by Lena Loneson
He grinned. “Guilty.”
As she picked her way through the woods, careful not to lose sight of the trail, Noire swore she could feel the heat of his gaze on her ass the whole way.
From the outside, the den looked like a regular black bear habitat. Bears could make a den out of nearly anything—a rock cave, the inside of a rotted tree trunk, the shelter of strong roots or a simple hole in the ground. This one was larger than most, cave in the side of a cliff that towered over them. The walls were earth and dirt, crumbling slightly, and vegetation all around the opening had been ripped out of the ground.
There was nothing that unusual about it, but when they approached, Noire felt her entire body go cold. It came from deep inside her, a point in her chest that until this week had been one of her greatest joys—where she normally felt her psychic link with Fawn. Until Fawn had died screaming.
“It’s here, Cam,” Noire whispered. “Her pelt. I know it.”
She knew Fawn was dead and her suffering was over—there was nothing of her baby sister’s soul left in the pelt. But Noire’s eyes still filled with tears, and everything came rushing back—Fawn’s pale face, bites marring her neck and shoulders, the rest of her body shrouded under the white sheet, surrounded by metal drawers in the morgue.
“Hey.” Cam’s voice was soft and kind. He turned her to him and kissed her forehead, wiped the tears from her cheeks with the sleeve of his mud-stained uniform. “We’ll get him, love. Trust me.” He comforted her with an embrace and she let herself relax for just a moment.
Then she pulled back and hardened her face.
“What’s the plan now?” she asked. “Back to camp, I’ll grab my shotgun and cover you?”
She could sense his hesitation; Cam knew she wouldn’t like the answer. “Listen. I can’t smell anything distinctive, so I don’t know what’s in there. It’s just a lot of blood.”
“My sister’s? Jedd’s?”
“I don’t know. Maybe from different people. It’s all just melding together, acrid and horrible. I don’t think we’re ready to attack.” He guided her back into the cover of the trees. They kept their voices low in case the bear was nearby.
She was so connected to his wolf side that she could sense a lie and would call him on it immediately. He wasn’t lying, but he was hiding something.
“We need to know more about the situation first.” This was truth. “Let me do some recon. Then I can figure out the next steps from there.”
She pressed her mouth together and bristled at the word “I”.
“I’m just as quiet as you are,” she said. “I’ve been tracking animals since I was four.”
“I know,” he said, kindness apparent in his voice. “But you don’t have my sense of smell, sweetheart, or my hearing. And when I’m in wolf form I can’t be distracted by you.”
“Distracted?” She scowled at him. This was not the time to be joking about their mutual attraction. She sensed him floundering, trying to decide whether to go with a lie or the truth. Which was more likely to chase her away? Even Noire herself wasn’t sure.
“I’m going to tell you something, and I need you to promise not to freak out on me.” He held both her hands in his. She felt him willing her to remain with him.
“I can’t promise that. What if you’re going to say something stupid?”
“My wolf won’t let me observe the bear without using part of my senses to keep an eye on you as well,” he started.
“I can take care of myself.” Noire yanked her hands out of his. “Just tell me what you’re thinking.”
“My wolf sees you as his mate. Werewolves…we don’t take a lot of time to find our forever partner, love. My wolf bonded to you almost immediately. And because of this, there’s nothing I can do to block out my worry for you if you’re there. It will be a liability. Noire, if you feel anything for me, and if you want your sister avenged, I need you to let me begin this on my own. I need you to go back to camp.”
“What are you saying, exactly?” she asked. She thought she knew, that every piece of him reached out to her, but she had to hear the words.
“I’m saying that I love you, and I need you to trust me on this.”
“Oh. Wow.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to say it back. You’re human, after all, and our two species don’t play by the same rules, even if you have a piece of shifter blood inside you.”
She kissed him softly. “Keep safe,” she said. “Promise me you’ll keep safe. Remember, if you make it back alive I’ll let you do whatever you want to me.” She kissed him again. “Wherever you want.”
“Noire, you’re a lot more special than you realize. The shifter blood in you, it connects us, werewolf to shifter. Maybe not as strong as with you and your sister, but when we’re apart, I feel you. Can you sense me?”
She had tears in her eyes, but she nodded.
“Then that will keep me safe,” he said. “You’ll know it if I get into any trouble.”
She managed a small, brave smile. “Then I guess I’d better stay alert.”
She turned to walk away, back to the campsite. She could let him do this. And she realized she had a secret of her own—he had no idea how strong their psychic link had grown.
Halfway back to the camp, she knew when he shifted. It was different than when she’d first seen him as a wolf. He’d shifted in the forest and returned in the other form, like magic. This was the first time she could really feel him. Cam pulled his service weapon out of its holster. She shared his regret at setting it aside, but knew the pistol was useless to a wolf. He placed it in a small tree stump nearby. His weapons today would be his sense of smell, his intelligence, his teeth and his claws.
He stripped off his clothes and though Noire was still dressed warmly for the late autumn weather, the cold breeze cut through her sweater. She shivered with him.
Naked, he changed. The bones popping out of their sockets, the muscles tearing—she knew all that pain brought him clarity and purpose. For Noire, feeling it for the second time, it was agony. When he was done, she was curled up on the forest floor, shivering and sweaty.
In a few short moments, the massive gray wolf stood, shook himself off and entered the bear’s den.
With each passing minute, Noire liked Cam’s plan less and less.
She was back at the campsite now, trying to distract herself with chores. What he’d said about their connection made sense. Carrying the recessive gene for weres gave Noire a natural affinity for wild animals, and also for those almost-humans like her sister Fawn—and Cam. Their physical and emotional bonding made this even stronger. Combined with her ability to read animal gestures, it was almost as if she could read his mind.
So surely, as Cam said, she’d know if he was in trouble. Right?
But the last she’d felt from him was entering that cave as a wolf. She could close her eyes and remember what it felt like to walk on four paws, her tail ready to tuck between her legs at the first sign of danger.
But she couldn’t stop imagining everything that could go wrong. As she pitched their tent, she thought about how small the den was and how easily Cam could be trapped inside.
She shivered and a tiny point just left of the center of her chest grew cold.
As she set up trappings to catch a rabbit for supper (she thought Cam’s wolf side might appreciate the treat, and Noire herself would never turn down rabbit stew), she thought about what the bear might eat, which led her to picturing bear teeth and claws—perfect for ripping bugs out of a fallen log, or for ripping the viscera out of the stomach of a vulnerable mammal.
The cold spot inside her seemed to freeze, like an icicle ripping into her heart.
She’d only seen the result of two bear attacks in her career as park warden, and she couldn’t dismiss either from her mind easily. When a human got ripped apart by a wild creature, it didn’t look like the neat autopsies she conducted on cadavers in school. All of the organs she’d been taught to ca
refully identify were mush, smashed together and torn to the point where blood darkened everything—intestines, lungs, heart, liver—into something resembling haggis.
The cold spot in her heart was at the point of pain now. Noire sat down hard on a log, slipping slightly on wet moss. She barely noticed. She closed her eyes and clutched at her chest, focusing on the pain.
She’d felt just like this earlier this week. A few hours before she’d received the call that they’d found someone matching her sister’s description. But Fawn was dead, so this new pain—this new pain had to be Cam.
Without thinking, Noire hoisted herself off the log and picked up her Beretta, pocketing all the extra shells she could find. The plan had been for Cam to kill the skinwalker. Making his death an animal attack would have diverted any suspicion, but with the Mountie in danger, Noire couldn’t worry about that now. She grabbed a camping knife and an axe they’d planned to use for firewood. Just in case. And then she took off down the path they’d followed earlier, this time with no attempt to avoid leaving a path. She trampled on grasses and let twigs snap off in her hair, picking up her pace into a full sprint, breathing heavier, the air in her lungs exhaling in a scream as the pain in her heart grew unbearable. But she pressed on.
As she ran, memories not her own flooded her mind.
The bear had surprised him.
One minute, Cam was standing deep inside the lair, staring at a pile of bloody furs, skins and feathers—Page’s collection of pelts. He kept his senses attuned for the smell or the scent of another predator, knowing that Page had access to several different shapes. They couldn’t even be sure his original form was a bear. So Cam’s wolf senses kept watch for bears, wolves, coyotes, hawks—even deer, knowing that the bear might try appealing to Noire’s love for her sister.
None of those smells reached his snout.
When the blue jay attacked him, he wasn’t expecting it.
The bird struck first for his eyes, raking small talons across them. Fluid streamed out of his eyes as he was blinded. The pain was unbearable, but he had to bear it. With a howl of frustration, Cam lashed out with his teeth, his claws, his whole body, throwing himself at the walls of the cave, trying to find the tiny bird to crush it between his jaws.
Next, the talons raked his nose.
He couldn’t see it coming—he couldn’t smell it coming—and the mad caws of the murderer they’d been tracking echoed off the cave walls. His only sense left was hearing, and it was useless.
Cam’s wolf self took over. He howled. He rubbed his head along the dirt ground, grit nestling into the scratches on his eyes like sandpaper. He snarled at the air and snapped his teeth at nothing. All the while the jay laughed at him. The wolf flattened himself to the ground, almost submissive, crawling on all fours. Forward, forward—sensing the wind in his fur. His tail between his legs, the wolf crawled as the jay laughed. Every instinct in his body told him to be dominant—he was an alpha, damn it! He could eviscerate a tiny bird.
But the human part of his soul that was still left thought of Noire.
Eventually he reached the opening to the cave again. The cold night air numbed his pain. For a moment, he let himself lie there in the dirt, wolf chest heaving, sucking in giant breaths of air.
He couldn’t hear the jay anymore.
His human self knew that wasn’t a good sign. He’d seen the pile of pelts—dozens, so many more deaths than Cam and his team of detectives had realized, and Page had access to all of them. Any animal he could imagine might attack him next.
Cam rolled onto his back, whimpering, showing his belly at the air. He shut his eyelids, trying to take stock of his ruined face. The eyes were gone, destroyed. The nose was useless. His only hope was to change to human, speed up the healing process. But he’d left his pistol in the woods. His human body, naked, would have no defenses.
With a scream Cam changed. Fur melted into flesh, front legs molded into arms, his tail pulled up against his body, and what was left of the flesh of his eyes reshaped itself. He lay in a fetal position, pink flesh exposed to the world like a newborn.
And then he opened his eyes, and he saw the black bear coming toward him.
Nearly eight feet tall and over five hundred pounds in mass, the bear roared. Before today, Cam thought he knew what teeth were—he’d had many a fight with young wolves challenging his position in his former pack. But he’d never seen a bear’s teeth this close before.
Cam the human stood, naked and vulnerable, and met the bear’s attack. There was simply nothing else to do.
When Noire found the clearing by the cave again, her worst fears were realized. As she saw the bear—her sister’s killer—attack her nude, defenseless lover, raking claws down his chest, Noire raised the shotgun to her shoulder and fired.
Her shot went high. She’d been sloppy, so distraught by seeing Cam in danger that she hadn’t braced herself for the recoil. The shotgun hit her cheek and she knew there’d be a large bruise the next day, if she survived. If they survived, for she knew that if Cam died, she wouldn’t make it out alive either. This creature was not killing both of the people she loved more than anything in the world.
The bear roared in pain. Noire had struck the top of his head, just a graze, but enough to throw him off balance. Cam darted to the side, changing as he went—Noire could see his body slipping out of humanity, growing fur. She raised the shotgun to her shoulder again, reloading as she went. She aimed and fired.
This time, the bear ducked, but she’d scared him. He squealed and roared and turned, heading back not to the cave but behind a thicket of bushes.
Still carrying her weapon, Noire ran to find Cam in wolf form. He lay on his side. His right eye was oozing something horrible and the skin on his chest beneath the fur was made up of red ribbons of flesh. His chest rose and fell with his breath, out of time, not steady like a healthy animal’s should. She crouched over him, protecting the wolf with her body. She leaned down, pressing her face to his, and kissed his snout.
“Please don’t die,” she said. “I love you.”
With that the wolf whimpered and rolled onto his feet. Noire felt the coldness in her heart warm and fill, and with that her own strength grew. The wolf whimpered and she looked up, readying her shotgun to meet the bear again.
The bear was gone.
Instead, a beautiful young doe stood in front of her. The white-tailed deer was graceful and perfect. She stood less than four feet from Noire and the wolf. Everything about her matched Noire’s sister Fawn perfectly. The tan firmness of her back, the skittish stance of her legs, the big, brown, guileless eyes.
But she knew it wasn’t Fawn. This thing had killed Fawn, skinned her alive, enjoyed her screams and then came after her lover.
Noire raised the shotgun and fired point blank into the face of what used to be her little sister. Then she reloaded and fired again.
By the time Cam had changed again, wolf to human and human back to wolf, his flesh had finally started to heal. Noire couldn’t look at him. She was seated on the ground, weeping helplessly. She barely noticed when he rose on four legs and limped to the dying body of the white-tailed deer. He leaned down and ripped out Page’s throat.
She felt Cam lick the blood off his snout, willing it to fill him, warm his belly and give him strength. Some of that strength made it to Noire and she held it close, deep inside her. When the wolf placed his head gently in her lap, she cried into his fur.
Later at the campsite, Noire finished cooking their supper—soup from a freeze-dried packet. She didn’t have the heart to kill and skin a rabbit tonight.
Her heart lifted as she heard Cam’s footsteps—or rather, she sensed them even before he reached the site. She kept her eyes lowered at first, scared of what she might see. He’d sent her back alone, knowing she couldn’t watch him dispose of the body of her sister’s killer wearing the flesh of her sister. He must have burned it; she didn’t want to know.
“I’ve got it.” His warm,
deep voice soothed her and she managed a small, wan smile. She raised her head, looking him in the eye. “Here,” he said, and held out his arms. He carried a small tan piece of fur—what was left of Fawn’s pelt after Noire’s shotgun had torn a hole in it. On his back was his pack, and his clothing seemed whole, with no blood seeping through. His eyes were gray like his wolf’s, healed, and looked straight at hers.
Relief shook her whole body as she took him in an embrace.
They burned Fawn’s pelt and said a small Native prayer, wishing her safe passage to whatever lay beyond. Then they ate the soup, warming their insides and recovering their strength. They couldn’t stop touching each other and Noire sat in Cam’s lap while they ate, feeding each other from a single spoon, licking chicken flavoring from each other’s lips.
Noire, the consummate loner, never wanted to be alone again.
“There’s something I want to show you,” Cam said hesitantly.
“What is it?”
“It’s… I’m not sure how you’ll react. So I’m asking you to please keep an open mind.” She’d never seen him looking this shy before. His long black lashes hid his eyes and his left cheek dimpled as he smiled.
“Don’t I know all your secrets by now?” she asked. What could be stranger than knowing the man she loved turned into a wolf?
“This isn’t my secret, Noire.” Cam reached into his pack now and pulled out a patch of fur—black as the night sky. He held it up to Noire’s hair. “It matches,” he said. “I think it’s meant to be yours.”
She knew what it was right away. The bear’s pelt. His original pelt, she supposed, from whatever creature he was before he sold his soul for immortality. But what was she supposed to do with it?
Cam answered her unspoken question. “You’ve got shifter blood in you, sweetheart. The legends say, if you kill a shifter, and you take their pelt, you can become them. This was your kill, Noire. I merely finished the job.”
She took the bear’s pelt in her arms. It was soft. Softer than she ever would have imagined. It should have disgusted her. It was the torn skin of the creature that had murdered her sister, and tried to kill her and Cam. But as soon as she touched it, she realized the fur felt…well, it felt like home.
