Tracking the Bear (Blue Ridge Bears Book 1)(38)

Frigg drew in her power, and it crackled like a golden halo around her head. A ball of golden light coalesced in her hands. Lucy’s eyes narrowed, and she aimed a kick at Frigg’s head.

Calder, who seemed to have been struck dumb by the first blitz attack, threw himself in front of the attack, taking the blow for his mistress. The werewolf stared dully at the hole in his middle. Maybe he’d underestimated the power of Lucy’s weapon. Maybe he really was that willing to die for his mistress. No one would ever know. The ball bored straight through his thick hide, like a hot knife through butter.

He mouthed wordlessly for a few seconds before he fell to the ground before the kneeling goddess.

I struggled to my feet, trying to bully my brain into completing the shift back to human. Slowly, painfully, the fur began to recede. My bones ground as they reshaped each other. It wasn’t painful, though most physiologists said it should be. Not too long after that, I was slumping boneless to the ground at the relief. I still felt sick, and I was exhausted after the ordeal I’d been through, but I was at least human again. Most of the pain had gone with the retreat of my bear.

Lucy stared at the corpse of the wolf, looking stricken. I didn’t see it as much of a loss. He’d bitten and threatened to rape her. But Lucy’s heart was tender. She felt deeply, and it was one of the many things that I loved about her. The fact that she’d hit anything but her intended target with a deadly weapon horrified her.

“Lucy, watch out!” Luke cried.

Lucy and I both turned in time to see Frigg seize the ball from the ground. Her hands burned even as she touched it, but she had a grin of triumph on her face as she raised it above her head. Her eyes burned with hate as they fell upon Luke, standing only a few feet away.

“Die,” she snarled, and prepared the hurl the ball at his face.

I lunged forward and, with all the strength left in my body, caught her in a flying tackle that sent us both flying over the edge of the cliff.





Chapter Thirteen


Lucy


“No!” The shout tore its way from my throat before I could think. I was on my feet again, running. My leg hurt from overuse and I didn’t care. Chance disappeared over the edge and as he did, I felt the power that had been inside the ball flicker out. It didn’t matter. I knew that my time had been limited. It was why I’d decided to blitz her, rather than wait for an opportune time to set up a headshot.

It had taken longer than we’d hoped to navigate our way back. First, because Luke had no idea where his bear had dragged us, and secondly, because the wolves had been everywhere in the woods. Alerting even one of them would have brought an entire pack down on us.

So we’d arrived at the clearing with only half an hour to spare. Luke had to physically restrain me, or I would have thrown caution to the wind and marched right up to the goddess and her lackey and botched the whole plan.

I had seen my fair share of animals in pain over the years, given where I’d grown up. Pigs and cows not immediately killed by a bolt. Messy kills made on hunting trips with my extended family. The tortured sounds that Chance had made were worse. His pain, suffered on my behalf, cut me to the heart. I’d wanted to kill her, right then and there.

But not this way. Chance disappeared over the edge of the cliff and my skin physically rippled as my bear responded to my distress. After all we’d suffered, it couldn’t end like this. He was our mate. No one was taking him away from us.

“Let me go!” I protested, struggling against Luke’s grip. While he’d been no weakling before, his body had seemed to double in size since he’d acquired the spirit of the bear. So despite the strength that thrummed through my body, he managed to keep me still.

“Promise me,” he snapped. “Promise me that no matter what you see, you’re not jumping after him.”

That thought hadn’t even occurred to me. Once it had, it held an odd sort of appeal. I understood what he’d meant now, about not seeing other women. I thought that he’d exaggerated, trying to soothe my doubts. But it was true. I hadn’t really considered other men that way. Not since I’d seen him.

What would it have been like for me, if he’d left Fairchild? I could picture all too clearly my sad little life in the backwater town. What if he’d died on the way, and I’d never gotten the chance to know him?

The emptiness of that life stretched before me in horrifying clarity. I knew for certain that if Chance died, I would never find a love as vital or sharp as what I felt for that man, that bear.

“I promise.”

He let me go reluctantly and I ran forward. I fell to my knees at the cliff’s edge and peered over the side. I let out a half sob of relief when I saw his face, a few feet away from mine. He’d clung to a protruding rock shelf for dear life. His knuckles where white and his arms were shaking with the strain of holding his body weight. Frigg was nowhere to be seen.

“You’re okay!”

“If I can get back up, the worst thing damaged is my pride,” he panted. “A little help?”

Together, Luke and I managed to haul him up to the cliff’s edge. He lay on the ground, limp and boneless for several long minutes.

Luke peered over the side as well. “I can’t see her. It’s like she just disappeared.”

“They tend to do that,” I muttered, thinking back to the sudden appearance and abrupt disappearance of Freyr’s messenger. I patted Chance down, looking for injuries. Aside from a few fading bite barks, he looked fine.