Chapter 8

CHAPTER EIGHT

ODETTE

I could feel Garrett’s frustration in my head. The sensation was odd, almost like a memory of frustration but knowing it was happening in the present. It was going to take time for me to get used to this mate-thing. My parents had been bonded for centuries and my little sister was newly mated but they’d been together since they were kits. I knew of the bonds between mates, how it went beyond the physical. Knowing about and experiencing were two very different things, though.

And yet there was something natural about it. Like Garrett’s presence in my head had always been there but it was only now that I could hear it.

It’s odd, isn’t it? He commented, having heard my train of thought. I’ve never met you before, don’t even know what you look like, but I knew your scent immediately. I know down to my soul that you’re mine. I know you’re going to be the mother of my cubs and that I am going to spend the rest of our eternity striving to make you happy, to keep you and our cubs safe, to provide a home worthy of you… My blood, my heart, pulse for you—and I don’t even know the color of your eyes!

I can feel the sheer profoundness of his words through my entire being. I am moved by them and can attest to their honesty because they echo my own thoughts and feelings.

I’m a redhead, like most of my people, but I dye it a dark brown to hide that I’m pretending to be my own granddaughter.

I’d love to see your red hair. There was a pause and I knew that he was speaking to his companion, Rodger. It was like I had earmuffs on. In my head, I could hear the rumblings of his spoken words but not the actual words.

Then directly to me, Garrett said, We couldn’t fit through the tree roots as either men or bears. Rodger and I are going to have to knock the tree down and then head into the tunnel.

I couldn’t imagine the sheer strength it was going to take to knock over a tree that size. It was nearly as old as my father. I felt sorry that it had to be taken down, but perhaps it could be replanted if the roots were not destroyed.

Amelia looked up at me hungrily. She understood we did not have any food with us and that the water trapping us was not safe to drink. It did not stop her misery. I didn’t know what time of day it was, but we’d likely been down here for over twenty-four hours. She wasn’t the only one hungry, but I couldn’t let that show.

I could feel Garrett’s determination and the raw power as he unleashed his bear.

Our animals were not separate from us, but they also were. It was hard to explain and I was lucky I’d never had to. My fox was me and I was my fox, but I could also feel my fox inside me in a way that made me think of her as her own individual. There was no her without me or vice versa. I heard my father once explain it to some kits that our foxes were pure instinct. I was still me when I shifted, but I also took a step back and let my fox be in charge. I didn’t disappear or have no control over what I was doing. I was still me . Just more instinctual.

It was the reason, when Amelia shifted during the evacuation, that she sought out her safe place, her burrow. She was too young to know how to control her fox…even though she was her fox.

When Garrett shifted, I could still feel him . His mind and thoughts were just as open to me as before, but I also felt his bear. It was large, gruff, and fierce—and I knew that his bear loved me with every fiber of his being. Because that instinct to protect and worship his mate was more pronounced in his bear than it was as a man. It didn’t mean Garrett loved me any less; it just wasn’t as loud.

Mine , I heard growled through my head. A shiver wracked me that had nothing to do with the cold.

I could feel my fox perk up inside me. She could feel her mate was close and was nipping at my insides to get to him.

I continued to hear echoing noises from above. The stacked debris that filled the hole in the floor and prevented me from climbing up to safety moved occasionally. Like an avalanche on the precipice, it was one wrong weight shift away from toppling over into the floodwaters and either crushing us or drowning us.

Triumph surged through me, an echo of my mate’s victory. I could see the downed tree lying in the flood waters above ground in my mind’s eye as surely as if I was standing by my mate’s side.

There was a sheer drop into the tunnel. Then a bend, which was how the tunnel wasn’t completely flooded on my side of the slope. Garrett and Rodger needed to submerge and swim over that rise underwater to get to air. Thankfully, bears were extremely strong swimmers.

The escape tunnel was both wide and tall. I’d asked my father once, centuries ago, why it needed to be so large when foxes didn’t need that much room to escape in. He told me it was so a shifter could escape as a human if needed. While shifting was a part of us and it was not painful to shift between forms, it did take time. Some were slower at it than others. An escape tunnel lost half its effectiveness if shifters could only use it in their animal form.

Even given how large the tunnel was, it would still be a tight fit for two fully grown bears. But it was also probably the only reason Amelia and I were still alive. If the tunnel was any smaller, we likely would have drowned when the flood waters took out the furniture shop.

A ripple in the water caught my eye. Then a larger wave, followed immediately by a second one. My heart beat faster. They were in the tunnel.