“Hey, brother, how you doing?”
Milo glanced up, and his dark eyes, which had been distant and sad as he stared into the middle of nowhere, lit up a little. “Thank you for coming to get me. I knew you would.”
“If I’d known you needed me to come get you, I would have done it ages ago.” He opened his arms, offering a hug, but he wasn’t sure Milo would want to take it.
“Now, I know you guys thought I just ran off, and I did to begin with.” Milo got up, came to him, grabbing him and clinging hard. “I told those guys, all of them, that you would come for me. I told the bears not to lose hope.”
Milo smelled like War’s body wash, which was a good thing. That meant he had the antiseptic and yet sort of unwashed smell off his skin. He had been hurt when they found him. “I brought you brownies.”
“I can smell them. They smell amazing, but I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to eat them without barfing.”
“I brought a salad too. It’s full of fruit and all sorts of yummy stuff, but if you’d rather I heated you up some soup or something, War always has some in his freezer.”
Milo smiled faintly. “He does seem to be kind of a nurturing bear for such a big grumpy guy.”
“All three of these grizzlies are stunning and wonderful,” Race admitted “They really took care of me after I got tranqued by a dart-wielding asshole who had a drone chasing me.”
“It sounds like we have a lot of stories to share. Warrick was telling me that Nolan ended up staying where we grew up for years.”
The familiar old guilt tried to flood him, but he could feel Con in his head, soothing him, pushing it away. His mate just had no interest in letting him feel bad for himself. “If I could have found a way to get him out, I would have. He had to do it himself.”
“Sometimes that’s the only way, brother.” Milo squeezed him again before letting go. “And I would love some soup. Can we put your salad in the fridge so we can eat it later?”
“Of course, absolutely. This is your freedom meal, bud.”
Milo snorted. “Freedom meal. I like that.”
“Tell me about the shift blockers.” He said it while he put the salad away, then went to the freezer and pulled out one of those cube containers so that he could grab two big cubes of the soup and put them in a pan.
“Can I wait till Nolan comes? I know he will. He’ll hear us talking. That way I only have to tell the story once.”
“Absolutely.” He started to thaw the soup and they kind of sat there in companionable silence, sipping coffee until War wandered in, nose working, and got more soup cubes out to put in the pan.
War didn’t really talk much; he just sort of grunted. It wasn’t long until Nolan and Rye showed up and then Connal wandered in from the back door wearing a pair of SpongeBob pants and a T-shirt that said, “I am the walrus!”
Race had to grin at his mate, because that was the most ridiculous T-shirt he’d ever seen.
They all plopped down and were served soup along with a loaf of crusty bread.
It was Nolan who finally cleared his throat and nodded at Milo. “Are you ready to tell us your story now?”
“No. But I think I’d better.” Milo sighed, dipping his spoon into his soup and stirring it to cool it off, Race thought. “After I ran away from home, I got in with a bunch of young guys like me who were trying to find their own way without a family or clan. We did okay, moving from place to place and staying one step ahead of any of the assholes who wanted to do bad things to us and in front of the law, who would have arrested us for vagrancy, and then we would have ended up being experimented on or something.”
Race shuddered because he had seen that too. It was never a good thing. It always ended badly. Either scenario.
“Anyway, I was in Cheyenne when they got me. I got separated from a couple of my roommates in a bar one nightand the next thing I know I was tranqued and carted down here to Denver, where they stuck me in a warehouse. They started shooting me up full of anti-shifting medication.”
Nolan swallowed hard, the click of his Adam’s apple audible. “So you’ve been in one of those places for years?”
Milo shook his head. “No. I managed to get out, and I stayed one step ahead of them for a long time, helping other guys escape. About two years ago I got caught when I was doing a raid on a warehouse that was full of shifters who really couldn’t defend themselves. We’re talking rabbits and ermines and raccoons and stuff, no match for big predatory shifters.” He sipped some of his soup as if gathering his thoughts. “Anyway, they managed to get me good this time, and they’ve been using me to take care of the other shifters to a certain extent. They knew I wouldn’t just leave the others to their mercies.”
“The guy we took alive, the one who went to Quin. Is he going to be able to help break up that operation?” That was Con, who just looked sad.
“If you can get him to talk.” Milo shrugged one shoulder.
“Oh he’ll talk,” War said grimly. “Trust me.”
Milo sipped some more soup, color coming into his cheeks as he stared at War. “Good. I hope he does because those guys need to go down, although you took a good many of them out of the house.”
