by Lynn Red
Holding her head gently in the crook of his arm, the huge bear swirled his tongue against Jill’s before he came up for air. When he did, he paused only inches from her. Every inhale, every exhale, she felt. Every time he breathed, or she breathed, their chests rose up and touched.
“It hurts here,” Jill said, trying not to smile, and pointing at her side.
Rogue, very seriously, nodded. “Ribs are cracked. At least one of them. I think that’s why—”
“You’re supposed to kiss it and make it better,” she whispered. “Whenever I was little, and I hurt myself, my mom would always kiss whatever it was and make it better. And also it happens a lot in romantic movies.”
“Even a wound? Like a cut?” Rogue squinted, apparently trying very hard to understand this alien concept. “Wouldn’t that make a mess?”
“If I’m supposed to believe werebears and werewolves exist,” Jill whispered in his ear, pulling him close, “then quit thinking so much.”
He smiled, and let out a soft groan, right next to her ear. A second later, he kissed her, pulling her earlobe between his teeth, and sucking gently.
“That’s not where it hurts,” she said, smiling playfully.
Slowly, Rogue kissed down the side of Jill’s body to where she was bandaged, and warmed her skin with his lips. “Like this?” he asked.
“Uh-huh, but now it hurts here.” She touched her chest, right below where her collarbones met.
“You weren’t hurt there, you—”
With a finger on his lips, Jill hushed him. “Just kiss,” she said.
“Don’t think,” Rogue said. “I’m good at that.”
One place after another, she pointed and he kissed until she ran out of places to tell him to kiss that wouldn’t get her way too excited for her present condition. Rogue went along with it, never going too fast, or pushing her too far. At some point, after the third or fourth kiss, it became clear that he understood – and enjoyed – the game they were playing. His heavy breathing and the thickness that Jill felt against her whenever he’d bend over to kiss some other place gave him away.
When he finally settled down, after Jill started grimacing a little from the wiggling she was doing, Rogue was staring at her, like there was something he recognized.
“Dreams?” they both said at the same time. “Have you—?”
Both of them cut off short when they realized the other was talking. Jill fell quiet cocked her head to the side. “You too?” she asked.
“Both of us,” Rogue said, emphasizing the ‘both’ part.
“You mean you and me?”
He shook his head. “King,” was his answer.
“You’re a king?”
“No, well, in a way I suppose, but bears will, er, bare, no kings.” Rogue smiled to himself. “King is the second alpha. We’ve both been,” he trailed off, concerned by the color draining from Jill’s face.
Outside, as dusk grew deeper, something howled. Something distant, but that made Rogue immediately sit up and take notice.
“They’ve returned,” he said, obviously perturbed. “Too quickly, too soon. I only hope the lupines aren’t warning me of something worse coming over the horizon. What am I saying? There’s always something worse coming over the horizon.”
Jill didn’t have time to process what he was saying. Hell, she didn’t have time to process her own thoughts. She’d barely started believing all this was real. She just turned her head from side to side, opening and closing her mouth like a confused bass about to go headfirst into a blender.
“Okay,” Jill half-heartedly squawked.
“I’ll be back,” he said, “and in the meantime, speaking of my familiarity with your tools, check the desk.”
With haste, he turned toward the door, but spun on his heel at the last second. “Oh, and by the way, I understand how dressers work. I just didn’t want to put them in the wrong place. I’ve made that mistake enough times to learn my lesson.”
The smile he threw her way as he turned and left put a herd of wild butterflies inside Jill’s stomach.
“Do you need me to lock the door?” Rogue called from outside.
“I got it,” Jill answered, pushing herself up on the bed, and then standing. Somehow, it hurt less than the last time she’d tried this, though nothing much had changed.
Maybe those kisses really do make things feel better, she thought, smiling despite the howls.
Howls which were growing louder, and closer, but seemed more communicative than aggressive. She knew enough about wolves to know when they were calling to each other over vast distances, their howls telling of danger or prey. Whatever they were discussing, it was far enough away that it didn’t concern her, at least not right then.
She shuffled over to the desk, opening the drawer as he’d instructed. The shadows in the room were too heavy for her to see, but when she stuck her hand inside, she didn’t find anything immediately.
Some paper, some pens, but that couldn’t be what he was talking about.
There, she thought, as her fingers wrapped around a rubber grip with indentions that seemed made just for her fingers. She pulled the snub-nosed revolver out of the desk, and closed her hand around the grip. She checked the action, flicking her thumb across the catch, and then returning it to ready position.
I wonder if that whole silver bullet thing is a load of crap? She stared into the cylinder, and counted six. She stuck her hand back into the drawer and fished out a very old ammunition box. Plucking out a round, she turned it around in her fingertips, feeling the cool, smooth metal slide against her skin. “That’s incredible. Handmade bullets?”
Flicking on the lamp, she saw that the tip of each one was marked with a deeply carved groove. She’d seen enough cop shows to know that was done so the bullet would spread whenever it hit a target. They were cold and hard, too, much different from the lead bullets she used when she and her dad went target shooting all those years ago.
“Silver,” she said to herself, shivering as another howl broke the night. “Guess not.”
-6-
“Really not into this whole ‘surrounded by wolves again’ thing.”
-Jill
It wasn’t the first time she’d drawn the hammer back on a revolver, but it was the first time she did it with the intent of killing something.
Jill gritted her teeth and cocked the hammer into position, listening to the howling outside her door. It was all distant, but still haunting and awful. Rogue left a slight ache in her stomach when he’d gone, but the chills that ran down her back every time a wolf howled quickly replaced the yearning.
“What the hell did I get myself into?” she asked her empty cabin. Squeezing the pistol in her hand, the mixture of hard rubber and cold metal was reassuring. The heft of the weapon gave her a sense of peace that was fleeting, but at least present for a moment. “I thought this was just supposed to be a year in the woods watching bears.”
The last word lingered on the tip of Jill’s tongue. She touched the spot on her chest that burned every time she thought of Rogue, said his name, or looked at him. She didn’t know what was going on, or if the stuff he’d said was a big load of shit, but at the moment? It sure didn’t seem like it was.
In the distance, the lupine howls were broken by what sounded like a struggle. Jill clenched her pistol tighter, but the only thing she thought of was how badly she wished for Rogue to be back, and in one piece.
Whatever hit her door banished that thought.
Something, she didn’t know what, and didn’t particularly want to think about it very much, banged against the door to her cabin. It held, but for how long she had no idea. There was a deadbolt, but after all, it was only a wooden door standing between her and whatever horror was trying to get at her.
She swallowed the taste of bile as it crept up her throat with a second, then a third, impact. Whatever was out there wanted her fiercely, but not in the way she wanted Rogue.
For a second, she wond
ered why it wanted her. Wondered why all of this was happening. She was just Jill, just a dorky scientist who was too tall for most guys and not coordinated enough to play basketball very well.
Thunk!
And why wasn’t that thing trying to come through the window?
She shook her head, focusing. Questions didn’t matter right then, neither did doubts or anything else. Survival was all that mattered. Another slam sounded, the door began to creak. There wasn’t much time left, Jill knew.
If it breaks the door, I’m gonna be real screwed. Not much way to get new hinges out here.
She stood, approaching the door slowly, measuring her steps. She forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out, consciously keeping her heart from racing. Sweat beaded on Jill’s temples, ran down the sides of her face where her lover’s fingertips had been only minutes before.
She swallowed her terror, and reached for the doorknob. Squeezing her eyes shut for a moment, she focused her attention to a laser pinpoint.
With her hand on the door’s handle, she waited, listening for the next crunch. From here, she could hear the claws outside, scraping against the ground, like a dog digging after a half-buried bone.
“Come on you son of a bitch,” she whispered. “One more time, just come at the door one more time.”
She gripped the pistol, squeezed the handle with her thumb on the deadbolt’s latch. “Come on...”
The paws scrabbled, the beast charged. A split second later, another thunk! met her ears. In one smooth motion, Jill flipped open the lock, swung open the door and grabbed the gun with both hands. Her eyes narrowed, she pointed the revolver straight at the middle of the gray, fur-covered half-monster, half-man.
He lunged, diving straight at her.
She squeezed the trigger.
The entire thing took barely more time than a breath, but for Jill, it extended into eternity, like being pulled through the middle of a black hole and stretched out into space.
Every single action of the gun’s firing filled her mind. The click of the hammer, the sound of metal on metal, the blast of the exploding bullet, even the sound of the hunk of silver erupting from the barrel, all sounded plain as day.
The only thing she blocked out was the noise the creature made when the bullet hit him square in the chest.
Right before her eyes, the wolf stood on its back legs. They started flexing and twisting, as the monster lurched back and forth. Backing away, Jill couldn’t tear her eyes away. The wolf made a screeching sound, then a gurgling one, and when he finally fell to the ground in a heap, half his body was vaguely human.
Trembling, she sat on the floor, scooting backward until she felt her bed against her back. Not for a second did she take the shaking gun barrel off the dead wolf – at least, not until the body began dissolving.
A sizzling sound – and the smell of burning hair and cooking meat – hit her, and moments later, where once there was a huge, dead werewolf was only a pile of fur and bones. Her bullet was lodged into the back of the ribcage that lay on the rough wood floor.
“Jill!” she heard. The voice was hollow and sounded distant, though the man speaking it was right in the doorway. She looked up at him, unable for a moment to recognize the face.
“I... shot it,” she said. “It was beating on the door and I shot—”
“You did what you had to do.” Rogue crossed the room and wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulders. The fur on his massive forearm receded as Jill buried her face in his chest.
He kissed her fiercely, running his thumbs down either side of her face to wipe away the tears. “You’re fearless,” Rogue said, in a voice that was barely above a whisper, as soon as Jill stopped shaking quite so much.
She let out a hollow laugh. “I don’t know where you get fearless from me shaking like a terrified squirrel,” she said. “I’ve never actually shot anything before, I—”
“You ended a frenzy,” Rogue cut in. “You stopped the wolves from getting whipped up into a blood-fed rage. My brother, King, we were in the woods, watching them and waiting. We can take five or ten of the wolves each, but an entire pack? Not a chance.”
“So I saved...?”
He nodded, slowly and solemnly. “The two of us, our cubs, perhaps. It’s hard to tell what lupines are going to do when they get worked up like that.”
Jill shook her head. “I thought they were,” she swallowed. “Full moons, or something? I don’t know. I don’t know about any of this.”
A surge of fear, then anger at herself for being afraid, and then at Rogue for not being a normal bear, ripped through Jill. She pushed away from him, though he held her at arms’ length. “You’re not supposed to exist!” she said. “None of you are! None of this is! You’re supposed to be a bunch of bears that wander around the woods, eat berries, and I’m supposed to watch you and—”
Her mark burning stopped Jill’s tirade short.
“We do do those things,” Rogue said in his quietly powerful way. He regarded her cautiously, like he was trying to figure out the best way to say something that was rolling around in his mind. For a long moment though, the two of them just watched one another.
Jill chewed her lip, like she always did when she couldn’t think of anything else to do with herself.
“Have you never wondered about the mark on your chest?” he finally asked. “The one I know you feel burning? We both have them too. You’ve never—”
He said we, she thought. We.
“You said she—” Another voice, very similar to Rogue’s, but slightly deeper and calmer, broke the silence.
“Who is—” Jill turned to the left, toward the door, as someone she knew, but couldn’t place, stepped through. He too was nearly naked. Huge, muscled thighs flexed every time he moved. Jill felt her mouth fall open, but couldn’t do anything aside from stare.
She shook her head. She knew this man, just like she’d known Rogue.
“You’re...”
Running his hand over his wavy, black hair, King stared back. “King,” he said simply. “My brother told me he’d found you. I don’t understand how this is possible, though.”
Jill scoffed. “You don’t? The giant, magically transforming bear-man doesn’t understand how I am possible? Did I just step into la-la land?”
“No,” King said. “I don’t know where that is, but it isn’t here.”
He and Rogue exchanged a glance. “I don’t know either,” Rogue said. “Is that like Virginia?”
A smile crept across Jill’s taut lips. That was the first time she realized she’d pulled them into a line. Just that instant of levity relaxed her enough to let emotions other than fear and anger come through. “It’s just an expression,” she said.
She laughed for a moment, then she smiled again, and then before she knew it, a tear was rolling down her cheek followed by another and another.
“This is real, isn’t it? I’m not going to wake up from this like it’s one of my dreams?”
Rogue stroked her cheek. His hands were quickly joined by one of King’s, pressed flat on Jill’s back. The heat from his palm burned through her shirt, warming her skin. “But she’s a human,” he said. “This can’t be right. Can it?”
The shorter, more muscled Rogue, turned his face to the other bear, then back to Jill. “Don’t you feel it?” he asked the other man. “When you look at her, don’t you feel your mark burning? When I kiss her, when I taste her lips,” he paused to do just that. She felt him warm her to the core, and then when he pulled back, immediately chased him for another.
“When I taste her, when I smell her, I can’t explain my emotions,” he said. “All I know is that I haven’t felt this since they were taken.”
Rogue’s voice had a strange down-turn when he spoke. King cocked an eyebrow, and Jill noticed that even with his skepticism, he hadn’t taken his hand away. “I,” he began, then trailed off.
“What?” Jill urged him. “If you’re going to barge in here and tell me
I shouldn’t exist, you can at least finish a sentence every now and then.”
King turned to her, confusion on his face. “She certainly reminds me of our last mate,” he said to Rogue.
“I am right here,” Jill said, pinching him hard enough to get a reaction. “You can use my name instead of talking like I’m livestock.”
It was King’s turn to smile. “I don’t understand this,” he said, “but you are right. She – Jill,” he said, catching himself. “She makes me feel like I’ve not for a long, long time. But Jill,” he turned to her. “You’re human.”
Slowly, she nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “I’m glad we’ve established that. And you are a giant magical bear who isn’t supposed to exist.”
“We do tend to stay to ourselves,” Rogue said. “But I think he’s referring more to the difficulty you’re going to have in delivering our children.”
He said that with such plainness, with such complete matter-of-factness, that it took a second before Jill actually realized what he’d said. “I met you a week ago and you three minutes ago,” she said, looking at King, “and you’re already talking about babies?”
“Cubs,” King corrected, helpfully.
“Right, yeah, cubs. I mean, don’t you think that’s a little forward?”
Rogue obviously got the joke, but King stood there, shaking his head. “I’m not sure why? We’re fated to be together, why would it be strange for—”
“Ah,” Rogue patted the other bear on the shoulder. “I think maybe this is one of those times where me being worldlier than you is a very good thing. Brother, I say this as gently as I can, but I think that she might be joking.”
King furrowed his brow and shook his head.
How can anyone be this serious without having an embolism?
“But the joke,” he said. “It wasn’t funny.”
For a moment, the three of them sat in silence before King broke it with a loud, single laugh that sounded more like a cannon going off. “You see?” he asked. “I pretended like I didn’t understand the joke, and then when I fooled the two of you, I said that I did, but that it wasn’t very funny.”
