Return To The Bear (4 page)

Joanna nearly fell down the stairs in her hurry to escape the moaning sounds Merit was making. She was loud. Obnoxiously so, and he wasn’t even touching her yet.

Now was her chance to find Hannah. He’d be preoccupied at least for
a little while with Merit. Where would he hide the mate of a rival alpha? Somewhere closed off because he wouldn’t want the rest of the clan knowing. Not yet. Not until he was ready to give them a battle speech and prepare them for another war. This house, where he could guard her himself, seemed like the most obvious choice. But it didn’t have a basement and a quick check of the rooms told her only his mates were here, somberly quiet and readying for bed. Anya lay on top of her comforter in her room, facing the walls and her shoulders shook as if she were weeping.

Time was ticking away but Joanna couldn’t pull herself away from the grieving woman without consoling her. “Anya, are you okay?” The bed creaked as she sat beside the woman
and rubbed her back in soothing circles.

She hurried to wipe her tears and gave her a faltering smile. “Oh, I’m fine.”

Joanna looked out her open door and bit her lip, then leaned closer and whispered, “You don’t have to take this from him.”

“I do,” she whimpered. “I’m not strong like you. And I love him. Even when he does stuff like this, I don’t know how to tell my heart to love him less.”

Geez. Joanna closed her eyes against the devastation she saw on Anya’s face. She’d convinced herself the other mates were here because they felt less, cared less. But Anya felt more, and had let so many lines be crossed simply because she loved Nathan and would do anything for him. He had it so good and didn’t even appreciate it. He didn’t need a harem of mates. Anya could’ve been enough for him if he were someone different. Someone better.

“He’ll never change, you know,” Joanna whispered.

“I know. Neither will I.”

Oh, Joanna knew what she meant. It was written all over
Anya’s face. She’d never stop loving him, no matter what he did. Joanna gave her one more squeeze on her frail shoulder and said, “I’m going to bed. Goodnight.” Then she slipped out the front door and into the night, headed for the mess hall with the first morsels of an idea stirring her mind.

There was only one place she could think where he would hide a hostage, and that was in one of the old abandoned cabins the last clan had inhabited. The tiny ghost town was deep in the woods, a mile away from the Long Claw’s bustling community. No one ev
er went there unless it was kids on a dare, and it was the perfect place to stash someone. The ghost stories alone kept even the most curious shifters at bay.

The night was cool and she rubbed the gooseflesh on her arms to try and warm herself. The conversations and laughter of the clan chatting in groups on the streets and in front of their small homes faded until the crickets and cicadas filled the night.
The dirt path had fresh footprints, like a sign pointing the way to Hannah, and the metal tray of food clattered in her shaking hands as she marched through the whispering trees. She’d missed eating dinner, but even now, the smell of reheated pork chops and green beans made her stomach recoil. Fear did that to her.

A human woman turning a great alpha’s head
, huh? Paired shifters and humans didn’t breed easily, if at all, and Benson Riker had to know that. He must love her very much to give up his chance at continuing his line. That or he satisfied himself with other shifters who could bear him offspring. The thought didn’t match what she had heard about Bear Valley. They encouraged monogamous relationships. Their members weren’t as desensitized to casual sex as the Long Claws were. Whether it was true or not, she wanted to think Benson Riker was faithful to his mate because Joanna still so desperately wanted to believe in love. Not the kind Nathan wielded to keep his mates cowed, but the real, heart pounding, die for each other kind. Romeo and Juliet romance had to exist in the world, because if it didn’t, then why was she traipsing through the haunted woods at night, risking her life to save the missing piece of a love story? It just had to be out there. Maybe not for her, but for someone—perhaps someone like Hannah.

Dunn sat on the front porch of a dilapidated wood cabin, kicking his leg off the side and peeling an apple with the long blade of a knife. She cursed her luck. Anyone but Dunn would’ve made this easier.

“I brought you and the prisoner dinner,” she said, her voice much more steady than she felt.

He rocked his head back and frowned. “Why?”

“Because Nathan told me to, you dipshit. I’m getting punished for overstepping my rank,” she droned, as if she were repeating a lecture she’d endured earlier tonight. “So now I get to go gallivanting through the freaking woods at night, up to the Kodiak’s haunted cabins because apparently, this is the best way to scare me straight. I’m on food assignments for the human until he figures out what to do with her.”

Dunn looked at her blankly and she hoped Hannah wasn’t already dead. It would definitely look suspicious if
she was bringing a corpse a pork chop dinner.

She arched her eyebrow. “I’ve been demoted in the clan to servant.”

“Ha!” Dun said, rocking back, then standing. “I knew you couldn’t hold a top position long. You’re too dumb to keep your mouth shut. Well, she’s feisty, so don’t get too close to her. I’m going to take a piss.”

“Gross.” She opened the door and checked behind her to make sure Dunn was really headed for the trees, then
pulled it shut behind her.

A lantern had been lit in the tiny cabin, but that didn’t seem to scare the roaches. The
y skittered this way and that across the uneven boards.

The crumpled woman on the floor had seen better days. Half of her face was swollen and her lip was split. A trickle of blood had dried under her nose and her hair was wild and matted. As she sat up and scooted backward, Joanna dropped her gaze to her bound ankles. Those would have to be cut before they made a run for it tomorrow. Where she expected fear in the woman’s eyes, instead, there was anger. She was a fighter.
Good.

Joanna
dropped to the floor in front of her, and checked the door once more. In a whisper she asked, “Are you Hannah, mate of Benson Riker?”

The woman frowned and nodded. “Who are you?”

“My name is Joanna. I’m a prisoner too.”

“Are you
messing with my head, Joanna? Because I’ve had a really bad couple of days and I can’t handle—”

“Shhh. Just listen. Brody Bannister showed up today and has promised to take me away from here if I bring you to him tomorrow night. Can you walk?”

A long trembling sigh left Hannah’s lips. “I think so. I’m losing circulation in my ankles though, so I don’t know how well I’ll be able to by tomorrow.”

The ties did seem to be cutting into her skin. “I can’t
loosen them or Dunn will know something is wrong. I’m sorry.” She was so sorry. This kind of punishment wasn’t fit for anyone. “Can I trust Brody?”

“Yes,”
Hannah said low. “He’s one of the best men I know. He’s a trusted councilman in our clan. Riker, my mate, trusts him unconditionally. He’s good.”

“Eat, stay strong, be ready. I’ll be here at sunset tomorrow.”

As Joanna stood to leave, Hannah lurched forward. “Joanna. If…if I don’t make it or if something happens to me, can you get a message to my mate?”

The air felt thicker, clogging Joanna’s throat and she struggled to swallow. The desperation in Hannah’s eyes tore at her
heart. “Of course.”

“Tell him I love him and that I’m sorry for what he’ll go through when I’m gone.” A single tear ran a track through the filth on Hannah’s face and Joanna dropped to her knees in front of her.

“Don’t you talk like that. You are the mate of one of the greatest alphas in the world. I won’t let anything happen to you. I made Brody a promise, and we’re both getting out of here. Together.”

Hannah nodded her head rhythmically
and bit her bottom lip like she was trying to keep a sob inside. A boot sounded against the wood of the porch outside and Joanna kicked the tray closer. “Eat or don’t eat,” she said loudly. “Doesn’t matter to me if you want to starve yourself to death.” She winked and escaped the one-room cabin with a plate for Dunn. “Here,” she said, dropping the metal to the splintered floor boards beside him. “See you in the morning for breakfast.” She stomped toward the trail. “And for lunch, and dinner and breakfast again.”

His laughter trailed her and the
scrape, scrape, scraping
of his fork against the metal plate made her cringe. And the blurry edges of her plan solidified a little more.

Brody paced the sidewalk in front of the motel he’d stayed in last night. Riker would be here any minute with back-up, which should’ve relieved his frayed mind, but instead, he only felt more frantic to get to Joanna. He hadn’t slept at all, thinking about her.

She’d trusted a completely stranger so much, she was in the thick of the Long Claw Clan, risking her neck because he’d asked her to. Because he’d offered her something he wasn’t even fully sure he could give.

He squinted up at the sun, which sat low in the sky. A couple more hours and they’d need to leave to meet Joanna. If she could pull off this miracle, they might just avoid war with the Long Claws yet. Riker’s oversized black truck appeared down the abandoned street of Hyattville, Wyoming.

The town tha
t sat in the Big Horn Basin on this side of the mountains was even smaller than Sheridan. Across the mountain peaks and into Montana sat Bear Valley. The mountains here reminded him he was close to home, but the town and the unfamiliar terrain of Long Claw territory made him want to tuck the people he cared about under his arm and rush them home. Joanna was now a part of that.

He felt something big when he
first saw her in Nathan’s mess hall. Maybe it was just the product of too much time thinking about her and admiring her brave nature that had got him here, but he would be a friend to her. She seemed to need that. A woman like Joanna deserved more than he could provide, but he could do her that little service. When they got to Bear Valley, if she still wanted to be claimed so badly, he’d help her find a mate who would be able to care for her like she needed.

Riker pulled onto the cracked pavement of the empty parking lot, followed by three vans of his loyal clan members.
He stepped from the cab and slammed the door behind him like he couldn’t control his actions. His hair was mussed and the lightened color of his eyes wouldn’t pass for human on even the cloudiest day. His jaw was clenched as if he were in pain and he smelled like bear.

“You look like shit,” Brody said.

“Where is she?”

“Let’s talk in the room.”

Riker looked around the parking lot, which was filled with shifters, and shot his eyebrows up in an impatient expression. Brody twitched his head to the motel manager, who sat in the shadow of the main office in a lawn chair with a lemonade in his hand. The condensation from the glass dripped onto his faded blue jean shorts. His belly poked over the fly of his pants, not quite shielded by his too tight threadbare T-shirt. He waved and took a pull from the pink bendy straw in his drink.

Brody sighed and waved back, then led Riker and the others into his hotel room
and out of sight of the human.

The hotel wasn’
t big, with only ten rooms, but it was in a town far enough away from Long Claw territory that he felt safe here. The room was small but they all fit. Riker sank onto the bed. He ran his hands through his hair and locked his fingers behind his head. Brody had never seen him so distraught, and they had been through battle together. Many of them.

“How you holding up, boss?”

“I want to kill her. I want to rip Merit to shreds for doing this. I knew she was manipulative and spiteful, but not this. I never would’ve called one of my own clan members betraying us in such a way.”

“She’s not one of ours anymore,” Brody said quietly.

“The peace treaty is over. The Long Claws broke it the second they accepted and hid Hannah.”

“
It was over long before this.” Brody sat on the twin bed across from Riker. “They’ve been expanding. The woman who is helping me, Joanna, said they took Blood Den’s land and slaughtered her people. So I came back here and started digging. They’re living on what used to be Kodiak territory. I called around and no one knows what happened to them. The entire clan just vanished. Now, maybe the Long Claws absorbed them into their growing numbers, but why didn’t any of them send word for help, or at least to notify the other clans this was happening? That’s two of a dozen instances I found where the Long Claw Clan, mainly this big one led by Nathan, have annihilated entire communities and taken over their territory. He has to be stopped. It’s much bigger than Hannah now. Our entire existence is threatened by this clan.”

Riker’s eyes went empty. Brody
knew that look. His alpha got it when he was preparing for something he didn’t want to do. Brody had seen this hollow expression on the eve of every battle he’d fought beside him. “What do their numbers look like?”

“Comparable to ours. They had
practice rings set up and young bears being trained for battle.”

“The question is,” Rike
r’s second, Cameron, said, “do we engage them now, or wait until we have more soldiers? We’re coming into their territory with fewer numbers. There’s no advantage for us here. They’ll have us. We have to consider that Nathan holding Hannah could be a trap. She could be bait.”

“What do you suggest then?” Riker asked
in a steely voice.

“We let Joanna try and bring
Hannah to the edge of their territory,” Brody said. “War will come and when it does, we will be more prepared. We’ll control where the battle happens, just like we’ve done in the past.”

“You trust her? This woman you just met, who could be a spy for them. You trust her with Hannah’s life?”

Brody thought about the desperation in her eyes when she’d asked him to claim her. The way she’d lost her composure over talk of destroying clans and her fury when Nathan had suggested Brody bed a woman in front of her. “Yes. I trust her.” He didn’t even know her, but trusted her more than most people he’d known his entire life.

Riker scrubbed his hand across the two day stubble on his jaw, then gripped the edge of the bed. “All right. If you trust her, then so do I.”

****

Joanna’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking no matter how tightly she squeezed them
into fists. By mid-afternoon, her teeth had started chattering too, though it wasn’t cold outside. On the contrary, it was rainy, but the humidity made every breath she dragged into her lungs warm her from the inside out. It held that muggy, sticky, hot ozone scented atmosphere. At least she and Hannah’s smell would be masked by the murky weather. Rain had a tendency to wash out even the most pungent trails.

Dutifully, she ha
d kept up the mask and brought Dunn and Hannah breakfast, then lunch. She didn’t visit with Hannah, feigning a busy schedule, but really she was just afraid of saying something to tip the guard off that all wasn’t what it seemed. At five o’clock, she stood in her unfamiliar, still tossed room and looked around for anything she could take with her. Carrying her things would definitely look suspicious.

The old alpha of the Long Claws had ordered her community burned, and her house ha
d gone down in a blaze, but she had saved a few things, including a photograph of her family. Tucking that into her pocket, she dug through a plastic hamper of belongings. When she didn’t find what she was looking for, she shoved it to the side and looked through a pillow case stuffed full of her things. Whoever moved her stuff didn’t take consideration for her fragile things, and she mourned the broken snow globe she pulled from the damp fabric. At the bottom of the bag, with the jagged pieces of broken glass, was the knife her father had made for her when she was fourteen. Ten years and the knife still looked brand new. She’d never had a reason to use it, but it was so beautifully crafted, it had remained one of her prized possessions. The sheath was made of soft deer hide, and the handle was made of deer antler with the image of a bear carved into the hilt. The blade glinted in the artificial light as she pulled it free, and when she ran it against her arm at an angle, her fine hairs split and fell in a tiny shower. Still sharp. Why wouldn’t it be? It had never been used for anything other than arm shaving.

With the blade safely back in its sheath, she tucked it into the back of her jeans and pulled the thin fabric of her shirt over it. With a last look at
the pillow Mom had embroidered, she stomped down her sadness at leaving her things and escaped the house. She didn’t say goodbye to Anya or the others because she couldn’t trust them not to go straight to Nathan at the first hint of odd behavior.

The community was abnormally quiet, though the practice rings were full of young men and boys, changed into their bear forms, fighting viciously. The sound of violence made her
mouth feel so dry, it was hard to swallow. She picked up a meal from mess hall and behind the building, she mixed the sleeping pills she’d crushed into the blob of mashed potatoes. If she was lucky, Dunn would eat those first.

The rain softened to a drizzle as she made h
er way to the old Kodiak cabins. The pattering drops bounced off the canopy above and landed on the food. She should’ve asked for some sort of cover for it.

“About time,” Dunn, the ungrateful little sod, called. “I’m starving.”

“Good,” she muttered with a painted upon smile. Handing him the plate, she sat beside him and dangled her leg over the broken railing of the porch.

“Can you ask your mate to find me a different job assignment? This sucks,” he said between bites.

“Nathan’s not my mate, but I can ask him.”

Dunn
’s dark eyebrows furrowed and a half smile curved his lips as if he thought she were joking. “I don’t get you. You’ve been here for two years and you still don’t want a mate. Why?”

He wouldn’t understand her sentiments about love, so she shrugged and stared at the dirt path between here and the trees. The clouds moved swiftly across the sky, dark and ominous and she tried to calm her breathing. She was really going to do this. In a few minutes, there would be no turning back.

“Damn, that was good,” Dunn said, laying back against the warped wood of the porch.

“Glad you approve. I’m going to feed the human. Be right back.”

She toted a plate inside and Hannah gave her a wide-eyed look. She shook from head to toe, the ends of her matted hair trembling with the movement. Joanna pulled her finger to her lips and made a calming gesture. She couldn’t stand to waste that adrenaline now. Hannah would need that extra bolt of energy very soon.

The click of the door closing sounded loud in the quiet. In the daytime
, it was easy to see just how ratty the little cabin was. Dingy light filtered through the holes in the walls where the sealant had failed, and rain dripped from a hundred leaks. Hannah was soaking wet, and Joanna wanted to beat the tar out of Dunn for not taking better care of her.

Pulling the knife, she sawed through the bindings at
Hannah’s ankles, careful not to knick the swollen skin there, then she moved to her wrists. Hannah exhaled a relieved sound and rubbed life back into her hands.

Can you walk
, Joanna mouthed, slow enough for her to read her lips.

“I have to,” Hannah whispered.

Slam!
The door opened so fast, it crashed against the wall. “You conspiring little bitch,” Dunn slurred, lumbering heavily through the door. “You drugged me.”

Joanna grabbed Hannah around the waist and hoisted her up. He lunged, but she was faster and pushed the human out the door. Her hair wrenched painfully as Dunn yanked her back into the cabin, and she stifled a scream as his meaty hand wrapped around her throat, crushing her wind pipe until she couldn’t breathe.
He was clumsy though, and his eyes rolled around, unfocused, so she kicked him viciously in the knee, then fled his grasp as he staggered backward.

“Jo,” Hannah said, and the terror in her voice froze her blood.

Nathan stood leaned against a tree across the path, a wholly unsurprised look on his face. “Joanna, Joanna, Joanna,” he murmured, shaking his head. “You’ve been a naughty bear.”