Chapter Text
Kyle was shaken out of his sleep as if by a hidden hand, jolting upright with his eyes wide and searching, seeing only the blackness of the woods before him. His mind was reeling, trying its damnedest to put his senses back together, desperate to make sense of his feelings. Nila was far away, too far for clarity, but her fear was surging so acutely that he could still feel it from this distance. Quickly, he shifted back into his human body so that he could rouse Price, jostling his shoulder to pull him out of his slumber as well.
“Cap,” Kyle spoke in a low tone, “Cap, wake up.”
Price’s bear let out a short grunt at being disturbed, but once he heard his sergeant’s tone of voice, he came to and shifted with him.
“Wha’ is it?” His captain’s voice was full of bear and sleep, garbling the words.
“It’s Nova. Somethin’s wrong. We need to be back.”
“She call you?” Price dug around in his pack for his phone, checking for messages. But, there was no service this far out of range.
“Felt her. She’s afraid. Can’t hear her thoughts, though. I need to go,” Kyle was a free agent, no longer his sergeant and no longer in his service, but it was still a request. He still respected Price enough as his Alpha as well as his ex-commander that he wouldn’t abandon his post, no matter how many years they’d been civilians together.
Price nodded,
“Alright, go on ahead. I’ll circle back to the border and be right behind you.”
“Aren’t you worried about Doc?” Kyle asked, wondering why he was being so conservative all of a sudden.
Then, it dawned on him. Price couldn’t feel her. He had no idea whether he should be worried or not. They had a connection, that much was clear, but it wasn’t a connection between mates. It was something half-in and half-out of obscurity. Without a bite connecting their souls, Price was out here on his own, and so was his pretty little scientist.
The realization flashed in the captain’s eyes followed closely by what Kyle suspected may be shame, knowing that he wouldn’t be able to protect his mate in the same way that Kyle could protect Nova.
“Meet you back at yours, yeah?” Kyle couldn’t wait on him to go through his millionth existential crisis this week. He needed to check on his wife.
Price agreed, zipping up his pack and tossing it on the ground so he could scoop it up with his mouth when he shifted,
“Aye, go. Don’t fuckin’ wait for me, Garrick. I’ll grab your gear so you can get there faster. Move it.”
Kyle didn’t need to be told twice. He shifted into his bear and bolted into an all-out sprint. It would still be far too long until he could make it back, but without gear, he could really cover some ground. He and Price had been trying to track the scent of the intruders for days, but they still had no idea who could have been privy to their whereabouts, nor could they guess what information they were after. Price had assumed it was some sort of Konni off-shoot, or maybe someone who had been cryptid hunting and bit off more than they could chew, but the unknown element – the lack of clear motivation – that was the eeriest part.
The fact that they had targeted the Howletts seemed like the most obvious clue, even if Kyle wasn’t sure of the reason behind it. If this was about the 141, surely Logan and Marie would have been left out of it. The more Garrick thought about it, the more it seemed like these drones and the various incidents had been related to their being shifters. But, this group of stalkers had been using military grade equipment, so who knew what was really going on. It was hard to tell. The past six years had been quiet, and the quiet was hard to get used to. However, now that he was used to it, Kyle wanted to protect it.
Nila had gone through a harder time letting go of her job than he had. She struggled to slip into a routine. In the early years of their relationship, she had taken risks, pushing herself and her bear to her limits, exploring the edges of what was possible through the magic.
He tried to reach out to Nova through their bond as he lept through the forest, his paws digging into the leaf-packed ground to gain speed and power as he ran. But, he couldn’t hear her. She wasn’t shifted, and he wasn’t sure whether that fact made him more or less worried.
The speed of his bear thrilled him. Without his human fortitude and endurance, it wasn’t worth much. The combination, though, gave Gaz a particularly heightened thrill. He watched the tall trees flash past him, and he felt the cold snap of air across his furry cheeks, spurring himself on to get back to his mate.
After all of the excitement and the long nights of tinkering with the drones, Kyle and Nila had used their free time at their cabin to reconnect. He still had her scent in his nose, or at least the memory of it, and she was co-mingling with him, their smells blending together after so much time connected. He could smell her even more acutely in his bear’s form, her musk clinging to his fur with a delightful headiness that made his heart slam into his chest – excited from more than just the running.
The idea that something would have made his gorgeous lover afraid made him all the more ferocious, pushing himself past pain to cross huge distances, letting his magic heal the scrapes and cuts on his paws, not caring about the sting of a rock or a branch here or there. He needed to get to her; that was his only priority.
Finally, hours into the early morning fog, he saw the crest of John’s cliff. He was still thirty minutes out, but the sight of it at least brought him some relief. He called out to his mate through their bond, trying to get her to hear him.
Nila. Answer me.
Nothing. He tried again.
Tell me you’re alright, love. C’mon.
His body ached. The magic did enough to heal him through the damage he was causing, but it still left its mark. Logan had tried to convince them all that the pain they felt while they were healing was just psychological, but it hurt just as bad. So, what did it matter if it wasn’t real? He’d run for hours, flat out, and his lungs were on fire. The cold seared its way down his throat, burning him in a terrible paradox. But, he ignored it, forcing himself to press through it. He was so close.
By the time he made it to the mouth of the cave, he was ragged with worry. He smelled Kate and Nik on the chopper, picking up their scent as it mixed with two strangers’ odors, neither of which he was keen to trust. Then, he burst through the door, shifting fast to unbolt the lock, barging inside, naked as the day he was born.
“Babes…” Nova commented, her tone amused and somewhat pleasantly surprised, “You’re back.”
“Are you alright?” Kyle ignored the small crowd, his face twisted with worry, moving toward her to hold her face in his hands, to inspect her for damage even when he knew there would be none, his instincts driving him more than his logic.
“I’m alright. C’mon,” she grabbed his hand, leading him through the kitchen, grabbing one of the spare robes hanging on the hook by the door as she moved him through the small crowd, “Get dressed, lover. I have some news.”
Kyle allowed himself to be led, peering over his shoulder protectively, watching her back. He spotted Kate and Nik, the two strangers, and Doc with a gun in her hands.
“Wha’s goin’ on? Who gave the doctor a gun?”
“It’s her gun,” Nova said dismissively, “Listen, I need to tell you something. C’mere. Put this on.”
Nova had led him through to the gardens, and he looked on as the sun melted through the plasticine panes, diffuse and pale in these early hours, making his lover’s skin glow like starlight. He admired her mouth, forgetting her orders, tracing a pale spot of skin that lay along the edge of her full, pouting lip, chasing it with his own, kissing her like she was too fragile, too delicate to even gaze upon, much less touch. Then, he dared to press himself forward, moving his mouth over hers, capturing her softness in his jaw, moving her head in his hands so that he could have deeper access to her perfect throat.
“Mm,” she tried to speak, “Kyle… wait…”
“Why?” He shook his head, grabbing her by her haunches and hoisting her onto a tall bed of tomatoes. She was at the perfect height. “Wait for what?”
He knelt to the ground, falling to his knees like a grieving apostate, regretting his abandonment and atoning for her between her legs. Ripping away her thin covering, he buried his mouth in her, covering himself in her wetness, drinking like he had found an oasis inside of her, sucking and swallowing as if to feed from her sticky honey.
“I have to tell y– ohh… Oh, fuck… Kyle…”
He curled his tongue inside of her, fucking her with it like he wanted to do with his cock, rocking her body with his hands to catch his rhythm.
“Ky—” She tried again, but he reached a long hand up to silence her, planting his palm over her mouth, muffling her long, high-pitched keening as she reacted to the pressure of him adding two fingers to the efforts that his tongue was busy making.
He fucked her slow and steady on his hand, playing her like a game he knew all too well, making her come quick and dirty, screaming and writhing against his grip, pretending like she couldn’t break free. Like she wasn’t perfectly capable of breaking his fuckin’ neck if she suddenly changed her mind about him.
But, that’s what he liked about her. She was as deadly as they came, and he couldn’t get enough of it. When they first met, after their first mission, when he watched her walk back to the helo grinning, covered in other men’s blood, he’d been so hard he thought he might come from the sight. She was like a ruthless queen; she was Nefertiti. She was a fuckin’ warlord, and she had smiled at him. Of all the bastards on that mission, she’d looked at him with her mouth splattered with blood, checking him out like he was the best cut at the butchers. And, fuck, he was ready to be eaten, eager to be bitten by her teeth and put deep in her belly, warm and fueling her to new conquests. But, she was always that woman for him. Even now, in his captain’s humid little garden, his cock dripped with its craving for her.
He stood, keeping his hand pasted across her face, gripping her jaw even tighter, knowing his own lips were shining with her slick and not caring a bit about it. Kyle looked down at her through hooded eyes, his thoughts empty and vacuous, the only thing on his mind was the pulsating throb of her cunt as he sank his prick through it. Nothing else mattered.
He used his other hand to hold the back of her head, sandwiching her jaw and her skull between his grip and applying no small amount of force. Then, Kyle began to feed his length into her, his thrusting becoming frantic, his body knocking against the wooden crate and shaking the tomatoes, their leaves shuddering with each and every thrust.
Her eyes had rolled back inside of her head, and she was practically drooling for him from her tight little quim, the soft meat of her flesh gushing with every powerful impact of his hips, the sound of their coupling filling the quiet room with a furious, steady beat.
“Tha’s it, babes. Lemme hear it. Let me hear that pussy come for me, yeah? Fuckin’ wet, you are. Bloody fuckin’ hell…”
She grunted, unable to scream, and like a wish come true, he could hear the sound of her milky hole pop and suck with lurid sluicing noises, signaling her body’s eager, immediate response.
“Mm-hm,” he groaned, nodding haughtily, a smug smile plastered across his face, “Tha’s my good girl. Feel good, Nov?”
He pulled his hand off of her mouth and let her breathe for a moment. But, the second she was free, she confessed in a strained, pleasure-racked voice,
“Kyle, I’m pregnant.”
His pace faltered, and he furrowed his brow, but he laughed with a low, rolling chuckle, chiding her,
“Don’t you fuckin’ wind me up, babes. You know what that does to your man, yeah?”
His hand shot out, grabbing her below her jaw, making her look at him while he was fucking the life out of her,
“You wanna make me come, huh? Say it again, then. C’mon.”
“You…” She struggled, bearing down on him, trying not to come on him again, “You got me pregnant.”
“Fuuuhhhhck… Nila. Say it again,” he leaned against her shoulder, rolling his forehead across her bones and muscles, trying to comfort himself as he fought the surge of his own orgasm.
She whispered in his ear, her voice shattered, her whole body trembling against him,
“I’m gonna have your baby.”
“Oh, holy fuck!” Gaz braced himself against the tomato planter, splintering the wood, his fingers digging deep into the black soil, soft and wet and warm. All of her hot pleasure was flowing over him like molten iron in a cast, forging her mark on him, branding her touch onto his jerking shaft, never to want another sheath.
She was coming, but it was so deep and she was quiet, staring up at him with fresh tears in her eyes, the joy bubbling out so fast she couldn’t hold it in. Her voice was small, even quieter than a whisper now, repeating herself in hushed gasps, barely audible over his terrible screaming,
“I’m… gonna have… your baby…”
His bursting pleasure was blinding. He stuck himself as deep as he could reach, and everything around him fell away. It was just him and her in a black, infinite void. His bear and her bear, his soul and her soul, staring at each other with a whole new hope between them.
When he came to, he was holding her in his arms, and she was smiling, her face tucked against his chest, sighing contentedly. His cock slipped from her, drooling onto the mossy floor, spent and empty. He looked down at her, hoping to meet her eyes.
“Nila,” he called to her, “Look at me.”
She looked, and when he saw her eyes, he knew it was the truth. But, he needed to hear it. He wanted to hear it.
“Tell me the truth.”
“I’m pregnant, Kyle. I wasn’t ready to tell you. I… well, I wasn’t ready to know. But,” she rolled her eyes, “It sounds fuckin’ daft, but… sometimes you just… know. So, I took a test. Tryin’ to think of a good way to show you. And then, all this,” she waved her hand at the other room, summing up the last few days’ events for him.
He didn’t know what to say. He was happy, beyond measure. But, he was terrified. Now, he was terrified of everything. Suddenly, the drones were personal. Suddenly, global warming was personal. Hell, all of a sudden, the idea that the fertilizer in the soil of the tomatoes he’d just fucked her in was way too fuckin’ close for comfort. He wanted to wrap her in a big bubble and keep her in his cave, set to guard centurion-style at the entrance; heaven help the poor bastard who tried to get in his way.
But, he knew he couldn’t be that way. Not with her. He didn’t need to be. She was strong, and she would guide them through the challenge. He trusted in her, more than ever.
He breathed. He breathed again. She looked up at him, her eyes rimmed with worry at his silence.
“Gaz…”
“Is this what you want? I know I’ve been beggin’ for it, babes. But, that’s just banter, yeah? I don’t want you to feel like I’ve be—”
“I want this,” she insisted, her palm flat against his bare chest, “I want it just as much as you. It wasn’t just jokes to me.”
“Fuck,” Kyle couldn’t wipe the smile from his mouth, “Fuck, are you serious?”
“Yeah,” she smiled back, just as excited as he was.
“Oh, God,” he hugged her to him, tight as could be, rocking her in his arms, “I love you, Niles. I love you. And I’m gonna be here for you. Whatever you need, yeah? Anythin’ you want.”
“I love you, too, Kyle. But, we’ve got time. She won’t be here unt—”
“She?” He pulled away from her, his voice full of shock.
Nova shrugged, wrapping herself back up and helping him into his borrowed robe,
“Dunno. Just a hunch.”
“Holy shit,” Kyle tried to breathe again, but his wife had just sucked all of the air out of the room. A little girl? His heart soared. What a world this was.
“You alright, babes?” Nova winked at him, teasing him in his moment of weakness.
“More than alright,” he countered her teasing with sincerity, and she softened for him, kissing him on the mouth. They sat in the quiet together, not saying much of anything that they couldn’t express with their bodies. A lingering touch, a warm embrace, a trail of kisses in places where they might never belong, but are welcomed anyway. Finally, they untangled themselves from each other before walking back through the kitchen, hand in hand.
They came upon a scene of action and planning. It felt so familiar, like the start of every mission they’d ever been on, a round table of players, all contributing to a cause. Kyle was used to seeing Kate run point, but in her place, Doc had somehow taken the lead. She was propping up a large SAT tablet next to Kate’s field projector, casting a local map of Price’s land on the tall cave wall, pointing out a border of some kind, trying to make sketches with a stray piece of rock, using it like chalk on a big board.
“... but, if the Umber has made it as far as the river, it might be too late,” one of the strangers commented in a thick Urzikstani accent.
Doc shook her head,
“At the rate of change between these two pictures, if these are the same region —”
“They are,” the other stranger added.
“Then,” Doc pointed to her second chalky line, “This is our new POI for the spread. Digging out a trench from here to here keeps us out of the river. And this is a ridge? Can you get a side view on this hill, Katie?”
Katie. Kyle thought he must be losing his mind. Doc was like a miniature Price. She’d tucked her gun into the tie of her robe, she was dual-wielding SAT tablets like a juggler. All she needed was a fat fucking cigar and everyone would be calling her captain by the end of the night.
“Wha’s all this, then?” Kyle asked Nova as they tucked themselves in beside Nik.
“Kate showed up with these two. Call themselves Wardens. Supposed to be the guardian angels of us shifters, right? Well, they knew about the baby.”
“Our baby?”
“Yeah,” Nova smiled, her hand instinctively moving across her womb, “And apparently, she’s special. She’s a Guardian. There’s some… plague. It’s deep in the forest. But, she’ll keep it away.”
“Then, what’s with all the plannin’? Just have to wait a few months, yeah?”
Nova’s mouth twisted at the corner. It was his favorite tell of hers. She could never keep a secret from him, and the truth fought to escape her plush lips. He nudged her with his mind, sending her just enough frustration to push her on. She sighed,
“She won’t make it without an Alpha. And the one we’ve got…”
Kyle didn’t need to look into her eyes to understand the words she left unsaid. He knew what she meant.
He didn’t mean to, but the vicious growl that escaped his chest filled the whole room, silencing the talk, and turning all eyes to him.
“Hey,” Nova tried to calm him down.
“What’s wrong, Garrick?” Kate asked, giving him space.
“We can do it without him, right? We don’t need an Alpha. We can still… our baby… she…” He was all over the place. The room was too bright, the air was too still, his head was pounding. He had to make it right. This wasn’t happening.
“Of course you need an Alpha,” the Urzikstani man snarled, “What do you think this is? That you are given all this power and take none of the responsibility?”
Kyle rounded on him, his body twisting into a half-shifted beast, his eyes narrow and black, inky and full of his rage.
“Growl all you want,” the stranger sneered, “It doesn’t make me wrong.”
Gaz’s bear mixed with his voice as he replied, the sound of it dark and distorted,
“ My mate carries our cub. ”
“She carries more than that,” the man replied, his light brown eyes meeting Gaz’s deep black pools, unafraid, “She carries the only hope for our entire fucking planet in her belly. It shouldn’t be possible. Without a mate, there’s no way your Alpha should be strong enough t–”
“This isn’t helping,” Doc’s voice cut through the chaos, and a silence fell between them as she continued, “You can either stay… and help, or you can go. But, I’m not giving up.”
The silence she had crafted with her voice remained. No one dared to speak over it. When he looked back on it later, Kyle would remember it being strange that she had such a command over them, over strangers who barely knew her, but at the time, it felt like it made sense. When she was satisfied with the stillness of the room, Doc, pointed to each of the men, quickly passing out introductions,
“Kyle Garrick, Connor Orens, Levan Pavlovna.”
The men nodded at one another, and Doc got back to her maps.
It was all a blur for Kyle. He was focused only on one thing: his wife. Was she hungry? She could get her own food. Was she tired? She didn’t need to be coddled to bed. Was she in pain? As if he could do anything about that. How could a shifter even have a baby? Was it full bear? That was crazy, right?
He had so many questions. More than anything, he wanted to talk to Price. The captain should have been here by now. The big grolar bear wasn’t that much slower than him. Perhaps Gaz had been faster than he thought. But, it had been hours. He tried to calm himself down, holding Nova to his chest as they sat together, pouring over aerial images of the Umber, as they called it. It didn’t look like any disease he’d ever seen. The tree bark was pale and peeled away in soft, fragile flakes like ash, and the color of it was a sickly mauve, too pink to be natural, and yet too grey to be anything made of life. It was frightening to look upon.
By the time they had come up with some sort of plan, Doc had jobs for them all. Nik and Kate would fly some Umber samples down to Sarah’s lab in Washington, trying to get a bead on the genetic makeup of the disease. Doc suspected a fungal source, but she wanted a full workup. She reiterated, multiple times, the importance of keeping the samples contained, going as far as to relabel the boxes herself.
Logan and Marie had come back sometime in the night, mostly empty handed, and they would go with Connor and Levan to find the other Wardens in the local guild, assembling them to determine who may have been involved in the drone sightings or the disturbance at the Howlett’s mountain cabin. Simon and Johnny were on drone-patrol, running two-man hunting missions across the border of their territory, flying their own equipment, taking any chances to survey the spread of the Umber while they were doing their recon.
Nova was still on protective duty for Doc, and Kyle had assumed the role of Nova’s protector in return, without being told. He knew that was his role. He felt it in his bones. Kyle was sure that there was nothing else he should be doing instead.
But, the consensus was all the same: they would wait for Price.
As the day wore on, Doc eventually collapsed on a big pile of furs by the fire, exhausted and overwhelmed. Nova was sitting by her and Marie, drinking tea that Johnny had forced on them, waiting in a sort of limbo of companionable silence. Nova caught Gaz’s attention with her mind.
She’s worn down.
He hummed in agreement, peering down at Doc’s sleeping form,
Tough, though. Tougher than I thought.
Help me put her to bed. She needs rest.
Kyle bent to pick up Doc in his arms, carrying her to one of the guest rooms, waiting for Nova to put some furs down before he lay her gently on the soft nest. He watched Nova cover her with a heavy bison pelt, sealing in her warmth.
They left her there and returned to the others, their minds still on their captain’s not-yet-mate. Nikolai had been watching them, and he lit a new cigar with Logan, his boots up on the table rudely, drinking Price’s best scotch and smoking through his collection like a chimney.
“So, she is the next victim, yes?” He chuckled, making a small fanged mockery with two of his fingers.
“Pssh,” Logan hissed, smoke curling around him like a snuffed candle, “He won’t bite her. If he hasn’t yet, he won’t. Too fearful. We’re fuckin’ doomed.”
“Hey,” Nova shook her head, “You don’t know that. He’ll… I think he wants to. He loves her. I can tell.”
“Too much,” Simon grunted, “He’s a fuckin’ control freak. Wants to keep her safe from all this. Even from himself.”
“Ye auld romantic,” Johnny rolled his eyes sarcastically at Simon’s appraisal.
“And what?” Simon retorted, “He’ll have a change of heart on the bloody mountain? Come off it. He’s dead set on sacrificin’ himself to to bloody greater good, no matter what shape it’s in.”
“What’s his hang up?” Connor asked, a little out of turn.
Gaz eyed him, answering carefully,
“He thinks he’ll kill her.”
“He will,” Levan shrugged, shelling pistachios that he pulled from his pocket, picking the nuts out from their husks between his teeth.
“I’m still alive, aren’t I?” Johnny protested.
“Me too,” Marie chimed in.
“Sure,” Levan shrugged, “But, it’s a new life. You split your soul. You are a bear, you are a person, and yet —” another pistachio shell chimed as it hit the bowl, “You are neither.”
“So, what?” Nova asked, cynical, disbelieving, “Are we cursed, then?”
Levan shrugged again,
“Is it a curse to watch the people you love grow old and die around you? A curse to be tied to a land and forever made to protect its people, its animals? To turn into a beast and still have the mind and heart of a man?”
Before anyone could protest, he held up his hands, acknowledging their rebuttal,
“I know, I know. It is a gift. For you, it is a gift. You have each other. You have love. But, you are not eternal. We may call you immortals, but it is only in a general sense. Your time will come, eventually. And in the end, only one of you will remain. I have watched it happen to our Guardian. The Snow Wolf. He is alone, keeping the ice cold and frozen, stopping the avalanches from burying us alive. But, even he grows old. Nothing is more powerful than time. Nothing.”
He chewed through three more pistachios before he continued,
“Your Alpha knows this. He feels it in his heart. That is his job: to feel. To know the darkness that lingers at the door. To see it before it comes for you. To keep it away. Only his mate can push that darkness away for him, just as he does for you.”
“Is she not his mate?” Marie asked, nodding to the sleeping ecologist in the adjoining chamber.
Levan pondered her for a while, his eyes focusing on the dark doorway between them,
“She must be, or he would not have a cub, and it would certainly not be a Guardian.”
It was quiet again, each of them lost in their own thoughts, and yet thinking them together. Levan sighed,
“I don’t know everything, but I do know that you need an Alpha if you want this to work. All the histories, all the books; they all say the same thing…” his voice became rote in its prosody, as if reciting from some tome, “A Guardian will be protected by their Alpha, and they will destroy the Umber to bring life back to the land. So,” Levan sat back, crossing his arms over his chest, resigned, “You need him, and he needs her.”
“You gonna talk to him, mate? Make him hear you. He’ll listen to you,” Johnny told Gaz.
“I’m not…” Kyle thought long and hard about what he was about to say, and then, he decided not to say it, “I dunno.”
“It’s alright, lover,” Nova let herself have another cup of tea and sat down next to him, “We’ll figure it out.”
Kyle let his hand rest on her leg, feeling the warmth of her skin, touching her with his fingertips, feeling her smoothness beneath his hand, marvelling at it. He would fix this for her. He knew he would do everything in his power to make it right, whatever right was. The Umber, their child, the Wardens — whatever it was, Kyle had found a new purpose, and he was ready to put everything he had into it, no matter the consquences.