Chapters 10

Chapter 10: Meeting of the Clans

Wrenley

Jaxon continued to show her around Bear Tower Heights throughout the morning. There were more than just the homes pushed around the outside of the town. There were fields and playgrounds and children running around everywhere. Yards were filled with laughter, with games and whispers and giggling. She and Jaxon were watched as they strolled down the quaint roads.

Wrenley found herself smiling, reminiscing about what it had been like to be a child. The fun and carefree days of playing outside and watching people go by. Before she'd gone to DeadEnd. Before she'd been through more than a decade of training for a fairy tale that she never got to see.

Her smile faded but Jaxon kept her engaged in the liveliness of the town. He introduced her to families, walked her through buildings that she had shown interest in. He'd answered her questions about what they did for occupations, for fun, to pass the time.

But before she had the chance to ease into a conversation about this whole mate business, a lyrical chime filled the air. Jaxon grinned at her in anticipation.

“It's time for the meeting,” he told her. “Wait until you see.”

She wasn't nearly as excited as he was. Being surrounded by dozens of people she didn't know, who all looked at her like she was a stranger. Like she shouldn't be there. How vastly she stood out as being different.

This stroll through town had definitely shown her that. She didn’t look like those of Bear Tower Heights. Her hair was too light, her eyes a different shade. She wasn’t even shaped quite like the other women. She was average in height and shape for those on the Outside. But here, she felt small and too curvy.

The women of this story were tall and the men even taller. The women were long legged, lean, and muscular. Still feminine and beautiful but it made Wrenley look soft and fragile if she got too close.

Jaxon led her to the back of the town. There was a large field with stadium seating surrounding what looked like a parade deck. The middled was tiled with colorful smooth stone. There were large totems surrounding the tiled area that were quite obviously different types of bears, much like those that had been surrounding the ceremony site in the Women of Chaos’s village. They looked all too familiar, like they were staring down at Wrenley, challenging her. Expecting something from her. Trying to get her to listen to what they were saying.

Only, she couldn’t hear the words.

There were people piling into the seating from all sides. Only as they started to gather in the seats did she notice how very different they could look and how they sat with those who were clearly from the same clan.

But she noticed that she had already been familiar with the telltale characteristics of the different clans from her time with the Women of Chaos. There were those with the smooth brown hair and bright green eyes that she thought were probably the Kodiac clan. And then there were those with the really dark brown hair and the dark, dark black eyes like Jaxon, Cain, and Rawson who were likely residents here at Bear Tower Heights and the Aspen clan. Especially since their numbers in the stands were vastly larger.

Then there were the light, fine features of the snowy blonde and bright eyed Creek clan. And the Indigos with those with light hair and eyes set into the backdrop of dark skin. They were probably some of the most striking people Wrenley had ever seen.

“I'm apparently important now,” Jaxon told her, rolling his eyes in annoyance as he called her attention back to him. “I think he's full of shit, and I think he's making a mistake, but there's a part of me that hopes this works out.”

Wrenley had no idea what he was talking about. She raised a brow and he smiled at her. A smile that made her stomach flip and her heart race. No, he wasn't gorgeous. Okay, fine. She could admit that he was absolutely breathtaking. But that didn’t change the fact that he was a stranger and she was going to keep being stubborn until he let this whole mate thing go.

“Anyway, I promised Rawson that he'd have my support for this meeting. So, hang out here, and just have a look.”

Wrenley nodded. What else was she going to do? She needed to identify who the elders were and figure out why the trees were bleeding. She needed to stop them. Heal them? Cut them down maybe and start over?

Perhaps that was the easy part of it. Maybe the forest just needed to be flattened and replanted.

Wrenley sat on the bench and watched as Jaxon crossed the parade deck. It was only as she watched him walk away that she realized who were most likely the important people of the clan. They had gathered in the middle. Rawson was there. As was Cain. And they were both watching her. Wrenley looked away, continuing to study the people around her.

There was a family with a small child sitting close by. The child looked nothing like the family. But he smiled tentatively and looked around with curiosity as he hung on to a small stuffed bear. Wrenley couldn't help but wonder if this was one of the children that the men had taken from the village they raided.

She hadn't had much time to really think about what had happened at the village with her imprisonment that followed and then the whole hell that had taken up the last couple days, but the fact that there had been so many cleared out according to Jaxon, meant that they'd known that Aspen clan had been closing in. Could there be something more to it? Had Aurelia anticipated their arrival after Maz’s murder? Had they known who they’d taken and known that it wouldn’t go unanswered?

The fact that three quarters of the village had already been evacuated meant that they'd absolutely known something was about to happen. But now that she was thinking about it, Wrenley had to question what Aurelia had really planned. According to her, they built their entire existence on retribution and yet when their chance was knocking at their door, they ran away instead of fighting.

Was their plan to kill one innocent person at a time instead of the ones who they were convinced had pushed them from their homes? They were just going to kill the solitary individuals whom they found outside of the walls of Bear Tower Heights? Or was there something else going on? Maybe they hadn't really told Wrenley the whole truth - what their plans had been. She'd been a stranger, after all.

Her thoughts were interrupted when a man walked by. He was tall with a lingering smile under light blue eyes with hair that was white with black streaks as if he dyed it to resemble pinstripes. He smiled at her, the corner of his lips lifting as he continued his way by, watching her with a lazy smile and his head bowed to look at her through his long lashes.

Wrenley watched him but noticed the distinct difference between her reaction to him and her reaction to the three men who took her from being whipped at the prison. It wasn't that this man was any less beautiful; it wasn't that she didn't find him incredibly attractive. But her body did not respond of its own accord as if it had known him. As if it longed for him in a way that it shouldn’t.

She rolled her eyes, internally scolding herself for being ridiculous. The sky did not choose her future. She would not let it choose who she was with. She refused to let her life be dictated any more than it already was by being thrust into a fairy tale she was not prepared for.

Just as the men in the middle of the parade deck had started to gather around in some kind of orderly formation, a beautiful woman sat next to her. Wrenley glanced at her but paid her no attention except that she was sitting a little closer than was necessary. She also felt incredibly inferior next to the golden beauty that sat so primely on the bench.

Could she be Goldilocks? Ohhh. And the three bears….? The three men who’d taken her from the prison and claimed she was their mate? Although, aside from the bears on top of the totems, she’d yet to see how the bears truly fit into this.

The man who most closely resembled the population at Bear Tower Heights took a step forward and raised his hands, calling the crowd to a hush.

“Welcome brothers and sisters. Welcome to Bear Tower Heights. I hope you have enjoyed your stay this far. Over the coming weeks, I beg that the sky bless you with joy and entertainment.”

She'd expected cheering and clapping, even catcalling. But it was something more animalistic than that. It wasn't quite a growl but it was a low thrum on the air that was accompanied by a steady rhythm of what she thought might be drums. But as she looked for them, she thought that maybe the men were stomping their heels steadily on the stadium seating. A constant rhythm that sounded like the drums of war mingling in the air with the low vibrations of a haunting growl.

“I'd like to formally welcome the Indigo clan that has come to us from Free Sun,” the man continued. He turned in the direction of the people with the most distinctive coloring - the light hair over dark skin - and he bowed ever slightly, a gentle inclination of his head and shoulders.

Wrenley looked that way, studying that part of the crowd. And she saw that it wasn't just the light hair over dark skin, but it was also their starkly contrasted opposites among them. And for some reason, her gaze met that of the man who just walked by a few minutes ago. He smiled. She looked at him and she couldn't help but return his grin.

“He's a cute one,” the girl next to Wrenley said, leaning into her with a whisper.

Wrenley glanced at her, shrugging. “He's alright,” she conceded. But she didn't know this woman any more than she knew that man. And she wasn’t going to get chummy with her.

The woman giggled, bringing a hand over her mouth and Wrenley had to stop herself from raising her brow. Did grown women really giggle? 

“Oh, come on,” she teased. “It's not every day you catch the eye of a gorgeous bear.”

Wrenley almost pointed out that she’d recently caught the eyes of three. This one just happened to be the fourth and she was hoping she could get rid of them all. This wasn't what she signed up for.

But with a sigh, she tried to let all that go. There was no use in griping over it. She was here now; she had a job to do that was no less important in Goldilocks and the Three Bears than it would have been in Snow White. She didn't have to give in to their weird beliefs. She didn't have to live at whatever the sky was supposedly telling them. But she could play along long enough to figure out what was going on, where she needed to go, and how she needed to fix this bloody fairy tale.

“That's Inyas,” the woman next to her said when Wrenley had turned back to the man in the middle. “He is the Primal of Aspen clan.”

Wrenley nodded. So, it was obvious she wasn't from Bear Tower Heights, despite sitting with them at this gathering. But she wasn't about to give this woman any indication that she shouldn't be here.

Inyas shifted to face another clan. He gave them the same greeting with the same slight bow, and as he went around the circle of surrounding visiting clans on the stadium seats, welcoming each in their turn, the low thrum of a growl and the stomps of the war drum rushed through her blood making her shiver. For some unknown reason, it brought a smile to her face.

When the greetings were through, Inyas and who Wrenley presumed were the Primals of the four visiting clans stood in the middle and clasped hands. They chanted a beat that slowly rose in volume, filling the air with a magical quality that had all the little hairs on Wrenley's body standing on end.

She closed her eyes to listen, feeling how their words seemed to speak to her blood. Telling her a story and wrapping her in their chant. It was almost as if something deep inside her reflexively knew this. It wasn’t familiar, exactly, but it was… missed?

When they broke apart again, they turned to the crowd and as one, the five Primals called out to the audience that they were not to be separated by clan anymore. It was time for them to intersperse and sit among their brethren as one large family.

Wrenley was a little startled when everybody around her surged to their feet. She stood but she didn't move while everybody else scattered. It didn't take her long to realize that the Primals’ words had been taken quite literally. They were no longer to sit in five separate clans but to mix among each other as one big family.

By the time everyone was seated again, Wrenley found that the woman was still at her side but that the man of the Indigo clan whose eye she caught had sat at her other side. He smiled at her, and Wrenley felt herself flush as she turned to look back at the Primals.

Behind them were smaller groups of people that had stayed where they started. Important people if she had to guess. As she studied them, she found Rawson, Cain, and Jaxon among them. She thought back to the structure of the clans that the men had told her about in Rawson's room after they'd initially cleaned her wounds. She assumed that the other small groups standing with the Primals were the individuals in those positions for their clans as well.

And the three men that claimed her as their mate were staring at her. She was too far away to guess at what their expressions were but if she had to take a guess, they weren't happy with the man who sat next to her. She smiled inwardly, enjoying their irritation. She wasn't theirs and she wasn't going to be theirs. Besides, she hadn’t invited this new man to sit there.

Before she'd really had time to think about how she could use this to her advantage, Inyas called the meeting back to order. But as he and the other Primals spoke, murmurs and quiet discussions arose around her. Wrenley realized that the meeting was there for anybody who wanted to listen but that they weren't required to.

She tried to hear what they were saying, especially as they started speaking about the Women of Chaos and their recent raid of the village, the confiscation of the children, and prisoners they had brought back. She tried to listen further when they started talking about the mating ceremony that would take place next week, if for no other reason than to better understand it. There were too many voices distracting her. Even though they weren't loud, they made it hard to concentrate.

Wrenley wanted to get closer when they started talking about the bloody forest. After a few minutes of frustration, she sat back with and glared at how far away the Primals were.

“It's just about the trees,” the man next to her said and she shivered at the tone of his voice. The way it caressed her spine, making her feel all… melty.

She looked at him, seeing his small, flirty smile.

“Hi,” he said. “I'm Raider.”

Wrenley nodded and gave him her name.

“You're new here?” he asked, and she nodded again.

“I'm visiting,” she said.

“Where from?”

She knew he was asking which clan but even sitting here among them with their variety of appearances, she didn't fit into any of them. “I'm from the Outside.”

He tilted his head to the side as he considered her, nodding slightly. “And how long do you plan to visit?” he asked.

Wrenley shrugged. “What can you tell me about the trees?”

His smile tilted up. “There are a lot of stories about the trees and why they bleed. Some say it's our ancestors filled with sorrow and fighting off their death for how far we've strayed from the sky’s blessing.”

“Uh huh. And what do you think really happened to the trees?”

He chuckled. “You don't believe that?”

At first, she wanted to scoff but she thought it might be rude. This was their culture, their belief system. Who was she to decide if it was all hogwash? She was sure that any kind of organized religion she could tell them about from the Outside would be equally looked at as if it were superstitious and weird. So, she kept her judgmental thoughts to herself concerning the sky, even though she didn't want to because the three men were pretty determined that the sky had chosen her as a mate for them.

“No,” she said flatly. “I'd like to hear something more tangible. Something that can be reversed.”

Raider nodded thoughtfully. “When the meeting is over, we can go check out the trees. See if there’s anything that might be a hint as to what makes them bleed. And I'll tell you everything I know regarding the trees and why they bleed for us.”

“I was told only the elders know that information.”

He grinned. “I was a very inquisitive child.” The humor in his voice made her smile despite herself. She didn't want to like him. She didn't want to like any of them. Her first order of business was to fix the fairy tale. Only then could she consider what comes next.

“Take him up on his offer,” the woman on her other side said and Wrenley glanced her way. For some reason, she was imagining that she knew the woman’s voice. She gave Wrenley a sickeningly sweet smile. “He'll keep you safe.”

Wrenley tried to give her one in return. Hopefully turning back to Raider, it would discourage this woman from talking to her again. “How long is the meeting?” she asked him.

Raider shrugged. “It won't be long. This is just the prelude so that all the clans can make sure that they're up to date on what's happening around this part of the story.”

“And you're not a deputy or something?”

He laughed. “No. I'm just a bear.”