Bearing Hearts (City Shifters: the Den Book 2) (13 page)

W
hen Lucy left
, her scent remained in the air. It almost distracted Axel from the envelope sitting on the island, calling to him and repulsing him at the same time. Ragnar left him a letter. Maybe condemning Axel as the worst brother to ever exist. Maybe forgiving him. Maybe asking him to protect Lucy or stay away from her or God only knew what. He stayed near the table as his thoughts raced, one heart-wrenching possibility after another running through his head. So many things remained unsaid and unforgiven. His sinuses burned and it felt like he lost his brother all over again.

He missed Lucy. Wished she was there with him, even if he didn't want her to see him read the letter. The polar bear grumbled and paced, uneasy. The bear had lost his twin, too, and they both grieved. Axel braced himself and finally picked up the heavy envelope, the paper thick and smooth against his fingers as he tore the flap.

Ax – If you’re reading this, then things haven’t gone as planned. I’m probably drinking beer in Valhalla and celebrating all the stupid shit we did before it finally caught up. The only thing I regret is not calling you. I meant to, a thousand times a day, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what to say. I’m sorry for that. Hopefully Lucy finds you, and finds you well.

Since I didn’t get a chance to tell you to your face, brother, please know how much I regret that stupid fight. She wasn’t really my mate, that girl, and even if she had been, I shouldn’t have let jealousy come between us. I’m sorry. Family is family, blood is blood. I know you, and I can only guess at how much you’ve been kicking your own ass over this the last few years, so know as well that I don’t blame you for this. It wasn’t your fault, but if you still carry some kind of guilt over this, Ax, know that I forgive you. I forgave you a long time ago.

Hopefully Lucy brought you this letter, so you have a chance to meet her. She’s been my best friend, the last few years, and more than that as well. She can tell you more if she wants. I think she’s your mate, brother, and I’m sorry I loved her before you had a chance to know her. I hope you can be together, because she’s wonderful. I don’t regret a second of the time we spent together. She’s special and I loved her. Please make sure she knows that.

Take care of her. That’s all I’ll ask of you. Maybe toast me once in a while. I don’t want to drag this out, so that’s about it. Thank you for being my brother. I wish we had more time together, and that we weren’t both stupid idiots when we were younger, but I’ll be waiting for you in Valhalla with the good beer. Don’t get here too soon, and give my love to Lucy.

Your brother, Ragnar

Axel stared at the paper for a long time, the words blurring as his eyes filled. Ragnar always had a way with words. Whenever they messed up as kids and had to write an apology to their mother, Ragnar came up with the words. Axel cleared his throat a couple of times, trying to gather himself. But at last, finally, some of the weight lifted off his shoulders. Ragnar forgave him. He thought there wasn't anything to forgive, just childish mistakes they were both too stubborn to acknowledge and correct. Axel's heart ached that he'd missed out on so much with his brother because of fear and pride, but at least he knew Ragnar died with no regrets.

He carefully folded the letter and placed it back in the envelope, then tucked the envelope away in the top drawer of his dresser, under his socks. He knew he would return to it and re-read it, over and over until the words burned into his memory, but Ragnar's request to pass his love to Lucy made Axel think of telling her. She would want to know. He checked his phone for the little blinking dot that was Lucy and froze in his kitchen — it was already moving. Already headed into the city.

He checked the clock, just to make sure he hadn't been reading the letter for an hour, but she'd only been gone thirty minutes. Definitely not long enough for her to have taken a shower upstairs, gotten ready, and headed out. He knew from the last few days that she took up as much hot water as the water heater provided.

Axel clenched his jaw and headed up to Kaiser's apartment just to check. Just to make sure. She was out of her damn mind, going up against the BadCreek enforcer by herself and
pregnant
. She wasn't really alone anymore, she could have asked for help. He threw open the door to the alpha's apartment and surprised Kaiser and Josie in the living room. Josie frowned as she looked at him. "What's wrong? Where's Lucy?"

"She came up here for a shower half an hour ago," he said, and held up his cell phone so they could see the blinking dot. "But she's already in the city. On her way."

"She was here for about ten minutes," Kaiser said. The alpha shook his head and reached for his own phone. "She left to check in with you, from what she said. I'm guessing Smith moved the meeting up to avoid us showing up and ruining the surprise. Damn it. I'll call the Chases. Pull the car around."

Axel hesitated as Josie got up and reached for her bag, and when she caught sight of his expression, she gave him a pointed look. "You have a problem with mama bear coming along?"

"Say 'no,'" Kaiser muttered, then dodged a kick Josie aimed at him.

"No problem at all," Axel said. He didn't have time to argue. Josie was a fierce enough grizzly, even though she was still a little unsteady on her bear-feet and terribly embarrassed every time she shifted back and ended up naked and human. He jumped down each flight of stairs, pounding on the apartment doors to wake up his brothers. The rest of the den mobilized quickly, and by the time Kaiser and Josie reached the street in front of the gym, they had two SUVs warming up and ready to go.

Sasha drove with Axel in the front seat, and Owen in the back with his medical supplies. Axel stared at the dot on his phone, giving directions to Sasha as the Russian smoked and steered through the clogged streets. They closed in on the park where Nick would meet Lucy, and traffic thinned. Suspiciously thinned. Axel's heart started to pound as they passed the empty corner cafe where Smith claimed some of the hyenas would be stationed. No one.

"I don't like this," Sasha said, drawing each word out until Axel wanted to punch him for stating the obvious.

Axel rolled down his window, hoping to catch a hint of Lucy's scent, but instead heard snarling. Growling. The curious yip-bark of a pissed off hyena. Sasha stopped the car so they could stare down an alley, where a hyena fought off four coyotes, and another hyena lay motionless on the ground.

"Shit," Owen said, a calm observation, then threw open his door and ran into the melee. He waded into the mix in human form, calmly firing a pistol at the coyotes and telling them to "fucking try me, losers."

Axel jumped out and ran for the park where Lucy was supposed to be, only a block up, so that Sasha could help Owen. The youngest bear couldn't shift without risking his life due to some shrapnel, and despite the former Navy medic's proficiency with a weapon, the coyotes might have been able to overwhelm them. Until the Russian Kodiak bear lumbered onto the scene.

He heard other sounds of fighting as he ran — other hyenas being attached. There were no wolves, just coyotes, from what he could see, which meant the wolves waited somewhere else. Axel's chest burned with fear, a kind of terrible fear he'd never felt in his entire life. His mate was in danger. Her child —
their child
— was in danger. He needed to keep her safe, keep them safe, and he was
failing
.

He skidded around the corner just as Lucy slid into the passenger seat of a dark sedan, that son of a bitch Nick getting into the driver's seat. Axel roared, racing to catch them, to at least slow them down, but Nick hit the gas. The car sped off in the empty streets and disappeared.

Axel stared after it, hands at his sides, as the little blinking dot on his screen drew farther and farther away. The other SUV roared up and Lacey Szdoka jumped out, face red and bleeding and one arm held at an odd angle. "Where the fuck did they go?"

"He took her," Axel said, more a howl than words. He grabbed the front of the hyena's shirt and yanked her forward, off balance. "What the hell is wrong with you? Why did you change the meeting?
Why is my mate gone
?"

Her teeth bared and her nails dug into the skin of his wrists, deep enough to draw blood. "Nick changed it. Everything was going fine until the coyotes attacked my people. Put me down and get your shit together, Isbjorn, before they get too far away."

Axel snarled, wanting to throw her across the park so she could get her own shit together, but Josie leaned out the window and said, "Let's go. They're getting farther away. Argue in the car."

Kaiser grabbed the back of Axel's neck and squeezed just hard enough to convince him to drop the hyena queen, although the alpha bear was not pleased with the hyena's behavior, either. They got into the SUV as Owen radioed back to them that they'd driven off the coyotes and would provide medical treatment to the injured hyenas until Miles Evershaw and his pack arrived to take over. Then the bears would join in the hunt to save one of their own.

Axel tore the arm off one of the rear seats as Kaiser tried to navigate after the sedan, wanting to leap through the roof every time they hit a red light and the alpha didn't immediately fly through the intersection. He focused so hard on Lucy and that blinking dot that he almost forgot to wonder where the fuck Smith was.

I
felt
bad about misleading Axel all the way to the meeting location, but as soon as I got a block away, I focused only on the task at hand. Meet Nick. Get the names of the guys responsible for killing Ragnar. Kill those guys. Get Nick out of BadCreek. Simple. Easy.

Except it never worked out that way.

Nick got there before I did, and as soon as he saw me, he smiled and pulled me in for a hug. He smelled worried. The fox immediately wanted to run, to back out, to find some place small and warm to hide. I remembered my promise to Axel, but shifting in the middle of a public park wasn't allowed. Humans might see.

So I hugged Nick back and murmured, "Everything okay?"

"Change of plans," he said, and winked. "Thought I'd take you back to my place for lunch, if that's okay?"

"Your place?" My voice cracked and I glanced at the car he gestured towards. A shadow moved in the backseat and my heart jumped up in my throat. "I really wanted to try this restaurant, though."

"I have a babysitter in the car," he said under his breath, playing with my hair and pretending to wheedle me towards cooperation. "Neither of us can walk away. I'll take you there, then I'll bring you back."

I tugged at his jacket, trying to fake a pout as the world spun and my guts twisted and clammy sweat broke out on my back and palms. This wasn’t good. "It doesn't feel right. Where's our other friend?"

"No sign of him." Nick put his arm around my shoulders and rested his head on top of mine, leading me back to the car. "I promise you'll be fine, Lucy. I give you my word."

"I don't know you well enough to trust your word," I said, not wanting to resist too much, since the shadow in the backseat seemed to be watching. And there was no telling who it was. Someone was following him? Did BadCreek not trust Nick anymore? Did he mean to curry favor with the alpha by bringing me in as a hostage? Josie said BadCreek tried to kidnap her, and according to Smith, they'd been doing that sort of thing for a while.

"My word is unimpeachable." Nick opened the car door for me and the scars on his cheek buckled as he winked. "I'm a Green Beret and a Boy Scout, darlin'. You can take my word to the bank."

"Just as long as I don't take it to the morgue," I muttered, but smiled and patted his cheek before I ducked into the car. "Okay. Lunch at your place, but you'd better make it fancy."

He waited until he got into the driver's seat to nod at the back. "That's my pal Hamid. Hamid doesn't talk much, but he wanted to get out of the house today, so he thought he'd ride along."

I managed a queasy smile for the stone-faced man. "Hi, Hamid. Nice to meet you."

He only grunted, his face convulsing in something that might have been a smile, and stared straight ahead as Nick started driving. I wanted to hold my breath but Nick kept up a steady stream of chatter, most of it sounding flirty and cajoling, as if he really was trying to convince an ex-girlfriend to hop back into bed with him for the afternoon. And I played along, even though I thought I saw a huge brown bear lumbering through an alley out of the corner of my eye.

Nick drove smoothly, casually, out of the city and toward farmland. I wasn't entirely familiar with the layout of the city or the suburbs, or even what direction we traveled, but the road looked lonely, even for a highway. When he turned onto a smaller, two-lane road, I started to get nervous. Storm clouds rolled in and cast shadows across the midday sun, and my throat closed. The fox definitely didn't like it. It felt like a trap.

As we drove through a stand of trees and what looked like the start of a forest, it grew dark enough that he turned on the headlights.

And then I saw them. Eyes. Dozens of pairs of eyes in the trees and ahead of us, reflecting the headlights back. Golden, glowing eyes. Animal eyes. Wolves.

The car rolled to a stop. Nick put it in park and put his hands back on the steering wheel. I didn't dare breathe or speak or move.

Hamid leaned forward, voice cold. "Why are you stopping?"

"Thought I saw something." Nick didn't sound concerned. He didn't even look concerned. I wondered if it was a boy scout trick. Maybe something a Green Beret would know how to do. Look totally normal when he should have been scared shitless. "It's probably nothing."

The silence stretched and no one moved for so long, I almost screamed. Or barfed. Then the wolves got a little closer, stalking with their heads down, and when I glanced back, I saw a few on the road behind us. Nick put the car in reverse and began to back up, fast enough he could have run over the wolves, and just as he would have hit them – the engine died.

Sputtered and went silent.

Nick muttered under his breath, turning the key in ignition and trying to get the damn thing to turnover, but nothing worked. A wolf stared at me, only a few feet from the car, and my hands shook as I tried to dial my phone in my lap. Someone had to be close enough to help us. Smith promised everything would be okay.

The man in the backseat moved, holding a small black fob in his hand, and said, “You won’t get it to start. It’s finished.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed. “A kill switch?”

Hamid nodded, waiting, and I held my breath.

And then they both moved at the same time, a violent explosion of arms and metal and snarling, and I yanked at the door handle. Locked.

And just as abruptly as it started, the movement stopped. Nick, breathing loudly through his nose, held Hamid by the collar of his jacket and pressed a pistol to the man's throat. Nick's teeth flashed white as he smiled, though it looked more like an animal baring his teeth. "Something interesting about my friend Hamid here, Lucy. He led the team of guys who killed Ragnar."

Hamid snarled, though he didn't move. A bullet through the throat would kill even the strongest shifter. His voice gurgled as he struggled to speak. "How did you know?"

"Because I do." Nick didn't even blink. "And since it looks like he set up the ambush ahead of us, so he can take credit for killing me, we have a choice to make."

"We fight," I said, scanning the surrounding woods to see whether the wolves approached. They stayed back, perhaps trusting in their friend Hamid to clear the way. After all, without Nick they must have thought me an easy target, an easy catch. They would learn differently. But my hands trembled as I opened the glove box, hoping for another pistol.

"Here." Nick handed me a gun, with no hint of where it might have come from, and nodded at the door. "There are two extra magazines in the console. You might need them." He gave the dude an extra shake, bashing his head into the roof of the car, and re-seated the gun against the man's Adam's apple, aiming up towards his head. "You want to pull the trigger, or shall I?"

It was tempting. I stared at the man, the one responsible for Ragnar's death, and wished I could have pulled the trigger. I wanted to. He deserved to suffer for what he'd done. A quick death was too kind. But we didn't have the time to really make him pay, not like how Lacey would make him pay. I dug the magazines out of the compartment, shoving them in my jacket pockets, and shook my head. "You do it. I don't —"

The blast of the gunshot deafened me. Sent glass and smoke and pieces of Hamid flying throughout the car, and I stared at Nick as my ears rang and my eyes watered and I figured I would never be clean again.

He wiped the barrel of the gun off, making a face at what must have been brain matter on it, and worked his jaw, rubbing at his ears. He shouted through the distorted ringing, "Sorry, forgot how loud that is."

The glowing eyes edged closer. More of them appeared out of the darkness. My heart sank. They wouldn't kill me; I knew that much. Experiment on me, use me for children, chop me up for parts. I wouldn't die right away. So one of those bullets would have to be for me, if things got ugly. My eyes smarted and I tried to swallow the bile that swamped my mouth. God help me. I didn't want to die.

Nick caught my shoulder and squeezed hard enough to get my attention. He spoke loudly and clearly, enough that I could follow what he said by staring at his mouth. "This is what we're going to do. As soon as I'm out, you run. Shift if you have to, but run as fast as you can and call for backup. I'll buy you as much time as I can, but you gotta move, girl."

"They'll kill you," I said, shaking my head. I held up my phone, searching for a signal through the trees. "We can both run, and —"

"There are too many of them." He took a deep breath and shrugged out of his jacket. "And it's the least I owe Ragnar, Lucy. Get your ass back to the city. If you guys can come back and give me a decent burial, that would be nice. Just don't let them play Taps over me, okay? I've heard that too many times."

"No," I said, catching his arm. I dialed the phone with shaking hands. "Nick, no. We can both leave."

"They're already closing in," he said. Gently. As if he didn't want to break the bad news. "I know how they'll fight. And we don't have any time."

"We need —" My voice broke and I shook my head. "You can't —"

And I screamed as something huge landed on the hood of the car.

A polar bear.

A polar bear landed on the hood of the car and crushed it with one swipe of his paw. Axel, blue eyes blazing gold, roared right through the windshield and fucked up what remained of my hearing. The fox peed herself, just a tiny bit. No one could be brave, facing a polar bear like that.

Nick sighed. "Well, good. Backup is here."

He opened his door as I struggled with mine, searching the woods for signs of any other bears. Because one polar bear, one Green Beret, and one Arctic fox might not have been able to hold off thirty wolves. Even with guns. But ice must have run in Nick's veins, too, because he didn't blink as Axel swiped at him and pinned him against the side of the car, the bear snarling right in his face. The wolves growled, close enough to be dangerous, even though they retreated a bit as the polar bear roared.

I almost dropped the pistol. "Axel, don't. Don't!"

Nick held up his hands, not struggling, and took a deep breath. "So you're his brother. Damn, dude, you look just like Ragnar. The mess of meat and bone in the backseat was the guy who orchestrated your brother's death. We killed him for you. There are more in the trees around us, but you have to get Lucy out of here. They want her. They’ll use her. So you need to grab her ass up and run, you hear me? Do me a solid and kill a few on your way out, if you can."

The polar bear snarled, and I wondered if Axel was even in control. Maybe he'd end up killing Nick and save BadCreek the trouble. My feet slid on the icy road, and my heart thumped as I searched the trees. Some of the eyes had disappeared, some had gotten closer, others changed position. Nick was right — they fought as a pack, circling around. My adrenaline surged and I needed to pee. Badly. Really, really badly.

Nick snarled back at Axel and held up his pistol when the bear didn’t move. "I can get a couple of them before they kill me, but
get her out of here
. I'll buy you as much time as I can. Now get the fuck out of here.
Go.
"

Axel shoved him again for good measure, then wheeled around and suddenly I was in the air, floating. Landing hard on a polar bear back. I struggled, trying to slide off so I could reach Nick. "Don't. Don't do this. We can fight them together, you can't —"

"Go," he shouted at Axel, and Axel ran.

The loping strides nearly bounced me off but I gripped his fur. Tried not to look back but failed as Nick strode down the lonely road by himself. Right into a line of wolves. The sharp crack-crack-crack of his gun bit through the silence in the forest, and I screamed at Axel to turn around and help him. I hit him with my fists and the butt of the pistol I still carried, desperate. We had to save Nick. He couldn't fight them all.

But Axel didn't stop. He didn't even slow down as half a dozen wolves peeled away and lunged after him, snapping at his legs and at me, and the polar bear swiped them away like annoying fleas.

Nick disappeared in a flurry of red snow.