Page 12 of Zorro

Whatever passed between them was tangled, sharp, and unfinished. He’d heard them argue before, low, clipped, restrained. Like they were trying not to wake something dangerous between them. But this…this wasn’t a simple argument, and that thing was stirring now. Something deeper. Something that didn’t have language yet.

Lines were being drawn. A battle was being forged. His brother? Zorro knew how to fight. No question, but he also knew how to heal. But Dr. Quinn stood her ground. He was going to have to decide whether this was the hill he wanted to die on. Dr. Quinn wasn’t just one battle. She was a war. Zorro would need everything in his arsenal to win. Not just strength. Not just charm. He’d have to face his own truths. Bear smiled when he saw it. All is fair in love and war. That steel behind his eyes, the glint of his trident etched into his soul. A vow, a promise, a challenge in both blood and heart.

He reached out, let his fingers brush her elbow. Featherlight. Just enough to ground her. He felt the tremor beneath her skin. That was enough.

“Let us walk you out, Dr. Quinn,” he said gently. “Flint’s getting restless.”

She straightened, reflexive denial knocking her down before she could stop it.

“That’s not necessary. You must be exhausted. I’ll be fine.” But she swayed. Most wouldn’t have caught it. He did. He didn’t look at her. He looked at Zorro. Met his eyes. I’ve got this, brother. Zorro gave a nod. Nothing more. But the weight of it hit like a hand to the chest.

“I insist,” Bear said. He turned back to her. Still waiting, just offering his support to someone trying to find her footing on uneven ground, not only for her, but for himself, and for the medic who guarded his team, for the brother who lived and breathed his oath, for the man who ached to be the one to help her.

Bear knew how to walk people out of places like this. Not just hospitals. Not just danger. Moments. The kind that left you breathless with things you didn’t have the words for.

She sighed, reached out, her fingers curling around his forearm. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zorro’s head bow, the pain in his body tightening. Bear’s smile was slight. This was going to come to a head. Maybe not here, maybe not now, but soon.

He and Flint moved as one, taking her weight so she could breathe a little, a calm before the storm.

Just there.

Like the mountain he was named for.

3

Bonita, San Diego, California. One month later.

Bear’s home sat at the far edge of Bonita, where the road narrowed into gravel and the city forgot it was a city. Nestled against the rise of the Sweetwater Valley, the land sloped gently toward open trails and eucalyptus groves, shaded by pepper trees and flanked by split-rail fencing. This wasn’t the glossy San Diego of beach bars and yoga studios. This was old ranch country, pockets of land still zoned for agriculture, where properties sprawled and neighbors waved from horseback.

His acreage wasn’t large by reservation standards, but in this part of the county, it was gold. Two and a half acres of hard-earned quiet. He slipped out of his modest adobe-style house with thick walls and a rust-red roof, heading for his barn—three stalls and a tack room that smelled of saddle oil and cedar. Flint had his own run, though he rarely used it. He preferred to stay near the barn. Near Bear.

The place didn’t look like much from the road. That’s how he liked it. But behind the gate marked Sleeping Wind, the property bloomed with quiet details: a prayer tie on the fencepost, a horseshoe above the barn door, smooth stones in stacked cairns near the sycamores.

Most people didn’t even realize they could keep horses this close to San Diego proper. But Bonita had always been its own thing, stubborn, unincorporated, rooted. Kinda like him. A place where tradition didn't fade under asphalt. Bear had fallen into the rhythm of it easily. Mornings with his horse. Nights with the stars. Deployments interlaced between the peace.

The night was alive with sound out here on the edge of the Sweetwater Regional Trail System. But the barn was quiet, save for the gentle shuffle of hooves, the rustle of hay, and the rhythmic swish of a tail brushing against old wood. Out here, he didn’t have to explain himself. Didn’t have to speak unless he wanted to. The Paint already knew him. He listened in the way only animals did—without judgment, without impatience.

Bear moved along the stall to Cha?té Skúya, Heart That Listens. The black and white Paint had been a constant in his life. Skúya wasn’t the flashiest or fastest, but he was something rarer, a soul that matched rhythm with purpose. A watcher. A listener.

The Paint bore two handprints on his flank, one in black, one in white. Bear had placed them himself, for honor, for his way, and for the old way. Symbols passed down from the stories of his Grandfather Ray, Raymond Tallbird, about Wa?blí Zí, Yellow Eagle, Bear’s great-great-grandfather, a warrior born under the winter moon in the early 1800s, who rode into battle with black clay smudged across his chest and left a print on every enemy he felled in close combat. His Grandfather Ray’s words about his ancestor echoed in his ears. Wa?blí Zí rode beneath the shadow of Mato Paha, Bear Butte, and dreamed in the wind of Paha Sapa. He lived before the borders. Before Wounded Knee. When warriors painted their vows across their horses’ flanks and called thunder down from the ridge lines. He protected his community through the Sioux Wars, culminating in battles like Little Bighorn, in a time when warrior societies were fully intact, before the dismantling, during a time when the eagle warrior lived in their hearts.

But Bear had never seen those stories as a call to violence. He saw them as a testament to purpose. His ancestor didn’t kill for glory. He marked what he had endured. Who he’d stood for.

So, Bear reimagined the meaning of those marks.

The black handprint, once a symbol of vengeance, he wore for the living. For the brothers who stood beside him in fire and shadow, who trusted him to see what they missed and act when they couldn’t. It was his vow to cover their six, to carry what needed carrying, to bleed before he’d let one of them fall. It was what his great-great-grandfather had done, too, only Bear didn’t leave the mark on enemies. He left it on Skúya, a living witness to the oath.

The white handprint was for the innocent. The ones his ancestor might never have had the chance to shield. The ones Bear did. He thought of the newborn in the jungle. The wounded child in Niger. The girl who had reached for him with a trembling hand in a field of blood and smoke. That print, bright and solemn, reminded him that power wasn’t worth a damn unless it was used to protect those who had none.

Together, the two prints were a story only he could tell.

A bloodline reshaped. A legacy not of death, but of defense.

Bear remembered those evenings like they were carved in smoke. His grandfather’s voice low and rhythmic, the fire between them snapping with sacred punctuation. Stories of medicine songs and ancestors who rode not for glory but to defend those they loved. How Paint horses, with their bold markings, were seen as spirit-kin, bridges between this world and the one that breathed just beyond it. His grandfather said they weren’t owned. They were chosen. If a Paint chose you, it meant you had a destiny to carry.

Back then, Bear needed something to believe in. His father was usually drunk or gone. His mother, worn thin by triple shifts and frayed nerves, had no time to anchor him. It was his grandfather who gave him stories. A name. A sense of the sacred. When he was thirteen, he gave him Skúya. Said the gelding had waited long enough.

“You don’t ride that one like you ride the others,” his grandfather had said. “You listen to him because he listens to you.”

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