Page 28 of Handcuffed to the Bear

“What are the rest of your family?”

“My Gran was a margay cat. Mom was a jaguar, and Dad was a swimming cat of some kind. Are bears like that, or are they all, uh—whatever kind of bear you are?”

“Grizzly,” Jack said. “And no, it’s not quite the same. We don’t always even know if we’re going to be bears at all. My mom came from a bear family, but she never got it. So we weren’t sure about me. And it tends to happen later with us than with a lot of shifters. It came out when I was in my teens.”

“That must have been weird.”

“It was just part of life, really. I knew it would probably happen. How was it for you?”

“Weird,” she admitted with a laugh. “I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and my mom didn’t talk about that kind of thing much. I guess she would’ve been the kind of mom who never really talked to you about the birds and the bees, either, or about, you know—girl stuff, periods and whatever, but instead left you to muddle through on your own.”

“When did they die?” Jack asked, his voice gentle.

“I hardly remember my father. Mom died when I was ten, and I went to live with my grandmother.” Suddenly the safe topic didn’t seem quite so safe. She changed subject quickly. “Do you see the right kind of moss around here anywhere?”

The ground had gotten squishy under her sore feet. They were coming into a boggy area.

“That,” Jack said, orienting on some bright-green moss around a clump of scraggly little trees.

It just looked like moss to Casey, but she dutifully tore off a big handful. It clung together more than she was expecting, and peeled off in a large sheet, mossy green on one side and dirt-brown underneath.

“How are we going to fasten this on?”

Jack smiled lopsidedly. “What, you don’t have a piece of rope in your pocket?”

“Nope, left it in my other pants. I don’t suppose you know any nifty Boy Scout tricks for making string?”

“Lots,” Jack said, “but these woods are sadly lacking in most of the useful things I know about.” He snapped the fingers of his handcuffed hand, making her jump. “Roots. That might do it. Spruce roots, especially. And these are mostly spruce trees here. They like wet places.”

Feeling ludicrous, she pulled more moss, and she and Jack both scrabbled for handfuls of roots under the trees, all the while watching the woods.

“Shouldn’t we wash your arm, and stuff?”

“We’re bandaging it with moss. I think at this point I’m gonna cut my losses and say there’s not much point. When we get back to civilization, I can get a nice ol’ IV drip of antibiotics, but right now I’ll settle for not bleeding to death or leaving a blood trail that’ll point the way for every predator in the area. My shifter healing can take care of the rest, for now.”

She turned the moss green side in, and Jack held it in place with his cuffed hand while she used her uncuffed one to wind roots around his arm.

“When,” she said. “Not if. You have a lot of confidence in those friends of yours.”

“They’re good people,” Jack said. “My partner, Avery, is the kind of guy you can rely on.”

“You think he’ll find us?”

“I think he’ll bust his ass trying.”

Which wasn’t quite the reassurance she’d been hoping for. But at least he didn’t lie to her.

* * *

They broke out of the trees at last onto a rocky outcropping overlooking a valley—not the beaver one, but a different one. Casey hadn’t realized they were still so high; they’d come down a lot while walking in the stream, but now they seemed to be back up in the hills again. She also hadn’t realized the island was quite so big.

Dark clouds with puffy white tops towered against the sky. Jack had been right: what she had mistaken for land was an oncoming storm. The first clouds had already begun to trail overhead, intermittently blocking the sun.

And nothing looked familiar in the slightest.

“I hate to say this, but I think we’re lost,” she said.

“Can’t get lost when you don’t know where you’re going.”

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