by Roxie Noir
“There’s a clearing at the end,” he said, his breath coming in ragged gasps. “Once I’m out of the truck, you turn around and you leave, understand?”
She risked a glance over at him. There were tears standing in his eyes, and his knuckles were white where he was holding onto the door handle.
For the first time, Ariana was truly terrified. She knew that Jake didn’t want to hurt her, she believed it with all her heart — but now, she realized that he might not even have a choice in the matter.
The clearing came into view, and Ariana gunned it, skidding the truck around on the grass. Jake was out before she’d even stopped, and as he ran at top speed for the woods, she could see the fur sprout from his back as his gait became more loping.
Before she could see anything else, her foot was back on the gas pedal and she was gunning it for the main road. By the time she got there she was sobbing, her hands were shaking hard, and her face was covered in tears.
I have to keep going, she told herself, turning onto the asphalt.
Just keep going, that’s all you can do.
Ariana looked over at the empty passenger seat of the truck, and saw the door handle. It had cracked straight through where Jake had been hanging on.
She covered her mouth with one hand and let the sobs wrack through her body.
At the cabin, Boone and Regina were both sitting at the kitchen counter, mugs of coffee in their hands. They didn’t look surprised that Ariana was there, but they did look relieved.
“He’s gone?” Boone asked.
Ariana’s heart seized in her chest. It sounded like Boone was asking if Jake dead.
“I just dropped him off in the woods,” she said.
“Where?”
“An old logging camp, half an hour away.” She sniffled and grabbed a paper towel to wipe her face with. “Twenty minutes if you drive like the devil’s chasing you.”
Boone nodded in approval.
“He’ll be fine,” offered Regina. “If he’s far enough away, he can’t get back to civilization before he comes to his senses.”
“He’ll be able to get home, right?” asked Ariana, her voice sounding small and miserable, even to her.
“Of course,” Regina said. “He got here from Alaska, didn’t he?”
“I guess that’s true,” said Ariana.
“There’s coffee,” said Boone. “Then we should talk.”
Ariana didn’t want coffee, she wanted to head into her bedroom and go to sleep until Jake came home to her, safe and sound. She wanted to be wrapped in his arms again, to finally tell him she loved him, and for him to be okay, not the terrifying shell of Jake she’d just dropped off in the middle of nowhere.
She felt tears rising up in her eyes again. How could I have just left him there? She thought. Everyone in this county wants to shoot a grizzly bear, and I just left him all alone—
“Hey,” said Boone, gently. He reached out and touched her arm. “Come on. Get some coffee and sit down. Jake can take care of himself.”
“I’m sorry,” Ariana said, and then walked to the coffee pot, trying to stifle her sobs.
“Poor thing,” she heard Regina say softly, behind her.
What a condescending bitch, thought Ariana, pouring coffee into a mug. Where does she get off?
“No thanks to you!” she said, loudly. A small part of her brain knew it wasn’t a great idea to go mouthing off to a lady who could turn into a grizzly bear at any moment, but fuck that. This was her house, she could say what she wanted.
“I had nothing to do with this,” said Regina, her voice also rising.
“You’re not exactly helping the situation.”
A stool scraped back. Ariana turned around to see Regina standing, even though she looked like it was painful.
“This is all Violet,” said Regina. “Try focusing your energy on that, not on some innocent bystander.”
“Innocent my fat ass.”
In between them, Boone stood, holding his hands out. “Stop it,” he said in his deep, soft voice. “I know that you two have your differences, but this is a bad time to hash them out.”
The two women glared at each other.
“Regina’s right about one thing,” he said. “This is all Violet’s doing. We stop her, we solve our problems.”
Ariana looked away and took a long drink of her coffee. Outside the cabin, the sky had turned purple and then lavender, the sun coming up over the mountains to the east.
“Okay,” she said. “First we get a gun.”
Regina and Boone exchanged a glance.
“What?” Ariana said. “You’ve got a better idea?”
Part of her knew that she should be nicer to them — Boone, in particular, was only trying to help — but she was terrified for Jake and had barely slept the night before, so she was in no mood.
“We might not need to kill her,” Boone said.
“Which might bring the whole Alaska pack down on your head,” Regina explained.
“I’ve been listening to the police scanner, and apparently there’s a plan to tranquilize her and move her to Montana.”
Ariana sipped her coffee again. “Why do you have a police scanner?”
Boone ignored her question.
“We just need to find her and get her in public,” he said.
“You make it sound so easy.”
“They’ve posted officers and rangers with the tranquilizer guns around town,” he said.
Ariana tilted her head back and drained her coffee, staring at the bottom of the mug for a couple of seconds. Then she put it down, looking from Regina to Boone and back.
“And I’m the best bait.”
“Jake killed her mate,” Regina said.
“She killed him,” Ariana said. “She smothered him with a pillow.”
“That’s not how she sees it,” Boone said. “I’ve known Violet a long time, and she’s not the forgiving type.”
“She’d love to kill Jake’s mate while she’s waiting for him,” Regina went on.
“I’m not Jake’s mate,” Ariana said.
The two of them looked at her skeptically.
“It’s only been a month!” she said. “Mating is a big commitment, and I don’t want to rush into anything, it’s kind of complicated...”
Regina put one hand on the other girl’s arm. “You don’t have to explain yourself now, but she’d still love to kill you,” she said.
Ariana rubbed her eyes with one hand. “Is it really as simple as going out in public?” she asked.
“Only one way to find out,” said Boone.
Chapter Eight
“How’s it going?” Ariana asked Harold, the forest ranger on duty. She tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, even though her heart was hammering in her chest and she knew her blood pressure was through the roof.
“No bears yet,” he said, shrugging. “Probably nothing today, the attacks seem to come at night.” He had a huge rifle slung over his shoulder. Earlier he’d assured Ariana that it was filled with tranquilizer darts only, and that her boyfriend Jake had been nice enough to come down late last night and estimate the size of this grizzly.
“Jake feeling okay?” he asked. “He looked a little rough last night.”
“I think he’s coming down with something,” she said, distantly. “He stayed home from work today.”
So far, Ariana had done two laps around the downtown area, always staying within sight of Boone and Regina, who were doing the least covert following job she’d ever seen. She didn’t know how to get her scent out, but it seemed like the best way.
“So you’ll take it to Montana?” she said.
“Most likely,” he said. “It’s got a big grizzly population that’s pretty far from any kind of population center. Should be okay.”
Ariana just nodded.
“Well,” she said. “Good talking to you.”
Thus began her third lap of the downtown Evergreen area. Truth be told, it was boredom
punctuated by spurts of terror, when every so often she remembered that she was here for the sole purpose of being attacked by an enormous grizzly bear.
It’s for Jake, she reminded herself. You can be brave for an hour for his sake.
She was also beginning to wonder when they’d just give up. Maybe Violet wasn’t actually interested in her — maybe she was interested only in Jake, and wasn’t going to risk being seen in public just to get at Ariana.
Humming to herself, her head buzzing with her third cup of coffee, Ariana stopped and looked into a store window full of little carvings of bears.
Behind her, a shadow moved in an alleyway, behind a dumpster. She didn’t see it.
Those are kinda cute, thought her sleep-deprived brain. That one looks kind of like Jake.
The shadow moved again, taking a couple of steps.
Then, the grizzly moved out of the alleyway at a jog, heading right at Ariana. She was still crouched down, looking at the bear statues.
“Hey!” shouted Harold, watching it unfold.
He took the rifle off of his shoulder and pointed at the bear, moving fast. Bystanders started screaming and running, doors of businesses slamming shut.
Finally, Ariana turned around, only to see the bear, closing distance fast.
Her mouth went dry, and her vision filled up with nothing but teeth. It was all she could see — just Violet’s enormous teeth, getting closer and closer.
In the corner of her field of vision, she saw Harold cock the gun.
Don’t move, she thought. Just stay still and he can shoot her.
The bear came closer and closer, running now, and Ariana’s resolve began to falter. Now she could nearly smell the bear, all dirt and funk and fur, and she could hear her panting and oh, god, she was so close and her heart was beating right out of her chest—
There was a very small noise from what seemed like very far away, and Violet slowed.
Then she stopped, and she turned to look at Harold, who was still pointing the rifle at her. She roared at him, her long head tilting upward in the sunlight. Ariana felt like everything was moving in slow motion, like she could see every speck of dust and mote of sunlight move through the air.
Then Violet looked back at Ariana and took another step forward, and another step — but then it seemed like she somehow missed the ground, stumbling a little, her front legs dipping.
Then she stumbled again, and this time her leg gave way, spilling the huge bear to the ground. She tried to roar again, but it came out soft, more a mew than a roar.
Then Violet stopped moving and she just lay on her side, twitching a little.
All at once Ariana felt her heart start beating again, out of control. She gasped for breath, a huge inhale, and just sat down on the pavement of the sidewalk. Her coffee fell out of her hand and onto the sidewalk, but she barely even noticed.
Carefully, Harold approached the enormous bear, the rifle still cocked at her. He stood over her for a good while, watching carefully to make sure she was really out.
On the ground, Ariana started clenching and unclenching her fists. Her brain almost refused to believe that anything she was seeing was real, and she was trying to convince those were really her hands, really connected to her body, really sitting on a sidewalk in Evergreen.
Finally Harold came over to where she was and offered him her hand. Ariana took it, letting him help her up from the ground, shakily brushing herself off.
“Bear’s out cold,” he said. “Looks like a female. Really unusual that it was so aggressive, especially during the day.”
Ariana just nodded and swallowed. Slowly, she could feel the adrenaline draining out of her, and she just felt shaky and oddly hollow.
“She was really booking it for you,’’ he said. “You carrying around steaks or something?”
“Ha, ha,” she said, her tone conveying that she didn’t find it funny in the least.
“Well, you’re fine,” he said. “We’ll get the bear transport over here in a few and then it’s off to Montana with her. Bet you’re awake now, huh?”
“Still not funny,” she said, looking at Violet, asleep on the asphalt.
Chapter Nine
Jake was tired and dirty when he finally came to his senses, somewhere in a deep valley full of pine trees, next to a stream. Still in bear form, he could see a line of trees with deep gouges in them. He only vaguely remembered doing that, his memory coming and going in blurry patches.
He remembered being in the truck, Ariana driving like hell, shivering and sweating at the same time, using every last ounce of willpower he had not to shift.
He remembered opening the truck door and jumping out, shouting at Ariana to drive away, and then the sweet, almost orgasmic rush of shifting. Then he remembered her tail lights. He hadn’t hurt her, had he? There was no reason to think that. The last thing he really remembered was her driving away — she wouldn’t have stopped and come back, right?
His claws had blood on them, but he’d also killed a deer.
Of course Ariana was all right.
The rest was a blur of running and destruction. The tiny, old cabin that had been in the clearing he’d torn apart, plank by plank, utterly destroying the thing until it was a pile of timber on the ground. He remembered doing that in flashes, here and there, and then he’d moved onto knocking trees over, chasing after and killing anything that moved...
There was a swath of destruction in his wake, and he could barely remember doing it.
Jake bent and drank from the creek, the cold water feeling good on his snout. He wasn’t exactly sure where he was, but he knew he had to get back to Ariana as soon as he could. Then he’d have to go deal with Violet, but he could do that later, and only after he was back with his mate.
Girlfriend. Not mate. No matter how sure he was about her, no matter how deep his certainty was, she was nervous about taking things too fast, and he was going to respect that.
Jake shook himself off and tracked the sun, figuring out which direction west was. That was, more or less, the direction of the cabin, and the closer he got to it the more likely he was to know his surroundings.
* * *
When Ariana, Boone, and Regina got back to the cabin, Ariana called in sick. She just told David that she was feeling a little under the weather, declining to go into details about her current predicament, which relied heavily on people who could turn into bears at will. As normal as it seemed to her by now, she was afraid that if she tried to explain to anyone else, they’d lock her away in the loony bin.
Of course, she’d hoped that when she returned, Jake would be there, waiting for her, drinking a beer on the couch or even getting ready for work. The other rangers had to wonder where on earth he was — he hadn’t been one of the people trying to shoot the bear, but so far no one had said anything about it.
She stood at the window in the kitchen, looking into the tree-filled back yard. It was still only early afternoon, and the sun was streaming through the branches.
Jake, where are you? She thought. Please come back, she thought. Please.
“I’m sure he’s fine,” said Regina, coming up behind Ariana, as if she could read the other girl’s thoughts.
“I know,” said Ariana, even though her voice sounded unconvincing to herself.
“He’s survived much worse,” Regina said softly. “To be honest, until Coleman found us a few weeks ago and told us Jake was in love with a human, we thought these three were dead.”
“You did?”
Regina nodded. “I was only ten or eleven when they — when everything happened, but I remember it really well,” she said. “That doesn’t just happen, most of the time. Teenage boys get beat up for all kinds of stuff, but most of them come crawling back to the alpha, they apologize for whatever they did, and then everyone gets on with their lives.”
“I don’t believe you,” breathed Ariana.
Regina shook her head. “I know it’s hard to,” she said. “Shifters a
re capable of a very strange kind of pack mentality, almost a type of groupthink. We’re taught from birth that the pack is the most important thing, far more important than our own lives.”
She was quiet a minute, and Ariana heard Boone walking through the living room, toward the kitchen.
“Almost no one just leaves,” she said, and then turned her head. Boone walked into the kitchen.
“What do you think?” he asked Regina.
Regina looked at Ariana, studying her. “Do you want us to stay?”
Ariana chewed her lip. Part of her didn’t want to be alone — what if Violet woke up and escaped, somehow? But most of her wanted to take a long, hot bath and try to decompress and forget everything that had happened today.
Besides, she was going to be a nervous wreck until Jake got back, whenever that happened, and nobody needed to be around to see that happen.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“He should be back before too long,” Boone said. “It’s been almost a day. That’s a long time already for grizzly fever.”
Ariana saw them exchange a look, and her heart plummeted again.
“Grizzly fever?” she asked.
“It’s our dumb name for the mania you get when you shift for the first time in a while,” explained Regina. “Just a name.”
Ariana narrowed her eyes at the two of them. “When this happens to someone, they always turn back into a person, right?”
Boone hesitated just a moment too long. “Of course,” he said, but he didn’t meet Ariana’s eyes.
“Tell me,” she said.
“It was a really long time ago,” Regina started. “He hadn’t shifted in almost two weeks.”
“The details are kinda lost to history,” said Boone. “But the legend goes, there was an alpha way up in Canada who didn’t shift for too long, and then he disappeared. His pack saw his bear form again, but he never returned to them as a human.”
“That won’t happen to Jake,” Regina said, then searched the other woman’s eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay?”
Ariana nodded.
