“I am keeping a close eye on her,” Chetan replied with an upraised eyebrow, his golden eyes flashing with mocking merriment.
“I am sure you are, does she strip down to her bare essentials to do her work or is there some other reason your interest is piqued?” Chris asked.
“Nope, that’s pretty much the whole reason,” Chetan replied, clapping Chris on the back in a conspiratorial manner as they began walking side by side.
“Is that where you’ve been? I wondered why my grumbling belly was so empty. Without you to spot the prey and me to kill it for us, both of us are going hungry. Did you see anything more practical than that woman in her skivvies?” Chris asked.
They wandered down the path, both magnificent men were at home in the wilderness and unconcerned with their nudity.
“Well, a few mice, voles and squirrels but nothing more substantial than a snack for you. I got me a hare a few hours ago, so I am pretty sated for a while,” Chetan replied.
“Keep a sharp eye out. She is probably scaring all the big game off the mountain and I haven’t had a decent meal, anything more than a salmon snack since I saw you last,” Chris complained.
They rounded the cove, to walk upon the side of Bear Lake. Its blue-green water was still at this time in the afternoon, only reflecting the green mountains behind the lake and the white snowy tips reaching to the clouds. There wasn’t much of a breeze coming from between the rocky peaks. Chris and Chetan each crouched down, scooping the cold water into the palms of their hands to take a much-needed drink. Chris leaned over a little too far and his bare toes slipped on a slimy rock, making him splash into the shallow water with an unintentional bit of floundering. When Chetan began laughing heartily at his perfidy, Chris hooked his foot behind Chetan’s knee, pulling him into the cold water as well.
They both began splash fighting and throwing small rocks at each other. Then they crawled out to a depth which they could begin swimming. Their effortless strokes through the water were as peaceful as two best friends could be.
“So, what are you going to do about her?” Chetan asked, swimming around, swirling in the water, then turning onto his back to bask in the waning light, floating easily on the water.
“I don’t know yet. I don’t want her to get hurt, but I do want her to leave the area of the lake before someone does hurt her. Do you think you could talk to some of the other shifters so that they will make a nuisance of themselves down by where she is building her cabin?” Chris asked.
“Sure, I can do an aerial survey and anyone who goes near that area, warn them of her and encourage them to persuade her to leave,” Chetan said with a sly glint in his hawklike eyes.
Suddenly, a splashing sound to the area at their backs drew their attention. They whirled, their heads popping up in an effort to scan the area for imminent danger.
Near the rocks on the edge of the lake, was a small brown bear. They each smiled in welcome as they recognized her. They saw the characteristic blue color on her muzzle and neck from laying in the dark-blue tubular flowers common in the meadows. She stood on her hind legs, showing her darker belly fur and light tan face. She swiped her paw as if to wave in greeting and recognition.
“Nebi! Come on in, we’re just taking a swim!” Chris shouted toward his closest childhood friend.
The small brown bear walked over toward the large black, sharp rock jutting out of the shallow area of the lake, nosing around, peering into the water with intense concentration.
“Yeah, shift and come over here, we are having a convo which might interest you,” Chetan invited.
Instantly, the small brown bear became a lithe, slender woman with deep-set black eyes and medium brown long hair. She stood in the shallow water, wading toward them with her high, round breasts bouncing with each carefully placed step. On her neck and near her chin was a slight shadow of blue staining, irregular in its appearance.
“You’ve been into the gentian flowers again, haven’t you?” Chris asked laughing at the blue stain which gave her away.
Nebi blushed bright red, the color complimenting the deeply-tanned olive tone of her skin. She swam out to meet the two men in the depths of the lake. Her delicate feminine stroke was slow, even and sure.
“What did you have to talk to me about? I have to get back to foraging. Some moron has been scaring the large game away, so it is slim pickings the past few days,” Nebi complained.
“Well, we’ve pretty much been discussing that same moron you are complaining about. Basically, Chris has been in a dispute with a neighboring human about the ownership of the land territory on the north side of Bear Lake. He is in a legal battle with this lady, Annabella Black, and now she is building a cabin over near the second cove off Bear Rock,” Chetan explained, in summary, the whole situation.
“And we have decided to send her a little unwelcomed attention to discourage her from wanting to build there. Are you in?” Chris asked, an evil crooked smile passing his lips.
“Being a big scary bear to terrorize a woman who is making life hell for me to get enough food to tide me over through winter? Oh, yeah, I am in. I can help by spreading the word to any other were-shifters whom I come across. She will be running down the mountain to escape all of us ‘wild’ animals!” Nebi said laughing, her mirth creating small ripples of waves away from her body.
All three heads turned to the sound of banging. Someone was hammering on the other side of Bear Lake. They grimaced at each other because that was the sound of their prey getting harder and harder to find. It was going to be a very bad winter here in the Alaskan subarctic for all of the animals and shifters at the top of the food chain. The three friends looked at each other knowingly.
Chapter 2
On the other side of the lake, Annabella stopped hammering, shook out her tired shoulders and walked over to the colorful flowers near the path. She leaned down to look closely at a quarter-sized yellow flower with a green center. It stood solitary on a long stem with dark green leaves. She picked the subalpine buttercup, bringing it to her nose to see if it had a smell. Just when she was doing so, she heard a rustling in the bows of an evergreen tree a few feet away. A blue grouse poked her gray, brown, and black head out of the green foliage to investigate any threat to her nest on the ground near a tree, which was partially covered by a thick greyish-brown log.
“Aww, aren’t you lovely?” Annabella murmured out quietly, careful not to scare the grouse.
She legally owned Bear Lake, which was willed to her by her grandparents. She was intent on starting a camping site for tourists, with kitschy little cabins and fireside talks as a yuppie money making scheme to bring burnt-out city dwellers in droves to enjoy the peaceful wildlife around Bear Lake. She looked around her, seeing a flash of color behind the surveyed area for the first cabin of her grand plan.
She walked to the rear of the beginning structure of a weathered wooden cabin to see a silvery blue butterfly nectaring on a variety of flowers, basking in the sunshine and fluttering its wings to attract mates. This one appeared to be male, as the females were not usually as brightly colored. The tourists were going to love this place, from its peaceful lake, to the beauty of the wildlife, to the pristine and undisturbed nature trails.
She walked down the path, a bit more vigilant now that she had encountered that frightening grizzly bear this morning. The trail from her cabin site led directly down to a large rock called Bear Rock mentioned on her survey. Beyond it was a haphazard group of smaller rocks with female mergansers taking a moment to bathe and preen with their duck elegance. The waterbirds were flapping their gray and white wings, using their beaks to peck at their dull orange legs and the water between them to find small fish and bugs.
Annabella heard the sound of a vehicle coming closer. She looked down at her dirty jeans and stained, ripped shirt ruefully. That must be the tree clearing team, they were earlier than she had expected. She hurried up the path toward the pad and the sparse progress s
he had made on the cabin.
“Ye Annabella?” A large, beefy man with a happy, ruddy face and a wayward shock of red hair asked.
“You must be Liam, my architect Derek told me you would be out here around three in the afternoon,” Annabella replied.
“So'tiz tree in de afternoon, lass!” He said laughing, his cheeks filling with even more blush, making his whole face red for a few seconds.
She looked down at her watch in surprise. It was 3:05 pm exactly. She had lost all track of time today. She self-mockingly grimaced, knowing she looked a bit foolish to the handsome muscular man.
“Yeah, well, I guess the nap I took was a little longer than I intended!” She said, lying. She didn’t want him to know she had worked all day and gotten so little done by herself. The progress on the cabin was going amazingly slow, but she insisted on doing it herself as much as she was able.
“Oyt ter wha chucker yer want de trees cleared, jist gie me a shape an' oi 'ill mark it wi' dis blue paint for de team the-morra,” he said, his thick accent obscuring most of the words.
“Oh, I want to keep things as wild and pristine as possible. I don’t want the trees to be clear cut. Can we mark individual trees instead of a whole area?” She asked.
“Sure, lass. Yer jist say de ward an' oi 'ill mark dem,” Liam replied, rummaging through the back of his Jeep for a spray can of blue paint.
They wandered around a space about five hundred square feet, with her telling him her grand plans. Each time she would point out a tree, he would raise the paint can. Then she would wave him off. She only ended up marking about a dozen trees for removal, thinning the area and making a space for a fire pit in the back.
When they were almost done, her stomach grumbled and she looked over at him.
“I guess that means that it is dinner time,” Annabella said, laughing.
She had brought dried jerky, nuts, dried fruits, and other low-perishable foods. She had hoped to have some time to fish in the lake to get fresh fish to fry, just as she had done all her life with her father and grandpa, but had been too busy to do so as of yet.
“Oi 'ill 'av de team oyt 'ere the-morra bright an' early ter remove dees trees. Derek said his man wud be back oyt next week if yer needed any 'elp,” Liam replied, making his way back toward his Jeep.
When Anabella sat down behind her tent, having her meager dried foods and listening to her satellite radio. She looked up suddenly when she heard a rustle in the bushes, then a soft padding of footsteps to her left. Then she heard a whoosh of an exhale and the scratch of nails on the ground as the 190-pound bear launched itself at her with all of its fury. She lost her footing as the bear lunged and clawed at her, pushing her down. She struggled and slipped out from under him, gaining purchase to keep getting back up. During one brief break in the attack, where she was able to slide between the bear’s claws and under his soft belly, she ran up the driveway toward the cabin.
The bear rounded a corner to be greeted by her, heaving and panting with a nail gun in her hand. He was growling with his huge mouth open and shaking the ground with his angry steps. The nail gun was trembling in her hands as she let the first couple of small nails fly toward him. She heard a distinct ‘umph’ sound when they hit their mark in his thick hide. The large bear sidled quickly away, growling as he briskly stepped back into the forest to be camouflaged by the foliage.
She heaved a relieved sigh but stood there vigilant with her arms trembling in fright still holding the nail gun in front of her. Her heart was hammering in her chest, its thrumming drowning out all other sounds of the forest at dusk. The tree canopy above was slowly waning from green to dark green to gray shadows. Soon, it would be completely dark. All she had was a small, circular tent to protect her and suddenly she was truly frightened. She thought that it would be safer to sleep in her little Subaru until the log cabin was built. Wasting no more time, she decided that she would go ahead and get in the car now with all of her food since that was probably what had lured the massive bear to her camp.
Chapter 3
Chris went away mad that he didn’t scare her, but he admired her pluck. Plus he got to see a great deal of her curvy backside and was very turned on by her. He liked strong women who wouldn’t back down. But for practical reasons, she needed to back down, because she was creating a lot of problems for everyone on the mountain and around Bear Lake.
Bears were an umbrella species, whose habitat was shared by many others, large and small. It was Chris’ moral duty to protect the vulnerable animals and shifters who depended upon this mountain and lake for their very survival. His family and ancestors had been on Bear Lake for as long as anyone could remember. They had been the dominant resident of this land, as werebears, living in harmony with humans who camped and fished here for a couple of days at a time.
Until now, there had been no permanent human residents which would upend the delicate cycle of life being invisibly played out across the subarctic meadows surrounding Bear Lake.
Annabella meant to change that pattern. The animals could deal with a day here or there of disruption, but the more days of human presence which were strung together, the more species struggled and the cycle of predator-prey interactions intensified.
Chris was determined to protect this fragile ecosystem, the livelihood of his and his friends. This was a no place for a petite blondie. Sooner or later, with a little help from other shifters, she will get the message and pack her things faster than you say Bear Lake.
What a pity to never see your sexy curves again, Annabella, Chris thought for a second and then headed deeper into the forest.
Chapter 4
Annabella was standing in front of her partially built cabin looking over the survey, trying to compare it to the marks which the surveyor had made on the ground. Her eyes were trained downward, deciphering the little symbols on the blue paper. Suddenly, without any warning, she felt the wave of air rush toward her as an enormous hawk swooped down and grabbed the survey pages from her hands. He flew back up into the sky with the papers in his talons. She saw the majestic hawk fly into a one hundred foot tall tree and perch there, his beak picking the survey into little pieces of confetti which rained down slowly to the bottom of the tree and was picked up by the wind to be spread in every direction.
Annabella let out a deep sigh. She was familiar with the roughness of this country, she had no illusion that getting the tourist site would require her to jump over many hurdles and obstacles, but this? She respected and appreciated the nature in all its ways, but, at the same time, she was a tough, determined woman working hard to make her dreams come true.
“What a story to tell the visitors over a campfire,” she said out loud and walked to her car to retrieve her laptop where the survey was stored in a digital form.
***
Over the next couple weeks, Chris continued sending his friends to threaten Annabella. He was trying to convince her through intimidation in their animal forms that Bear Lake was too dangerous for unsuspecting, city-dwelling tourists because they would be harmed by the wildlife. Several shifters assaulted her, including Chetan, the hawk shifter, who did his own attack in several forays on different days as he oversaw the slow progress of her rickety cabin.
“What’s happening over at Princess’ camp today?” Chris asked.
“Well, I have watched the other attacks. Annabella is not intimidated one little bit. She slept in her car the first few nights after your visit, but since then, she has been sleeping in her half-built cabin. She has nerves of steel. I don’t think this plan is going to work. You have finally met your match,” Chetan replied, mocking his stubborn friend.
“It has to work! It is my moral right to the land because it has been my family’s hunting and living territory for many generations. We just have to turn up the intensity of the harassment until she gets the hint that she is not welcome here!” Chris said, pounding his fist on a large boulder.
“Well, I notic
e that you have kept this silent war to attacks which are meant to intimidate her but have not allowed anyone to harm her. Is it time to take it to the next level?” Chetan asked, sensing his mate’s emotional attachment to the woman. He was curious to see how his aloof bear friend was going to handle this new challenge.
“I have another way to make her bend to my will. She will be mine, tonight,” Chris said, his eyes alight with burning desire.
***
The trees had slipped into the cover of grays and blacks, with only a ray of light passing diagonally to them from the clearing over the lake. Chris walked slowly, his thighs chafing against one another making the smallest of sound. He crept around the camp site, surveying the progress that Annabella had made on the small square-shaped cabin. All of the walls were now up, but the roof had not been raised. The top of the walls was covered by a thick blue tarp which was anchored on nails to the sides of the cabin. He stopped any movement when he heard her sigh and turn over, the covers quietly rustling and her cot groaning with her change in position.
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