Boarlander Silverback (Boarlander Bears #3)(55)

Too close. That was too damned close—not only for her, but for Kirk, too. If anything had happened to him…

Alison clutched the thick black fur of his arms as her chest heaved for breath and her eyes burned with emotion. She couldn’t imagine a world where he didn’t exist.

“You came,” she murmured, over and over again. She punched the words through her crying as she tried to convince herself she was still alive. That she was still here with him.

Kirk’s blazing eyes pooled with worry as he searched her face and ran his knuckle along the stinging cuts the glass had made.

“I’ll be okay,” she promised thickly.

And it was true. The words weren’t just a balm to her mate’s worry.

Because of Kirk and Damon, she was going to be okay.





Chapter Twenty-One


In the last streaks of sunset light, Damon lowered them carefully to the clearing at Boarland Mobile Park. The wind from his wings kicked up tornadoes of dirt, but the chaos at the trailer park didn’t stop to watch. Harrison and the others were loading the bed of his truck with shovels and barrels of water, yelling and pointing, ordering each other about with panic on their faces. Even Clinton blasted by on a bobcat, complete focus in his eyes.

When Damon released them too high up, she yelped, but Kirk had her, and he landed them on the gravel with grace and an easy impact. Kirk’s Change back to his human form happened before Damon had flown away, and he instantly folded her in his arms and bolted for his trailer.

“Tell me you’re okay,” he rushed out, eyes wild as he set her on the bed inside. “Tell me now, Ally, or I can’t leave.”

“Where are you going?”

“Those *s set an uncontrolled fire with fire accelerant.” He shoved his legs into a pair of jeans and whipped his hair from his face as he pulled on a shirt. “There’s a reason we don’t have logging season in the summer. Too hot, too dry, and any heat from our machinery could spark a forest fire. If we don’t keep this contained, Damon’s mountains, our homes, everything goes up in flames. Tell me you’re okay, Ally.”

“I’m okay, I swear.”

He checked her bruised neck, lifted her shirt and examined her aching ribs, then lingered at the bottom of her foot. She still didn’t want to look. Especially not after he gritted out a sigh and muttered, “Fuckin’ IESA.” Kirk kissed her hard and quick, and when he pulled away, he said, “I’m hitching a ride with Harrison and the boys. If we don’t contain the fire and it heads for the river, you and the girls go deeper into the mountains. Up to the Gray Backs, then to the Ashe Crew territory. Gather the women and kids we’re leaving behind and make sure they all get up to Damon’s house safe. If it reaches you there, you take everyone into the cave under the falls beside Damon’s house. We’ll find you. Do you understand? Harrison will have called the smoke jumpers and the rangers outside of Damon’s land. I don’t want to leave you. Not now.”

“Go Kirk. Help them save the park. You have to help them save the mountains.”

Kirk leaned forward and kissed her hard, let his lips linger a moment, then pulled back and strode for the doorway.

“Kirk!”

He turned. “Yeah, Ally Cat?”

“Thank you for coming for me.”

He smiled a sad smile as he flicked his gaze to her foot, then back to her face. “Always. I love you.”

And damn it all if that didn’t sound like a goodbye. He’d been careful with those words, and as he bolted from the trailer, she doubled over the pain in her chest. That was his second I love you, and she hoped with everything she had that it wasn’t his last.

She hobbled her aching body to the front of his trailer and onto the porch just as the trucks were speeding out of the park. Kirk was in the front seat of Harrison’s jacked-up red pickup with a map in his hands, talking, but when they passed, he looked up and watched her as she lifted her fingers in a wave.

Mason was in the back of the truck and called out, “I’ll get him back home to you.” His eyes were blazing the bright blue of his boar people as the truck sped away and disappeared into the Boarland woods.

Audrey stood quietly by Emerson, just below Kirk’s porch, watching them leave.

“They’re trained for fire,” Emerson said, cradling her stomach with one hand and holding a small camera in the other. She lifted her attention to Alison. She looked so scared. “Fire is always a risk up here, but they know what to do. They’ll be back.”

In the distance, against the darkening sky, was a plume of black smoke, wide and ominous. She could smell it from here. Too close for comfort, and she knew what the heat of those flames had felt like licking at her skin. The shifters of Damon’s mountains were charging the fire to save what they’d built here.

And for what? Because IESA didn’t like them? Because they were scared that they weren’t the top predator on earth? IESA was smoke. Dark, dangerous, able to fit in any space. Choking, poisonous, blinding.

“What are you taping?” Alison asked.

Emerson let off a trembling breath and tried to smile, but failed. “Everything. Cora said to catch what I can. I don’t know much about videotaping, though. I’ve just been trying to document life around here for my baby to watch later. And now Bash and the boys are headed down there to that fire, and I’m here doing nothing. Ally, they’re everything and we’re stuck here doing nothing!”