Authors: Anya Nowlan
Callie glanced up through her fingers, meeting Alice’s gaze. The small woman was fishing a cookie out of a bowl in the middle of the table, her legs curled under her. Clan members like Alice were just the reason why Callie kept feeling so bad about her happiness, but, at the same time, bears like Alice were also the ones who didn’t see the reasoning behind battling with the Arders. It was an odd situation that Callie found herself in – the people she cared for the most were the ones, who would understand both her decision to stay or to go with Jonah.
“He is very special,” Callie murmured, dropping her hands from her face with a sigh. The house was quiet otherwise, their two other housemates long asleep. The Bitterroot clan didn’t have too much room to command at the moment, so the living arrangements were quite cramped. Ryder said it would help them bond again, which was true in a sense. Still, Callie would have much rather been bunking with Jonah.
“I actually haven’t been with him since we... since I came home,” Callie said, smoothly glazing over the fact that they had had a fight when she had set off for Montana. “Alice, you won’t tell anyone about us, right?” Callie asked, trepidation in her eyes. Alice shook her head quickly and grabbed for Callie’s hands, her mouth full of a chocolate chip cookie. Callie grinned, nodding in understanding. “Thank you. It’s not like Ryder doesn’t know, but I don’t want anyone to worry about me and Jonah. It’s none of their business, but I’d rather not cause any additional drama around here.” There was plenty of that around even without her help. Tempers were running high between the two camps in the clan – the ones all for waging war and the ones who just wanted to bow out of the whole thing. Both Callie and Alice were ardent believers in the latter option, but the Alpha’s word was final, and there was no swaying Ryder. In fact, any time that anyone mentioned cooling their heels and patching things up, Ryder blew up in a spectacular fashion. His rage seemed to be barely contained, and it seemed to be better for everyone’s health to keep out of his path when he was riled up.
“Why haven’t you?” Alice asked after swallowing a bite of the cookie. Callie squirmed uncomfortably in her seat.
Yeah, Callie, why haven’t you stayed?
“I… It’s all me. I keep feeling like I’m betraying the clan’s trust,” Callie said, her voice getting quieter with each word. She’d never known herself to be so indecisive about what was the right thing to do, but now she felt almost trapped between the two options – loyalty or love? She wanted both and it seemed preposterous that she couldn’t have both anymore. Alice snorted loudly, her brows furrowing. Ryder had been pressuring her about quitting working for Susie, but Alice had stood strong so far. She kept saying that making a living had nothing to do with being loyal to the clan, and even though he tried, Ryder couldn’t really argue with that.
“Right. Because the relationship that you’ve had with him for ages is now somehow in violation of our core beliefs? Please,” Alice said, sarcasm dripping from her words. “You know that the vast, vast majority of us wouldn’t have any problem with it. We’re all holding our breaths, waiting for Ryder to snap out of this and get back to being the sane leader that he was. The bears who would be outraged are Ryder’s closest circle, and they’re only angry as long as he is.” Alice’s scowl never wavered, the diminutive woman as if trying to stare Callie down and guilt her into not being such a worrywart. Callie shrugged, though she knew that Alice was right. She’d known it all along, which was why she had let it go on as it had for as long as it did. Callie had never thought that her well-established relationship with Jonah, the twin of Ryder’s ex, could be problematic before Ryder pointed it out in a scathing phone conversation. Since then, Callie had felt increasingly unsure about her decisions.
“I know you’re right. But I still hate going against the Alpha’s will, even if the Alpha has flown off the handle,” Callie said. The clan structure was set in stone for most werebears. Once they had made a commitment to a clan, then it had to come first. Even the thought of disappointing the Alpha was one that most werebears found unbearable, so it was all the more unusual that so many of the Bitterroots expressed their discomfort with the state of things. Callie frowned at that. “Alice, what happened to Ryder?” Alice stopped chewing mid-mouthful and gulped it down after a second of thought. She looked obviously uncomfortable, and Callie was almost regretting asking the question. “You don’t have to tell me if you feel uncomfortable. I know I wasn’t here when it all happened, so I can’t expect to know everything,” Callie said softly.
“No, you should know. I’m just surprised you don’t already. I guess Jackie hasn’t wanted to tell her family, then,” Alice said. Callie quirked a brow at that. Jackie had grown apart from the Arder family in recent years, much as Julian had, but her departure had been viewed as more of a taking space and looking for herself kind of thing, while Julian had shut himself off completely. It was odd to hear that Jackie was still such a big factor in understanding Ryder, when Callie had thought her a topic from the past.
“You don’t know that Jackie and Ryder got back together again?” Alice asked, receiving a prompt and shocked shake of the head from Callie. Though there had been rumors, no one had outright confirmed it. The Bitterroots had thus far been surprisingly tight-lipped about it with the bears who weren’t with them during the latest upsets. Nodding in understanding, Alice continued, choosing her words carefully. “They did. For a while. They’ve always been on and off but she showed up at Bitterroot a while ago, and their relationship seemed to find some kind of equilibrium, if you will.” Callie smiled at that. Ryder and Jackie had been the kind of couple that threw things at each other one moment and then were madly making out a second later. Saying that they were passionate about each other was an understatement, so every time they broke up or got together again, the whole town knew about it. As such, it was surprising to hear that Jackie and Ryder had managed to do something discreetly.
“Was she there when the Kadin pack came?” Callie asked, curling her fingers around her mug again. Warmth was returning to her body and she wasn’t sure whether it was the tea, the embarrassing chat she had just had with Alice or the understanding that her once close friend Jacqueline was doing things she could scarcely believe. While she had never been as close with Jackie as Susie had been, Jackie still maintained good relations with the Bitterroot clan girls mostly thanks to her involvement with Ryder. While the boys drifted apart, the girls had continued talking to one another, and Callie certainly considered Jackie close.
“Yes, but she left just after the first attacks. Which is kind of the reason why it turned out so bad, I think. I don’t know what happened exactly, but right after the first wave of attacks on the cottages, I caught Jackie leaving. I saw her when she was heading out, and she had obviously been crying. I thought nothing of it at that point. Some of the buildings had been torched, and a few bears were out with pretty bad wounds. Not to mention the deaths. Since Jackie was kind of our unofficial Queen, it made sense that she was taking it hard. And she didn’t take anything with her either. After she left, Ryder was gone for a few days, and when he emerged, he was a disheveled, drunken mess. A broken man if I’ve ever seen one. He told everyone to pack up and get out after the first wave. They would have slaughtered us if we’d stayed,” Alice paused, letting it sink in. Callie’s insides twisted, hearing about the pain her clan had gone through while she was off in Texas. She knew about the deaths, and it had struck her as hard as anyone else, but Ryder had been adamant about no one returning unless they wanted to pay their respects. So she hadn’t, and it was obvious now that it had been a mistake.
The Kadin pack had come so quick that there was no time to gather the bears who had scattered across the land. Unlike what was happening between the Arders and the Bitterroots now, the Kadin attack had been ruthless, and they’d shown no mercy. The young Alpha that led the wolves was shrewd and possessed the kind of cold-heartedness that werebears had fought long and hard to shed from themselves. The fact that the Kadin Alpha had a young bride with him – equally as talented at outmaneuvering the slower, more calculating bears – didn’t make things any better. It had been a thorough defeat.
Callie chewed on her lower lip, her worries bundling together into a tight ball. “I can’t imagine what would make Jackie leave like that,” Callie said, receiving a nod of agreement from Alice.
“Me neither, really. What makes a woman abandon her would-be family like that? Even more, what makes Ryder crumble so thoroughly that he forgets all about his duties to the clan? Things haven’t been the same since. I mean, I know they couldn’t be, with what happened to us. But it’s like Ryder’s working overtime to make sure that everyone around him feels his pain, especially the Arders. As if we don’t have any of our own.” Alice shrugged slightly, picking up her cookie and finishing it off. It was a difficult topic to discuss, and the change in Alice’s posture made this obvious. Callie could see the way Alice’s muscles tightened and her jaw squared at the memory of the brutal attacks and the way the clan had been driven from their home.
“But!” Alice started, a smile drifting across her lips. “Coming back to you now – I think you should totally go and screw your hot boyfriend. You know, before the sky falls upon us and we’re all torn to pieces between a bloody clan war. Get it while the getting’s good!” The wide grin that Alice sported was too much. Callie groaned loudly and buried her face in her hands, the heat from the tea mug mingling with her scarlet blush.
It’s not like she’s wrong, though.
CHAPTER FIVE
The week that followed was full of conflicting emotions. Callie made it a point to sneak out once a day to go run with Jonah. They took to the trails they’d never managed to run together, showing each other their favorite haunts around the beautiful Cabinet Mountains and reveling in each other’s presence. The further they got from the other bears, the freer they felt. It was an odd juxtaposition, both needing their families as badly as they did and wanting nothing more than to shed their responsibilities to either clan and only live for one another. Callie’s heart and body ached for Jonah, and she could tell that she was not alone in her need. The way he looked at her made her body pulse with hot flashes and her muscles tighten at the thought of being touched and taken by him. But, she wouldn’t give into her need yet. Not before she knew that she was ready to commit all the way again.
At the same time, the clashes between the Bitterroots and the Arders were getting more frequent and bloody by the day. As the younger generation of Arders had returned, so had the Bitterroots, and there was no love lost between the two factions. While Jackson and Ryder had been close when they were young, many of the men around Jonah’s age had been rivals or at least not on the best of terms in their youth. Ryder had taken his clan and moved to Bitterroot right around the time Jonah and Callie had gone to high school, so instead of being classmates, many of them suddenly found themselves on opposite ends of the mountain ranges, separated by both distance and culture. Friendships waned and were forgotten, and the recent happenings in either clan made for a lot of extra testosterone.
On two occasions, Jonah had shown up for their date with a black eye or a split lip. He would try to brush it off as nothing serious, but when Callie went home to her clan and saw several younger bears sporting matching wounds, she could easily put two and two together. The bears were getting into fights whenever they met. Not too serious, but fights none the less. She had no doubt that Jonah would try to stop them and cool his guys down when he could, but Callie also knew that he could only do so much without seeming weak. While Jackson held the reigns tightly and told all of the Arder bears to be careful and levelheaded while things were being sorted out, Jonah had to deal with hotter tempers and flaring personalities. The young bears of the Arder clan wanted the Bitterroots to know that they were fighting tooth and nail, and the Bitterroots just wanted revenge for the pain brought on them by the Kadin pack. It made for tense dates between Callie and Jonah to say the least.
It was another beautiful autumn day when Callie tumbled through the woods at breakneck speeds, the wind whipping at her thick coat and driving scents from all around into her wide nostrils. She could hear Jonah quickly coming up behind her, Callie having thrown him for a loop thanks to a thicket of trees some way back. Callie let out a bellowing roar of victory as she reached the edge of the clearing overlooking a wide sweeping bend of the Yellowhead River. The ground was hard and cold under her paws as she stood up for a moment on her hind legs, looking out across the magnificent expanse of land. Two Bighorn sheep trotted up a mountainside at the sight of her standing on the plain and another grizzly plowing up behind her. Callie exhaled deeply and shifted out of her bear form with the controlled ease of someone who had been doing it for years. Despite her inner turmoil, her bear had kept in line. Callie figured it meant that her bear was as confused about the whole thing as she was, otherwise it would have told her what to do and which feeling to pursue a long time ago.
When Jonah came to a halt before her, all dark fur and almost black pools for eyes, Callie was already standing with her hands on her hips, beaming triumphantly.
“So, Mister Arder. Think you can beat me at my own game? I expect thorough wallowing in shame after this!” she said, grinning. The big bear snorted, baring his gruesome teeth for a moment. Instead of jumping back in fright like a sensible human would, Callie leant forward and tucked her hands into the thick hair on his neck and nuzzled her forehead against his. Jonah was much larger than her bear, but it also meant that Callie had the advantage of speed, given he had enough obstacles in his way. She laid a kiss on his forehead and pulled back as the shift took Jonah. His powerful muscles contracted and spun into his frame, the warm coat and long nails as if vanishing into him to let the human out. The primal beast took the shape and size of a tall, broad-shouldered man, and the sight was just as exciting to Callie now as it had been the first time she’d seen him.