Taming the Bear Collection

by Jessica Ryan

  He looked back at Rain, fist-pumping in his brain as he got the desired reaction. Her mouth was hanging open and her eyes were wider than saucers. He could practically see the wetness running down her thighs as his crude description turned her on.

  “That sounds like a plan,” she finally choked out.

  “I’m glad you agree,” he said. “Do you hear that?’

  Rain stopped and craned her neck, sniffing the air as she did so. She must have caught a whiff of something because she recoiled in disgust, her upper lip curling and her tongue almost falling out of her head.

  “I smell other wolves,” she said.

  “So do I,” he said. “They’re not being quiet, either. They’re howling and hollering as they come. They’re trying to intimidate us. They want us to know they’re coming.”

  “They’re in for a rude awakening.”

  “Hell, yes,” Beorn said, pulling out the detonator and laying in front of him. “I’m going to enjoy this almost as much as that monster blowjob you gave me yesterday.”

  He heard Rain giggle again and then heard the shuffling of plants as she ducked behind the tree, ready to play her part in the bloody battle that was to come.

  Could there be any woman more perfect than her? he thought. She’s fucking amazing.

  He regretted that he had put her in harm’s way, but at the same time she was a Dawnguard member and the surrogate daughter of Rowan. Beorn knew the wolf could fight, probably better than anyone else in Bucklin save Aster. She wasn’t going to go down without a fight; she was a strong woman. Of course he’d rather have Rowan or Aster watching his back if he had a choice. They wouldn’t need the weapons and bombs if he had just one of them. Together they could annihilate an entire wolf pack.

  He looked at the cabin through his scope, waiting for the first little bastard to appear on the scene. It didn’t take long to get his wish. A scraggly-looking gray wolf emerged from the bushes directly opposite Beorn’s position on the other side of the cabin. The mangy mongrel began sniffing the ground, picking up on Beorn’s and Rain’s scents. The hair on its back began to puff up as it began to growl, gnashing and barking at the cabin.

  Two more ugly gray mutts emerged from the bushes, each picking up the scent as well. Together the three of them began to circle the cabin, each one getting into some sort of attack position. Right behind them came a larger brown wolf. Beorn immediately recognized him as the one who had run off earlier after Rain had bitten his tail. It was one of the bastards who had caused his injuries, which still stung him at the moment. He hoped the stupid dog would get back and avoid the blast altogether, allowing Beorn the satisfaction of putting a bullet in his head.

  The brown one was quickly joined by a large silver wolf. Beorn pulled his face away from the scope and studied the creature. He’d never seen this wolf before. Who was he? His size was immense, much larger than any wolf he’d ever run into except for the aforementioned Dawnguard wolves. He had to be an alpha, but alpha of what?

  Beorn did a quick checklist in his head. Forrest was dead, Aster was in town, Thorn was in town and on his side, Crow was dead and Hawk wasn’t colored like that. The only other alpha wolf that he knew of was Rowan, but he wouldn’t betray them either. Beorn cursed himself for the wolves and their domestication. He hadn’t seen many of them shifted in ten years, and he had no clue about their size or coloration these days.

  “Who the fuck is that”?” he whispered.

  He glanced back up at Rain, who was also studying the strange wolf. She looked down, their eyes locking. He mouthed the question he had just whispered to her and she shook her head in confusion. She had no clue who this guy was.

  It didn’t matter now, though. He was going to die just like the rest of them. Beorn tried to give them a little bit more time, in hopes that more would make their presence known.

  Come on, damn you, he thought. Show yourselves.

  It took several minutes but eventually six more wolves emerged from the woods, bringing the total to eleven. Was this all they had? All of them except for the silver one were surrounding the cabin and sniffing. Finally the brown one shifted, revealing a very hairy and ragged-looking human. He was pretty big, closely resembling Forrest.

  They started to have a conversation, one that was punctuated with wild points at the door and finally a backhand from the brown one to the gray one that sent him to his knees. The brown one turned to the silver wolf, who still hadn’t shifted, giving him a wary look. Beorn caught it; it was subtle but it was there. He was scared of the silver wolf, and he didn’t want to do anything to disappoint the beast.

  Half of the wolves were now shifted and walking to the windows, preparing to break into the cabin. It was time, almost time. Beorn moved his hand to the detonator and prepared to send them all back to hell. At that exact moment he froze, fear gripping his entire body.

  The silver wolf was looking right at him, his cold black eyes focused on Beorn’s direction. Without warning the others he turned and disappeared back into the brush, leaving his partners alone.

  What the fuck? Beorn thought. Did he see me? He can’t see me, I’m hidden. He can’t smell me, either.

  An unsettled feeling fell over Beorn, causing his hand to shake. He glanced back at Rain, whose eyes were focused on him, but she didn’t seem to notice the obvious fear that had overtaken his body. With a deep breath he closed his eyes and opened them again, calming his nerves. He made eye contact with his mate and nodded, letting her know the explosion was about to happen. In response she ducked and stuck her fingers in her ears, ready for the blast.

  Beorn smiled as a few of the wolves broke through the windows, entering the cabin. He wanted to savor this moment, to enjoy the anticipation one last time as he prepared to deal a death blow to so many hated enemies. It wasn’t right to enjoy killing a living being this much, but these goddamn wolves had it coming.

  With a deep breath and a broad smile Beorn pressed down on the detonator, waiting for the monstrous explosion to come. Nothing happened. He looked down at the detonator again, turning it over and looking for something disconnected. Everything seemed to be fine, but there was no explosion. He began slamming his hand down on the button, before standing up to put himself on a level with the bombs.

  This wasn’t good, not good at all. He began walking towards the cabin, repeatedly slamming his fist into the button. Why weren’t the bombs going off? Had he built duds?

  “Look there!” one of the wolves yelled. “They’re over there, in the forest.”

  Shit, they’ve caught us.

  The wolves were starting to exit the cabin, each of them with snapping and growling, ready to converge on the lone werebear. Beorn smashed his fist into the button one more time, hearing the controller break and crack under the force of his blow.

  That wasn’t the only sound he heard. He looked up to see a brilliant flash as a fireball emanated from inside the cabin, blowing it outward. It was a beautiful site as the orange fire filled his vision and several wolves flew through the air, thrown by the awesome concussive forces of the blast.

  Beorn threw himself backwards and landed on the soft forest floor as shrapnel flew in every direction. There was no time to waste; he had to roll back to his gun.

  Chapter 23

  Rain waited and waited for the blast, but nothing came. She was afraid to look up, afraid that the detonator wasn’t working. Her fears were confirmed when she heard the other wolves shouting and yelling. They had seen Beorn and they were heading right for him.

  She took a deep breath and picked the handgun up off the ground, preparing to defend herself with it. They would probably overwhelm her, but maybe she could shoot a few of them before they did so. It would help the people of Bucklin if there were fewer enemies to deal with. None of them would know the sacrifice the silly young girl and cantankerous bear had made.

  Luckily the stories about werewolves only being killed
by silver bullets were just that: stories. A regular bullet would pierce their skin and do damage like it would to any other living creature, except a vampire. There were no vampires here, though, just a battle for supremacy between two mismatched lovers and a pack of dangerous wolves.

  As she picked up the gun and gripped it she put her back to the tree, preparing to spin out and open fire. Just as she began to pivot her foot a loud boom filled her ears and shook the tree she was leaning against, startling her in the process. Rain screeched and caught her foot on the ground, falling to her knees beside the tree.

  She looked up to see a massive fire raging in the clearing with several burning bodies inside of it. A few more wolves were lying in the clearing, none of them moving. Each of them looked more like a broken heap of fur than a body; the explosion had done its job and done it well.

  Beorn was rolling backwards towards his gun, preparing to open fire. It didn’t look like there were any wolves left to shoot, though. The entire hunting party had been decimated by Beorn’s bombs.

  Rain stepped out, gun at her side, as she watched the carnage and horror that had unfolded before her eyes. Her legs began to feel weak and she almost collapsed to her knees as the flames shot up into the sky, beginning to catch some of the trees as well.

  “The whole forest is going to burn,” she muttered. “They’re all dead.”

  The whole scene felt like a movie. She was there watching it, but she didn’t feel involved. The birds had stopped chirping, the trees had stopped moving and the only sound was the crackle of the roaring fire that threatened to consume the entire forest.

  A piercing gunshot brought her back to reality. Her hands immediately went up to cover her highly sensitive ears as another gunshot boomed through the forest. Her eyes finally focused on the situation at hand. Several more wolves, ones who hadn’t been involved in the hunting party, were exiting the bushes to assess the situation. Beorn had shot two of them already. One he immediately killed with a well-placed shot to the head and another he clipped just behind the shoulder blade, bringing it to the ground.

  “Dammit, Rain, pay attention!” Beorn screamed. It was at that moment she realized he had been screaming at her for some time. “Shoot! Shoot!”

  Rain lifted the gun in front of her face, gripping it tightly with two hands. She’d never fired one before and now he was asking her to use it to take another life. Earlier she had felt confident that she would be able to do it when asked. She’d had no problem crushing her jaws down onto Eden and she would have finished her enemy if need be, but it just felt so wrong with a gun. She was a wolf, not a man, and she didn’t need man’s destructive weaponry.

  Wasn’t it Beorn who had told her to find her inner wolf and ignore the conveniences of man’s life? So why was he begging her to use a weapon designed by man to obtain dominion over the world around him?

  “This isn’t the time to get cold feet!” Beorn shouted as another of his bullets ripped through the flesh of an approaching wolf, bringing it to the ground. They were getting closer now, three of them almost out of the clearing around the cabin and into the underbrush where Rain and Beorn were camped.

  Rain looked into the eyes of an oncoming brown wolf as he fixed his deadly gaze on her. There were bad intentions in his eyes; he meant to kill her and nobody else.

  Kill or be killed. That was the only thought that played through her mind.

  The oncoming wolf left the ground, flying through the air with ease as he headed straight for her face. The world went silent again; the only thing Rain could hear was her own screaming as she pulled the trigger repeatedly. Her ears began to ring from the explosion of the bullets leaving the chamber.

  Blood sprayed through the air, creating a macabre painting in mid-air with the fire as a backdrop. And just as quickly as it had begun, the wolf was on the ground, another breath never to leave its body.

  She was shaking as she held the gun in her hands. She had killed one of the other wolves, and she had used a gun to do it. With a scream she dropped the gun and jumped back, slamming into the tree she had used earlier to hide behind. Her eyes scanned the scene, trying to make out what was happening in front of her.

  There was another wolf lying beside Beorn’s gun, its breathing shallow and rapid. The fire glinted off steel revealing to Rain the large hunting knife jutting out of the wolf’s throat. Meanwhile Beorn was on his back, another large brown wolf pinning him to the ground. Her mate was doing everything he could to keep the creature from tearing him apart. He had his forearm shoved into the wolf’s throat and his other hand holding the wolf’s mouth shut as he tried to push him off. She could see the veins throbbing in his forearms and hands as his strength began to falter. The wolf was going to break free and bite into his exposed neck.

  Rain snapped out of her war fog and quickly sprang into action, pulling the knife from the other wolf’s throat and bringing it down on the base of Beorn’s attacker’s skull. He whimpered and then gurgled before slumping off of Beorn, the light leaving his eyes as he did so.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m good,” Beorn said, looking at the large scratches down his arms. “Thanks for finally joining the party.”

  “You knew I’d get there eventually,” she said, looking around. Her eyes settled on something across the clearing, something terrifying. “Who do you think he is?”

  Beorn stood up and looked at the silver behemoth who stood on the other side of the fire. His black eyes still burned into them. The fire didn’t seem to faze the monster at all; he stood silently watching with the flames dancing right up to his fur.

  “I don’t know,” Beorn said, picking his gun up. Deliberately he brought it to his shoulder and aimed at the beast. If the silver alpha was frightened by the action, he didn’t show it. Instead, he backed into the woods, the expression on his face and in his cold, dead eyes not changing the entire time.

  “I think we need to go,” Rain said, feeling very uncomfortable as he vanished from sight.

  “I’m not going to disagree with you,” Beorn said, slinging the rifle over one shoulder. “Pick up your gun. Let’s get to the truck now.”

  Rain walked over and stopped, staring down at the tiny instrument that had caused so much death and destruction. When she’d woken up this morning she hadn’t expected the day to go this way. Violence was always the elephant in the room when you were a werewolf. Even civilized meetings carried the ability to easily devolve into a violent pissing match. But that was the old days, before the packs had moved to Bucklin and established a human life. Rain had been trained to fight, but she wasn’t conditioned for this kind of wholesale devastation. Her entire frame of reference had come from television and movies, not from dealing death herself.

  It was so easy for her surrogate father, Rowan, to end another life; he was older and had been through violence. He was closer to the old ways than she would ever be. This wasn’t fun; it bothered her in a way she couldn’t even describe. Things would never be the same for her. She’d taken the most precious gift from another.

  Her wolf was growling its approval, satisfied that she had punished those who would seek to harm her mate, pack or territory. But she wasn’t an animal, and as Beorn had said, there had to be a balance. The balance just wasn’t there right now; she was too torn between the strong feelings of regret and guilt from her human side and the strong feelings of satisfaction from her wolf.

  As she picked up the gun she almost fell forward, her head suddenly feeling light and the world spinning. Just as quickly as the feeling hit her she managed to calm it and stand upright. She looked over at Beorn, who didn’t seem to have noticed.

  “Are you ready?” he asked solemnly. He seemed to know something was wrong, but he was in full-on survival mode at the moment.

  “Yes,” she said, fighting back tears. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter 24

  She’s really upset, Beorn thou
ght as they beat their way through the dense underbrush of the forest. He’d made it a point to avoid any paths that he had cut through the trees, expecting to find more of the Oakdale pack lying in wait for an ambush.

  Beorn could tell the guns and killing had bothered Rain, but he couldn’t stop to comfort her right now. If they hadn’t done what they did, then they could both be dead right now. They had saved their own lives.

  She’s grown a lot, Beorn thought, looking over at Rain. When they first met she’d described herself as petulant and immature and the stuff she said had revealed that to him. For all he knew, in her day-to-day dealings she was still immature and childish, but right now she was stepping up to the plate and acting much more mature. Being in mortal danger for the better part of a day usually forced one to grow up before they were ready. But it was no accident that she had handled the danger so well. Rowan might not have coached her well in her day-to-day dealings, but he had definitely taught her how to survive.

  “We should be getting close to my truck,” Beorn said.

  “Okay,” Rain choked out. “Then what are we going to do?”

  “I’ll call Thorn on the way,” Beorn said. “He’ll meet us in town.”

  “What about Rowan? Call Rowan too.”

  “I’ll call Rowan too. Hopefully…never mind.”

  “What were you going to say?” Rain looked at him, a desperate plea in her eyes.

  “Nothing,” Beorn said, trying not to make eye contact. “It’s just not important.”

  “Say it.”

  “I was going to say hopefully Leena hasn’t turned on him. Hopefully he can answer the phone.”

  Rain’s bottom lip began to quiver, but she bit down on it hard enough to draw blood as she froze in place.