“No, this is it.”
I reached in my back pocket and pulled out the paper. “It says here that there are thirty-three people in this group. There’s no way in hell they all fit inside that matchbox cabin. Where are the cars? It looks abandoned.”
Blue set her sunglasses on the dash. “Some bears live underground or in modified caves. I’ve heard they have a really nice setup, but they don’t like strangers seeing where exactly they live.”
“So they build these tiny shacks to deal with outsiders?”
“Exactly.”
I admired the tiger lilies surrounding the cabin. When we got out, a breeze rustled the leaves in the tall trees surrounding us. Aside from that, it was eerily quiet.
“They know we’re here,” she said, cocking her head when a bird screeched.
I swatted a mosquito buzzing around my thigh. “I picked the wrong day to wear shorts.”
We approached the little shanty and knocked. When no one answered, I stepped off the rickety porch and rounded the building. I passed a pile of bones, flies buzzing all around them.
When I reached the back, cold dread washed over me.
A brown bear paced toward us, a chain locked around its neck. I backed up, almost stumbling and falling on my ass. The beast let out a weak roar before sitting on its haunches.
“That’s a female,” Blue said quietly as she eased up beside me.
“How can you tell?”
“Intuition. She’s weak. I don’t like the looks of this.”
“Why is she chained up?”
Blue scanned the woods around us. “When the lower-class groups have trouble getting fresh blood for mating, they sometimes trade women. If the women give them trouble, they break them.”
I clenched my fist. “Should we free her?”
Blue shook her head. “That’s not what we’re here for.”
My gaze darted back to the bear. “We can’t just leave her like that.”
“She would probably maul you to death. I can fly to safety, but you—”
“I can flash.”
Blue pivoted toward me and folded her arms. “Then what? We’ll lose our chance of getting information, and on top of that, we’ll have bears hunting us down. This goes on more than you think. Freeing her won’t stop them from doing it again, and they’ll just find some other woman to replace her.”
“So you can just… walk away?”
She glanced over her shoulder at the bear. “Let’s get what we came here for. The leader isn’t the one meeting us, is he?”
“No. Some guy named Ferro. Father of one of the victims on our list. He died eleven months ago. Age twenty-one.”
We both turned at the sound of footsteps approaching from the left. Breaching a thicket of trees, a rugged-looking man approached us. His hair was black and shorn close to his head, his eyes dark and mysterious, and his chest hair covered him like a thin vest.
“Which one of you is Raven?” he asked, coming to an eventual stop.
I squared my shoulders, putting on an air of authority. “That would be me.”
“I’m Ferro. Frank said you wanted to talk about my son. We don’t have to report deaths to you. We’re out of territory limits.”
“I know. That’s not why we’re here.” I waved my hand at a mosquito whirring in front of my face. “The higher authority is looking to see what they can do for Shifters in the area. They want to make amends after that fiasco with the fighting rings.”
