Page 36 of Handcuffed to the Bear

He didn’t know at first where he was going; his only thought wasaway. After a few moments of running, as his human mind began working again, he found that they were retracing their steps back up the mountainside. Something in his grizzly instincts must have saidbacktrail to safetyand that’s what he was doing.

Unfortunately, there was in all likelihood another lion along their backtrail, since at least one more Fallon sibling was unaccounted for.

Jack veered off and crashed through the brush, down into the nearest ravine, with Casey racing at his heels. Near the bottom, he skidded to a stop in dismay. What would have been a small, trickling stream before the rain was now a raging, muddy cataract. He might be able to navigate it, with his massive size and low, squat build, but a smaller feline like Casey would be swept away.

He didn’t want to expend the energy to shift back and explain. Instead he crouched down and hoped she’d understand.

Casey looked at him in disbelief, but then she cautiously crawled onto his wet, shaggy back, digging in her claws to stay on. When he could feel her crouched on top of him, Jack stood up carefully—there was a fast prickle of claws as she automatically dug in harder—and waded into the flood.

The water was ice cold, churning around his legs. Small rocks, dislodged by the flood, bounced off his body. Worse, he was swaying with dizziness, barely able to keep his feet in the torrent. Between the blood loss from his injuries, and his body’s own energy demands as it tried to heal itself, he was nearing collapse.

He tried fighting his way upstream, but it was too exhausting, so he only went a short way before climbing out on the other side. Casey hopped off. Jack led the way in a short slog uphill, out of the brush onto the exposed brow of the mountainside.

It was utterly miserable up here in the storm. Rain poured down so hard that his nearsightedness didn’t make a difference; they could only see ten or twenty feet in front of them. Lightning flashed overhead with simultaneous ear-shattering claps of thunder, a constant reminder that they were doing exactly what youweren’tsupposed to do in a lightning storm: crossing open ground and presenting themselves as tempting lightning targets.

But the danger and misery of it was the point. Jack was hoping the Fallons would be willing to wait out the worst of the storm, following them once the going wasn’t quite so rough. In the meantime, they could gain a little distance.

And then what?

He wasn’t capable of forming plans that far ahead right now. Increasingly, it was all he could manage to put one paw in front of the other.

Beside him, Casey slouched along, the very picture of abject unhappiness in her bedraggled state. She kept flicking her ear and raising one forepaw to brush her face. She must have gotten stung by the wasps. He hoped it wasn’t too bad, and wished he could tell her how brave she’d been.

Right now, though, he was fairly sure if he shifted to his human shape, he wouldn’t be able to turn back into a bear. And the only thing saving them from death by hypothermia was the thick fur of their animal forms.

His vision had telescoped down to a dim view of the rocks right in front of his low-hanging snout. A silver glimmer caught his eye, and he swung his shaggy head far enough to see the empty handcuff dragging behind Casey’s left ankle, what would be her wrist in human form. At least he’d managed to get them disconnected from each other. When he collapsed—which he was starting to consider a certainty and not a distant possibility—she could go on without him.

Would have to go on without him.

And he wanted to tell her it was all right; he understood. He knew now, finally, what Avery had been trying to hammer through his head for all this time they’d known each other. Why he’d never really made it in the military, why he’d always bounced from one group of friends to another, never quite putting down roots anywhere. He’d blamed it on his shifter nature—bears were loners, bears were ramblers. But what it really came down to was that he’d never been willing to lay down his life for someone else. He’d neverlethimself put down those roots. Kept yanking them up before they could take.

And he wasn’t sure what had changed. Maybe it was Avery and the rest of them, and the fact that he’d stayed at the SCB longer than he’d ever stayed anywhere. Maybe it was Casey, her courage and resilience and the way he felt when he looked into her amazing gold-flecked eyes.

Maybe it was just that he’d hit a point when he had to either change or keep running forever, and he’d chosen to be something better than he’d been in the past.

Whatever it was, whatever it meant, he was okay with falling here on the mountainside as long as she got away. Avery and the rest of themwouldcome; if he knew nothing else, he knew that for certain. And even if he couldn’t walk, he could try to slow down the Fallons enough to give Casey a head start.

In fact, why was he wasting his energy climbing, when he should wait here to stop their pursuers?

Jack sank to his knees, then let his bulk settle to the mountainside. Rain washed over him. Wind tugged at his sodden fur. He ignored all of it.

Suddenly Casey was there, pawing at his face.

Jack closed his eyes and ignored her.

But two small hands seized the fur on both sides of his muzzle and yanked on it. “Jack!” Casey’s voice said.

He opened his eyes with great effort. She was kneeling before him on the mountainside, naked and human, gripping his fur. The cuff dangled from her wrist like a bracelet.

“Jack, get up. We’re almost to a cave. You can lie down there.”

No, he wanted to say.This is my sacrifice. Let me stay here and protect you.

But she kept prodding him, even going around and pushing on his great bulk as if she could move a half ton of bear all by herself. She was shaking with cold, gooseflesh standing up on her bare limbs, but she just wouldn’t leave.

And it was for her sake that Jack made himself get up again, wobbling onto legs that would hardly hold him. She was going to stay out here on the mountainside until she died of exposure. He couldn’t let her do that.

“Just a little farther,” she said, her teeth chattering. “That’s it. You can do it.”

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