15. Finn
FINN
F inn trailed her by some distance, never getting close enough that she would see or hear him. He was downwind, too, so he tracked her mostly by scent. She still smelled afraid and upset, and tired as well. The bear didn’t like it, but he also understood she needed time and space. He could explain to her eventually.
Plus his leg hurt like a kick in the nuts. Hiking on it so soon would no doubt fuck it up still more, but he had no other choice. He wasn’t going to let Lauren out of his reach for even a second, at least until he knew she was safe somewhere warm and clean. Finn took some pain killers before he chased after her, so at least he didn’t feel his leg. He’d pay for it later, he knew that much from experience. But sometimes you had to push through agony to come out the other side for a worthy cause.
Or so he’d always believed. And there was no worthier cause than his mate.
He sensed something amiss about an hour away from the cabin. Lauren moved in fits and starts: sometimes at a near-jog, others at an ambling walk, sometimes at a flat-out run or simply standing in the middle of the trail looking at the sky. He didn’t know if distress kept her from acting rationally, if perhaps panic ruled her emotions, or she was simply too tired to be consistent. He’d have a talk with her later about preserving energy and moving steadily, rather than rushing and then slowing to rest.
She paused just as he noticed a shift in the air. Predators close by. He didn’t smell them, even being downwind, which meant it wasn’t likely to be another bear or even a wolf or mountain lion. Something else. Something that knew to mask its scent. None of the other animals in the forest moved, the birds long since fled, and even the trees seemed to freeze in anticipation.
His heart beat faster as adrenaline surged and the bear clawed for control of his body. He needed to shift to protect Lauren. She’d already seen him once, obviously she wouldn’t mind seeing him as a bear again. And even if whatever stalked her wouldn’t flee from a human, they’d damn well retreat when they faced a grizzly.
But his ears caught a few words, the nervous chatter that Lauren generated when she didn’t know what to do or where to look, and tangled threads of scent: hers, more afraid and verging on panic, and two unknown males, bitter with metal and chemicals and ammunition. Blood. His hackles rose even in human form. The smugglers. The drug runners. It had to be them or their minions, trying to find the supply chain. Maybe the mules were late and the buyer grew nervous.
Or maybe they were Shotgun’s guys, already on the hunt, and the cowboys decided to take advantage of a female alone. Finn wouldn’t have put it past some of those men to sideline a mission for the chance to get laid.
He shook himself and checked his rifle, just in case. He’d try to reason with them and send them on their way. If that didn’t work, he’d shoot them. It wasn’t the first time he’d killed a man, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Finn hoped that Lauren wouldn’t be traumatized by seeing it. He’d become so numb to death that it mattered less than how much his leg throbbed as his shifter metabolism chewed through the narcotics.
Finn found his focus and stalked closer, sniffing and listening for clues about who stood where. Who said what. Who posed a threat. Whether Lauren would be caught in the crossfire if he needed to shoot. How much room he’d have to maneuver on the narrow track if the trees grew too close in. Whether Lauren could run and hide once the conflict kicked up.
All of it ran through his mind, almost on autopilot, with each step and new point of data from his senses. The bear wanted to shift and charge down the trail, knocking down anything and anyone who stood between him and Lauren. A simple solution. Not as elegant and clean as a bullet through the chest, but effective nonetheless.
Finn crept off the trail and into the trees to circle around without being seen, and hopefully get ahead of the interlopers before they hurt Lauren. He placed each foot deliberately, even with the spike of pain right through him from the injury, and barely made more than a rustle as he moved. At least all that time doing SERE training had paid off. He didn’t have a ghillie suit or any concealment, but at least he didn’t sound like a herd of fucking elephants tromping through a field of bubble wrap.
The moment he saw the two men holding guns on Lauren, who trembled in fear, all of his focus shifted. His heartbeat slowed and steadied, and every other thought dropped away, save the information necessary to save her. He assessed the two men as they demanded to know who Lauren worked for and threatened her with dire consequences if she didn’t talk. Which she did, at length, but it wasn’t the kind of information the bastards wanted. It was just Lauren, trying to explain that she was hiking and didn’t mean to disturb them and they really didn’t need to take her to jail.
Take her to jail? His head cocked as that little nugget of information broke through his concentration. Why would she be worried about going to jail? Did she think the two men were cops or rangers or something, trying to bust her for trespassing or poaching? Finn shook it off and figured they could sort that shit out later. And they would have a very long discussion about things to do and not do when threatened at gunpoint.
He swallowed a growl as the Napoleon-looking, pistol-toting motherfucker threw her on the ground and put his boot on the back of her neck. Shorty leaned into it, ignoring her pained cry, and growled, “You will wish for death before we’re done with you. Lying bitch. Who the fuck are you reporting to? They won’t save you. They won’t even care when we fuck you and throw your body into a ravine. The wolves will finish you off, maybe a bear if you’re lucky.”
The fucker had no idea he’d signed his death warrant and would learn in short order what facing a bear looked like.
Finn couldn’t get a clean shot and didn’t want to risk one of them getting trigger-happy if bullets started flying, since they both still aimed at Lauren. He reached out and deliberately broke a stick, the crack audible over Lauren’s breathless pleading. It broke his heart. The first thing he wanted to say was to reassure her and promise her he’d save her, but he couldn’t afford to show weakness in front of Shorty and his sidekick. It would have given them more leverage, and that wouldn’t help either of them.
The two men froze, scanning the surroundings for a hint of what made the noise. Finn spoke from the shadows. “Best if you just back up and disappear, friends.”
“Who the fuck is that?” the taller one demanded. His rifle swung up and around, searching for a target, but Finn stayed far enough back he wouldn’t get a clear shot.
“The girl is mine.” Finn added a growl to his voice, so maybe they would take the hint. And Lauren sobbed in despair, like he’d crushed her himself. She couldn’t really believe he meant it? His heart sank, but he pushed away the creeping sense of guilt. He would explain to her later. She’d understand. “Get the fuck out of here before we kill you.”
“You and what army?” Shorty said. “We’ve got twenty other guys here, man, and you’re all alone.”
Finn threw a hefty rock into the trees on his left, up the trail, so it hit a few branches and sounded like someone else in the undergrowth. “You sure about that, champ?”
A tense silence stretched, then Shorty laughed. “Fuck off. If you had enough guys, you wouldn’t be talking right now. So I’m going to take this bitch out of here so we can get some use out of her, and we’ll go ahead and leave her body here when we’re done. You move a muscle and we’ll just shoot her right here.”
“You’re really pissing off my friend,” Finn said. The bear roared to the surface, ready to claw the bastards to pieces, and the man held on to control with his fingertips. The growl bled into his voice until it deepened and roughened into an animalistic snarl. “Back the fuck off right now or you’re going to die.”
Lauren squeezed her eyes shut and whispered to herself, trying to cover her ears to block it all out, and Finn almost rushed out to comfort her, and damn the consequences. But killing the smugglers on the trail would alert the group that they weren’t alone, and set off a manhunt on a quest for vengeance. Leaving them alive and knocked out would give him a chance to lay false trails and confuse the scene, maybe tie one up a fair distance away. It would buy him time to get Lauren back through the forest the way he’d come, and to signal Simon and the rest of the clan to send in reinforcements.
But the sons of bitches left him no choice. Shorty hauled her up by the hair and shook her, pressing the pistol into the back of her neck. “You sure you want to risk it?”
Tears tracked down Lauren’s cheeks.
Something in his mind snapped. The bear broke free and he lost all control. The grizzly launched the ten or so feet down to the trail in one leap and slapped his claws into Shorty’s chest. The pistol flew into the trees, followed by pieces of the man’s body, but the bear didn’t stop moving. He barreled into the taller man as he struggled to swing the rifle. Finn knocked it away but the smuggler managed to squeeze off a round that caught him in the stomach.
The bear took care of that with another swipe of his claws, and the man dropped in a bloody heap, groaning in pain. Shorty, at least, was quiet.
Finn whuffled around them and used his paws to toss aside the weapons they carried, including giant fucking machetes, and to free the packs from their shoulders. Idiots. No wonder they went down so easily: they threw off their center of gravity carrying a heavy load, and thought they could fight effectively without good balance.
He didn’t feel as bad about killing them. Neither one would recover from the deep rents in their torsos unless someone carried their asses to a clearing and got a life-flight there in under an hour, but that was not the bear’s problem.
Something clicked behind him. Finn’s head swung around, prepared to attack if one of their compatriots decided to ambush him, and instead found Lauren holding one of the pistols in shaking hands. All of her had paled, and she sat on her butt and scooted backward toward the trees as she tried to aim.
At least she used both hands in a reasonable grip, instead of trying some ridiculous one-handed action hero nonsense.
She hyperventilated, her eyes wide and pupils huge, and shook her head. “I don’t want to shoot you. I don’t. I love all animals. Even ones that might e-e-eat me. Just let me leave. I don’t know where you came from and that’s okay, even though you should probably be hibernating right now or at least…oh God…eating a lot to store up for winter. Just d-d-don’t eat me. I don’t taste good, I promise, and there’s not a lot of meat on the bone, I can promise that too. Those guys look way more ap-ap-appetizing…”
She sucked in huge lungfuls of air but it didn’t seem to help.
Finn eased back to sit, hoping that would be less intimidating, but the tall guy groaned and rolled over. So Finn flicked him out of the way and the body whacked into a tree trunk hard enough that bones crunched. Lauren groaned and leaned over to barf, her grip on the pistol slackening.
He held his breath. He couldn’t comfort her—or even speak to her—as a bear, that much was obvious. Having a grizzly a few feet away wasn’t helping her nerves. Finn debated what to do as he watched her, but the sound of a radio on one of the bodies made the decision for him.