by Leela Ash
Estelle nodded and followed him slowly and carefully down the winding mountain roads, until they finally came upon one of the five properties with cabins built. He had chosen this one specifically because it was sparsely occupied. One family of three lived about six cabins down, and the rest were, more or less, deserted. The majority of the men preferred to live closer to the mines they were working on, and where these cabins sat was the entrance to one of the few known ancient tunnels.
Chaz and his family guarded the site, so he knew they would also be able to keep a watchful eye on the human, both to keep her from getting underfoot and to keep her out of harm’s way should the time come.
“What do you think?” Blaine asked once Estelle got out of her car. She stared at the cabin and then looked at Blaine.
“Are you sure this won’t cost me anything?”
“Oh, there’s a small price to pay,” Blaine admitted. “There isn’t any internet or cell phone connection for miles. If you want any of that shit, you have to drive about twelve miles out of your way to go into town. They have a tower there where your phone would work. But, otherwise, no, this isn’t going to cost you anything. Just so long as you take care of the place.”
But Blaine could tell he wouldn’t have any trouble of that kind. Not with this girl. She seemed to take great pride in keeping herself well-kept. And upkeep of the home could often be predicted by the way a woman carried herself. At least, that had been Blaine’s limited experience. Not that he wanted to think about that right now.
“I can’t thank you enough for all the kindness you’ve shown to me,” Estelle said, turning to Blaine, her eyes round and grateful. There was just something about her he couldn’t help but like. That was rare, though, and he tore his eyes away.
“You won’t have anything to thank me for if you do your job right,” Blaine said. “This isn’t charity. This is work. Hard fuckin’ work. And if you last a week here, I’ll be surprised.”
Estelle’s eyes widened and she opened her mouth to speak, but she had nothing to say that Blaine wanted to hear. Instead of listening, he got into his car and slammed the door shut.
If this girl thought he was some kind of a bleeding heart who was just handing jobs away to her out of pity, she was sorely mistaken. He would have to remember this when he got her to work the next morning. Then they would see whether or not she felt like thanking him.
4.
Estelle was stunned as she watched Blaine speed away from the cabins, but she couldn’t let the man throw her off. The whole situation was vaguely overwhelming, and so she knew she would just have to take it a step at a time. It was weird that he had suddenly gotten negative with her like that. She had thought she and Blaine were getting along pretty well.
Oh well, she couldn’t let that kind of thing bother her. Estelle had vowed, a long time ago, to live in the moment. It was the only way she had survived living in a family full of skinny people who thought that having a little extra weight on the body was some kind of grotesque disease. Thankfully, she had worked hard on building up a positive body image, and it didn’t matter to her what anybody else said, especially not assholes like Ken. She was who she was, and there was no reason in hell to apologize for that.
Estelle distracted herself by going into the cabin to explore. It was already stocked with some of the basics; clean linens, soap, shampoo, and the like. But what it lacked was food. And she was sorely hungry.
She glanced at her watch and grinned. Helen wasn’t going to believe what had happened. There was no reason she couldn’t run to town before her first real shift at the company began so she could stock up on food. She didn’t even have spare clothing. Hopefully, they had some kind of retail outlet where she would be able to get at least one or two outfits until she had time for another three-hour drive back to campus.
Estelle sighed. She had many strengths, it was true, but one thing she wished she could change about herself was her impulsivity. It usually got her into trouble, but somehow, this time, it seemed to have done just the opposite.
Her heart fluttered as she thought back to her first look at Blaine. He was nothing but man. Encountering him had afforded Estelle with a rare opportunity to look inside the mind of a man who clearly had everybody’s best interest at heart, even if he didn’t know how to show it. Sure, he was a little rough around the edges, but she knew that with a little nurturing, things could really turn around for him. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she would stake her life on it.
Estelle set to work making her bed and getting settled in before hopping back in the car. Blaine had given her a tourist’s map of the mountain, and she followed the map carefully, driving slowly down the mountain roads, her heart in her throat every time she looked over the edge at the steep drop below.
Thankfully, she had always been an excellent driver and made it to town in one piece.
“Welcome!” a broad, kind-faced woman exclaimed when Estelle found her way inside a little boutique clothing store. The clothing was astonishing, and Estelle looked slowly through the racks at patterns that vaguely resembled symbols that were once rampant in ancient bear cultures throughout the mountains. She had taken a course on the Oak Mountain bear shifters at SU, and now she was beyond glad she had. Every article told a story.
“You guys, you know, bear shifters…you wouldn’t mind if you saw me wearing these, would you?” Estelle asked. She couldn’t stand the idea of offending anybody.
“Oh no! Of course not!” the woman exclaimed. “None of those symbols are particularly sacred. It’s more like random words. The one you’re holding now says ‘mountain dweller’.”
“I guess I am technically a mountain dweller now,” Estelle said with a short laugh. “All right. I guess I’ll take it.”
It happened to be a very fashionable black dress. She also picked up a red skirt and a couple of blouses–the bear shifters were snazzy dressers, apparently. At least, they were if they were women interested in fashion like she was. The miners all wore simple garments, though the sleeves and collars were embroidered and decorated beautifully with simple and natural designs.
Estelle’s stomach rumbled as she paid, and the clerk laughed.
“Do you mind if I leave my car in the parking lot here, so I can explore a little bit on foot?”
“Of course not,” the clerk said. “Take your time.”
“Thank you!”
Estelle loved to walk through new places; it was the best way to take it all in. Everything went by so quickly in the car that it was almost impossible to register it. And so, she went on foot through the town, gaping at the rustic architecture and looking for a nice sit-down restaurant where she could have some dinner before heading back to the cabin.
Finally, the perfect place sprang out at her from the corner of the road and she walked inside, hit by the sudden, intoxicating scent of food in the process of being cooked.
“Hello,” a young wisp of a girl said. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen years old, and was at least two heads shorter than Estelle. “Just you today, miss?”
“Yep,” she said, wishing, for some reason, that Blaine had come to join her on her first trek exploring Oak Mountain. But he was her boss. That was wildly improper. “It’s just me today.”
“Great! Do you prefer a booth or a window or anything?”
Estelle smiled. “Anything is fine.”
“Right this way,” she said, grabbing a menu from the podium in front of the door and leading Estelle to her table.
The food was unbelievably good, and she left feeling much better than she had when she had gone inside.
“Come again soon!” the young server called.
“I will,” Estelle promised.
Finally, she retrieved her car from the parking lot of the boutique clothing store and got some groceries. Nothing made a house feel like a home quite like a full refrigerator. When she was satisfied that she had gotten everything she needed, Estelle crept down the steep roads onc
e again, until she finally found her way back to the cabin. It was a good thing she had such a good sense of direction, because she had nearly gotten lost in the dense foliage of the trees. Fortunately, she had noticed a landmark; a tree that had been struck by lightning which looked to be about fifty years ago or so, and managed to find the small settlement despite any potential opposition.
It was a lucky break, and she was glad to have had the opportunity she did to have somewhere rent-free to live and a paid internship. She had heard many horror stories from friends about internships gone wrong–people who cared more about saving their company money than creating a future full of competent workers were always being spoken about. Even Helen had dealt with that type of adversity, and she was in the medical field!
Estelle sighed. She would just have to count her blessings. Her first real day of work was going to happen tomorrow, whether she was ready for it or not, and that meant she would have to prepare herself.
5.
“That’s what I thought,” Blaine muttered, leaning forward in his chair to study the papers on his lawyer’s desk. “My grandfather left this mountain to me. I’m the one in charge of what goes on in this place and no one else.”
“It certainly looks that way. The will is very clear on that point.”
“How much longer until it’s finalized?” Blaine asked. He was sick of bickering with the dragon shifters. They wouldn’t be able to dispute a deed in Blaine’s name; a deed that showed that even the valley belonged to him and him alone to do with as he pleased. As sacred as ancient rites tended to be, there were still some modern laws the shifters of all creeds had to respect; the law of the land. It was Earth where they lived now, and although the ancient tunnels left some room for debate, if a shifter could present a deed, there was only so much they could do to legally bypass those laws.
“It should be about another month, if my calculations are correct. Give or take a week or two. It all depends on the courts, really. It’s hard to rush them along, even in cases like this.”
“Not even if I show a little fang?” Blaine growled.
But he knew by his lawyer’s face that it would be no use. Acting out, especially in court, just made relations between humans and shifters even more tense than they already were. He had to protect his people, not make them more enemies to deal with. And that was the sad fact. There were just some cases when asserting his will wasn’t the best way to go about things.
“I’m afraid we’re just going to have to wait until the paperwork is finalized before you can do anything about the dragon shifters in the valley. Maybe you can find a way to settle things peacefully until then.”
“Right,” Blaine scoffed. “Peacefully. Because dragons are known for their rationale.”
“Actually, in this world, dragons aren’t known for anything at all. They’re just mythical creatures.”
“Right. Sometimes, I forget you were raised as a human.”
His lawyer, a stern looking man by the name of Jon, smiled grimly.
“There are a lot of things I understand in ways that shifters of any breed would never comprehend, just because of the advantage of my upbringing.”
“Right,” Blaine said, standing up. Whether it was true or not, he couldn’t be bothered to sit around and listen to the blathering words of a self-interested and pretentious man like Jon. It just wasn’t what he wanted to do with his time. “Just let me know.”
“Of course,” Jon said with a formal nod.
Blaine tipped his hat and took off. He hated being in town; he belonged with all his heart and soul in the mountains. The only thing that would ever be better would be if he were able to fulfill his family’s one, strong wish – to get the bear shifters off the planet Earth and back to their own dimension. No matter what it might take.
“Where the hell you been, Blaine?” Jack demanded when he returned to the office. “We have a situation.”
“A situation?” Blaine asked, furrowing his thick brow. Those words were never good. Especially when they came out of Jack’s mouth. He trusted Jack to know what a serious situation was a lot more than he would trust any of the other assholes on his team.
“It started out innocently enough, but…”
“What the hell happened?” Blaine demanded, looking frantically around the office. For some reason, his first thought was of Estelle; the young woman he had just hired. Was she safe?
“Well…there was a landslide and some dynamite went off…an explosion. A couple of guys were injured under the rubble. One might not make it.”
“What?! Which mine was it?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Shit!”
Blaine’s low roar echoed through the office, which had grown silent enough that his voice echoed off the walls.
“What’s being done about it?” he asked as he hurried to the door.
“Well, that’s the thing…”
Blaine froze. It was hard to read Jack’s voice.
“That girl you just hired? Estelle?”
“Yeah?”
“She had a friend come up to bring her some things. Apparently, she’s a nurse and all, so she’s been on the site helping out while we get Jameson to the hospital up on Oak Mountain.”
Blaine frowned. “What kind of friend?”
Jack looked at Blaine, fury and confusion flashing in his serious black eyes. “The hell do you mean by that? We have men injured and your girl has some kind of medic friend who is helping us out right now. But we have to get up there.”
Blaine nodded and soon, they were on the way to the mine. It was raining further up the mountain, which was unusual, and Blaine’s first thought was the dragons. Myth had forewarned that dragons may have slight abilities to control weather, and if that really was the case and not just ancient paranoia, that could mean that the bear shifters were in big trouble over the disputed turf, especially if they weren’t cordial to the dragon shifters. 50 years of peace had to count for something, right?
They were too close to give up, though. As little as Blaine liked the idea of casualties in this heated, unofficial battle for the valley, he was going to do what he had to do to make sure that his land stayed his. The ancient sites wouldn’t find themselves, and the portals had been there specifically for the bear shifters. That’s why his family had guarded the mountain so fiercely. They had known they were there somewhere; located them with ancient divination techniques that were lost on Blaine. That’s why he was left with the mines if he was going to make any progress at all on his family’s goal to locate the portals and get the bear shifters back on their own world where they belonged.
“Over here, Jack!”
The sound of Estelle’s crystalline voice made Blaine pause for a moment; she sounded frantic, scared, and for some reason it made Blaine pick up his pace. But it wasn’t Estelle who was injured. It was Danny lying on the ground beside her, a man he hadn’t known well at all, but it was still a fellow shifter. Blaine knelt beside the man and sighed inwardly. He looked like he was going to survive, which was why they had probably left him there to take the more seriously wounded up to the Oak Mountain Community Hospital.
“Hey Danny,” Blaine said as jovially as he could muster. It was a tone he rarely used now days, ever since…
“Blaine,” Danny said. His words were labored, but he was smiling. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? Or it would be if Blaine hadn’t already known that bear shifters were stoics. They hid their pain, whether with a pleasant smile or a dark scowl. He would know. “What are you doing here? Thought you were going to be talking about the land dispute today with your suit.”
Blaine grinned, for real this time. “It’s looking up. We’re going to have it settled soon. Maybe as soon as this coming month.”
“That’s good news,” Danny said, grunting in pain as he tried to sit up.
“Just stay still,” Estelle’s kind voice said, pressing her hand against Danny’s shoulder. The bear inside Blaine roared in silent fury upon w
itnessing the touch. But what did he have to be jealous about? Maybe the bear had decided to claim her but Blaine wasn’t sure that’s what the man in him truly wanted. It would be a long time coming before he would open himself up to anyone again…
“So, what happened in there?” Blaine demanded, turning his thoughts away from Estelle and back to the matter at hand. He could feel her watching him though, almost as if she knew just what he was feeling somehow…but how could she? She was just a human. And a rather unspectacular one at that. So why couldn’t he get her out of his head?
“I don’t know, it must have been the storm. Rare for this time of year, in this altitude…”
“That’s what I was thinking too,” Blaine said darkly. Estelle’s eyes locked on him curiously.
“The weather can be unpredictable,” she said.
Blaine glared at her. “Not on Oak Mountain. There are protections here. Ancient powers beyond the comprehension of a silly little human.”
Her face fell at the jibe and Blaine tore his gaze away. Why was he being cruel to her? It wasn’t her fault he was suspicious of the dark dragon arts for sending one of his mines into catastrophe.
“Blaine’s just angry that it happened. We were making progress.”
“Not enough progress,” Blaine growled. “Anyway, when are they coming back to take you in to the hospital?”
“I’m waiting on a stretcher and a truck,” Danny said with a sigh. “I hurt my back pretty bad.”
“Shit. So that means you won’t be able to work for a while.”
“Yeah, well it’s better than the other two guys. But you know us. We’ll heal pretty quickly and then things will get back to normal.”
“So,” Blaine said, finally getting to the heart of the matter. “How bad is the mine?”
Danny’s face fell and Blaine growled.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
“On the plus side, the vein of gold we spotted in there ain’t going anywhere.”
“No, but…”
“Come on, man. I know how important it is to you but it’s going to be all right, you know? Nobody’s going to come up here and claim it. Everyone knows that the real fight is in the valley.”
