Phoenix (6 page)

***

He awoke early the next morning, his phone vibrating under his pillow to muffle the sound from the others. Getting up as stealthily as he could, he dressed and crept to the kitchen, feeding himself some of the dry trail bars they had brought with them. Packed full of calories, they were nutritious but less than delectable.

Satisfied, he grabbed the air horn he had stashed the night before and walked to the closest bedroom. Opening the door he slammed the button down, the loud noise filling the confined space. Immediately shifters began rolling from their beds. He kept hammering on the button and shouting at them to move faster. They traded insults with each other while he berated them for their inability to get ready in time. In reality it took them less than a minute, which was more than acceptable. Not that he could let them know it.

“Pathetic!” he raged as they presented themselves for inspection in the hallway. There was no uniform, though they tended to wear tactical clothing which counted as such. “My grandmother could be ready faster.”

“With all due respect, sir, your grandmother would have been awake for an hour by now!”

They weren’t in the military, and as long as they obeyed their superiors, the Stone Bears had allowed a more relaxed structure. Even he couldn’t help but smile.

“Well, Connor, I can see you’re awake and functioning enough yourself. Sounds like just the person to go for an exploratory ten laps around the cabin while we make some breakfast.”

There was a groan, accompanied by the laughs of the others. Connor fell out of line and headed toward the door before Uriel stopped him.

“You are a team,” Uriel announced. “And as a team, you should work together. Besides, breakfast is simple today. Grab your gourmet ration bars and go join your fellow trainee.”

Now there was a chorus of groans.

He grabbed a couple more for himself, along with his instruction tool for the day, and headed outside, walking down one of the trails into the woods. After they finished their morning exercise, the trainees jogged up alongside him.

“Today’s lesson is about being aware of your surroundings.” Without further warning he reached up and tapped a tree branch with his tool, a long, spiked metal pole.

Three of the four trainees saw it coming and dodged out of the way. Justin did not. A fresh dumping of snow cascaded over him as it fell from several vibrating branches.

“Stay aware!” he shouted.

Justin shook himself vigorously and rejoined the others moments later, none the worse for the wear.

They marched on, though Uriel had no other lessons for them until they came to a clearing. The snow wasn’t as deep here, and they crunched out onto it until they stood in the center.

“Line up,” he said and they quickly formed a line in front of him. “No, like this,” he instructed, having them face front to back, instead of side to side. He pushed them in close to each other as well.

“Today’s other lesson,” he said, stepping close to Jared, who anchored one end of the line, “is about teamwork.” He punctuated his last word with a sharp crack of his pole against the ground in front of them.

“Teammates.”
Crack
. This time in front of Justin, who was next in line.

“Work together.”
Crack.
Moving down the line to Josh.

“They look out for the whole before themselves.”
Crack.

He circled around the back of Connor, who he had just been in front of.

“We are a team.”
Crack.

“That’s right, I said
we
.”
Crack,
his spike drove deep into the ground again. This time he saw the trainees sway as the ground trembled under them.

“But for today, I mean you.”
Crack.
“Any questions?”

There was silence. The trainees were looking around more fervently as they felt the ground begin to shiver more.

“That’s too bad. There should have been.”

Crack.

With one last hard motion, he completed the rough outline around the group of trainees and the thick ice behind them shattered completely, dropping them into the pond that spanned the majority of the clearing they were in.

Shouting and curses came his way as they struggled to get out. But there wasn’t enough room for them all to try and get out at once. The line they had been in had ensured not enough ice broke to give the four big men the opportunity to do so.

Finally Jared took control, pulling two of the shifters closer to him. He ducked under the ice, freeing up enough space for Josh to climb out. The other shifter quickly pulled out his squad, until the shifters were lying on the snow, cursing and trying to recover their warmth.

“What was today’s lesson?” he asked, not giving them any time to recover.

“Teamwork,” Connor said.

“Be aware of your surroundings,” Jared said, remembering the first lesson Uriel had given them.

“Exactly! So why did you stay on the ice and let me dump you like a bunch of buffoons?”

“You told us to line up,” Jared protested.

“I didn’t tell you to stay there once the ice started buckling under you though!” he yelled. “If you sense danger, you act, or at least bring it up to me. I even gave you leave to ask questions. You could have asked about the ice. But you didn’t!”

He shook his head. He really had hoped Jared or someone would have said something. They were smart, but they still needed help thinking for themselves from time to time.

“Justin, at what temperature does a bear shifter began to become susceptible to the cold the way humans do?”

“There is no hard data on an exact temperature, but once it reaches about thirty to thirty-five below, you can expect to begin experiencing symptoms in human form if outside for an extended period of time in little to no clothing. Add another twenty-five degrees or so for bear form.”

“What temperature do you think that water is?”

“Cold,” came the response, but they figured out what he had meant.

“Firewood,” Jared ordered, and they split up, gathering some firewood.

As Uriel watched, Jared also directed them to build the fire closer to the trees, after he found out where the water line ended.

“They
can
learn,” he said to himself and sauntered over to join them.

That wasn’t entirely fair. The trainees had come a long way since first coming to the Valley and being selected for the process. But there was still quite a journey ahead of them. Uriel had gone through ten years’ worth of training. They were trying to do the same with these men in six months, and they likely didn’t even have that long. It was going to be rough. Many important lessons had to either be skipped completely, or taught in such a fashion that they immediately stuck with the trainees.

It didn’t take the shifters long to have a blazing fire going. Uriel wasn’t concerned about their bodies—shifters were far more resilient than that—but the clothing they had been soaked in could have posed a problem. It was unlikely, but he didn’t want them thinking they were completely immune to cold either. Whether they would ever find themselves exposed to such cold temperatures in modern society was also unlikely, but better to be prepared.

Besides, he had been testing to see if they would make the fire on land or not, now that they knew it was a pond.

“I really prefer it when Gabriel sends us out to do winter training on our own,” Justin grumped as Uriel got close.

“What, you mean when he sends us out to the middle of nowhere and then forgets to call us for two days?” Jared asked, and they all laughed.

Uriel could laugh now, but at the time, he hadn’t. He and Kierra had just been ambushed by the other platoon of trainees at the cottage, and they had kidnapped her under orders from Nash, a former senior liaison for the LMC and now-imprisoned criminal.

None of the Stone Bears had known whether Jared and his team were loyal to them, or to the unknown enemy, so Gabriel had packed them off on a bogus training mission in the middle of the forest somewhere. In the aftermath that followed—dealing with Nash, the revelation that their enemy had at least one powerful bat shifter working for them, the interference and subsequent forced fleeing of Valen Kedyn—Gabriel had forgotten about the team for over forty-eight hours. They had finally called him, having gotten sick of sitting around and waiting for him to arrive.

“What was that all about anyway Uriel?” Jared spoke for the group. They all looked up at him.

“A test of your patience,” he replied. “And you all failed.”

The assembled group rolled their eyes as one in his direction. It was the standard excuse that the three Stone Bears had been giving since the incident occurred. Everyone knew it was a lie, but Uriel and his comrades weren’t willing to explain everything just yet. Not until they had verified the loyalty of their trainees.

Looking around, Uriel decided that they would camp there for the night, and he set the men to building shelter purely out of the snow and ice.

It was going to be a long seventy-two hours until he could see Sydney again. He wondered if he could get away with texting her…

Sydney

If there wasn’t a fresh coating of snow on the ground that hadn’t been cleaned just yet, Sydney was positive she would have been skipping from her car to the office.

Uriel is back today!

There were butterflies inside each of the knots her stomach had wrapped itself into, and her fingers drummed constantly on the steering wheel on her way in to work as she anticipated seeing him for the first time since they had shared a kiss in the park. He had informed her of the unexpected training mission that Gabriel had foisted upon him, and then proceeded to regale her with pictures or videos via text of how he was putting the men through the paces.

Her favorite was still seeing the reaction of an unnamed shifter making a fire. The shifter was looking at Uriel in confusion, wondering why he was being filmed, when the Stone Bear had pointed the camera up above the fire. The poor trainee had set his wood ablaze directly below a huge branch covered in snow. Even as she watched, it had melted enough to begin to slip along the bark, where it had deposited itself directly on the trainee’s head.

She giggled even now at the look of shock and then disgust on the shifter’s face.

It wasn’t a substitute for seeing Uriel, but it certainly helped keep her spirits up. There was still a battle going on within her about whether she should be seeing him, due to his status as her patient, but it was mostly background noise to her now. Sydney had made her decision when she let him kiss her. It still shocked her to realize the path she was likely headed toward, but she knew Uriel better now. He was a
good
man. Man-Bear. Shifter.

Whatever
. She rolled her eyes at herself. He was good, and that was what mattered the most. That and the fact that around eleven in the morning he was going to walk into her office. That mattered a lot. She wanted to feel him against her. She had made a promise to herself to be good while on the clock, however, so a hug was all she would limit herself to.

“Don’t you just have a shit-eating grin plastered all over your face this morning,” a cheerful voice said.

Sydney blinked and looked over at a car nearby. She hadn’t noticed the person in it as she approached the doors inside, but now she recognized them.

“Courtenay!” She smiled. “Good morning to you too.”

“Okay, spill the beans. What happened and why are you so giddy this early?” Her best friend grabbed her arm and they walked inside together.

“What, I’m not allowed to just be happy about life?” she asked innocently.

“Do you really think I’m dumb enough to buy that excuse?” Courtenay asked, eyebrows raising. “Be careful how you answer that,” she said as Sydney smiled and began to reply.

The two of them shared a laugh as they approached the medical wing. Several of the administrative staff gave them a look for making noise, but they ignored them.

“So maybe I have a reason to be happy. A really, really tall, handsome reason,” she said slyly, enjoying teasing her friend.

“Does he have a name? Does he know you exist?” Courtenay’s snicker turned into a yelp as Sydney’s elbow lodged itself in her side. “Okay, okay! Mercy!” she exclaimed with a laugh.

“He does too have a name. An interesting one at that. And the reason I’m happy is because I get to see him today, and it’s been a few days since the last time.” She knew Courtenay wouldn’t betray her confidence to anyone, which was a huge relief. She had been planning to tell her friend shortly as well, because she wanted her opinion and needed to know if she was making a mistake or not.

“Just tell me who it is already!” Courtenay was getting anxious.

Although she was tempted to tease her friend even more, they had reached the medical wing and it was likely Courtenay would have work to do that was much more important than what she was doing.

“It’s Uriel.”

Courtenay nodded her head, eyes unfocused as she processed the information, thinking it over. “Is that why you had such an embarrassed look on your face when I came into the office the other day? Were you two—”

“No!” Sydney said emphatically with a slight look of horror. “I had just met him! He actually went off-balance and almost squished me. It put us really close to each other, and I was realizing that I felt something for him, something different. But no, we weren’t in the middle of anything, you filthy pervert,” she said with a chuckle.

“So you and he are finally hooking up tonight then?” Courtenay asked, wanting all the dirty details.

“No! I don’t know!” She frowned. Was she planning on sleeping with Uriel tonight? It wasn’t something she had expressly set out to do, but Sydney found that she wasn’t put off by the idea either. “Maybe? I’m hoping he’ll ask me out on a date.” Her eyes narrowed in confusion. “Wait, do shifters even do that? Do they go on dates? Or am I just expected to be his mate and that’s that?”

Courtenay’s jaw dropped at the same time her bag hit the floor as she stared at her friend in shock.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. “You weren’t talking about just hooking up with him, were you?”

Sydney shook her head.

“Sydney,” she said, taking her friend by the shoulders. “You realize that shifters either fuck you or mate with you, right? They don’t have a ‘relationship’ setting anywhere in the middle. Do you know what you’re getting into if you expose yourself to him like this?”

She swallowed hard, looking her friend directly in the eyes, and nodded. “I think so. As much as any human is going to truly ‘get it’ without being a shifter.”

“You’re sure this is what you want?” There was concern in Courtenay’s eyes, but not for what Sydney was doing, but to ensure that Sydney was aware of it.

“I don’t know, Court. I really don’t know. But there is some sort of... connection between us. I don’t know how to describe it, but it’s more powerful and intense than anything I’ve ever felt before with any man. It’s sexual, yes, but it’s also more than that. It’s a sense of completeness being around him, if that makes any sense. I don’t know how else to explain it.”

Her friend nodded. “Do me a favor though?”

“What’s that?” Sydney asked.

“Go talk to Caia, okay? Just tell her how you feel, and see if she agrees. She’s really nice.”

“That’s not a half bad idea,” Sydney said, agreeing to the suggestion. She wouldn’t mind talking to a human woman who had been down this path before. Caia was Gabriel’s mate, and like Courtenay had said, she was extremely nice. She had come to live at the mansion with Gabriel ever since the two of them had become official.

“Good.” A loud beep sounded from the bag she had dropped. “Sorry girl, duty calls,” she said with a grin and picked her stuff up off the floor and headed into her office.

Sydney turned and moved along to her own office, taking her time. She had an appointment in half an hour, but that was it until Uriel arrived.

Thoughts of being mated to Uriel swirled in her brain once more, stirred up by the shock of her friend. Was she making the right choice in pursuing things with him?”

Her mother would approve at least.

Sydney snorted aloud at that thought.

“Of course she would. She wants grandkids more than she wants me to be happy.”

Sydney was one of eight siblings. Each of her other brothers and sisters were now married, and all but two had at least one child. The others were working on it, from what she knew. The only exception had been Sydney. Her sisters were housewives and loved it. She was the one who had been so driven to establish herself in a field and find a career. It wasn’t that she was against marrying and having children. Far from it, in fact. She just wanted to do it on her own terms, after proving herself to the world.

Her mother didn’t agree with that, and it had been the source of constant fights. If she brought Uriel to meet them, however, her mother would probably be deliriously happy. Even more so if she bore his children.

How would mother react if I brought home a few mini-bear shifters?

A laugh bubbled up within her at the thought of it. The look on her mother’s face alone would almost be worth doing it. A smile restored upon her face, she got down to work.

Uriel would be here before she knew it.