Ranger Knox (Shifter Nation: Werebears Of Acadia Book 1)

by Meg Ripley

  “Have you heard any anecdotes explaining what spurred his interest in conservation to begin with?”

  I glance at her again; Hannah’s keeping pace with me pretty well, even without the advantage of having the preternatural speed that comes with being a shifter.

  “Lots of rich people back then made it their pet cause, and they still do today. It’s a way to preserve beautiful landscapes, and add some credit to their names. You know?”

  “I guess that makes sense, but why not...I don’t know. Why not build hospitals, or something like that?”

  I shrug. “Some of them did that, too,” I tell her. “But a lot of them liked to be in the great outdoors in their downtime, and the best way to make sure they could enjoy it was to set up parks like this one.”

  Of course, the real reason behind why many of the conservationists were so devoted to the cause is a very different story. One that Hannah could never know.

  Davis and a handful of the other founders--his comrades--were shifters.

  Around the turn of the twentieth century, the industrial revolution began to encroach on our normal safe spaces, the same way it had been pushing out other wildlife. We needed areas where we could shift at will or during the full moon; to be ourselves and embrace our dual natures while being shielded from the public eye. So, while Davis and his associates were rallying for the designation of a preserved space for us here in Maine, other wealthy shifters with political prowess infiltrated the federal government and made their case for forging the National Park Service as a whole, which would establish preservation areas for shifters across the nation.

  As for Hannah, hopefully, if I keep repeating the story that’s on the official record, I can get her off this line of questioning altogether. I’m pledged--as every shifter is--to keeping our kind and its history secret. Because of my position as the administrator of Acadia, as well as the Alpha of my clan, I have the responsibility of making sure no outsiders know about the real purpose behind the national parks. Hannah is most definitely an outsider, no matter how much the ursine part of my brain keeps insisting that she should belong to me.

  “I guess maybe the fact that it was mostly a bunch of super-wealthy people is why some folks are so keen on the idea that they were free masons, or Elks, or whatever,” Hannah says.

  “People are always going to say weird things like that about rich people,” I agree. Thank god. That’s an answer she can deal with.

  I’m about to change the subject when I hear the voice of one of my clan-mates, Jack, in my mind.

  No one’s been able to track down the four of them. We’re combing the woods, but they’ve done something to cover their scent trail.

  I almost groan out loud at the news; after I saw Hannah safely out of the park last night, I’d sent the word out to track down and capture the bears who’d tried to attack her. Since they were outsiders, no one could track them by their mental signature--they weren’t attuned to the rest of us--and if they were somehow managing to cover their scent-trails, that made it even harder.

  “Something wrong?” I look around and see that I’ve slowed down to a near-stop, and Hannah is looking up at me, concerned.

  “I just remembered something,” I say, shaking my head. With her so close, I can’t avoid breathing in her scent, and it drives any worry about the bastards completely from my mind, replacing it with the bone-deep need to touch her. I make myself step back, away from her, and fill my lungs with some of the crisp air of the surrounding forest. “Let’s keep going; the basket of food I put together for us is just ahead.”

  I can feel the heat flowing through my body, and just from being around Hannah, and breathing in her scent, I can already feel myself getting hard. This is disastrous. I need to get away from her as soon as I can; not just because she’s distracting as hell, but because I need to find a way to deal with the bears that almost attacked her.

  I send a signal to the members of my clan, telling them they need to comb back through the woods, and if they have to, raid the camp the interlopers set up for themselves amongst the cabins and find whatever they need to get a good scent-mark to go by.

  We get to the spot where I put the basket off to the side and I lead Hannah out to a clearing; it’s one of those places that the hikers and tourists almost never get to, because it’s off the trail and a little under cover, and it’s one of my favorite places in the park to visit when I’m by myself. I can’t say for sure why I’ve brought Hannah here specifically, except that it’s quiet and well-lit during the day.

  “So,” she says, once she’s settled on the blanket over the grass, “what’s the craziest rumor you’ve ever heard about the park?”

  I laugh while I’m taking out the sandwiches, salad and fruit. “There was one floating around for a while that the government uses national parks to grow super-potent weed to get kids hooked on it,” I tell her. “That one occasionally gets the alt-right prayer groups out here looking for hidden marijuana to report.”

  “And probably some potheads looking to score some premium product, too,” Hannah adds.

  “Yeah, that too,” I chuckle. I start in on some of the salad I made, and Hannah takes a swig of water before taking a bite of her sandwich.

  “I wouldn’t think a big tough guy like you would be interested in having a picnic in the woods,” she says, raising an eyebrow.

  “Hey--I love being in the woods, and I love to eat. What’s not to like?” I ask, shaking my head.

  Hannah laughs. “Well, what’s keeping Yogi Bear and Boo-Boo from coming to steal your picnic basket, Ranger?” she asks with a flirty grin.

  I chuckle at that. “Bears aren’t usually interested in well-hidden picnic coolers,” I tell her. “Generally, if they’re going to bother to raid something, it’ll be out in the open, like if someone leaves the remains of a campfire feast out.”

  “Good to know,” Hannah says. For a few minutes we eat in silence, but I can see the gears turning in her mind, the way she’s looking off into middle-distance, thinking about what she’s going to ask me next.

  The clan keeps checking in occasionally, but I’m able to keep that in the back of my mind, like I always do. Now that I have a little time to sit here and relax, I can’t help but scan my eyes over Hannah’s curves. I’d checked her out the night before, of course, but the sunlight does something special to her light brown hair and makes her hazel eyes sparkle. I keep finding myself glancing at the way her tits strain at the fabric of her sweater, or thinking--almost against my will--about how she must taste, what it would be like to feel her thighs close against my head as I devour her.

  The grapes I’m eating don’t taste half as sweet as I’m sure she would, and as I let my mind wander a bit more, I can feel my dick getting hard--not enough to be embarrassing, but enough to make my pants feel uncomfortably tight; enough to make me sweat a bit.

  “So,” I say, plucking another cluster of grapes out of a plastic container, “what else do you want to know about the park?”

  “I’m really just trying to get to the bottom of what’s behind its creation,” Hannah says with a shrug. “Like any journalist, if I see something vague that doesn’t quite add up, it’s like some switch in my brain flips; I have to know what the answers are.”

  I smile at that, but I can only hope that Hannah isn’t as good at her job as her questions lead me to believe.

  “There’s nothing sketchy going on,” I say matter-of-factly. “Davis was a great man, and most of the conservationists--including Rockefeller--were pretty decent, beyond the whole ‘super-capitalist’ thing they had going on.”

  Hannah snorts. “But those people seem to have always had shadowy personal lives,” she points out. “I mean, just take the Kennedys, for example. There was that Kennedy sister whose dad sent her to get a lobotomy because she was, I guess, mildly mentally ill and disobedient, and she ended up pretty much becoming a zombie. And no one talks about it when they’re talking about JFK.”

  “So, wh
at’s your pet theory? What skeletons do you think are lurking in the closets of the people who wanted--shockingly--to save some of this beautiful land from being turned into factories and strip malls?”

  Hannah shrugs. “I have no idea,” she admits. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Well, I wish you luck in getting to the bottom of it,” I say. “I can’t help you tease out these fringe theories; I only know the official story.”

  “Of course, you do,” Hannah says. She grabs a ripe plum out of the cooler and takes a bite. Watching her, seeing the juice dribble down her chin onto the front of her shirt; noticing the look of pure pleasure on her face at the flavor turns me on beyond belief.

  I want nothing more than to pin Hannah down on the blanket and taste the plum on her lips, tear her clothes off and make her understand that she belongs to me.

  Down, boy! Fuck! I push my primal instinct to the back of my mind and try to get back the control I’ve prided myself on.

  “I’ll be happy to show you around a little more,” I tell her. “There are some great bird-watching spots around the park, and maybe we’ll be lucky enough to get a look at some of the other wildlife from a safe distance.”

  “I’d like that a lot,” Hannah says, nodding her approval.

  Before I can suggest that we pack up the remains of our little feast and move on, I hear the unmistakable sound of bears approaching, growling, telling me once again, the politics of my life as a bear are about to collide with my professional life.

  Chapter 5 - Hannah

  I see Knox go tense, and my heart starts beating faster. “What’s wrong?” He’s been a little on edge most of the day, but it’s obvious to me that he’s alert to something I haven’t noticed.

  “Bears,” he says, hardly above a whisper.

  “Bears?” I look around; I thought I’d heard something a moment before, but I didn’t think anything of it.

  “Bears, and they’re close,” Knox murmurs.

  My heart isn’t just beating faster in my chest--it’s pounding, my blood is rushing in my ears, and I have no idea what to do with myself.

  “What do we do?” Knox rises to his feet in one quick movement; it’s almost too fast for me to see, in fact. One moment, he’s lounging on the blanket next to me, and in the next, he’s heading towards the tree line.

  “Stay here,” he whispers. “I’ll take care of this.” I watch him move through the grass in near-silence, and while part of me is pretty sure that of the two of us, he must be the one to know what to do--but another part of me is imagining what would happen next if he gets himself killed by a bunch of bears.

  Knox disappears into the woods, and I’m stuck sitting on the blanket with the remainder of the food he brought, wondering what the hell to do if his plan falls apart. I hear movement in the woods and I shiver, thinking of Knox going up against however many bears there are out there.

  Aren’t bears solitary? They don’t wander around in groups, other than, obviously, mother bears with their offspring, right? I couldn’t remember ever hearing anything about bears working as a group towards some common goal, but apparently, they did.

  After a while, my curiosity got the best of me, and I couldn’t resist rising and making my way toward the tree line. I must be out of my mind; it’s crazy to think of walking into the woods when there are bears within a short distance of me, but I can’t stand not knowing what’s going on.

  I try to move as quietly as possible through the grass and it occurs to me how strange it was that Knox was able to get into the woods without making a single noise; but then, I remind myself, he’s a park ranger; he’s used to doing stuff like that.

  I slip past the trees and it feels like every inch of my skin is crawling with anticipation. As I step in the direction Knox went in, I start hearing some of what’s going on: growls, groans, and the unmistakable sound of foliage being trampled and crunched under enormous feet. I can’t hear any sign of Knox, and a terrifying thought occurs to me.

  Oh god, what if they got him? What if he’s dead?

  And then it occurs to me to wonder what the hell I think I’m going to accomplish by going after him, when I don’t have any training in dealing with bears at all.

  I see a blur of dark fur and crouch down, hoping I’m downwind of the huge beasts. I crawl forward, enough to be able to see what’s happening, and I’m completely confused: three bears thunder off in the opposite direction of the clearing, muzzles coated in foamy saliva, while two more continue to wrestle. I can’t see Knox anywhere, and I lift myself up a bit--still trying to remain hidden--to look for him. Where the hell could he have gone? I thought he was supposed to be taking care of the situation so the bears wouldn’t come after us--or more accurately, me?

  The two bears still fighting are going at it harder than I would have imagined possible, tumbling and growling and even roaring every few moments, and I can’t help but just sit there, fascinated and afraid, watching them.

  I have no idea what to do. At first, the two bears look almost identical, but as I stare at the fight going on between them, I notice slight differences: one is definitely bigger than the other, even if it’s hard to tell from all the movement. One of them has patches of bare skin showing through the fur--maybe from some kind of infection, or mange? I’m not sure. But I definitely feel like the bigger bear is somehow familiar, and somehow comforting. It keeps putting itself between the other bear and the path to where Knox and I had been having our picnic before.

  The smaller bear manages to slip past the bigger one, and then looks straight at me. I want to believe that it can’t see me, but it’s hard to keep that belief up when it licks its chops and starts heading in my direction. Panic washes over me, and before I even know what I’m doing, I get to my feet. My legs prickle with pins and needles from the circulation rushing through them again, and I turn around and begin to run, crashing through the woods.

  As I’m heading back in the direction I’ve come, I spot something: Knox’s jacket, on the ground, half-tucked behind a log. That only makes me feel more panicked, reminding me that the one security I have against the bears fighting in the woods is nowhere to be seen. I run past the blanket in the clearing, not even bothering to grab my purse: all I care about is getting away before the bear can catch me.

  It isn’t until I’m a good half mile down the trail that I realize I don’t even know where I am, or where I’m headed. I’m totally lost, and as that realization dawns on me, a sharp, pointed catch lights up along my ribs, and I have to stop running. I slow down and look behind me; the bear either got distracted by the picnic or the other bear caught up to it--whatever the case, it isn’t chasing me.

  I stop, panting and gasping for breath, and bend forward until my hands are on my knees. My head spins and I feel myself wavering, my knees going rubbery from so much running all at once along with the fear of being chased by at least one bear. I sink down onto my knees and wince at the impact on my hands as I try to catch my breath and--at the same time--figure out what I should do.

  “Hannah! Hannah, are you okay?” I scramble up onto my feet just in time to see Knox jogging towards me; his jacket is gone, and there are some scratches across his face and his hands, but otherwise, he looks just fine.

  “Where the hell did you go?” I dust my hands off on my jeans and look Knox up and down quickly. It definitely looks like something happened to him, but I can’t wrap my head around the fact that he somehow disappeared, and then reappeared, not as harmed as I would have thought for a guy who had a run-in with four bears.

  “I lured a few of the bears away, and then the remaining ones were fighting it out,” Knox tells me.

  “One of them chased after me,” I say.

  Knox nods. “I had doubled back by then. When I saw it going in your direction, I headed it off and sent it back into the woods, away from the trail,” he says.

  I look at him for a long moment. Other than his jacket, I’d seen no sign of Knox while I was running from the bea
r. He probably took it off and tossed it aside when he started fighting with the bears, I tell myself, but the whole situation seems so endlessly bizarre.

  “Is it safe to go back to the picnic? I left my bag back there,” I say.

  Knox nods. “I got rid of all of them; they won’t be bothering us anymore,” he tells me as I look him over. He’s obviously been scratched up, but it looks more like the work of being whipped in the face by branches and vines rather than claws. Of course, there’s no way for me to know what really happened between the time he left the blanket and when he reappeared on the trail, coming to me; something about the whole situation just doesn’t add up.

  “I guess I have to thank you again,” I say as I start back in what I hope is the right direction.

  Knox falls into step next to me. “Oh?”

  I grin at him. I don’t want him to think I doubt his story, but in the back of my mind, I’m trying to piece together a scenario that would both explain what I saw and validate his story.

  “Yeah, you’ve saved me twice,” I point out.

  “Just doing my job,” Knox says. He moves a little closer to me, and I catch a whiff of some kind of deep, earthy musk clinging to him; it doesn’t smell bad exactly, but very--very--primal. It must be something from the bears, I decide, putting it out of my mind. But even as we finally get back to the blanket, I find the smell clinging to Knox is actually kind of appealing in a strange way.

  “Wow, that must get the adrenaline pumping,” I say absently. “Chasing off bears, I mean.”

  “It definitely makes me feel manlier than--say--having a picnic,” Knox admits.

  I have to chuckle at that. I glance over at him as I’m gathering up my things from the blanket, and I can’t help but notice there’s a definite bulge at the front of his jeans. The sight of it makes the blood rush to my face and I look away quickly. Either Knox is turned on by me, or he’s turned on by fighting bears; I’m not sure which one is more concerning.