Page 26 of The Bear Between Us

Volume six contains the entries from around the time I was seven or eight. She documents the first signs of the Forest God's attention, small things, animals behaving strangely near the property, the ley line under the forest becoming more active. She also documents what she did about it.

She dampened my magic.

Not removed it. Dampened it, suppressed the upper registers of my capacity, kept me operating at a level that was functional enough not to raise questions but limited enough that I wouldn't draw the god's attention before she could prepare me. She did it so carefully that I never felt the ceiling. I just thought that was where my power stopped.

She has her grandmother's potential and her mother's stubbornness, she wrote in the margin of that entry, in plain handwriting without the secondary notation, like she forgot herself for a moment. She will be furious when she understands. She should be. I am doing the only thing I know how to do, which is buy her time to be herself before the forest claims what it thinks it owns. I am sorry, Elowen. I have always been sorry.

I close the journal.

The workroom is very quiet. The mark pulses steadily against my wrist, present and certain, and I sit with the weight of what I've read and let it be as heavy as it is without trying to manage it yet.

My entire life. My magic, my ceiling, my careful controlled practice. All of it shaped around something my grandmother knew was coming and couldn't stop, only delay.

I stack the journals and cover them with my jacket, which is not a rational thing to do, but I do it anyway.

When Kaedric appears in the doorway an hour later I tell him the journals confirm the bloodline connection and the ley line mapping, both of which are useful and both of which are true. I tell him my grandmother knew more about the Forest God than she shared with me. Also true.

I don't tell him about the cultivation. About the seven generations. About the entry written in plain handwriting in the margin of a volume six page that I have already memorized without meaning to.

Not because I don't trust him.

Because I need to be the first person to understand what I am before I let anyone else weigh in on it.

20

KAEDRIC

The first breach hits the northeastern section at two forty-seven in the morning.

I'm already awake. I've been awake for an hour, running the overnight intelligence reports and sitting with the shape of what Brennan's land acquisition research revealed, the eleven years of preparation, the founder's name he delivered late yesterday afternoon that I'm still working through the implications of. A name attached to a conservation corporation with deep pockets and deeper patience and a specific and documented interest in every significant site within twenty miles of the forest.

When the alert comes through I'm dressed and moving before the second one hits.

The second breach opens on the southern perimeter forty seconds after the first. Then the eastern creek line. Then the northwestern ridge, which we reinforced three days ago and which they're hitting anyway, harder than the other sections, with enough force that the two pack members on that rotation are calling for backup within the first minute.

Four simultaneous breaches. Coordinated to the second.

I hit the operations room and Brennan is already there, map on the table, running the response allocation.

"Northwestern ridge is the primary push," he says without looking up. "The other three are diversionary. They want us to spread thin and then concentrate everything on the ridge while our southern and eastern coverage is depleted."

"Don't give it to them. Hold the diversionary responses at minimum viable and weight everything to the ridge." I pull on my jacket. "Where's Torin?"

"Already at the eastern line. He called it diversionary thirty seconds before I did."

I move toward the door. "Keep me on comms. I'm going to the ridge."

The northwestern ridge in the dark and at speed is difficult terrain, uneven ground and dense undergrowth and a slope that requires attention even when you're not heading toward an active boundary breach. I cover it in seven minutes, which is faster than I've done it in daylight, and what I find when I reach the ridge crest is worse than the reports suggested.

There are seven of them on our side of the boundary already. Not the twisted quadrupedal things from the early weeks. These are larger, more coherent in form, and they're moving with a tactical awareness that the earlier creatures didn't possess. Two pack members are holding the line but barely, and a third is down, not dead, but out of the fight.

I shift.

The bear is faster on this terrain than the man and I cover the distance to the nearest creature in four seconds and the fight is immediate and total and requires every piece of my attention for the next three minutes. The pack members on the ridge recalibrate around my presence and the defensive line steadies.

We push them back to the boundary.

Then the southern line opens up.