Staying out here in the dark no longer seemed like such a good idea. She carried her bucket of water to the cabin, rapped briskly on the door to give warning in case Luke was changing clothes, and slipped inside.
Luke was unfolding bedding from one of the totes. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
Inga hadn’t realized that her alarm was visible, but the dog was looking at her, too. “There are bears around,” she said, setting down the bucket.
“Aren’t you a bear?” Luke asked, and then hastily amended, “We. We’re bears.”
“Yes, but wild bears can still be dangerous to us.”
She had seen no signs of anything trying to break into the cabin, but now they had food smells and other temptations inside. Inga lowered the heavy bar across the door, designed to keep out exactly this sort of hazard. She had a moment’s concern for the griffins outside, but they were wild creatures with wings, after all.
“The griffins will be an early warning system if we do get a bear sniffing around. If we hear anything out there, one of us can shift and give a few good growls to drive it off.”
“Griffins? Is that what those are?”
Inga had forgotten she’d promised to fill him in later. “Uh, yeah. Except there are different kinds of griffins. My sister-in-law—” She stopped abruptly; it was so easy to talk to him that she was halfway to forgetting that Lucy’s shift form was very much a secret. “—can tell you more about it, but anyway, yeah, we call them trash griffins, though I guess it’s a bit rude. They’re basically the griffin equivalent of seagulls.”
Luke stared at her. “I never heard of anything like that.”
“Apparently it’s a thing! I’ve only ever seen them in the town I’m from.”
“Where’s that again?”
“Westerly Cove. It’s an outport down the coast a ways.”
“Outport?”
“You really aren’t from around here, huh? Little fishing towns. I grew up in one.” Inga caught herself on the verge of breaking her earlier promise to herself not to press Luke about his past. Firmly she turned her attention to other matters, like food. “There are more sandwiches in my pack, which we should probably eat before they spoil, since we can’t refrigerate them. Let me see if I can find something to go with them. I bet you’re hungry.”
“Starving,” Luke said with gusto.
As a shifter, he would be; his body was no doubt currently pouring resources into healing from his ordeal. The dog thumped its tail, reminding Inga that there was another mouth to feed as well. She looked over the canned goods on the shelves. They seemed dry and undamaged and mostly within their expiration dates. Inga selected two large cans of stew and opened them into a tin saucepan.
While that heated on top of the stove, she sniffed an open but tightly lidded can of coffee, shrugged, and filled an old-school coffeepot with water and a few scoops of medium roast. “I hopeyou don’t mind cowboy coffee. Dad always used to insist that if you don’t have grounds in your campout coffee, you might as well get a suite at the Hilton.”
Luke laughed softly. “I used to be in the Army. I’ll take coffee in any condition that has caffeine.”
“Really? My brother was in the Army for a stint.” Then she remembered some of the things that had happened to her brother toward the end of that time. As she placed the coffeepot on the stovetop, she wondered if Luke had gone through something similar.
Her brother Eren and some of his teammates had volunteered for a special project that turned out to involve having their shift animals experimented on. Maybe that explained why Luke seemed to have a peculiar relationship with his own bear.
“Can I do anything to help with dinner?” Luke asked. He sounded a bit plaintive; it must be tough to sit there smelling food without any other distractions.
“It’s about done. Just let me get the rest of it.” She opened the top of the backpack, wincing at the condition the baby griffins had left it in. The sandwiches were tightly wrapped in plastic and under a few other items, so they were fine, although sadly diminished. She had thought she would have enough food in the cooler to last her for days, but for two people with shifter-sized appetites plus a dog, the sandwiches would be gone tonight. And from there, they’d be down to canned goods and whatever they could catch in the cove.
Still ... they were bears. If they had to survive on fish until her dad and brothers came to find her, or she got tired of waiting and decided to walk out, they would be fine.
Since the cabin used to regularly host Inga’s family, there were plenty of dishes, neatly washed and put away. She set the table for two, put the most wrecked-looking of the sandwicheson a plate, and set it down for the dog. He ate it in two bites and wagged his tail. Inga filled a bowl with water for him, which he lapped noisily without getting up.
“That’s a really well-behaved dog.”
“Yeah,” Luke said, looking at the dog. “He is, isn’t he?”
While she was setting the table, Luke had gone ahead and shaken out blankets and sleeping bags from the tote to make up both bunks. Now he was sitting on one of the bottom bunks, rubbing his bare foot with his thumb.
“There’s a first-aid kit in my pack,” Inga said. “Even though we heal fast, you might want to clean those scrapes.”
“I think it’s okay.” Luke shook his head. “I’m not used to—” He broke off sharply.
