Page 27 of Handcuffed to the Bear

“Which way should we go?” Casey asked. She found that she could loop his right arm over her shoulders, with the cuffed hand across her chest. It was awkward because he was so much taller than her, but it would help steady him.

“Don’t know. Damn, I hate this. Water didn’t work; they found us anyway. They’ll find us even faster now ...” He stared off into the distance, his eyes not quite focused.

“Jack! Don’t pass out on me.”

“I won’t. I’m thinking.” He turned his gaze on her, the brown eyes sharp again. “You said you saw caves?”

“I saidmaybeI saw caves. I’m not sure if that’s what it was. Rocky ridge type of things, with shadowy parts.”

“We have to go somewhere. Keep going in circles in the forest, they’ll get us for sure. Going back in the water might delay them somewhat, but the only place it’ll take us is to the beach, and they can pick us off at their leisure there. We can’t outrun them. But, with hands, we can climb better than they can.”

“They can shift and climb too,” she pointed out.

“Yeah, but that’ll help level the playing field. They’re a lot more vulnerable in their two-legged shape.” He sounded stronger now, more sure of himself. Jack was obviously the sort of person who worked a lot better when he had a goal.

Her grandmother had been that way, too. Casey sometimes thought the reason why Gran had died shortly after Casey turned eighteen was because all that time, Gran had been holding out against the heart trouble and the diabetes because she was needed. Then Casey left and Gran’s powerful spirit stopped holding her body together.

Casey blinked hard.Don’t go down that road. Not now.

“Which way?” she asked.

“Not sure. We gotta get out of the trees, somewhere we can get our bearings.”

“And find that kind of moss you said.” The blood on his arm was partly clotted, making it look even worse than it had before, but at least it wasn’t bleeding as much. Maybe it would stop on its own.

But his arm across her shoulders felt cold to the touch. She didn’t want to bet on it.

“Sphagnum. Yeah. Or any kind of clean-looking moss would probably do.”

“Tell me what I’m looking for.”

“Feathery moss. Bright green. Tell you if I see any.”

They started moving again. Every step hurt, and she couldn’t shake the fear that she was doing irreparable damage to her feet.Even if you have to walk with a cane for the rest of your life, it’s worth it,she scolded herself.The important thing is not to die.

They hadn’t gone far, just enough to leave the clearing behind, when another lion’s roar echoed through the woods. Casey could tell this one was a lot more distant, somewhere on the far side of the island, but it still raised all the hairs on her arms. Jack’s arm tightened briefly against her shoulders, not in comfort so much as a sudden convulsive reaction to the sound.

The echoes were just dying away when another roar came from somewhere else. This one was a little closer. And then another. The echoes rolled around and around, until Casey thought her heart would tear its way out of her chest.

As the forest died back to silence, Jack murmured, “Three of them. Assuming one of those wasn’t Derek, then we have Roger and two of the other brothers or sisters to deal with.”

“I thought it was only female lions that hunt,” Casey said. “Why are the guys after us?”

Jack shrugged, and then winced. “That’s kind of a myth. Male lions are just as capable of hunting as the females. In wild prides they don’t, usually. But the males still rule the roost and take the—well, like they say, the lion’s share of the kill.”

“It’s so stupid. EvenI’mdoing it now. We’re not animals; we don’t have to behave like?—”

She stumbled when a dry branch snapped under her foot, almost taking them down. Jack winced, and both of them looked anxiously at the woods, which continued to fail to materialize a lion.

“What about lynx shifters?” Jack asked, his voice cracking a little in the middle.

“What about us?”

“Are you guys mostly solitary, or what?”

Obvious segue is obvious, she thought. But at least he was trying to give them both something to focus on other than their imminent death.

“Well, for starters, we’re not all lynxes,” Casey said. “Cat shifters in the same family can be any type of cat. Lions are really the only exception I’ve heard of. They’re like wolves, where the whole family will all be the same kind of shifter. With most cats, we don’t really know until our shifting starts, which is usually around the time we’re six or eight—somewhere around grade school age, ‘til shortly before puberty.”

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