Chapter 24 Baz
BAZ
The sky still glowed with a flaming sunset when they set off from the motel, but by the time Baz slowed to find the turnoff into the woods, it was fully dark.
He crawled up the dirt road with nothing but the headlights to guide him across the puddles and ruts.
Beside him, Arden was pale and resolute in the glow of the dashboard lights.
He had suggested that she stay behind, then pushed for it, but she was just as determined to come back with him. Now she sat beside him with her hand clasped on his, occasionally shifting her grip to his jeans-clad thigh.
“Do you think everyone’s all right?” she asked.
“I’m sure they are.” Baz wasn’t entirely sure that he felt the same confidence he was trying to project, but he was reasonably sure his alpha sense would have told him if they were all in dire danger.
“They’ve got Declan, and everyone else turns into bears.
And if they really have to, they can hole up somewhere and wait for help. ”
Main Street was lit up. The generator was running, and someone—probably Lexie—had strung lights along the street. There was also a bonfire burning, casting long shadows. Baz parked behind it.
Down the street, he could see a small crowd of assembled wild-clan shifters; at least he assumed that was who they were.
From here, all he could pick out were shadowy shapes, maybe a few dozen people.
Some were in their shift forms—he glimpsed the dark bulk of bears, the outlines of antlers, the smaller darting shapes of a few bird shifters.
“If I can’t talk you into leaving, what about staying in the truck?” Baz murmured to Arden. He hated the thought of having her out there.
Arden shook her head. “I’m going where you go.”
The store’s front door opened and Lexie came out. She hurried over to the truck and tapped on the door. Baz rolled the window down. “Should you be out here?” he asked.
“It’s okay, they don’t seem to be doing anything threatening. They’re just staying down there, and we’re over here. It feels kind of like a standoff.”
“Where’s everyone else?”
“Most of us are in the store. We figured we ought to stay together. Declan’s, uh, out there somewhere. I think he was going to keep an eye on things from the air, and he wanted to be able to shift if there was fighting.”
Great, just what they needed. Another wildcard. “Arden, why don’t you go in with—”
“I said I’m staying with you.”
Baz took a breath and jerked his head in a nod.
If this was something to do with Arden’s human presence in the town, keeping her with him was probably for the best. If it was something else—well, he’d cross that bridge when and if he came to it.
“Lexie, could you stay with the truck? I’d like a getaway vehicle available if we need it. ”
He slid out, leaving the keys in, and Lexie took his place. Arden climbed down from the passenger side. Through the half-open door to the store, Baz glimpsed Fern and Maida peeking out.
“Stay there,” he told them.
“Any instructions for me?” Lexie asked, leaning out the truck’s window.
“Be ready to come pull us out if we need it. You’re our extraction team.”
“Roger that,” Lexie said and pulled her head in.
As he stepped away, Baz realized it might be the first time he’d given her an order and she had simply obeyed it without question or argument.
Part of it was the tense nature of the situation.
But there was something different in the air ever since he and Declan had clashed.
A newfound sense of authority had settled over him.
He wondered if the wild shifters could sense it, too.
“Sure you don’t want to stay inside?” he murmured as Arden fell into step beside him.
“Quit asking me that. Trust me to know my own mind, Baz. I’m exactly where I want to be.” Her voice was low but determined. She nudged the back of his hand with her own, and he gripped her hand firmly for a moment before letting it go.
They walked side by side down the street. As they approached, some of the waiting shifters who had been sitting down stood up. They weren’t threatening, at least not overtly, but it was hard not to feel at least a little intimidated when he and Arden were outnumbered thirty to one.
Baz found himself glad, for a variety of reasons, that he had already claimed Arden as his mate.
For town shifters, let alone humans, it didn’t matter all that much.
But these were people still very much ruled by the old shifter ways.
They cared a lot. And he would have much better standing to protect her if they could both see and smell that she was his mate and co-alpha, despite being human.
“Brush your hair off your neck,” he murmured to Arden.
“What?” At least the request got the nervousness off her face; now she simply looked baffled.
“Let them see the bite mark.”
“What?”
“It might help us. I’ll explain later.”
Arden shrugged a little and brushed back the wispy, blonde-tipped strands of hair lying against her neck. The bite was already nearly healed, much faster than a human normally would have.
There was a lot of speculation among shifters on what it really meant for a human to be mated to one of them.
Growing up in a clan with a number of human-shifter cross marriages, Baz had heard quite a lot about it, especially from his nurse-midwife aunt Charmian.
Shifters’ human mates seemed to stay healthier and live longer, and sometimes they appeared to pick up a few extrasensory abilities from their shifter mates as well, especially being able to tell when their mate was in danger and being able to find them easily.
But Arden was still very much not a shifter. Whether the others would sense her as an alpha or a human or something else entirely—Baz wasn’t sure.
As he and Arden approached, the gathered shifters parted to make way for a single individual to step through.
At first all Baz could see was a large, shadowy shape, which resolved into the single biggest man he’d ever seen.
The guy was absolutely huge, tall and broad, with a shaggy gray-streaked beard over a bare chest.
He thumped his chest with his fist in what looked like a ceremonial salute and said, “I am Thunder, alpha of Silver Mountain Clan.”
Baz echoed the gesture, feeling a bit foolish. “I am Baz—that is, Sebastian Hayes. I am alpha of—of Windrock Clan.”
Thunder nodded solemnly. “My son has been observing you.” He jerked his head to the side, and Baz saw River standing behind him and slightly to the right, face completely expressionless. “He says that you do not seem to mean us any harm.”
Beside River, another man about Thunder’s age loomed, nearly as large, wearing what appeared to be a permanent scowl. Great, Baz thought, maybe every clan has got their version of Declan; but he kept the thought to himself.
“River is right,” he said. “We have come here with no intentions except peaceful ones. And we owe a debt of thanks to River for finding our injured clan-sister and bringing her safely back to us.”
For the first time, expression flickered across River’s stony features. “She is well, then?” he asked.
“She is very well indeed, thanks to you,” Baz told him, smiling.
The faintest trace of a smile flickered on River’s lips. “Good.”
Baz turned his attention back to the clan alpha.
“It was our hope in coming here that this town might become a bridge of sorts between us, a place for our two different versions of shifter-kind to meet and learn about each other. We would like to invite some of you to stay here with us, if you wish.”
Thunder gazed at him for a moment before speaking.
His voice was deep and measured, as if each word was being considered carefully.
“We will think about it. In the old days, it was tradition to cement relations between clans with an arranged mating. Might your clan be open to such a thing? We have many unmated young males, and have noted that you have several females among your people.”
Baz nearly choked. He could only imagine how any of the female members of his clan would react to being told they had been betrothed to a stranger.
Lexie would probably smash her new husband over the head with a wrench, and bash Baz a few times for good measure.
Fern would invent a brand new poison tea, and Maida would simply make all of them miserable in a variety of inventive ways.
“I can’t agree to that, I’m sorry. That is not a practice of my clan.”
Thunder inclined his head in a slight nod. What that meant, Baz wasn’t sure. “You also have humans among you.”
“This is Arden. She is my mate.”
“Sun-Hair, yes,” Thunder rumbled, and Arden looked surprised that he recognized her. “She is human. That is not a practice of our clan.”
“It is for ours. Several members of my birth clan are mated to humans.” Baz slipped his fingers into Arden’s.
Her hand was cold and slightly damp, but she squeezed back.
“If not with a, er, a planned mating, may we show our goodwill towards you in other ways? We can get medical supplies that your clan might need, and we are willing to act as go-betweens if you need to deal with humans for any reason.”
The scowling man behind Thunder rumbled in a voice like two rocks rubbing together, “We have no need to deal with humans or with you.”
Thunder turned his head and spoke a few words so quietly that Baz couldn’t make them out. The authority was clear, however, and Thunder’s follower subsided into threatening silence.
“We must discuss this among ourselves,” Thunder told Baz. “For now, let us proceed as we have been. You may remain here—for now.”
“Thank you,” Baz told him. “We hope to have good relations between our clans in the future.”
“We shall observe and consider.”
With that, Thunder turned and spoke a few more soft words.
A ripple seemed to pass through the assembled shifters, and they all slipped off into the darkness, vanishing so quickly that it was difficult, in a few moments, to believe they had ever been there at all.
Arden looked up at Baz. “Does this mean it’s all right for me to stay?”
“I’m not accepting anything less. And they’ve accepted our claim on the town, for now.” Baz let out a sudden whoop of joy and waved down the street to Lexie. Then he seized Arden in his arms, pulled her close, and kissed her.
When he let her go, Arden said breathlessly, “Not that I mind, but what was that for?”
“Just making sure everyone got the message.”
He raised his voice a little. An instant later, there was something like a rush of dark wind and then Declan was standing at the edge of the woods, having shifted so swiftly that Baz hadn’t even seen him do it.
“Yes, I get it,” Declan said. He gave Arden a solemn nod, and went past them, back toward the firelight.
“Come on,” Baz said. He tugged gently on her hand. “Let’s go home.”