bless you, Miss Lisbeth.” Sula gratefully swallowed down both.

Daniel got up and retreated a little, looking at her critically. “What do you really know about the bracelet? Not what it tells you, but what you know is fact?”

Sula shook her head, figuring there was no escaping it. Even Lisbeth looked genuinely interested, belaying all the times she had never asked about Bracelet in the past. Cal and Tony crowded the doorway—or Tony did, Cal lurking behind him.

“Pretty much what I've told you. Mama gave it to me, and said it was a family heirloom.”

“Why'd she give it to you? Rite of passage?” Tony asked, his posture a mirror of Daniel's across the room: arms folded, deceptively slouched.

“No, I don't…she gave it to me on my fifteenth birthday. She went out that night and—” Sula sighed. “You ever heard of what happened to the werewolf pack in Lawton, Oklahoma?”

Cal hissed, and the tension in the room went up. Sula could almost taste the latent fear and anger.

“My god, that was your mother?” Lisbeth asked quietly, her hand over her mouth.

Sula nodded. “Remember I told you about that pack that drove her out of town, killed her boyfriend? That was them.”

“The bear was shot. Killed.” Daniel spoke up, his voice flat.

Sula nodded. “Kind of like 'suicide by cop', I think. I know for a fact she did not intend on getting out of that alive. The wolves weren't expecting it, four years after what they did to her. She planned it out. “

“Happy fucking birthday,” Cal snarled. Tony cuffed him with a snarl in kind.

“No, he's right, it was a lousy thing to do to me. I know that. But she was—”

“Unhinged?” Cal offered. Tony shoved him down the hallway.

“Go downstairs until you pull yourself together, Whitman.” Tony pointed, and Cal slinked off.

“She was crazy by then, and I knew it. When she gave me Bracelet, I knew.” She pet the beads.

Tony thumped his head lightly against the door frame, looking off into the distance. “Everyone heard about that. Word traveled fast. Pop was put on patrol for weeks by our Alpha. No one slept for days. It was like a horror movie come to life and we didn't know if it was some kind of bear uprising or not.”

“Lawton— that whole part of the state— is still free territory. No one wants to move back into it, and it's been at least ten years.” Daniel added.

“Doesn't surprise me. Mom killed, what, thirty wolves?”

“About. Puppies too.” Tony frowned at Bracelet.

“I said she was crazy. Bracelet had nothing to do with that; in fact it probably tried to stop her. That's why she gave it to me.”

“You're not going to go crazy if you take it off,” Lisbeth said quietly, cutting to the heart of the argument in her usual way.

“I know that. I've taken it off before. But at this point, I don't know how long I'd stay alive without it.”

Daniel looked horrified while Lisbeth and Tony tried to appear sympathetic. Yet, Sula had to admit to herself that it was true. She did not know very much about how to live as a full–on shifter, and despite her own confidence in her sanity, she was not certain just how her mother came to be insane. She knew it might be hereditary, or might have come on during times when her mother took Bracelet off—few and far between, but she did remember times when Bracelet sat in a drawer or hid in her mother's purse. It was just as possible that Bracelet drove her mother crazy, but Sula had worn it for over a decade and if nothing else had some insight into what Bracelet wanted, and she could not explain it to anyone, not even Lisbeth, without coming across as already unhinged herself.

Daniel was right, though: what drove Bracelet had nothing to do with Sula personally. It did not care about her. It hid a deeper, more powerful magic that she could probably tap if she tried, but she was too terrified of it. Bracelet existed for itself, and Sula feared that. Bracelet protected her and kept her shifter nature under control, but what really drove Sula was the fear that she was the only thing holding it back from some far greater, and far darker purpose.

L
awton, Oklahoma
.
Cal could not get it out of his head. He remembered it clearly. He was about seventeen at the time, a year away from the police academy, but it did not stop his uncle, the pack's Alpha, from ordering Cal out on patrol with his cousins. No one traveled alone for weeks.

It was the worst thing Cal could imagine at the time: a bear wiping out a whole pack, adults and children and puppies in a murderous rampage for no reason. That was three years before his own pack was eliminated by the strong, ruthless wolf pack they had sworn allegiance to generations before, but until that time the worst he could imagine was the bear attack in Lawton. For many shifters, it was still the worst they could imagine.

Sula had been so hot on the dance floor, moving between Cal and Daniel, that Cal had shoved it all to the back of his mind. That bear wasn't Sula as long as Sula was powerful yet pliant in his arms. Watching the involuntary shifting she suffered through later was a kind of exquisite torture for Cal because it was horrifying, terrifying, and utterly intoxicating.

Tony had ordered them to shift and run, and they had, but Cal and Daniel could not stay away. Cal heard her moaning in pain and frustration, saw her huge form splayed on the cold ground, desperate for comfort, and he could not leave her alone. The smell of her was nothing like a wolf, a bit more sour and a lot stronger, full of scents that were new but distinctly Sula. Daniel had tried to keep Cal at a distance from her, but gave up, sitting down to guard them both as Cal scooted up to her.

He had been terrified, no two ways about it, and later Tony reamed him a new asshole for even trying, but lying on the ground nose to nose with something as powerful and magical as Sula filled Cal's soul with something he could not even name. It was not the same sense of belonging he got from being a second to Tony, but it wasn't dissimilar either. It was an adoration of strength and power that sent Cal to his knees in worship. In their shifted forms, the sexual allure was not there, but the rest of it was magnified 1000x and intensified by the fact that Sula would never make him choose between her and Tony. She was outside of the pack dynamics, she was right about that, but that did not make her invisible. It made her irresistible. The sexual attraction they shared as humans fed on that, and Cal was helpless to fight it.

Except that since he understood her fears and her anger, he felt a sense of dread about it. He understood that his distrust of the bracelet and his sexual frustration at her pushing him off repeatedly merged with his abject terror of losing his pack, causing him to turn vicious and mean. He knew it but he was helpless to stop himself, so he had been secretly grateful when Tony tossed him out of Sula's bedroom, ordering him downstairs. Even that wasn't far enough, though, so Cal stomped outside to pace the porch in the fresh air, which was where Daniel found him.

“Tony and Lisbeth are still talking to her, but I doubt there is more to say at this point.” Daniel sighed, leaning against the railing, staring into the forest.

Cal chewed his lip, trying to think of what to say.

“Tony's not happy.”

“No shit!” Cal blurted out.

Daniel turned on him with narrowed, angry eyes, which was such a surprise that Cal stepped backwards.

“You were the one keen on getting close to her, on the dance floor and after. You were nose to nose with her and what was I supposed to do, Cal? How can I protect you if you run where angels fear to tread?”

Cal opened his mouth but closed it again before he could shoot it off. Daniel looked
really
pissed.

“When we met, you were skittish of everyone and everything, but you didn't have a death wish! Has that changed, Cal? Is there something about this bear that makes you want her to take you from us?”