by Roxie Noir
She’s a grown woman, Jake reminded himself. She’s in public and she’s safe. Stop worrying about her.
He texted her quickly that he was going to be off doing trail work for two or three hours, and she texted back that she was totally fine, at the library, and that he should quit worrying already.
He smiled a little half smile. It was like she could read his mind.
Five minutes later, Jake was cruising the back roads in his truck again, still too fast. He loved driving on these twisty, windy roads, loved feeling the asphalt beneath his tires as he went around the tight turns. He’d loved it even when he was a teenager in Alaska, though in that case, driving into the wilderness and being alone in a car had felt like some of the only respite from the pack.
As he drove, he thought about the pack more than he had in ten years, easily. He was surprised to realize that he’d never missed it. He’d missed his parents, even though he knew they were fanatics who wouldn’t have helped him if they knew the packmaster had shunned him. He missed his friends — even though he’d spent four years with Boone and Coleman almost all the time, once they’d re-entered human civilization, they’d drifted apart. Boone lived way, way off the grid somewhere north of the Canadian border, and Jake wasn’t sure that whatever he did for money was legal. He was sure, though, that Boone spent more time as a bear than as a human. Coleman, always the friendlier of the two, had taken up sports and was a ski instructor in the winters at a resort closer to Seattle, and in the summer, he guided whitewater rafting tours. They’d been drawn to Jake’s territory by Brock’s sudden presence, and they were probably back home by now.
Maybe not all bears need a pack, he thought. He’d been raised to understand that, unlike real grizzly bears, shifters only lived in packs and adhered to the incredibly strict structure, but years on his own had shown Jake that this wasn’t true, not even a little. Sure, he’d wished for a mate from time to time, but now that he’d met Ariana, everything was going beautifully.
For one second, he wondered what their children would be — human, or shifter, or some hybrid of the two?
Then he shook that thought out of his head. They’d been dating two weeks. Thinking about children was just silly.
At the trailhead, Jake pulled a shovel, a rake, and a pack from the back of the truck and headed on in. It was a beautiful day, sunny and warm, and there weren’t even any other cars parked at the trailhead. He whistled as he hiked, his long legs covering the two miles quickly, and it seemed like no time at all before he saw the portion of washed-out trail.
Really, it wasn’t a big deal. A little of the trail was gone, but the main problem was the huge pile of debris that had somehow ended up on the trail, and that was just a little shovel work to fix. Still whistling, he set his pack down, took a long drink of water, and set to work, sometimes using the shovel to move the accumulated leaves and dirt, sometimes tossing logs down the hill bare-handed.
He was nearly done, working up a good sweat, when he smelled Brock.
Even when he was in human form his sense were sharper than other people’s, and he knew the other shifter was there immediately. He tossed the log he was holding into the brush and stood up straight, looking around, trying to ascertain exactly where the other man was.
It only took a few moments: he was a little ways behind him, on the trail. Jake took off his gloves, threw them on the ground, and strode off.
When Jake finally saw him, Brock seemed to be examining a very large fir tree. Jake said nothing, just crossed his arms in front of him and stood, staring at the newcomer.
“I heard there were grizzly bears in Washington State now,” Brock said, casually, still looking up the tree. “They’ve been trying to bring them back for years, and they’ve finally succeeded.”
“Brock, what do you want?”
“Did you know there used to be grizzlies all over the western United States, almost down to Mexico? The bear on the California state flag is a California Grizzly. They’re extinct now.”
“So you came here to tell me bear facts?”
“And now all that’s left is a pocket in Montana, a pocket in the Northern Cascades, where you are, and the cold, unforgiving, Canadian Rockies.”
“And Alaska.”
Brock smiled, something that Jake didn’t find pleasant at all. “Yes, and Alaska,” he said. He finally turned to look at Jake.
“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” Jake said. “What do you want?”
“My point is, humans have chased bears off of their ancestral land for thousands of years now. They’ve slaughtered us, made us into rugs in front of their fireplaces.”
“Most bears aren’t shifters.”
“They’re still our brothers. We’re closer to them than we’ve ever been to humans.”
Jake recognized part of Brock’s dogma: stay as close to nature as possible. Humans are a great evil.
“And therefore,” Brock went on, “It’s unwise to mate with them.”
“I thought so,” said Jake. “Well, luckily for you, my love life is none of your goddamn concern, so you can head back to Alaska.”
Brock just laughed. It was even more unpleasant than his smile. “Of course it’s my concern,” he said. “Jacob Kodiak, whether you like it or not, you are still part of my pack, under my leadership.”
“I’m not part of anyone’s pack,” Jake said, angrily. “And absolutely not yours.”
“And in my pack,” Brock went on as if Jake hadn’t spoken, “Nobody takes a human as a mate.”
Jake hadn’t taken Ariana as his mate yet, but he didn’t feel like arguing semantics. Besides, pointing that out would feel like he was trying to argue for mercy on a technicality, and there was no way he was doing that.
Instead, he growled, still human.
“You’re forgetting your manners,” Brock said. He began to take off his shirt, and Jake knew he was about to shift. “Growling is for animals.”
For a moment, Jake was sixteen again, kneeling on the cold, hard Alaska gravel. He could almost see his breath frosting in the air, see the circle of adult men who’d gathered to watch their psychotic leader beat up three skinny teenage boys. His heart beat faster, and for the first time since he’d seen Brock, he was afraid for himself, not just for Ariana.
Brock undid his belt, and Jake snapped himself out of it. He was fifteen years older now, and he was bigger and stronger and had been out alone in the world for a long time. Brock was fifteen years older too, and even as he began to shift, Jake could see the signs of age on it: his sideburns just a little gray, lines around his eyes.
Jake tore off his clothes and shifted, not bothering to look where they landed.
The two bears faced off in the middle of the hiking trail, circling each other slowly, growling and showing their teeth, each waiting for the other to show some sort of weakness: a glance, putting a paw down in the wrong place.
In Brock’s eyes, Jake saw something he’d never dreamed he’d see: hesitation. It wasn’t quite fear, but suddenly he realized that the older man knew Jake was a match for him, something he obviously hadn’t expected. Right at that moment, Jake lunged for him, trying to bite the side of his neck and the two bears rose up on their hind legs, grappling with each other, wrestling.
Jake nearly got a grip with his teeth when Brock twisted hard, wrenching himself out of Jake’s grasp, leaving Jake with a mouthful of fur.
Furious, they circled again, now snapping and biting at each other. For a moment, Jake thought he heard a twig snap on the trail, and took his eyes off of Brock for just a moment.
It was a mistake.
The other bear was on him and they rose up on their hind legs again, wrestling and biting. Jake felt teeth sink into his shoulder and he roared shaking Brock off, knocking them both down with a furious swipe right across the other bear’s snout.
Then, just as they began circling again, there was a very human shriek. Both bears turned their heads to see three women, just on a bend in th
e trail, looking completely terrified.
Jake took stock of the situation for a moment, knowing that Brock was doing the same. Then he roared again, this time at the women, advancing toward them. They turned pale and ran, dropping packs and water bottles in the process. He didn’t follow. It was a bad enough situation already: they’d already seen not one but two grizzlies, fighting, next to a bunch of human clothes, not at all far from a trailhead. Obviously they wouldn’t assume the bears were shifters, but they might think the bears had attacked another hiker, and that was bad news.
Still in bear form, Jake turned back to Brock and bared his teeth, just a little, but both of them understood that this couldn’t go on here. As Jake watched, Brock collected his clothes in his mouth and wandered off into the forest.
He didn’t shift back until he was certain the other man was gone, then got dressed again and began the walk back to the trailhead.
Chapter Six
Ariana wasn’t getting much work done. She was supposed to be finding information on a recreational fisher who’d claimed a Bigfoot sighting, tracking down some decades-old alleged Bigfoot prints, and keeping an eye on the developing chupacabra situation, but all she could do was replay Violet’s threat to her, over and over again in her head.
You’ll never be enough for him, she’d said.
Sitting in the library, story time for kindergarteners taking place fifty feet away, she tapped her pencil on the table and stared off into space.
The problem was that Violet knew what she was talking about. She’d been a shifter her whole life, and she’d lived with shifters her whole life; she knew how they acted and what they wanted, what their customs were. Ariana didn’t even know what these people meant when they said mate. Did they just mean sex? That ship had already sailed, but she guessed that it was something deeper, something more intense.
What if shifters really liked shifting and having sex in animal form? She couldn’t shift, and the thought of having sex with a bear — even if the bear was Jake — made her physically nauseous.
Were bear shifters crazier in bed, somehow? Did they scratch their men with their claws, but in some sexy way that the men liked? Did they growl, or bite, or... do other bear things?
Ariana felt tears come to her eyes, and battled them back, furiously. Shifters probably never cried in public over whether they were good enough for their boyfriends, she thought.
Thankfully, her phone buzzed, and she looked at the time: five fifteen. It was a text from Jake.
I need a drink, he’d said. Meet me at the Lodge Bar?
Ariana felt a little better. Meeting for drinks after a rough day at work: a normal, totally human thing to do. She could definitely meet Jake for drinks. She excelled at meeting for drinks.
Absolutely, she texted back. Fifteen, twenty minutes?
Sounds good, he said. Be careful walking.
Just then, Ariana’s computer dinged with a new email. Her “chupacabra” email alert had returned something — a few more reports from people in the desert outside Juarez. She swore quietly and flipped through them for a few minutes, glancing at the clock every now and then.
She was barely late, but of course Jake was there before her, because Jake was always early. Ariana adjusted her shoulder bag and walked into the Bigfoot-themed hotel bar, smiling, excited to see Jake again even though it had only been eight hours.
Then, halfway across the bar, she realized he was talking to someone. Deep in conversation. She couldn’t see the other person, but then she saw fingers on Jake’s forearm, curling around it, and Jake didn’t do anything to shake them off.
Her heart beat even faster, and she had no idea what to think. Some Evergreen slut, trying to horn in on her man? Was Jake flirting with her?
Was she a shifter?
When Ariana finally came around the long bar and saw the woman sitting next to Jake, her heart sank. The woman was completely gorgeous: long, red, curly hair, green eyes. Even sitting down she was tall and thin, and her combination of low-cut shirt with pushup bra didn’t leave too much to the imagination. Instantly, Ariana felt dumpy and ugly, incredibly aware of how her jeans didn’t quite fit either her thighs or her waist so they constantly fell down just a little, of her love handles, of the way her messenger bag was pulling her shirt funny. She swallowed.
“There you are,” said Jake. He stood from his bar stool and kissed her on the lips, long and slow, one hand gripping her shoulder. Right away, Ariana was a little bit less mad.
“Hi!” she said brightly. Probably too brightly.
“Ariana,” said Jake. Was that relief in his voice, or disappointment? “This is Regina.”
“It’s a pleasure,” purred Regina, holding out her hand for Ariana to shake.
“Like the town?” asked Ariana, trying to calm herself down. Even if this woman had clearly been hitting on Jake, he couldn’t be interested.
“That’s pronounced differently,” Regina said, her eyes sliding to meet Jake’s, as if they were laughing at Ariana together.
Jake just looked at Ariana. “What can I get you?” he said.
“I just want a beer,” she said. “Do they still have that Deschutes Porter on tap?”
While Jake ordered her a beer, Ariana sat at a bar table, glaring at the back of Regina’s head. The other woman was still talking to Jake, still putting her hand on his forearm, still laughing at whatever he said, even though he was clearly buying his girlfriend a drink. Finally he had the beers and he turned away from her and walked across the room to Ariana. She could see Regina’s eyes following him.
“Another shifter?” she said, darkly.
Jake just nodded. “The guys warned me about it last night,” he said. “Brock figures he won’t have to fight me if I’ll just mate with her.”
Ariana looked at him.
“I’d much rather fight Brock,” Jake said.
She relaxed, just a little, looking down at the table. Then she noticed: Jake, a hairy guy at the most normal of times, was extra hairy.
“Did you shift today?” she asked.
He looked down at his arm.
“Yeah,” he said, and told her about meeting Brock on the trail, in the woods.
When he finished, Ariana’s eyes were wide, and she was worried again. Not only was he going to fight for her, but what if she wasn’t even worth it? She could never have sex with a bear, no matter what, she knew.
“Hey,” he said, touching one cheek with his hand. Ariana blushed; they were in public. “I’m fine. Nothing bad happened.”
“I know,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “It’s just — I don’t—“ she broke off, frustrated, and took a drink of her beer. It was really good, but she could barely pay attention to it.
“I’m still worried about this,” she finally said. “He hurt you so much before, and now he’s here and — Jake, he’s not going to stop until he kills you.”
“Or I break up with you,” he said, lightly. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Won’t happen.”
“Okay, okay,” she said. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“How was your day?”
“Fine. Boring.” She didn’t tell him she’d seen Violet. “There have been reports about the Chupacabra, you ever heard of that one?”
She told him about those for a while — the legendary goat murdering monster that, in reality, was probably nothing more than a sick coyote — while they drained their drinks.
“Come back to my place for dinner,” she said. “We’ll go by the store, grab some groceries, spend the night in. I can teach you to cook something besides venison on the stovetop.”
Jake tilted his pint glass up toward the ceiling, and Ariana had a thought.
“Why do you have so much venison?” she asked. “Do you hunt?”
“Sort of,” he said, smiling at her.
Then, it was obvious. He was hunting deer as a bear. Ariana felt like an idiot for not realizing that at first. “Got it,” she said
, into her own pint glass. “So, all that venison is covered in bear spit?”
“I wouldn’t say covered,” Jake said. “I do try to remain cognizant of the fact that I’m going to eat it as a human. Usually.”
She looked at him for a long moment, and had the feeling she was about to discover something she kind of didn’t want to know.
“Do you ever shift and eat it raw?” she asked.
Jake’s eyes were laughing, crinkling just a little around the edges. Ariana could feel her nose beginning to wrinkle in disgust. “Not the stuff in the freezer,” he said. “That’s for civilized dinners.”
“But?”
“But, if there’s no food in the house and it’s the weekend, sometimes I just shift and go eat some grubs or berries or — you know, other stuff,” he said, changing course once he realized that Ariana had gone into full disgust mode.
She didn’t say anything, but stared at him, her nose wrinkled.
“The lake has lots of trout,” he said, trying to sound meek and contain his laughter at the same time. “How about I bring some back next time?”
Ariana was just making a face.
“I won’t even slobber all over it,” he offered.
“Let’s just go to the grocery store,” she said. “We’ll buy our food, like people.”
Jake just laughed, then stood, took her shoulders in his hands, and kissed her forehead. “Sounds perfect,” he said. “I gotta take a whiz first. Be right back.”
As he walked toward the back of the bar, Ariana wondered if that was one of the shifter things she’d never understand. It did sound convenient to just shift and eat your dinner raw, on one hand, but on the other? Gross. She finished her beer, tilting the glass toward the sky.
When she put it back down, she realized Regina was standing there.
“He’s in the bathroom,” Ariana said, annoyed.
Regina acted like she hadn’t heard the other girl, and put an envelope on the table.
