Reign: A Royal Military Romance (67 page)

O
n the movie
theater screen in front of them, one man dressed in black leather shot at another man wearing the same thing. The second man dodged. A sixteen-year-old Jake turned his neck to look behind him at the teenage couple furiously making out, and then turned back to the screen, grossed out.

“They still at it?” asked Coleman, another teenager, stuffing his face with popcorn.

“Yeah,” said Jake.

“I hope their braces get stuck together.”

“I hope he comes in his down jacket and has to explain it to his mom.”

The boys both giggled. Besides the two of them and the couple with their tongues down each other’s throats, there were a few scattered people in the front of the theater, but that was it. Fjords, Alaska, only had one tiny movie theater, but they could barely fill it. Even so, it was nearly a miracle that none of the shifter pack besides them was in the theater: Boone, the guy sucking face behind them, was a shifter but Kaitlyn, the girl, wasn’t, and they didn’t need pack leadership figuring out what they were up to.

“You want more popcorn?” asked Coleman, shaking the few kernels left at the bottom of the XXL-sized bag. “We’re almost out.”

“How many times you refilled that thing?” asked Jake.

“Tim’s working the stand so he’s giving it to me for free,” Coleman said, grinning.

From the front of the theater, someone shushed them.

“Sure,” whispered Jake, and Coleman got up and left.

* * *

A
fter the movie
they walked back to the car they’d all come in together, crunching over the gravel parking lot in show boots and down parkas. Boone still had his arm around Kaitlyn, both of them rosy-cheeked and smug.

“I thought that movie was pretty cool,” said Coleman. “You ever think about stuff like that? Like, what if this is all a dream and we’re really plugged in somewhere?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Jake thought he saw something move. He looked, but there was nothing there, just the cold dark of early springtime.

“I
really
enjoyed the movie,” said Boone.

“Me too,” said Kaitlyn, giggling.

Jake rolled his eyes and reached for his keys. As the first to turn sixteen, it was his job to drive all his dumb friends around.

“We call the backseat!” shouted Boone. Kaitlyn giggled louder. Coleman rolled his eyes dramatically. Jake pulled his keys out, trying his best to ignore them.

But then, as they closed in on his car, two huge trucks drove up behind them, high beams on, and stopped.

The three boys froze. They recognized the trucks; Kaitlyn was the only one to react, shading her eyes and shouting, “Turn your lights off, numbnuts!”

Three huge men got out of the trucks, none of them wearing jackets even in the cold Alaska night. Kaitlyn’s eyes went wide at the men, built like tanks.

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just really bright...”

One of them strode up to her, and before she could react, backhanded her across the face. She fell to the gravel, unconscious.

With a roar, Boone charged at the man, all six feet and one hundred forty pounds of him flailing furiously. He tried to punch the man who’d backhanded Kaitlyn and missed completely, the huge man easily dodging out of the way. Before any of them could blink, the man had both of Boone’s hands twisted behind his back, the teenager nearly in tears.

Without thinking, Jake started to shift. The rage and the animal urge to attack flowed through his veins and he felt the fur sprout, felt himself grow bigger and stronger — and then, before he could react, another of the men had him a rough headlock, forcing Jake to his knees.

“Shift back,” the other man said, his voice a low growl, into his ear. “Shift back or I swear to God I’ll break your neck.” His hands tightened, just to make sure he got his point across.

Jake shifted back. Coleman stood, shaking, in the middle of the half-circle. He hadn’t moved a muscle.

“Let’s go talk somewhere,” one of the men said, and they forced the boys into the trucks.

“I’m not leaving her here,” Boone managed to choke out, struggling. “Kaitlyn!”

A dull
snap
sounded across the parking lot, followed by a teenage boy’s howl of pain. Boone got into a truck, now sobbing.

* * *

J
ake sat
in the jump seat of the truck, quiet and furious but knowing he couldn’t do anything. How could they just leave her there? She was annoying, sure, but he didn’t want her to freeze to death.
It’s my fault
, he thought.
I should have never driven them, I should have said something to Boone
—

The truck pulled into an empty lot, other trucks and four wheel drives scattered around. At least ten huge adult men stood in a circle, all looking angry. The boys were forced to kneel in the middle, and then one man, with light brown hair and long sideburns, stood.

Jake knew exactly who he was, even though he’d barely ever spoken to him. Brock had been their alpha for a long time, since the last one had left in turmoil. He was the kind of leader who ruled by force, and thought his word was the absolute law.

“Which one of you was dating outside?” he said.

None spoke.

“WHICH ONE?” he roared.

He waited.

“Me,” whispered Boone, his shoulder shaking, his arm hanging at an odd angle.

“And the two of you,” Brock went on. “You were complicit in this?”

Both of them nodded, looking down.

“Do we
fucking
date outside?” he shouted.

The boys all shook their heads.

“Say it,” he said.

Boone started sobbing.

“Say,
we don’t date outside!
” he roared.

One of the men standing in the circle cracked his knuckles.

“We don’t date outside,” the boys answered in unison.

“Why?” he shouted.

“Dilutes the bloodline,” whispered Boone.

“Why else?”

“Humans are beneath us,” whispered Coleman.

“And?”

Jake paused, refusing to talk.

“Why don’t we date outside?” the man shouted, now standing directly in front of Jake.

Jake turned his head to the side, saying nothing.

Brock kicked him in the shoulder, hard, sending Jake flying. Jake heard a crunch and a searing pain tore through him as he lay face down on the gravel, gasping.

He crouched in front of Jake. “Tell me,” he said.

“Humans are filthy scum,” the sixteen-year-old Jake gasped out.

The man walked away, but Jake didn’t move. He thought that maybe, if he stayed face-down in the cold gravel, it would be over. He could escape without things getting worse.

Brock ripped his t-shirt over his head and threw it to someone on the edge of the circle. Jake had a sinking feeling in his gut. He tried to move his arm, but he couldn’t. It had gone numb.

Brock undid his belt. “Shift,” he said.

All Jake could hear was Boone and Coleman’s ragged breathing to his left and right. He shut his eyes tighter, tried to slow his own breath. Maybe if they thought he’d passed out...

Moments passed, and Jake didn’t hear anything but something shifted in the air. Suddenly he smelled the bears: three of them, standing in front of him. He held his breath, hoping they’d leave him alone.

Then, claws on his chest, raking him deep and flipping him over, hard, so he landed on his other side. His eyes flew open and he gasped in pain, then went up on his good elbow, only to see the blood welling up and pouring out through his tattered down parka.

A few feet away, a bear growled at him and began to advance.

Jake had no choice. He shifted, the transformation hurting even more than usual, feeling himself grow fur and stretch and sprout teeth and claws. The flesh on his chest where the other bear had cuffed him still bled, and his arm was useless. In the corner of his eye, he could see Coleman, shifted, getting knocked around by another huge grizzly, and he knew that he didn’t stand a chance: Brock was easily twice his weight, and he was already wounded.

He still tried, though.

Brock came back at him, walking fast on all fours, and Jake grabbed onto him and together they rose onto their back legs and before Jake knew what was happening Brock had gotten his neck in his teeth again. Jake cuffed him hard on the head, but that just threw off Jake’s balance and he fell hard, trying and failing to land on his good arm.

He struggled to stand, and then grapple again with Brock, but this time Brock caught him right on his bad shoulder and knocked him back down, and then when he was on the ground, fastened his teeth right on Jake’s neck, shaking the younger grizzly back and forth, his teeth puncturing deep.

Jake tried to fight but it was useless; before this, he’d only sparred with the other young bears, not fought with a full grown grizzly. He felt the teeth on the other side of his neck and tried to swipe at Brock, but the other bear was much too quick and clever. Jake felt weak and powerless. All he hoped was that it would be over soon.

Finally, it stopped. Jake knew he had a broken shoulder and probably broken ribs, plus he was bleeding heavily from the gash in his chest and the deep, torn punctures in his neck. He thought Boone had taken the worst of it and might be missing an eye. As he laid on the gravel, Brock and the other two men shifted back to human. Jake didn’t care. He just wanted them to leave so he could either die or figure out what to do next.

“You know how to make this right,” Brock said, pulling his pants back on.

The three boys, still in bear form, didn’t move.

Brock walked away, right through the middle of the three bears, lying bloody on the ground. All the men got into their trucks and drove away.

* * *

T
he boys waited a long
, long time before shifting back to human. Each wore a now-tattered down parka in the subzero cold, and pulled the threads around them.

There was a long silence, and finally, Coleman spoke up.

“I guess we go ask for forgiveness,” he said.

Jake spat blood to one side and watched it begin to freeze on the ground. “Fuck that,” he said.

“What else are we going to do?” said Coleman.

Boone hadn’t said anything. He just looked miserable.

Jake shook his head. He had no idea what he was going to do, but he knew the first step was to shift back into a bear. Otherwise, he’d freeze to death within the hour.

“I’ll find a way to survive,” he said. “But I can’t go back there. I can’t ask those people to forgive what
I
just did. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I think Kaitlyn’s dead,” Boone said, suddenly speaking up. “She wasn’t breathing.”

The three freezing boys said nothing, but their breath frosted hard in the air.

“I’ll come with you,” Boone said.

“Are all bear packs like this?” asked Coleman. He touched a head wound and his hand came away dripping red.

“I don’t know,” said Jake.

“I’ll come,” Coleman said.