Gay Shifter Romance: Daddy Bear

by Sy Walker

  “These are the most loyal people you will ever meet,” Jonas told Bruce. “You must never betray them. We will never betray you. This you can trust.”

  They held hands openly as Jonas led Bruce to the fire for dinner, and they began their lives together, in peace at last.

  THE END

  M/M: Wolf Trails

  Wolf Trail

  “Don’t come crawling back to me!” Ivan shouted to Jake, tossing his battered old jacket into his face and slamming the door on him. Jake willed himself not to cry. His now-ex boyfriend had abused and tormented him for the last time. He was never going to go back to Ivan, not even if his life depended on it.

  They shared the same apartment. That was the only problem. Well, actually, there were many issues, but that was the one that bothered Jake the most at present. He didn’t care that Ivan had thrown him out. He did not want to be anywhere near him.

  In fact, now that he was free, he could do one of the things he had always wanted.

  Jake put on his jacket and got into his car, heading out to the nearest store. A lot of the stores were closed in Richmond on a Sunday evening, but he was determined to find one that could be of service.

  Once he found one that had the sort of camping supplies he was after – tent, sleeping bag, flashlights, etc., Jake bought everything he thought he would need and then hit the road for Shenandoah National Park.

  I’m finally going for it, he thought. I’m going to hike the Appalachian Trail! And Jake was not planning to half-ass it either. He meant to hike the entire thing. As it was the end of March, he wouldn’t be starting in the frozen forest of Maine, however. He’d start at the halfway point and work his way up. Then he’d come back and go on to Georgia. It was foolproof!

  It was admittedly foolhardy of him to just up and do this, but he definitely needed to get away from it all for a while. He’d been dating Ivan for the worst year of his life. The other man had psychologically abused him and tried to control him so much that he felt at his wit’s end when he finally spoke up.

  “I can’t do this.” That was how the conversation started. “I can’t go on living like this. I can’t keep seeing you and being with you as if nothing is wrong when EVERYTHING is wrong.”

  That started their hour-long fight. Jake was relieved only that Ivan was not a physically abusive boyfriend. He yelled, swore, called Jack all sorts of insulting names – worst of all, “fag”… What kind of gay man called another man that?

  As they fought, even though the words stung and the realizations hurt, Jake felt like he was becoming stronger. He was busting out of the nervous cocoon he had been hiding inside for a year.

  He was thirty years old. And he was taking back his life.

  When he arrived at Shenandoah, he got himself a room in a motel, realizing that it would be better to head out on the trail the following morning. It wasn’t safe to hike alone at night. Even a novice like him knew that.

  As a younger guy, he’d been fond of going on hikes and nature walks, but had never attempted anything of this magnitude. He was not sure if he was going to be able to make it through, but he figured it was worth a shot now that he had nothing to lose.

  Once he was settled into his room, he gave his friend Olga a call so at least one of his friends knew where he was and what he was going to attempt. “I have had the longest, strangest but probably best-for-me day,” he said as soon as she answered her phone.

  “Eww,” she joked. “I probably don’t want to know.”

  “I have left Ivan,” he said. “Well, he threw me out of our apartment, but only after I told him I was leaving.”

  There was silence on the other end for a moment.

  “…Olga?”

  Finally, he could hear her breathe. “Wow,” she said. “That is quite a lot. But I’m glad for you. I know how much of an asshole he was in the end.”

  “Pfft, in the end?” Jake asked. “Try the entire time.”

  He told Olga where he was and what he was planning to do. “Who knows how far I’ll actually be able to go,” he said. “I just know that I need an escape and I’ve wanted to do this for years.”

  “Wow,” Olga said again.

  Jake laughed into the phone. “I know, I wow you. I’m the kind of guy who just wows everyone.”

  “Be careful out there,” she said.

  “I will,” he replied. “Please let everyone who asks know what I’m doing okay? I don’t want there to be, like, a search party for me prematurely. That will put a damper on my fun.”

  She laughed softly. “Got it.”

  Falling asleep wasn’t easy for him, but somehow he managed. He had dreams about being so physically fit and happy from his hiking excursion that Ivan was jealous and spitting bullets. Jake knew that he would react like that. Ivan hated when anyone had good news that he wasn’t somehow a part of.

  It was going to be magical, to walk through the forests and experience what nature had to offer. He was not going to be tied down to anyone or anything… It was finally, at last, going to be all about Jake Reilly.

  The following morning, as he was brushing his teeth, he realized that he hadn’t told his boss at Como La Flor that he was no longer going to be part of their wait staff. He supposed that it was probably a better idea to go ahead and tell them instead of disappearing without notice.

  Again, premature search party.

  He called the restaurant and told the boss that he was quitting that moment so he could hike the Appalachian trail. “Call it a pre-midlife crisis, I guess.”

  Slipping on a purple tank top along with his jean shorts, he felt that he was ready to go. His car would be safe at the hotel. He would be back for it come the wintertime. At least, if the wolves didn’t get to him first.

  The very thought just made Jake giggle. Let them come. He felt fearless at the moment!

  He set off down the clearly-marked trail. There were others who were out there hiking with him, of course. Many of them were clearly coming straight up from Georgia. They were tired-seeming, harried but still excited to see the end point. Still clinging to this lofty goal that Jake shared. They were the crazy people.

  Hiking along the trail felt quite easy and laid-back at first, if a bit lonely. Unlike the Georgia crazies, Jake had elected to take on the Appalachian Trail starting in the middle, in early spring, and working his way up so he’d be in Maine by early winter time. Then he’d regroup and walk from Shenandoah National Park down to Georgia. The only thing he would need to worry about was having some kind of a car or a ride at each end, so he could keep going. He figured that, as soon as he reached Mount Katahdin, he’d be able to figure something out.

  Jake had thought to bring along his cell phone and several extra batteries and chargers, but he had neglected to think about how he would get back to Virginia once he’d started. As he walked along the trail, trying his best to get a good pace going so he could reach his goal in time, he started to wonder if he maybe should have thought this through a little more first.

  Dammit, he thought. I hate it when Olga’s right.

  He was not going to back down now, though. He would not be defeated. If his last fight with Ivan had taught him anything, it was that he needed to take a stand in life and start doing things differently. He needed to grab life by the horns and live a little. All of that inspirational shit.

  At his first stop, at the end of that first day, Jake staked out a place in the camp site and took off his back pack. He pitched his small, dark green tent and placed his blue sleeping bag inside of it. He was surrounded by strangers who were also clearly hiking the trail, but thankfully for him they were all a comfortable distance away.

  Closing his tent securely, he changed into some pajamas and was soon asleep, dreaming about bears and wolves, and all of the ludicrous things he hoped to experience along his way.

  Maybe, hopefully, he would make a friend or two.

  The sunrise woke Jake early and made him feel like a colonial settler. His mind wondere
d if he was supposed to go churn the butter or wrassle up some grub now, but then he remembered where he was and what he was actually supposed to do.

  He took down his tent and packed everything back up into his backpack, then ate one of the fancy trail mix bars that he’d bought at the store. He knew that it wasn’t going to be enough to hold him for hours, but it would at least be enough to hold him until the next rest area.

  Now that Jake was more used to hiking along, he allowed himself to look around and admire the lovely views.

  He stopped for an early lunch at a rest stop that offered a rode-side diner called Lefty’s. It didn’t look like much, but it had soup and sandwiches, and that was what Jake wanted.

  After eating and resting there for about an hour, he went back out to the ATR. The group of people that he’d been walking near was of course gone from sight now, but there were some new people that Jake hoped to maybe strike up conversation with.

  After all, a big part of what he needed was to meet new people, now that he and Ivan were kaput.

  He soon noticed a tall, handsome young man who seemed to be about his age. This guy had on an olive green tank top and some muted camo shorts, and he looked like he definitely went to the gym on a regular basis.

  Jake looked down at his own little belly that protruded just a bit and let out a chuckle. This hike was meant to get him back in shape, but right now it was not helping his confidence so much.

  “Hi,” the young man said, flashing him a perfect smile. He had hair that was dark brown if it wasn’t black and eyes that were so relentlessly blue that Jake had to look away from them, blushing a little in surprise at their prettiness.

  If guys like this are hiking here, I wonder why it took me so long to start.

  “Hi,” Jake said back, hazarding a shy smile of his own. He was not a bad looking guy himself. He was shorter than this Adonis, but he was of medium height with sandy-ish red-ish hair, and amber brown eyes.

  “First timing hiking the ATR?” the young man asked him.

  Jake nodded. “Yup. I just took it on a few days ago as a foolhardy attempt to get away for a while… a long while.” He looked back at the young man and laughed a bit. “I realize that that makes me sound like a character at the beginning of a chainsaw murder movie or something.”

  That was enough to make this handsome stranger chuckle. Jake felt like he had won something.

  “My name’s Jameson Lowell,” he told him. “I’m from Erect, North Carolina.”

  Jake stared at him and realized with no small amount of excitement that Jameson was now walking beside him instead of a little ways in front of him as before.

  “Erect, North Carolina?” he asked with a smirk. “Are you kidding me?”

  Laughing, Jameson shook his head. “I could show you my driver’s license, if you want.”

  “No, I believe you,” Jake replied. He whistled a little. “I know where I’m going to need to visit one of these days.”

  Jameson chuckled again. It was a deep, full-throated sort of chuckle. The kind Jake always associated with sexy lead actors in romantic comedies. The ones who usually ended up turning on the heroine in the end. Not to be trusted.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jake,” he answered. “Jake Reilly.”

  This looked like the beginning of a beautiful friendship…

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Trail We Blaze

  Now that Jameson was hiking with Jake, the trail started to feel much less lonely and also a lot less daunting. He felt like he could do more because he had a teammate, of sorts. He had someone to help him through the rougher patches and also someone that he could cheer on. Jake had always been more used to being a part of a team or a group. After all, he’d been dating Ivan for a while, and before him there was Sam. Before Sam there was Roger. And etcetera. He was not used to being a lone wolf, and it was even harder on the Appalachian Trail, where everything was new and nerve-wracking.

  There was no lack of conversation anymore either, which kept Jake from losing his mind and starting to talk to the trees in order to stave off boredom.

  “So now that I’ve told you about my awkwardly-named hometown, where are you from?” Jameson asked him, smiling a joking sort of smile that just endeared him to Jake further.

  “I’m from Richmond, Virginia,” Jake replied. “Not as funny in name, but a good place. A little more Republican than I would like, but…”

  Jameson laughed, shaking his head. “I know what you mean, trust me. Try being the one gay kid in your school in a town called Erect.”

  “Oh, I bet no one made fun of you and your high school years were boring.”

  That made both of them laugh. “Next town we come to, I’m buying you a drink,” Jameson said. “I insist.”

  Jake was not about to argue with that. It wasn’t every day a handsome stranger insisted on buying him a drink. Hell, it wasn’t every day that anyone offered to buy him a drink! He felt like his luck was starting to turn around again.

  “I was thinking about maybe staying in a hotel at the next rest area on the map,” he told Jameson. “I saw one called The Country Inn. What do you think? That’s not cheating, is it?”

  “From what I’ve read about this trail, very little is considered cheating. I think the fact that we’re going from state to state makes staying in a hotel sometimes the obvious choice.” Jameson smiled at Jake.

  He was handsome, fit, obviously skilled at hiking, and he was kind. Jake was worried that he was really starting to fall for this guy. He supposed that finding love on the ATR was not unheard of. He could just imagine Olga’s reaction if he told her about it. She would make a sound like she was retching and punch him on the shoulder.

  When there was a lull in their conversation about an hour out from their rest stop, Jake took his phone out of his pocket and texted his best friend the most important update.

  Hottie trailmate! he wrote.

  It didn’t take long to receive a response, which surprised Jake because the trees were doing an excellent job in covering any sign of the sky at the moment. The reception must have been good in that part of the toppermost of Virginia.

  You found a rebound boy that quickly?

  Ha ha, Jameson texted back. He’s tall, handsome and it just so happens he’s—

  “You get reception?” Jameson asked.

  Jake’s thumbs stopped dead in their tracks. He looked over to see Jameson looking over curiously. There was no way that he could read Jake’s screen… Right?

  He shook his head, feeling silly. Of course Jameson couldn’t read his screen. He was too far away. He could probably only just make out that it was a text window that was open.

  “Apparently,” he said, quickly finishing up his text and sending it before pocketing his phone back in his pocket. “I just wanted to send word back to my friend that I’m doing well and I haven’t been eaten alive by bears yet.” He chuckled nervously, hoping that Jameson couldn’t detect his nervousness.

  He was going to need to make sure to charge up his phone again as soon as possible. Not every state would be so kind as to give him service and not completely drain his battery.

  “I didn’t even bother bringing a phone,” Jameson confessed. “I figured I could always write a postcard home so people don’t think I’m dead.”

  Jake smiled at him. “That’s a good idea. Both a souvenir and a reassurance. Are you close with your family… Got a lot of loved ones waiting for you back home? Again I’m sounding like a serial killer! I’m sorry!”

  Jameson laughed. “It’s okay. It’s just my grandma, mostly. My parents and I aren’t very close. I’ve got a sister, too, but she’s married with kids and we had a falling out…”

  “Ah,” Jake said, nodding. “Well, at least you’ve got your grandmother. I’ve only told my best friend Olga where I am. I told her to relay the info, but who knows? I guess I’ll get an angry phone call from my mom one of these days.”

  As the sun began its slow
descent into the horizon’s edge, Jake and Jameson checked into the Country Inn at the second over-night rest stop of their hike. Jake felt like he was slowly starting to pick up speed and get a good plan for how the rest of his northbound hike was going to go.

  “Do you want to room with me?” Jameson asked him. “We’d save money that way. I don’t take up much space.”

  Jake felt like dancing and maybe exploding a little, but he kept those feelings inside and simply nodded with a smile at his new friend. “That sounds good to me.”

  They got themselves a room and went up the elevator. The hotel was not very big, but at least it could boast two floors. It was pretty classy-looking, considering it was not expensive. Jake was pretty much blowing his whole savings on this excursion, so he figured that he may as well enjoy it. He’d be working until he was eighty-five after this.

  When they arrived at their room’s door, Jameson stuck the key-card in the slot and opened up the door, stepping aside so Jake could enter. They were both still wearing their packs on their backs, but Jake took his off and set it down with a plop onto the floor near the queen-sized bed.

  There was only one bed in this room.

  That surprised him. He figured that the people in this town wouldn’t be so ready to just have two young men room together for the night. Maybe they assumed they were brothers? Two very different-looking brothers…

  “I think I’ll take a shower,” Jameson said, letting his pack fall off of his shoulders near the other side of the bed – the side closest to the room’s one window. Jake would be close to the closet, and the door. “When I get out, let’s go somewhere. Don’t forget I owe you a drink.”