by Sky Winters
His over-protective boarding on possessive tendencies started to show themselves when she had fully moved into his place. He had a high-powered, high-tech security system installed in and around the perimeters of his house. “This way I can guard your security while I’m off at work, being a security guard.”
Sabrina wondered if she should view this as a red flag, or just take it for what it was portrayed to be: a protective boyfriend trying to make sure that his girlfriend and unborn baby would be safe.
One day, while he was at work, she reclined on his large, black leather couch and played on the internet. There was nothing better for her to do. She’d already napped until noon, which made her feel guilty. She entered the sort of hole that was difficult to get out of once it started. She started watching videos.
She searched for the black bear who went crazy in Pine Tree Mall. She wasn’t disappointed. The videos of Jacob when he went on his violent rampage were largely filmed with cell phone cameras. They were blurry and shaky, but they showed him breaking through glass storefronts and roaring at people – including children – and knocking over every cart and sign that was in his path. In some of the videos, she could see that he had blood on his fangs. He had not simply roared at people. He’d clearly mauled at least one person.
Suddenly, she felt bad. She never asked him what had angered him so much. She’d been so surprised and excited when she found out who he was that she’d never thought to ask about why he had felt so angry. She realized now that it had to have been something important to have caused such a visceral feeling. Jacob was such a sweetie. It would take more than a minor tiff to turn him into a monster like that.
When Jacob returned home, she felt like asking him, but he was so tired and happy to be with her again that she didn’t want to dredge it all up again. “I need to take a shower,” he said, giving her a kiss. “I think I’ve got the smell of prison shit all over me.”
He went into the bathroom and she started to wonder how safe it would be to be with him when he got mad. Originally, Sabrina had thought the idea of him shifting into a werebear would be the definition of sexy. But now she was starting to realize that, more than anything else, it was something that made him different in a way that he maybe didn’t like…
That was probably why he didn’t like just shifting on a whim. It scared people. And he was most likely afraid that it would scare her away, too.
Just then, in a flash, she noticed something that was picked up by the surveillance cameras outside. She had it up in a small window on her screen, but she maximized it so she could get a better view.
A gray blur went past on the screen.
She thought she had a pretty good idea who that was.
Victor.
Sabrina sprang from the couch and did her best to silently pad down the hallway to the bathroom. She could hear the water blasting in the shower. The front door was locked, but front doors couldn’t stop an angry werewolf.
She knocked on the bathroom door to try and alert Jacob that something was up, but she went inside the bathroom to let him know with her voice, as well. “JACOB,” she shouted. “Victor’s on the surveillance!”
The water turned off and Jacob pulled back the shower curtain. “What?”
“Just now, on the surveillance footage, I saw Victor. It was just a flash; I don’t know what he’s doing.”
Jacob didn’t even bother with a towel to dry off. He came out of the shower, dripping. Sabrina glanced down at his cock and then looked away, not wanting to bother with any thoughts about how her hot man was there to save her.
Was it just her or was he harrier than she remembered?
He crept out of the bathroom and to the living room, where her computer was. Sabrina followed him, trying her best to remain as quiet as he was. He looked around at all of the windows he could see, but he could not see any sign of the bastard.
There was a sudden crash from a window near the front door as Victor came leaping into the house. He was quick and agile in ways that Jacob could never be. Letting out a low growl of warning, Sabrina’s trusty werebear shifted in front of her very eyes. He grew in height and his hairiness grew thicker and covered all of him until at last an enormous black bear stood where Jacob Priestly had been.
This black bear was Jacob Priestly.
He lurched forward and took a huge swipe towards Victor the werewolf, but Victor was fast and expecting it. The wolf avoided the blow and made for Sabrina, who ran into the kitchen to arm herself with something, anything that might stop him and possibly even gravely injure him.
She was going through the various knives that were on hand while Jacob ran after Victor, biting and swiping his mighty paws as he approached the wolf.
Victor slowly made his way into the kitchen, moving in a way that let her know that he might pounce at her at any moment. “You belong with me, you BITCH!” he howled.
“Get over yourself,” she snapped at him, holding a butcher’s knife tightly in her hand. If he made a move on her, she was going to aim for his heart. She was not afraid of killing him. In fact, she was more afraid of what would happen if she didn’t. She was starting to feel completely controlled by this fear.
Victor’s golden eyes narrowed, and he smirked in a way that normal wolves certainly couldn’t. “Good,” he said. “Give in to your fear. Fear is what kept you with me.”
“Leave her alone!” Jacob bellowed, finally making contact with a big swipe that cracked Victor over the head and made him land on the floor, dazed and disoriented for long enough to Sabrina to get away and protect herself behind her bear boyfriend.
“Ahh,” Victor said, collecting himself again and returning to his paws. “I suppose you work together well. But do you really think you can give her what she wants, bear? What she needs?”
“What I need is for you to get out of my life and stay out!” Sabrina shouted. “Go find someone who doesn’t mind your selfishness and your rules. You don’t want me. You don’t want someone who can’t even stand the sight of you anymore.”
Victor flew into a rage and jumped at her, mouth wide and aimed at her throat. Jacob caught him on the jaw with his giant paw and sent the wolf slamming to the floor yet again.
“When are you going to learn that I’m bigger than you?” Jacob asked him pityingly. “When are you going to realize that you are beaten?”
“Never!” Victor spat, getting to his feet again.
Sabrina could tell that his strength was weakening. All it would take was one more thing to take the bite out of him and he would be history. Hopefully for good.
She remembered that she was holding the knife and hid it behind her back, so Victor wouldn’t see it. He was so distracted by Jacob’s taunting that he barely even seemed to notice her anymore. They’d briefly forgotten what their feud was over. The only thing that mattered now was that they hated each other.
Holding the knife up, she let it fall, hitting Victor in the furry white chest.
“NOOOO!!” he cried.
At the same time, Jacob lunged down at him and bit at his face. There was so much blood all over the cream-colored carpet. At first, Sabrina couldn’t be sure if they had killed him or if they’d just happened to get him in a particularly blood-filled spot.
But when Jacob pulled away from Victor, she could see that her ex was still alive, but just barely. He was back in his wolf form, clutching at his chest with one hand and his face with the other. He was a bloody mess.
Jacob had saved the day. But she had helped. She felt proud of herself, and so glad that she was dating that rampaging bear. This was something that their cub would surely be proud of.
They offered to call for an ambulance to come for Victor, but he declined. If he had still had his tail, it would have been between his legs. “No,” he said. “I’ll see myself home. This is what I deserved.”
Sabrina was not sure that this was the last they would see of him, but she hoped so. He knew that he had been beaten, and he was not one to
let such a thing happen more than once. A wolf could not possibly stand up to a bear and a butcher’s knife.
Jacob was riled and wild even after Victor was gone. Sabrina did her best to soothe him with cuddles and kind words, but nothing worked. He was apparently going to be stuck in his werebear form for a while.
She lay in his arms, smiling up at him and finding his magical power so attractive, even still while he was covered in wolf blood and panting a bit. “I was watching videos today,” she told him. “Of your little rampage in the mall.”
“Oh, fuck, not that again,” he growled.
She wanted to laugh, but his anger made her worry that he might turn on her next. She didn’t want him to think she was laughing at him, or judging him or anything like that. “I’m sorry… I just wanted to see what you were like when you shifted. I guess I should have been careful what I wished for.”
“Why would you wish for this?” he asked. As she looked at him, she noticed that some of his black fur was disappearing and his face was taking on his human form again. He was finally settling back down.
“I want to be with you because you’re sweet and gentle, but also strong and protective when I need you to be.” She placed her hand on her stomach. “When we need you to be.”
His transformation back into that of a tall, burly quarterback was nearly complete. All that remained was his bear nose and some whisker-like hairs on his cheeks. “But I’m a monster.”
She smiled at him. “Maybe. But you’re my monster…” She finally decided that it would be okay to ask him. “That day in the mall… I should have asked you this. I’m sorry for not even thinking of your feelings. What were you so angry about?”
Jacob looked into her eyes. His gentle, brown eyes were back to normal. All of him was back to being the way she knew and loved. “My ex-girlfriend had just broken up with me.”
Sabrina’s heart melted a little, even as it also broke a bit for him. “And why were you bloody?”
He appeared to be extremely guilty. She worried that he was going to say he had killed his ex. Maybe she shouldn’t have ever asked. Maybe it was never an appropriate question and some things were better left not talked about…
“I bit my tongue,” he said.
She looked at him, surprised and relieved.
He suddenly smirked a little. “I do that a lot, when I lose control.”
Letting out a laugh, she kissed him. “You do more than that.”
THE END
Papa Bear
CHAPTER ONE
The Man Child
“How has the job hunting been going?” Maggie asked her fiancé Tony.
He answered her with a shrug, not even looking over at her when she came in the door. Typical.
Maggie Bullock worked full time – plus a lot of overtime – as a customer service representative at a toy company. It sounded like it would be so much fun when she first got the job, but now that she was struggling to pay the rent for her and her deadbeat boyfriend, it was nothing short of draining. She spent eight-plus hours every day responding to stupid people and their stupid questions, only to come home and deal with Tony the couch potato.
Tony Deburgi was an artist, though Maggie was starting to think that he was actually an “artist.” His easel always seemed to be empty, ignored off in a corner somewhere. She bought him a really fancy set of paints for Christmas recently and he’d barely touched it. He claimed to be in a dry spell. “I have lost my muse,” he had told her.
“Well, maybe you should make video games your muse, since you’re so attached to them,” she had replied.
“No,” Tony had argued. “My art is not fan art. It’s abstract!”
They’d had many fights like that lately. Maggie wanted to support his art and help inspire his creativity, but she also wanted him to be realistic and apply himself more.
“I know it’s not ideal,” she said, going into the kitchen and fixing herself a drink. “But I really think you ought to start looking into more options. Painting houses is still a form of art.”
Once she had poured herself the perfect mixture of Scotch and Coke, Maggie carried her glass out to the living room and sat beside Tony, who was sunken into the couch, as though he had molded himself into it. Game controller in hand, he stared at the screen, blasting away werewolves or some other type of shifter. Maggie couldn’t keep track. They all seemed the same.
All of the games he played involved shooting shifters. He never played the cute, colorful games where he could save princesses and collect coins. He always played some form of murderous hit-man against an army of vicious monsters. Tony hated shifters, and Maggie thought he was ridiculous. He’d never even met one before. Video game monsters were not the same thing as living, breathing beings.
At first, Maggie had seen his video game heroics as a sign of his manly, caring nature. Now, however, she saw them more for what they were – another way to slack off.
“Is this all you’ve been up to today?” Maggie asked him. “I was gone for eight hours, and you’re still wearing your pajamas.”
Annoyed, Tony paused the game. He finally turned to look at her, but it was a glare. Not at all the appreciative look Maggie expected or felt she deserved. “I’ve told you, it’s a dry spell,” he said.
Maggie did not want to fight with him about it anymore. She was tired of nagging him and trying to get him to contribute. She was tired of feeling frustrated at him all of the time. She was just tired.
“Whatever,” she said with a sigh, knocking back a large gulp of Scotch and Coke. “I just don’t want to keep coming home after a long day and finding you just sitting here, playing games. When’s the last time you showered?”
“Ugh!” Tony shouted, throwing the controller down on the table and standing up. “Fine, I’ll go take a shower. I wish you’d stop acting like you’re so much better than me. You can’t rush art. And you hate your job. Don’t take it out on me.”
With that, he stormed off to the bathroom. Maggie heard the water start running. She turned off the TV and looked over at the abandoned easel. It would make things easier if he just tried to even pretend like he still cared about working.
Maggie was twenty-five. Tony was twenty-seven. They had met in college and they shared a mutual love of a lot of things, including video games. Initially, everything seemed blissful and perfect. He did all sorts of really captivating paintings in the beginning, while she worked hard in customer service. He had even entertained the idea of someday being an artist for video games, which she would then help sell at her company. It all seemed pretty great…
Until that slowly turned into him just sitting on the couch, playing the games like some kind of mindless zombie himself. There was market research and then there was just making excuses.
Maggie was tired of excuses most of all.
“I don’t know why you’re even still with his lazy ass,” her friend Trish told her over the phone.
After his shower, Tony had switched to a computer game that involved lots of intense silence when he wasn’t shouting commands at an unseen person who spoke to him over a headset. Maggie hated that game, but she capitalized on the fact that he was completely absorbed in his own world. That was the best time to complain about him to her friends.
“I don’t know either sometimes,” Maggie said, sounding a bit sadder than she felt. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s just that I love projects.”
Trish laughed. “Girl, if he’s your project, he is not your best work.”
“You should see the Tell-Tale Easel.” Maggie chuckled a little. “He’s not even trying to hide his lack of progress. He just leaves it out for all to see; blank canvas, paint barely even touched, brushes cleaner than they were when I bought them. Oh, and I bought them. Let’s not forget that.”
Trish tisked. “You should break that blank canvas over his head.”
“I would if I hadn’t paid for it.”
“What, his head?”
Maggie laughed. �
�Practically. I have supported that creative noggin’ of his for three years now.”
“You should try and get your deposit back.”
It was all well and good to make jokes about things like that. But even though Tony annoyed the shit out of her, a lot of the time… Maggie still loved him. He was her college sweetheart. He was still the reason she got up in the morning and worked so hard.
She just wished she would get a ‘thank you’ now and then.
“Hey, honey?” Tony suddenly asked her, removing his silly, large headset. He resembled an air-traffic controller when he wore that thing.
Maggie swallowed her annoyance. “Yeah?” She even managed a smile at him. She was glad to have his attention at last.
“Do you want to play Zelda with me?”
She rolled her eyes a little, but she continued to smile. At least playing with him was better than him playing without her all of the time. She moved the phone back so Trish could hear her. “I gotta go for now. We’ll talk again soon – hopefully with good news.”
“Bye, Mags. Hopefully the good news is that you’re leaving that f—”
Cackling, Maggie hung up on her friend.
Friends did not let friends date douches. But friends also did not let friends give up.
Tony was not really a hopeless case. He just needed a lot of pushing.
They played the fantasy video game for a while, and then he left her to it while he went to his easel and began covering it with yellows and greens. Maggie glanced over at it and smirked at him. “I thought you said you didn’t paint video game characters.”
“This is just inspired by it,” he said, indicating that it was similar colors but not actually any shapes that were specific to the game. No fairies were to be found. “It’s also inspired by you.”
Maggie paused the game. She got up and went to him, wrapping her arms loosely around his shoulders. They kissed each other. “I don’t know why you’ve gotta be such a pain in the ass all the time,” she murmured against his neck. “I just want you to reach your full potential and be happy.”
