Meanwhile, he nodded as if he accepted her words though she hadn’t said anything. “Enough people saw and then more when I refused to allow them to amputate my feet.”
What? Ouch.
“Among many shifters, that is a killing offense.”
And now she had another thousand questions, all of them ending in an exclamation point. So she started with the most obvious. “Killing offense because you didn’t want your feet amputated?”
He shook his head. “Letting the shifter secret out.”
Oh. Right. “So you’d be killed for telling? Or they’d be killed for knowing?” And how soon were angry grizzly-shifters going to come for her because she knew about the fur?
He sighed. “Both. Sometimes. That’s why I didn’t tell anyone.”
Oh shit. “So, um, the military knows about shifters now because you saved my brother’s life?”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t confessed that particular detail to your alpha.” She was guessing at the power structure among his kind, but he seemed to confirm it all with a nod.
“Many human things are forgotten when being a bear. And they don’t come always come back.” He glanced at her. “It slipped my mind.”
Yeah, right. “I thought you said you didn’t lie.”
“I don’t. I came back home and everything about my clan had changed. We had a new alpha and new rules, plus there had been some sort of attack on the children.”
“What?” A very real surge of fury went through her. She despised it when kids were targeted.
“I was angry about leaving the army, and I would not submit to Carl. I decided since I had left the army, I didn’t have to take orders from anyone anymore.” He swallowed loud enough for her to hear. “I was very angry.”
She heard the pain in the very emptiness of his tone. Her brother had cost him everything, and here she was demanding he help Vic again. But rather than face his pain, she shifted to her questions. “Who is Carl?”
“The new alpha.” His gaze wandered out the window to the passing trees as he clearly longed to be outside as a bear. Which meant she had to keep him talking.
“That’s why you went bear for so long? Because you were avoiding a showdown with your alpha?” Another guess. Another nod.
“Carl understood that I needed to find control of something. He suggested I go to the UP to get away from clan politics. Control myself and my life up there. I don’t think he meant for me to be a bear for ten months.”
Yeah, probably not. “And now?” she pressed.
He shrugged. “Now I will have to submit to Carl. Or not.”
Great. Male dominance taken to animal extreme. Not something she wanted to contemplate. But that was tomorrow’s problem after he fixed Vic. Meanwhile, she still had to keep him talking. “So back in Alaska, people figured out you could shift. Not just my brother, but the doctor. And the guards.”
“Yes.”
“And that means your CO, too.”
“He said no one would tell. He certainly couldn’t put it in a report. Who would believe it? But he expedited the paperwork for me to leave the military. Didn’t like having me under his command.”
And they were back to how Vic had destroyed his life. “So my brother’s stupidity cost you your military career.”
“Yes.” A wealth of fury in that word. But a moment later, he started to relax back against the seat. As if he were consciously releasing each muscle one by one. “Maybe it was time for me to leave. My grizzly had been changing. The mountain was too close.”
It sounded like rationalization. Or the beginning of acceptance. She couldn’t tell and maybe he wasn’t sure either. She opened her mouth to ask, but he held up his hand to stop her.
“I don’t have an answer,” he said. “Mount Denali is just a mountain. But it had a wildness to it that my grizzly liked very much. It made him more aggressive. Harder to contain.”
That wasn’t what she’d wanted to ask, but she’d go with it. “The mountain made it harder for you to stay human?”
