by Jessica Ryan
“This is amazing,” she said, noticing how the path twisted around all of the biggest trees. Whoever had cleared it had been thoughtful to not disturb the ancient beauty of the forest that surrounded them.
“Beorn built it.”
“Who’s Beorn?”
“He’s an old bear who used to come into Bucklin from time to time. He was instrumental in defeating the demon and his biker gang. He used to have a cabin not too deep into the forest, until the demon and his troops blew it up.”
“Where is he now?” she asked.
“He and his mate moved deeper into the forest. Bears are pretty solitary. I doubt we could even find him.”
“His mate? There’s another bear out there with him?”
“A she-wolf,” Seth said. “My surrogate niece, actually.”
Maribel wanted to ask what he was talking about, but she shut her mouth and kept following Seth. He seemed to be in better spirits after their near moment, but there’d been a hint of sadness in his voice when he mentioned his surrogate niece.
He can talk about William and the wolves of Bucklin all he wants, she realized. But he longs for his family. That’s why I’m here, to keep him honest. He’d never tell us the truth about Rowan if he was left to do it alone.
“We’ll continue down this path for a while,” he said. “The path should be clear and you shouldn’t fall, even in the dark.”
“Are you not going to shift?” she asked. She had to admit, she was a little bit excited about the possibility of seeing him become a monstrous wolf. He had promised something big, but she wondered if he was exaggerating his size, like most men did. Although Seth didn’t need to exaggerate about size. He was one of the few men she knew could deliver on such boastful tales.
“I don’t need to shift yet,” he said. “I won’t need to do that until we leave Beorn’s old territory. I know my way around here fairly well. It’s when we cross the river that things will get a little fuzzy.”
“River?” she asked.
“This trail leads up. Most of them do. They lead into the mountains, and there’s a mighty river that runs right through the middle of this. It’s been an uncommonly wet spring and summer, so the river has already flooded a few times.”
“Won’t that mess with your sense of smell?” Maribel asked. She thought she’d heard once that animals were able to escape pursuers by running through a stream for a time. Hopefully the scent he was going to hunt wouldn’t be completely covered by the overflowing water.
“Let’s hope not,” Seth said, not convincing her very well. “I’ll pick up on it eventually.”
“What if you pick up someone else’s scent?” she asked.
“There shouldn’t be any other shifters out in this forest.”
“What makes you say that?”
“There’s some wild ones on the other side of the waterfall, closer to the campgrounds, but they don’t come this far over. How many shifters do you think there are in the world?”
“A lot?”
“Not as many as you think. There’s some humans who think every animal they meet in the wild is a shifter and every yoked man is a shifter in human form. If those people were right, we’d never be able to keep ourselves secret, and you wouldn’t be able to walk down the street without tripping over a shifter.”
“That’s true,” Maribel said. “I guess if there was a lot more of you, it’d be hard to keep your secret.”
“Exactly.”
“Still,” she asked, pondering a question that had been bothering her for a long time. “How are you able to keep yourselves a secret? The odds of being able to hide something this big are astronomical. I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I study the numbers, and I know how the human mind works. There’s no way anyone with any knowledge of this would be able to keep it quiet. It’s also why there’s no aliens at Roswell.”
“You’re more likely to find an alien than a wolf in the city,” Seth said. “It’s easy to keep it hidden when we live such isolated lives. There’s a reason we live in rural areas. It’s closer to nature and it’s easier to keep up our masquerade.”
“Yeah, but what if a shifter was born in the city? What’s to keep him from turning into Teen Wolf during his formative years to gain popularity?”
“Do you really think our government would allow something like that to happen?” Seth asked. “They’d chew him up and spit him out. You know how many scientists would be rushing forward to decapitate that kid and study his brain? How many would want to drain his blood? Poke and prod him? Fear keeps us in line. That’s the only thing.”
“Fear? I thought you didn’t fear anything.” Maribel was trying to make a joke, but she realized that Seth might take offense. Luckily he was in a good mood. It must have been the fact that they were so close to nature. She was sure his wolf was enjoying the walk through his natural habitat too.
“I fear no man and no shifter,” Seth said. “That’s not to say I’m not wary of men.”
“What’s the difference?”
“A man is an inquisitive and compassionate creature. A man would be more willing to want to be my friend. Sit down and talk to me and see what makes me tick. Ya know? Men are panicky and stupid. They would demand that their government protect them from the boogeyman and thus comes the experiments.”
Maribel had never thought of it that way before. The mob mentality was something that had been studied extensively, and she’d looked into the statistics associated with it too. Gang mentality caused a crowd to join together into one large hive mind that did stupid and irrational things.
“How long have we been walking?” she finally asked. They had been talking in between bouts of silence for so long. The sun was completely gone now and the silvery light of the moon was bathing them with its beautiful lunar glow.
“For hours,” Seth said. “We’re getting very close to the place for me to shift and take the reins.”
“I can almost hear the river in the distance,” Maribel said.
“We’ll make camp soon,” Seth said.
“By the river?” Maribel asked.
“Make camp right next to the water cooler? Isn’t that where humans gather at work? Why would animals be any different?”
“Good point.”
Maribel couldn’t get over how beautiful the moon looked through the trees. It was a full moon, one that nearly lit the forest up like it was daytime. It was so large in the sky Maribel felt like she could simply climb a tree and pull it right out of the sky.
“Why are we camping at night?” she asked. “I thought you wanted to sleep by day.”
“It’s late, and the full moon brings out the predators. It might as well be daylight right now as far as the creatures of the forest are concerned.”
“So, what are we going to do?” she asked.
“We’ll sleep until midday and then eat. By the time we set out it’ll be close to evening and we’ll spend most of that night traveling through the forest. The moon won’t bother us like this tomorrow night.”
“I thought the full moon did strange things to shifters,” Maribel asked.
“No, it doesn’t,” Seth said. “That’s an old wives’ tale.”
“I swear I heard it does something. It doesn’t force you to shift?” She could’ve sworn she heard that shifters were powerless to control their animals during a full moon. Seth would tell her not to believe everything she read in a book.
“It does do something,” he said finally, turning and giving her a smile that instantly melted her.
“What’s that?” she asked, afraid of the answer.
“It makes us extra horny,” he said before stopping in a clearing off the path. “We’ll make camp here.”
He’s got to be joking, she thought. Please tell me he’s joking.
“Well, I guess it sucks to be you,” she said, not realizing what was coming out of her mouth until she’d said it.
“Yeah,” he said, shaking his head with a forlorn look on his fa
ce. “Just a damn shame.”
Jacko’s full of shit, she thought as she settled onto the ground beside Seth. His comment had been in jest, even though she knew that if she offered herself to him right now he would take her. But he wouldn’t take her without her permission. Surely she had nothing to worry about.
As Seth settled in next to her and began to spread the bedrolls he had brought, she smiled. This trip wasn’t going to be so bad, and she was finally getting to know Seth, just like she had wanted. The problem was: how much was he going to get to know her?
Chapter 4
Seth lay back with his head against his pack and stared up at the beautiful full moon above him in the sky. He could feel his wolf breathing heavily, begging and wanting to be set free to roam.
Soon, my better half, he promised. Soon you will be free and she’ll be up against you, gripping your fur. Her scent will be intoxicating and we’ll feel the warmth of her sex on our back as we take her on this journey. She’ll have no choice but to accept our claim.
He hated thinking about it like that. It sounded almost stalkerish in his head as he reasoned it out. She had rejected him, but he was still pursuing her with fervent desire. He was hoping to make her fall in love with him. The only difference was that he knew that her rejection was just a façade. He could smell her desire on her—it was impossible to lie to a shifter. He wondered if she had learned that fact in all of her studies. She claimed to know so much about shifters, yet she knew so little.
He glanced down at her. They had put their bedrolls side by side. He had told her it would keep her from being stolen away in the middle of the night if she was close to him. Luckily she had taken that at face value and not questioned him. In reality no creature would dare approach them as they slept. Seth’s mighty scent was enough to send even the nastiest of predators scurrying away.
He watched as Maribel slept with her face up against his chest. She fit perfectly against him, like she belonged. He fell asleep that night with that wonderful thought in his head and her soft breath brushing his ear. It was the perfect way for him to end an otherwise crappy day.
The next day Seth woke up with a start. He’d stopped feeling Maribel’s warmth against his chest. Where the hell was she? He sat up and looked around, finding the bedroll next to him empty. Her pack was missing as well.
“Maribel?” he called, jumping up with a start. “Maribel, where are you?”
Panic began to flood him as he looked in every direction for her. Surely she hadn’t abandoned him. That would be foolish of her, right? She would never survive out here in the wilderness by herself. She was a city girl if there ever was one. How was she going to stand up to a bear? Tell it that she was statistically more likely to die from a bee sting than a bear attack?
He peeled his clothes off so fast he nearly ripped his shirt. Within two steps his body had changed into a giant black wolf with silver streaks flashing through his fur. His nose immediately went to the ground as he searched desperately for her scent.
Bingo! He found it with ease once he hit the trail. Was she mad? Had she set out on the trail by herself? He began to head back toward the truck, but stopped dead in his tracks. The trail went cold when he went that way. No, she had gone toward the river.
What madness would drive her toward the river? Had some creature grabbed her while he was fast asleep? It was impossible. He would have woken up if that was the case. She must have voluntarily gone to the river. Maybe she’d woken up with a thirst. It was past noon and she probably wasn’t used to sleeping that late. He would have to admonish her good and hard for doing something so foolhardy.
No, this just wasn’t in her character. She was more careful than this. What the hell had gotten into her?
As he bounded down the trail he turned over what he was going to say in his head. He would tell her how worried he was about her and how important she was to him. He would remind her that she wasn’t on familiar ground and wasn’t the outdoorsy type. He would then remind her how dangerously close they were to stepping into uncharted territory just past the river.
It was the perfect speech, one that would let her know how much she had messed up but at the same time it would let her know how much he cared. He had it all laid out in his head and then it fell completely apart when he reached the river and saw Maribel standing there.
As soon as he saw her, he dropped low to the ground and dove behind a rock. He was as silent as any cat and she never suspected a thing. There she was, completely nude, with soapy water running down her smooth, bronze skin. Even though he was shifted, he could feel the human inside of him stirring with desire. If he’d been shifted, he would probably even begin to stroke his cock, he was so turned on by what he saw.
Her perfect ass was facing him, all round and plump and inviting. He stared at her slick cheeks and only thought about fitting his human tongue between them as Maribel moaned with pleasure. She turned and leaned her head back and closed her eyes as she ran the sponge she had brought from home over her soapy breasts, taking it down her body and into the fresh spring water below.
It was almost too much for Seth to bear. He wanted to fly through the air, shifting midway as he tackled her into the water and staked his claim. She might be surprised at first, but he knew as soon as she realized what he was doing that she would give in and let him take her. She wanted this as much as he did.
He moved forward, slinking across the lush green grass that separated him from the river. She still hadn’t looked up, and he felt his belly drag across the ground. Just as he was ready to make his change he stopped and looked past her.
He picked up the intruder’s scent before he saw him. It was a cougar, stalking along the riverbank as it looked at Maribel. It was too large to be any normal cougar; it was a wild shifter. When the hell had cats moved into this territory? When Beorn gave it up and quit policing the place, that was when. He should have known that answer.
There were few things a wolf hated more than a goddamn cat. They were formidable foes in their own right, but they were also cocky bastards who thought they owned the world. Usually they were solitary, not traveling in packs, but when they joined together into a pride they became even more dangerous.
This one wasn’t very old, judging by the looks of him, but he was foolhardy enough to focus on a delicious meal bathing right in front of him. That would happen over Seth’s dead body, though. Cats generally weren’t into claiming humans as mates. They saw themselves above anything that wasn’t a cat-shifter and they usually used humans for meals rather than sex. If they only knew what they were missing out on. But this one wouldn’t have his prize. This one wouldn’t eat the only woman who made Seth’s heart sing with the song of love.
He rose up fully, making himself visible to the cat. Maribel still hadn’t noticed either of the animals that were so perilously close to her. Seth again wondered what the hell she was thinking. This was so out of character for her.
The big cat reacted immediately to the sight of the pissed-off alpha wolf bearing down on him. He hissed and then roared as Seth hit the water and began to splash towards him. By now Maribel had looked up and she was screaming the kind of bloodcurdling scream that only a person in mortal danger would release from their lungs. Seth ignored it and ran past her as she dove into the water to get away from him.
She didn’t recognize him and obviously thought he was some sort of monstrous shifter that was coming to eat her. Finally her head turned to see the doom that she hadn’t even been aware of. Hopefully the realization of the wolf’s identity was setting in for her.
The cougar reared back and swiped with its massive paws, trying to intimidate Seth into breaking off his charge. He ignored the beast’s show of strength and continued his straight run. The fight would be over quickly, but it would be bloody.
The cat swiped, but Seth was nimble for his size and he easily dodged out of the way. He reared up himself to meet the cat that had now gone onto two feet in an attempt to box him away. I
t just barely missed taking his eye out with a swipe. One of Seth’s paws with its long front claws found its mark on the cat’s nose. The creature howled in pain and dropped to the ground in shock. Seth came down on top of it, his weight crushing the creature to the ground.
It tried to fight, but he was too big and too strong for it to find its way out from under him. His jaws clamped down on the intruder’s throat and began to crush, cutting off all of the cat’s air.
You bastard, Seth thought. You son of a bitch. You deserve to die. You deserve to be maimed. I should gut you and hang your entrails from a tree as a warning to the rest of your kind. Fuck you!
By the time he realized that he was wildly clamping down on the cat’s face and neck, it was long dead. The battle had ended just as quickly as it had begun. Seth’s face, neck and chest were covered in the cougar’s blood. His chest was heaving and the sudden end to his frenzy brought a wave of sleepiness over him that almost forced him to collapse on the spot. He had slept for at least nine hours, but right now he wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep. The side of the cougar’s body looked like as soft and good a place as any for him to collapse.
“Seth?” a heavenly voice asked behind him.
He spun around to find Maribel standing in fear, clutching her hands to her chest as she looked over Seth in his most primal form. He didn’t want her to see him like this. He didn’t want her to see him covered in blood with the carcass of a vanquished foe lying behind him. It just wasn’t a good look when you wanted a girl to accept you.
He slowly began to move towards her, trying to get his wolf under control. The beast was in a blood lust frenzy, feeling invincible and on top of the world. He wanted nothing more than to claim his mate and be done with the entire trip. Some wolves could barely keep up with their wolves’ basest desires, but Seth wasn’t some wolf—he was an alpha.
Calm down, boy, he said, trying to soothe the beast in his own head. Maribel was trying to cover her naked body while retreating into the water.
