by Roxie Noir
Ariana thought her heart might stop.
As she was watching the bear, her phone rang. It was Jake.
“Stay inside,” he said as soon as she picked up the phone.
“I’m watching it through the window,” she told him.
“It’s Violet.”
Ariana swallowed and nodded, even though the gesture was lost on the phone. “Why?” she said.
“I don’t know,” said Jake. “Maybe for revenge. Maybe she’s just suicidal.”
There was another gasp in the crowd at the library windows, and everyone’s heads turned the other way.
“There’s someone with a gun,” Ariana said. “Out in the street.”
“What kind of gun?” asked Jake.
“Big,” said Ariana.
“It’s a rifle,” offered one of the kids in front of her.
“A rifle,” she told Jake.
Violet had stopped in the center of the street, simply watching the man with the gun. As everyone watched, he took careful aim.
Almost like she knew what was coming, Violet waited until the last moment, then charged the man before he could fire. Terrified, his shot went wide, and then she was quickly closing the gap.
After a moment of hesitation, the man dropped the rifle and sprinted into the nearest doorway. The people huddled inside let him in and then slammed the door.
The bear stopped running and looked around. Then she loped off, down an alleyway, and everyone in the library started talking at once.
“What happened?” Jake was shouting into Ariana’s ear.
“She ran off!” she told him. “Somebody shot at her, but he missed and she ran off.”
“Shit,” said Jake. “Shit, shit, shit. Are you okay?”
“Of course. I’m fine,” said Ariana.
“Don’t move until I come get you.”
She almost protested, but didn’t.
“All right,” she said.
Twenty minutes later, Ariana was standing on the steps of the library, her laptop bag packed up and on her shoulder, checking her emails on her phone. The place was crawling with police, kids, parents, and a couple of men wearing camouflage and carrying uncomfortably large guns. She tried to ignore those, as well as the clear possibility that they’d shoot someone if Violet came back.
Someone besides Violet, that was. Ariana prayed no one was dumb enough to fire a rifle on a crowded street, but she figured you never really knew with people.
Soon Jake’s green truck came speeding up. He stopped right in front of the library in a clear no-park zone and jumped out before she could even get down the steps.
“You’re outside,” he said.
“I’m fine,” she told him.
“I thought you weren’t going to leave the building.”
“I was standing right outside the doors.”
For a long moment they stared at each other. Ariana flexed her jaw. She hated it when Jake got like this — even though she knew he was just worried about her and wanted her to be safe, she didn’t think it was any reason to treat her like a child.
“Come on,” he said.
“Where do you think we’re going?” asked Ariana. She didn’t budge from where she was, already frustrated with Jake and in no mood to be bossed around.
“I’m taking you to my office,” he said, like it was totally obvious.
“Can I work from there?”
“Sure,” Jake said, in that tone of voice that meant he was appeasing her — he didn’t actually know.
“Well, is there a desk? Is there wireless?”
Jake stomped back up the stairs of the library to stand right in front of Ariana. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice low and bordering on dangerous.
She stood her ground. “I have work to do,” she said. “You can’t just pull up and expect me to follow you like some weird duckling,” she said. “I am an adult, and I’m perfectly capable of not being eaten by a grizzly bear.”
Jake ran one hand across his mouth and then through his hair, looking away from her briefly. He looked upset and agitated, and Ariana began to wonder if maybe she’d gone too far. Violet was here, after all, and she knew that Jake blamed himself for a lot of what had happened.
“Ariana,” he said. “I’m sorry for treating you like a child. I know you’re an adult, it’s just — it’s my responsibility to keep you safe—“ Ariana opened her mouth to protest, but Jake held up one hand, “—because I got you into this. I’m afraid that Violet is after you, and if she kills you, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Ariana shut her mouth and felt bad.
“Please come with me to my office, because I’m worried that no one else here can protect you.”
Ariana gave herself a moment before she responded. She was still annoyed with him, still a little frustrated with his condescending tone and assumption that she wasn’t smart enough to keep herself out of trouble, but she figured they’d talk about that later, when the situation wasn’t so tense.
“Thank you,” she said. “Let’s go.”
She worked from an empty office in the forest ranger headquarters. Even though she was annoyed with him, still, she had to admit that he had really nice digs: floor-to-ceiling windows in a modern building, everything light and airy. Even though she was spending the day tracking down chupacabra reports, pricing flights to Juarez, and then pricing security for three Americans searching for cryptids in northern Mexico, every so often she’d look over and watch mist move through the woods or the sun peek out from behind the clouds.
About two hours later, Jake came in and told her he was heading off, up to the lake for a little while.
“Posting signs, alerting campers, that sort of thing. Regular bear education,” he said.
Ariana waited a moment for him to tell her she was coming with, but he didn’t.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine here,” he said.
“I promise not to let any bears in,” she said.
He glanced once, worried, at the plate glass window behind her, but left. Ariana glanced out the window, but there was nothing there: just trees and sun and mist, still. She buried her nose back in emails that said Please read — from David Lycan, and didn’t look up again until the sun was setting.
Chapter Five
Jake kept hoping that he could find a time and place to sneak off, just for an hour, so he could shift and get it out of his system, but he never could. He drove with another ranger to the campgrounds on the lake, telling campers to be careful and giving the usual bear safety spiel: keep food in the bear boxes, not the tent, don’t approach bears, make loud noises if they’re nearby.
All he could think about the whole time was Ariana and whether she was safe. He knew he was overreacting, and he knew she was a grown woman, totally capable of keeping herself safe. He just felt responsible for her being here, and for her being a target of the grizzly pack — or, the former grizzly pack. Who knew what they were up to now, with their alpha dead in another state and his mate on the loose.
Besides, he loved her. Wholeheartedly. Desperately. If something happened to her, well—
“Oh, I’m ready for a bear,” said the man Jake had been talking to while on autopilot.
Jake just raised his eyebrows, wondering how exactly someone got “ready” for a bear.
The man reached behind him, into the bed of a pickup truck, and produced a lever action rifle, the kind usually used for hunting moose or elephants.
“This’ll stop just about anything,” the man said.
Jake couldn’t argue. “It’s a federal crime to shoot an endangered species,” he told him.
The man grinned. “I’d never shoot nothing,” he said, obviously lying through his teeth. “Just scare it a little.”
Right, thought Jake, saying goodbye to the man and walking toward his own truck. He felt like his skin was crawling all over him, but people like that were why it just wasn’t safe for him to shift again. He couldn’t risk getting shot by some rednec
k with an elephant gun.
Of course, he thought, the longer I go without shifting the more dangerous it gets.
What a mindfuck.
Finally, he got back to the station and was relieved, though not really surprised, to see Ariana still sitting there, perfectly safe.
“Told you so,” she said, as he bent over her desk to kiss her.
“I knew you’d be fine,” he said. “Ready to head back?”
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You don’t look great.”
“I need to shift soon,” he said, trying to shrug it off. “I feel a little weird, but I’m fine.”
They drove the road back to the cabin mostly in tired silence, listening to country western radio the whole way there. Jake tried not to worry about the next few days, tried to put Violet out of his mind, along with his own need to shift, but it didn’t work that well.
At last, he pulled into his driveway, tires crunching down the long gravel ribbon, grateful to be at home, where his couch and his bed were, where at least he wouldn’t have to worry about Ariana getting eaten by Violet.
In fact, he almost wanted Violet to show up — he could shift, and he was sure he’d take all of his pent up frustration and rage out on her without hurting anybody else. The best case scenario, really, which was why he was sure it wouldn’t happen. Whatever she was up to, it wasn’t as straightforward as that.
His headlights washed over the front of the cabin quickly, but in that moment Jake saw something strange on his steps. He slammed on his brakes, skidding a little on the gravel, shocking Ariana.
“What is it?” she asked.
Jake slammed the truck into reverse and turned the wheel, pointing his headlights directly at the front door. Both of them held their breaths.
The lump, too small to be a bear, moved a little. It was clearly some sort of animal, though the way it was huddled it was hard to tell exactly what it was.
Then it lifted its head.
It was Regina.
Jake blinked in shock. He’d honestly forgotten about the third shifter from the Alaska pack, the female in heat who’d come with the alpha and his mate to try to seduce him. His hand clenched around the gearshift, and despite himself, he snarled, the animal sound tearing itself from deep in his throat.
“She’s hurt,” Ariana said, next to him.
Before he could do anything, she’d undone her seatbelt and hopped out of the car, walking toward the other woman, her back in his headlights.
Overcome with fury, Jake punched the soft part of the now-empty seat beside him, his fist leaving a deep well. He could just feel the fur begin to prickle beneath his skin, and sweat slid down his face. He spent another moment there, in the cab of his truck, forcing the bear down, forcing himself to stay human.
Then he shut it off and hopped out himself, jogging across the gravel to get to Regina just as Ariana did.
“What do you want?” he growled. Ariana was already kneeling down next to her, saying something softly.
Regina looked up at him, her face bloody from a cut above her eye and tear-stained.
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she said.
“Was it Violet?” Ariana asked. Already she was pulling the other woman’s clothing away from a series of deep gashes on her torso, Regina gasping in pain.
Regina nodded. “She’s gone crazy,” she whispered. “I don’t know — I tried to talk to her, and she just attacked me for no reason,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d make it back here.”
“You can’t stay,” Jake said, gruffly.
Ariana looked up at him sharply.
“Look at her,” she said.
“She tried to get you killed,” he said, not bothering any longer to hide his anger.
Ariana stood and walked the two steps to Jake, then took him by the arm and pulled him to the edge of the headlights’ glare.
“We can’t let her die,” she said.
“I’ve survived worse.”
“And don’t you wish someone had taken you in?” Ariana said, accusingly. “If someone had let you into their homes, put you in bed, given you a warm meal, you would have taken it in a second and don’t you lie to me.”
Jake just clenched his jaw and looked away.
“As a matter of fact, she wanted you not to get killed, remember that?” Ariana said.
She was right, of course. Regina, another shifter from the Alaska pack, had tried to seduce Jake away from Ariana. If he’d mated with her, the alpha would have left them alone — it was humans who mated with shifters he had the problem with.
“I don’t trust her,” he muttered.
“She’s cut through to the bone,” Ariana said flatly. “You think this is all part of a plan?”
“We’re excellent at healing.”
“That excellent?”
Jake didn’t have an answer. He felt miserable: first he couldn’t shift, and now Regina was here. He didn’t want this. He didn’t want any of this.
“Fine, let her in,” he said. “If she murders us both and then eats out hearts, it’s your fault.”
For one moment, Ariana looked alarmed. “Do bears do that? Eat hearts?”
Jake just shook his head and walked toward the other woman.
* * *
Inside the cabin, Jake brought out a rollaway bed that Ariana hadn’t known he owned and they put Regina on that. She peeled away the other woman’s shirt, doing her best not to hurt her, while Jake grabbed his First Aid supplies.
When he returned, he handed Ariana scissors.
“Just cut her shirt off,” he said. “It’s what they do in the ER.”
She cut Regina’s shirt and bra off. The other woman didn’t protest at all, and even though she glanced a little at Jake, he didn’t seem interested in the other woman’s naked torso. Ariana felt bad for even wondering about it — but after all, hadn’t Regina originally come here for the express purpose of seducing him? Wasn’t she allowed to be a little — just a little — concerned?
The gashes were deep, and they wrapped around her side and onto her back. Ariana got her to lie on her other side, just as Jake came back with a suitcase.
“I thought you were getting a first aid kit,” Ariana said.
He put it down and opened it. It was an old-style plastic suitcase, the kind without wheels. Inside was stuffed with neatly-organized medical supplies: gauze, tape, three kinds of tweezers, all the ointments and antiseptics anyone could ever want.
“Can you swallow?” he asked Regina.
“Yeah,” she said.
He took out a medicine bottle and shook loose two big white pills.
“Are those Vicodin?” asked Ariana.
“Morphine,” he said. He handed Regina one pill and a bottle of water, and the woman downed them without blinking.
“Where the hell did you get that?” she asked.
Jake just looked at her, a little cockily, and handed her a pair of long tweezers.
“She’s got some debris in the cuts,” he said. “Help me get it out.”
They worked on Regina in silence for fifteen minutes, listening to her labored breathing and her occasional gasps of pain. Finally, when her wounds were clear, Jake doused her in antiseptic and started taping her up.
“Should we give her stitches?” Ariana asked.
“Do you know how to give stitches?”
Ariana shook her head. “You’re the one with the morphine and the suitcase full of medical supplies,” she said.
“I can get stuff. I can’t give stitches,” he said.
They finished taping the other woman, and then Ariana tugged her pants off and sponged her legs down. She was scratched and bruised up pretty bad, but mostly fine — the only real damage was to her ribcage.
“Pants off,” said Regina in a sing-song voice.
“Morphine’s working,” said Jake.
“Pantssssssss,” said Regina. Jake left and came back with some of his own old work clothes, and together, they sat her
up and got her dressed again. Once they had, she was completely asleep, passed out on the cot.
“Let’s go eat dinner,” Jake said.
Ariana cracked open two beers as Jake reheated the previous night’s spaghetti and meatballs. She perched on a stool at his kitchen counter and watched him load the bowls with the pasta and then the sauce, admiring even the small movements that he made, the way that they moved his muscles against his shirt.
“Parmesan?” he asked.
“Put it on after you microwave it,” she said. “Tastes better.”
She took a gulp of beer, and Jake put the food into the microwave oven, then leaned heavily against the counter.
“You look awful,” Ariana said. It was true: he was a little flushed, almost sweaty. His hair looked a little wild and greasy, and he just looked... unwell.
“When was the last time you shifted?” she asked him.
“Not important,” he said.
“Tell me.”
Jake sighed and rubbed his eyes with his hands. Ariana noticed that he was looking a little hairier than normal, and that just made her worry more. “Five days,” he said, softly. “But it’s fine.”
“Can’t you go shift now?” she said. “Just... run outside and do it real quick?”
“I can’t leave you alone here with her,” he said.
“Go in the bathroom and shift, then.”
He just shook his head. “Look, you don’t understand — when you go this long, you can’t control it any more. I don’t know what will happen when I shift.” He paused when the microwave dinged and pulled two plates out. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said.
There it was again, Ariana thought. I just don’t understand. She felt something tug at her, deep inside. Despite herself, she wondered one more time what Jake was missing by being with her, instead of another shifter.
Did he miss it? Would be ever miss it, in six months, a year, five years?
She looked up and realized that Jake was just looking at her, and that she had tears in her eyes. He offered her a plates of spaghetti and she took it as he sat next to her.
