Page 11 of Omega's Bears

No.

The wolves turn to face the newcomer immediately. The bear roars again and charges toward them. He swipes a wolf across the face, drawing blood, as another leaps onto his back and sinks its teeth into his shoulder. Seconds later, two more bears appear, and I lose track of who’s who in the brawl below. Fur is flying, and I can see blood and I want to scream or cry, but all I can think is that my actions have caused this to happen and if anyone is hurt or killed, it’ll be on my conscience.

I should never have come here. I should never have imposed my presence on the Hell’s Bears. They were happy and whole before I arrived, and I’m going to leave them in pieces. Just like I did with my old clan. Wherever I go, people die. Anyone who’s close to me dies.

I was just starting to care about them....

And then, as suddenly as it began, the fight is over, and three wolves lie dead on the ground.

Wolves.

They haven’t shifted back. When a shifter dies, I know all too painfully, he resumes his human form. These haven’t. Which means, they were never shifters at all. These aren’t the wolves I’ve been running from. They’re just...wolves. Regular, Alaskan wolves. Which means, this fight would have happened even if I’d never come here. It never had anything to do with me.

The men shift back. Ryan is bleeding profusely from his shoulder, and I realize he was the one who was bitten. Other than that, however, they look basically unharmed. They’re naked, of course—we all are, now—but I don’t care. I’m so relieved to see them alive and safe that I immediately climb down from the tree.

“What were you thinking?” Jack demands. “You ran right toward them. You couldn’t have thought you had a chance at taking them on alone.”

“I just...,” I hesitate. “I wanted to draw them away from the cave.”

“You could have been killed.”

“Any of us could have been killed,” Ryan says quietly. He’s looking at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Nobody was. Isn’t that what’s important?”

Jack looks from Ryan to me. I feel like he’s looking into my soul, somehow seeing something about myself that I don’t even know. Finally, he speaks. “Don’t ever do it again.”

I nod.

“Let’s go home,” Jack says, and turns toward the cave. The rest of us follow without saying a word.

---