Authors: Anya Nowlan
“Jackie?” he said finally, reluctantly pulling away from her.
“Yes?” she replied, a tremble of a smile gracing the corner of her mouth. She looked gorgeous even when she was teary-eyed and red-cheeked. He doubted she could ever look anything but beautiful to him.
“I want you to know that not all is how it seems.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Ryder’s jaw squared, and he sat up a bit straighter, stroking the small of her back absent-mindedly. Every second he could spend feeling her curvy body against him was a moment of bliss that he was reluctant to let slip away.
“Just that. In any case, I don’t want you to feel like you have done anything wrong. The failure was on my part and my part alone. You did the best you could in an impossible circumstance, and I know there was nothing else you could have tried. Our cub was lost because of a senseless land war, one that we didn’t even have time to react to. And I should have stopped it before it ever got that far.” Jackie looked like she wanted to say something, but the steeliness in his gaze must have quieted her. He wanted to tell her more, to tell her everything that he had been hiding in him, quietly expecting the swell of violence like the tide that always came. If he told her, he’d be putting her in danger once more, and his bruised and battered conscience could not take any more of that.
***
Ryder had been in a daze since Jackie had left his home. It had been days, but he could still feel the lingering warmth of her touch and clearly see the tiniest outline of her lips and the curl of her hair. She filled his senses completely, mesmerizing him and taking him dangerously far from his goal.
“Ryder?” Drake asked, arching a brow with mild annoyance. Ryder shook his head, clearing the vision of himself kissing Jackie again from his mind. It was a pleasant thought, but not one he could allow himself to dream of when there was war to speak of.
“Sorry. What did you say?”
“I asked what we’re going to do next. Now that you’ve decided to grace us with your presence again,” Drake grumbled, hushing the moment Ryder threw him a look that could have salted the earth.
He cast a glance across his lieutenants. Troy kept his eyes down, staring at his tied fingers. Most of the others avoided Ryder’s gaze as well, quietly waiting for what was to come. Ryder had done his very best lately to construct an air of insanity about him, and he’d been so successful at it that even he had to wonder sometimes if it was merely an act. Perhaps his sanity was truly fraying at the edges? After all, how much failure could an Alpha take before the ground crumbled beneath him and gobbled him up like a relic of a simpler time. He smirked, rapping his knuckles across the wood of the desk and leaning back in his chair.
“Well, well, Drake. We’re mighty demanding for a bear who got knocked out barely into the fight, aren’t we? Took Julian Arder a good few minutes to wipe the floor with your useless carcass. Tell me, Drake, do you think you are in any position right now to act disrespectful towards me? I should expel you from this sacred circle, not listen to your sneering remarks.” All emotion left his eyes as he looked at Drake. From the corner of his eye, he could see Troy looking up, sharing a mute conversation with the rest of his closest lieutenants. The circle had been bigger once, but two seats now remained vacant. Ever since Bitterroot, they had served as a painful reminder of what had come to pass, and they would have scarcely believed what was going on with the clan now.
“He has a point, Ryder,” Troy said, his voice low. Ryder cocked a brow, conjuring a wide, toothy smile on his lips.
“Does he? Enlighten me,” he said, sweeping broadly with his arm in a gesture of openness. Troy balked, but with encouraging nods from the others, continued.
“Well, what
are
we going to do now? We were supposed to settle the land dispute once and for all with the battle. Instead of clarity, it brought more confusion. Now, we’ve been huddled up here on a speck of land, licking our wounds, while you disappear into the nether with barely a word. Again.” The last word pierced through Ryder, sending his stomach in wild loops. He’d become quite the actor lately though, managing to take the jab with composed madness.
“I needed time to think. The addition of the Arder girl makes things harder. She’s not part of the trifecta, but she is another of their bloodline, and it makes them even more powerful. Simply charging them all at the same time won’t work now,” he said, frantically spinning a web of deceit in his mind. It had been hard enough to get them to attack the Arders in the first place, and now, it was becoming almost impossible. They were tired of war, but Ryder couldn’t divulge the secrets he knew. It would only divide them, and divided they would fall. “I have been getting closer with Jacqueline again. I think she is the key. If I can neutralize her, then it will wound her brothers much more than any physical pain could.” The words felt disgusting on his tongue. They seemed to be equally as distasteful to his closest lieutenants, but yet, their expressions softened and slow nods followed.
More than anything, they needed a plan. Ryder had done his best to keep them preoccupied with the conflict, edging them on only enough to make them act, but not go overboard. So far, it had worked. How much longer could he keep up the charade was another question all on its own. As Ryder had expected, their simple decency and good souls had kept them from doing irreversible harm. But even the best of bears could only be surrounded by darkness for so long before it got to them. Yet again, he wished that he would have fallen on the field of battle as planned. Then, it would all be so much simpler. No such luck.
But then you would not have seen Jackie,
he reminded himself. Death or love, as always.
“And by neutralize, you mean…?” Drake asked, his hands squeezed together so tight that his knuckles were turning white. Since losing his sister, Drake had become hollow, yearning for a cause. He was the easiest to sway, and Ryder couldn’t get over the feeling that he was picking on the weak and making them do things they would have never agreed to under normal circumstances. But such was the power of an Alpha, and their losses had only made that clearer.
All for a greater cause,
Ryder reminded himself, gritting his teeth.
“I mean, get rid of her,” he said resolutely, not caring to expand on that. What could he say? That he would kill his mate? Not even his depravity could go so far as to state that. “And then, we will attack them again. This time, nothing will stand in our way.”
To that, he got wordless nods of approval. Ryder fought against letting himself slump down on the chair. The weight of what he was doing lay heavily on him, but the alternative still seemed even darker.
Whatever it takes. As always.
It would have been a lot easier to concentrate on going through with his plans if Jackie wasn’t so god damn close. He could feel her in his pores and all around him, even though she was miles away. All he wanted was to see her and to be with her, regardless of the consequences. But he couldn’t be quite as brash. Even he knew that much. Still, he had now given himself a passing excuse as to why he was seeking her out, and if it quieted his clan, all the better. Ryder knew they needed time to heal and to regroup. The next battle would be even harder, especially if things kept changing the way they were now.
With each day, they became more tired and sluggish, dragging their feet. Winter was a time to rest, not to wage war, and that made Ryder more nervous than anything. This was no time to lose their guard, but winter came and took its toll as always. Laws of nature were hard to argue with, no matter how badly he wanted to.
“I will be moving onward with this. I want the patrols to start going out twice as frequently from now on. The Arders are back on their feet as much as we are, and we need to remain vigilant. If I were them, I would plan to catch us unaware, and we all know how that has ended for us earlier.” Just saying that was like twisting a knife in their collective wound. Drake grimaced, not knowing that his face contorted in a look of pain every time the horrific night was reminded to him. Several others echoed his pain, all as quiet as could be but their auras smothering Ryder with an air of shared grief.
God, I hate this.
“That is all,” he finished. The lieutenants piled out one by one, Drake and Troy taking up the rear and starting to discuss things amongst themselves with lowered voices as soon as they had stepped out of the room. Ryder’s brows knitted. With every day, his clan drifted further from him, and he couldn’t do anything about it. Telling them the truth would end it all, but it would take the Bitterroot clan down with it. No, he had to stay strong and wrestle through it for as long as he could, keeping them together as best he could. Even if it seemed like an impossible feat with Jackie taking up the majority of his attention.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“I should not be here,” Jackie grumbled to herself, walking through the snowy forest with determined strides. The line between Bitterroot and Arder territory was far behind her, lost in a thicket of dense shrubs, and she scarcely cared. Her logical thought kept telling her to turn back before it was too late, get out of there and behave like a proper outraged clan member should! But, this close to Ryder, she couldn’t really hold onto her anger quite as well as she should have.
Time had passed in a blur since leaving his cottage a few days ago. She’d been so distracted with what he’d told her that she’d scarcely had time to remember to live or breathe outside of it. He knew! And he’d forgiven her even when she couldn’t forgive her herself. Rationally she knew it was a horrible accident, and she was lucky to have made it out of the burning wreck of a house with her life. The mother in her, however, screamed with pain at the faintest thought of letting go of the grief and the tortured thought. The middle was somewhere between the two, she knew. There had to be a way to keep going even when life had taken what was most precious to her. She knew it had to be better than the miserable existence she had thrown herself into, roaming the land like a nomad in search of her soul.
“You can’t possibly think anything good can come from this,” Jackie continued, talking out loud to herself. It was somewhat schizophrenic, she thought, but there was little about her at that point that wasn’t just the slightest bit off-kilter. To her shock, a piece of her had dared hope that things could be better. It wasn’t so bad on its own, but her happiness seemed to be very strongly rooted to the man who had very recently tried to kill her brothers. If that wasn’t a sure sign of lunacy, she didn’t know what was.
Jackie’s hands had balled into fists at her side, stomping through the snow like it had done her a great disservice simply by existing. She wasn’t sure what she was doing, but she’d started walking a while ago, and her path kept leading up to the Bitterroots, no matter what she did. There was no plan or great plot to bring justice and joy to the world. There was just the violent need to see Ryder again. For the part of her that dared hope, he had become a sort of anchor, something to return to when things became too mad to take.
“Like seeing him again will magically solve all of these problems,” she snorted loudly.
I’m clearly losing my mind.
“I want you to know that not all is how it seems.” Those words kept ringing in her head, looping back time and time again. She’d tried thinking of what Ryder could have meant by it, but every theory came back more ludicrous than the previous. All that she had heard from her friends told her clearly that Ryder had gone off the deep end. What she’d seen at Yellowhead confirmed that. And yet, when she had talked to him, when she’d been in his arms, she could only see the man she had known and loved for so long. Maybe just a bit more broken and bruised, but not insane. Not violently mad. The longer she thought about it, the less sense it made. So, there she was, drudging through the snow towards Ryder, hoping to make sense of it all. Insanity!
Jackie was getting dangerously close to the point from which she’d start seeing the Bitterroot’s cottages, when a rustling came from one side of her. Her mind eased as quickly as she felt his presence. Ryder’s gigantic bear came lumbering through the woods, crashing through the underbrush with all the elegance of a steamroller in a bed of daisies. He stopped a few feet before her, huffing in her scent. Those deep brown eyes, filled with intelligence, rested on her for a second before the shift took him. Last she’d seen his bear, he had been poised to charge at Jackson, foaming with rage and bloodlust. Now, he was little more than the cuddly bear she remembered him as. She couldn’t help but smile a little.
When the man emerged from the coat of the bear, Jackie’s eyes rested on him. He still looked worse for wear, certainly, but there seemed to be a bit more of the man she knew in his appearance. The dark circles under his eyes had cleared somewhat, and he stood straighter. When he smiled in greeting, her heart leapt. She admonished herself for it, but it was no use. As usual, she felt like a giddy schoolgirl around him. Right up until the point she wanted to strangle him with her own bare hands, of course. Those two things seemed to go hand in hand. It was odd that this time they had started off with her being angry and had smoothly moved onto Jackie merely wanting to throw herself in his arms. Being a dastardly warmonger seemed almost irrelevant for the time being.
“Hi,” he said simply, cocking his head to the side a bit. Jackie smiled in return, feeling a blush creep up on her cheeks.