by Roxie Noir
When she caught Ariana looking, Jake practically dragging her behind him, she smiled the tiniest bit.
And then she winked.
Back in the cool night, standing between their cars, Jake turned to face Ariana, exhaling as though he’d been holding his breath for hours. “I’m sorry,” he started.
“They’re shifters,” Ariana said, surprising even herself.
“How could you tell?” Jake asked, his brows furrowing.
Ariana shrugged. How had she been able to tell?
“They just have that look,” she said. “That, plus they freaked you out so much, and the woman winked at me.”
Jake didn’t answer, but Ariana could see his jaw flexing as he ground his teeth together. “We need to go back to the cabin,” he said.
“Our food’s going to get cold.”
Jake shook his head. “You need to stay with me for a while.”
Ariana balked. “What? No.”
“I need to know where you are and that you’re safe.”
“You don’t even have internet! How am I supposed to work?”
He was heading toward his truck already.
“Jake!” she shouted. He turned his head. “You have to tell me what’s going on and that is not optional.”
He put one hand on her face, bent down, and kissed her very, very gently. Despite herself, Ariana felt her resistance melting away at the touch of those wonderful lips.
“I promise I’ll explain at the cabin,” he said.
“Can I at least get my stuff?” she asked.
Jake sighed.
They were in and out of her new apartment in five minutes, Jake continually pacing through both rooms, checking the locks on the windows, casting annoyed glances at Ariana. Finally she had her stuff and they left together in Jake’s truck, her watching nervously as he hit fifty-five, sixty, sixty-five on the narrow, windy country roads. She began to wish that she’d driven on her own. At least then she’d have her car there, and she could leave if she had to. It didn’t escape her at all that she barely knew this man, and despite how she felt about him — wildly infatuated, head-over-heels — he could still be an axe murderer, and now she was going to his backwoods cabin alone with him, with no real way to escape.
Once inside he locked the door behind her and lowered a bar across it.
“Whoa,” she said.
“It’s just for my peace of mind,” he told her, and crossed the cabin to check on the back door. Meanwhile, she turned the oven on.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I’m reheating our food,” she said. “It’s gone cold, and I’m hungry.”
He relaxed a little. “Of course, sorry,” he said. “Thanks.”
Ariana just shook her head. “How about you tell me what’s going on?”
Jake collapsed onto a sofa and patted a cushion. Ariana flopped next to him.
“I’m not the only shifter around,” he started.
“Right,” Ariana said.
“Most shifters live in packs, and I used to be part of one.”
“Okay.”
“I grew up part of the grizzly pack in Alaska, and we have some bad history.”
Ariana settled in.
2
Jake
Fifteen Years Earlier
Fjords, a little town on the southern coast of Alaska
On the movie theater screen in front of them, one man dressed in black leather shot at another man wearing the same thing. The second man dodged. A sixteen-year-old Jake turned his neck to look behind him at the teenage couple furiously making out, and then turned back to the screen, grossed out.
“They still at it?” asked Coleman, another teenager, stuffing his face with popcorn.
“Yeah,” said Jake.
“I hope their braces get stuck together.”
“I hope he comes in his down jacket and has to explain it to his mom.”
The boys both giggled. Besides the two of them and the couple with their tongues down each other’s throats, there were a few scattered people in the front of the theater, but that was it. Fjords, Alaska, only had one tiny movie theater, but they could barely fill it. Even so, it was nearly a miracle that none of the shifter pack besides them was in the theater: Boone, the guy sucking face behind them, was a shifter but Kaitlyn, the girl, wasn’t, and they didn’t need pack leadership figuring out what they were up to.
“You want more popcorn?” asked Coleman, shaking the few kernels left at the bottom of the XXL-sized bag. “We’re almost out.”
“How many times you refilled that thing?” asked Jake.
“Tim’s working the stand so he’s giving it to me for free,” Coleman said, grinning.
From the front of the theater, someone shushed them.
“Sure,” whispered Jake, and Coleman got up and left.
After the movie they walked back to the car they’d all come in together, crunching over the gravel parking lot in show boots and down parkas. Boone still had his arm around Kaitlyn, both of them rosy-cheeked and smug.
“I thought that movie was pretty cool,” said Coleman. “You ever think about stuff like that? Like, what if this is all a dream and we’re really plugged in somewhere?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Jake thought he saw something move. He looked, but there was nothing there, just the cold dark of early springtime.
“I really enjoyed the movie,” said Boone.
“Me too,” said Kaitlyn, giggling.
Jake rolled his eyes and reached for his keys. As the first to turn sixteen, it was his job to drive all his dumb friends around.
“We call the backseat!” shouted Boone. Kaitlyn giggled louder. Coleman rolled his eyes dramatically. Jake pulled his keys out, trying his best to ignore them.
But then, as they closed in on his car, two huge trucks drove up behind them, high beams on, and stopped.
The three boys froze. They recognized the trucks; Kaitlyn was the only one to react, shading her eyes and shouting, “Turn your lights off, numbnuts!”
Three huge men got out of the trucks, none of them wearing jackets even in the cold Alaska night. Kaitlyn’s eyes went wide at the men, built like tanks.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just really bright...”
One of them strode up to her, and before she could react, backhanded her across the face. She fell to the gravel, unconscious.
With a roar, Boone charged at the man, all six feet and one hundred forty pounds of him flailing furiously. He tried to punch the man who’d backhanded Kaitlyn and missed completely, the huge man easily dodging out of the way. Before any of them could blink, the man had both of Boone’s hands twisted behind his back, the teenager nearly in tears.
Without thinking, Jake started to shift. The rage and the animal urge to attack flowed through his veins and he felt the fur sprout, felt himself grow bigger and stronger — and then, before he could react, another of the men had him a rough headlock, forcing Jake to his knees.
“Shift back,” the other man said, his voice a low growl, into his ear. “Shift back or I swear to God I’ll break your neck.” His hands tightened, just to make sure he got his point across.
Jake shifted back. Coleman stood, shaking, in the middle of the half-circle. He hadn’t moved a muscle.
“Let’s go talk somewhere,” one of the men said, and they forced the boys into the trucks.
“I’m not leaving her here,” Boone managed to choke out, struggling. “Kaitlyn!”
A dull snap sounded across the parking lot, followed by a teenage boy’s howl of pain. Boone got into a truck, now sobbing.
Jake sat in the jump seat of the truck, quiet and furious but knowing he couldn’t do anything. How could they just leave her there? She was annoying, sure, but he didn’t want her to freeze to death. It’s my fault, he thought. I should have never driven them, I should have said something to Boone—
The truck pulled into an empty lot, other trucks and four wheel drives scattered arou
nd. At least ten huge adult men stood in a circle, all looking angry. The boys were forced to kneel in the middle, and then one man, with light brown hair and long sideburns, stood.
Jake knew exactly who he was, even though he’d barely ever spoken to him. Brock had been their alpha for a long time, since the last one had left in turmoil. He was the kind of leader who ruled by force, and thought his word was the absolute law.
“Which one of you was dating outside?” he said.
None spoke.
“WHICH ONE?” he roared.
He waited.
“Me,” whispered Boone, his shoulder shaking, his arm hanging at an odd angle.
“And the two of you,” Brock went on. “You were complicit in this?”
Both of them nodded, looking down.
“Do we fucking date outside?” he shouted.
The boys all shook their heads.
“Say it,” he said.
Boone started sobbing.
“Say, we don’t date outside!” he roared.
One of the men standing in the circle cracked his knuckles.
“We don’t date outside,” the boys answered in unison.
“Why?” he shouted.
“Dilutes the bloodline,” whispered Boone.
“Why else?”
“Humans are beneath us,” whispered Coleman.
“And?”
Jake paused, refusing to talk.
“Why don’t we date outside?” the man shouted, now standing directly in front of Jake.
Jake turned his head to the side, saying nothing.
Brock kicked him in the shoulder, hard, sending Jake flying. Jake heard a crunch and a searing pain tore through him as he lay face down on the gravel, gasping.
He crouched in front of Jake. “Tell me,” he said.
“Humans are filthy scum,” the sixteen-year-old Jake gasped out.
The man walked away, but Jake didn’t move. He thought that maybe, if he stayed face-down in the cold gravel, it would be over. He could escape without things getting worse.
Brock ripped his t-shirt over his head and threw it to someone on the edge of the circle. Jake had a sinking feeling in his gut. He tried to move his arm, but he couldn’t. It had gone numb.
Brock undid his belt. “Shift,” he said.
All Jake could hear was Boone and Coleman’s ragged breathing to his left and right. He shut his eyes tighter, tried to slow his own breath. Maybe if they thought he’d passed out...
Moments passed, and Jake didn’t hear anything but something shifted in the air. Suddenly he smelled the bears: three of them, standing in front of him. He held his breath, hoping they’d leave him alone.
Then, claws on his chest, raking him deep and flipping him over, hard, so he landed on his other side. His eyes flew open and he gasped in pain, then went up on his good elbow, only to see the blood welling up and pouring out through his tattered down parka.
A few feet away, a bear growled at him and began to advance.
Jake had no choice. He shifted, the transformation hurting even more than usual, feeling himself grow fur and stretch and sprout teeth and claws. The flesh on his chest where the other bear had cuffed him still bled, and his arm was useless. In the corner of his eye, he could see Coleman, shifted, getting knocked around by another huge grizzly, and he knew that he didn’t stand a chance: Brock was easily twice his weight, and he was already wounded.
He still tried, though.
Brock came back at him, walking fast on all fours, and Jake grabbed onto him and together they rose onto their back legs and before Jake knew what was happening Brock had gotten his neck in his teeth again. Jake cuffed him hard on the head, but that just threw off Jake’s balance and he fell hard, trying and failing to land on his good arm.
He struggled to stand, and then grapple again with Brock, but this time Brock caught him right on his bad shoulder and knocked him back down, and then when he was on the ground, fastened his teeth right on Jake’s neck, shaking the younger grizzly back and forth, his teeth puncturing deep.
Jake tried to fight but it was useless; before this, he’d only sparred with the other young bears, not fought with a full grown grizzly. He felt the teeth on the other side of his neck and tried to swipe at Brock, but the other bear was much too quick and clever. Jake felt weak and powerless. All he hoped was that it would be over soon.
Finally, it stopped. Jake knew he had a broken shoulder and probably broken ribs, plus he was bleeding heavily from the gash in his chest and the deep, torn punctures in his neck. He thought Boone had taken the worst of it and might be missing an eye. As he laid on the gravel, Brock and the other two men shifted back to human. Jake didn’t care. He just wanted them to leave so he could either die or figure out what to do next.
“You know how to make this right,” Brock said, pulling his pants back on.
The three boys, still in bear form, didn’t move.
Brock walked away, right through the middle of the three bears, lying bloody on the ground. All the men got into their trucks and drove away.
The boys waited a long, long time before shifting back to human. Each wore a now-tattered down parka in the subzero cold, and pulled the threads around them.
There was a long silence, and finally, Coleman spoke up.
“I guess we go ask for forgiveness,” he said.
Jake spat blood to one side and watched it begin to freeze on the ground. “Fuck that,” he said.
“What else are we going to do?” said Coleman.
Boone hadn’t said anything. He just looked miserable.
Jake shook his head. He had no idea what he was going to do, but he knew the first step was to shift back into a bear. Otherwise, he’d freeze to death within the hour.
“I’ll find a way to survive,” he said. “But I can’t go back there. I can’t ask those people to forgive what I just did. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I think Kaitlyn’s dead,” Boone said, suddenly speaking up. “She wasn’t breathing.”
The three freezing boys said nothing, but their breath frosted hard in the air.
“I’ll come with you,” Boone said.
“Are all bear packs like this?” asked Coleman. He touched a head wound and his hand came away dripping red.
“I don’t know,” said Jake.
“I’ll come,” Coleman said.
They shifted back into bears and slowly made their way into the forest, never to be seen again in Fjords, Alaska.
Jake stopped talking. Ariana waited a moment, staring at him, her eyes as big as saucers, his hand sandwiched between hers.
“What then?” she pressed.
Jake shrugged, still staring off at the wall like he couldn’t quite meet her eyes. “We survived,” he said. “We ate grubs and berries and squirrels. Hibernated when we could, moved south, trying to find an area with no pack where we could just... be. By the time I got here I’d been a bear for almost four years straight. I’d practically forgotten how to talk.”
Ariana fiddled with his hand, running her fingers over his callouses, over the thick dark hair on his muscular forearm. He gripped her, tightly, and finally turned to face her.
“What about the girl? Kaitlyn?”
Jake’s jaw worked again.
“I didn’t know for years,” he said. “But when I got a job with an office, I found the archives of the Fjords newspaper, and I found a story about a girl name Kaitlyn who was attacked by muggers in a movie theater parking lot.” He swallowed, hard, and broke eye contact again. “She was in a coma for weeks before she finally died.”
Ariana swallowed too, suddenly fighting back tears.
“All that because a shifter was dating a human?” she whispered.
“Yup,” said Jake, simply.
“Where are the other two?”
“They live around,” Jake said, waving his hand. “I don’t see them much, but they’re here somewhere.”
“In the restaurant,” she said, “That was Br
ock, wasn’t it?”
Jake just nodded. Ariana’s blood went cold.
“What does he want?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, simply. “He’s not my pack master anymore. He hasn’t been for fifteen years, not since the day he nearly killed me and I left. He’s got to right to insert himself into my business.”
“But he might anyway?”
Jake shook his head. “A pack can be dangerous, like a cult. It can encourage fanatics, total allegiance to one alpha. I wouldn’t be surprised if Brock considers me still an out-of-line pack member.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“It’s instinct.”
Ariana paused and thought for a moment. “What about your parents?” she asked.
He shook his head. “True believers,” he said. “They followed him blindly and never questioned anything.”
“I’m sorry,” Ariana whispered. She touched his shoulder, softly, her fingers exploring the hard muscle there.
“Was it this one?” she asked.
Jake nodded. “It’s been healed for years and years,” he said. “But I can still feel it when it gets real cold.”
She walked her fingers to the collar of his flannel shirt and unbuttoned the top button, shifting so she was kneeling on the couch. “Do you have scars?” she asked.
“Over here from the bite marks,” he said, pointing to a very faint series of dots on his neck and shoulder. Ariana pulled his shirt aside and ran her finger over them. They had faded so much they were pearlescent, barely visible but smooth and warm. She’d never noticed them before.
Ariana bent over and put her lips on one, kissing it slowly and tenderly, then kissing the next one and the next one his flesh hot under her lips, and she felt him relax. His arm curled around her, finding the small of her back. He smelled so good, and his shaggy hair and stubble tickled at her face as she planted her lips on his neck, over and over.
Ariana drew back and put one hand on his chest, snuggling in.
“Where else?” she whispered.
Jake looked at her for a long moment, like he was deciding whether to trust her, like he was about to reveal some deep, dark part of himself. Then he pointed to another spot, on the other side, right by his collarbone. Ariana kissed those scars too, one by one.
