by Sky Winters
After about twenty more minutes, while they were feasting on their delicious, fruit-infused waffles, Amos’s motorcycle club buddies showed up. “Bonjour,” one of them said as they gathered up chairs and sat down.
“Vicky, please allow me to introduce Ray, Buzz, and Jean-Claude,” Amos introduced.
Jean-Claude was the one with the evil villain moustache who had spoken French. He was clearly a Creole.
Interesting group of friends.
Then it dawned on her.
“Did Jean-Claude name your club?” she asked.
“Oui,” he said with a smile. “How did you know?”
She smiled as the new information dawned on her. “NOLA Ours,” she said. “Ours is French for bears.”
The biker guys all grinned and nodded at her.
“Anyway,” Amos said, redirecting the conversation back where it belonged. “Here’s the plan. We head back to Miss Roberts’ apartment. The wolves will sense her presence, or they will be waiting right outside for her to come back. She goes in, we go in. We attack at the first sign of them.”
“Right,” Ray said.
“Inside the building?” Buzz asked.
Amos nodded. “Unfortunately, that’s how these guys like to play – rough. So we will play the game the way they want it. And beat them at their own game.”
Vicky sighed down at her waffles. “Only this game is not fun at all.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Familiar Sunrise
After gorging themselves on waffles, the bears all hopped onto their motorcycles – Vicky rode with Amos, of course – back towards her apartment in the heart of the city. The others did not go in with her. Amos did, because he knew that the wolf and his friends would be expecting him to be there, too. The way to ambush someone was to make them think they were catching you going about your business unawares.
Vicky pressed the elevator’s up button and went inside with Amos. As the door was closing, a pale arm stopped it and Stuart from art class slipped inside with them. The three of them rode up together as if nothing was off about anything. When the elevator stopped on Vicky’s floor, they all stepped out; the wolf kept his distance, pretending that he was not following them but so clearly doing just that.
“Honestly, this guy is an amateur,” Amos whispered to her.
She giggled a little, but that did not mean she wasn’t uneasy. She unlocked her apartment and they went inside.
That is when the wolf chose to strike. He and three other men that Vicky assumed were wolves came running towards her. They held the door open and came inside her apartment. She ran and hid beside Amos who grew and grew in his enormity until he was a large, black and brown bear again.
This time she noticed that, when he had transformed, the gold ring in his eyes became the color of his eyes. They had flashed gold that night!
Once he shifted, the pack of wolves followed suit until, before long, Vicky’s apartment was full of forest predators. Even more filled it as three large bears came crashing into the room. The rest of NOLA Ours had waited outside, giving the wolves that chance to feel they were safe.
The growling bears bit and snapped at the wolves as they lunged and bit right back at them. Vicky holed herself away in her bedroom, opening the door to peek at what was happening before closing it again before any of the enemies noticed where she had gone to.
While the werewolves were all strong and swift, the bears were stronger and Amos fought back ferociously. She is not just some she-bear, he thought. She is MY she-bear.
“Stay away from Vicky!” he roared, thrashing his long claws against Stuart. The wolf fell away, bloodied and limping. He did not stand a chance against Amos. None of the wolves did. No one could stand a chance against an angry papa bear protecting his lady and cub.
Jean-Claude stood on the gullet of one of the other wolves, pressing his paw down but not enough to completely choke the wolf. “If you ever come around here again, we will kill you.”
The werewolves began to whimper. They did not want to get involved in a fight versus four angry werebears. They hadn’t known that Amos would bring his friends. They were not so loyal to Stuart that they were willing to get killed for his cause. They quickly high-tailed it out of there, as soon as they could.
Stuart, on the other hand, spat out blood, eyeing Amos a bit. It appeared as though, if he did not leave soon, he was going to die.
“You think that she bear loves you, don’t you?” he asked. “You think she cares about you at all? All she wants is her art and her school work. I have seen her there. I know where her passions lie.”
Vicky saw that as her cue. She came out of the bathroom, unarmed and unable to protect herself, aside from the fact that she had a massive werebear right there to keep her safe.
“Oh, come on,” she said to him, scoffing and shaking her head. She folded her arms in front of her chest. “You talked to me, what, three times? You don’t know what I’m passionate about. And I assure you, the answer is standing right there.”
Amos smiled. Well, if bears can smile, that’s what he did. It was more menacing-looking than happy, but she knew what he meant by it.
With that, he whipped his large paw towards the wolf again until Stuart finally got the message and scampered away.
Vicky smiled up at Amos and he smiled back down at her, his mouth slowly taking on more of an actual smile as he shifted back into his tall, beefy human form. As soon as he was back to Normal Amos, she jumped into his arms and hugged him close.
“He was wrong, you know.”
“Of course he was, darlin’.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
They gazed into each other’s eyes and then kissed.
Vicky’s place was a wreck. The pictures on the walls were all crooked if they hadn’t been knocked off and there was broken porcelain, smashed glass, and ripped up artwork everywhere. “Well, one thing’s for sure,” she said with a sigh. “I can’t stay here. I guess art class is over, too.”
Amos looked at her, feeling guilty. “I’m sorry we destroyed your apartment.”
Ray attempted to straighten one of the pictures, but it crashed down to the floor and shattered instead. He grimaced. “Sorry.”
She just laughed.
The three biker bears worked to salvage as much as they could while Vicky and Amos packed everything up into boxes. “If you want, you could keep going to your class, just from a different home.”
“I’m not going to be able to afford it. Once the landlord finds out about this…”
He shook his head. “They won’t. We’ll fix it.”
“But what if I want to live with you on the bayou now, instead?”
The three bears looked at her and then looked at each other.
“We should go,” Buzz said.
“Yeah,” Jean-Claude added. “We shouldn’t disturb you.”
Amos suddenly looked over at them. “Boys,” he said. “Bring these boxes to La Grande Grotte.”
When Jean-Claude spoke French, it sounded creole which was cool. But when Amos spoke French, it sounded as though he was well-cultured and had trained in it for many years. Vicky had ended up catching herself an aristocratic bear.
“You got it,” Ray replied. They took the packed boxes and carried them out of Vicky’s apartment.
She eyed him curiously. “La Grande Grotte?” she asked him.
“Yes,” Amos said. “It means—”
“I know what it means,” she said, laughing. “The Large Cave. But what is that?”
He waggled his dark eyebrows at her. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Right,” Vicky said. Now that the others were gone, it was just the two of them, alone in her semi-demolished apartment. “I’m going to take a shower. You coming?”
Amos grinned and started taking off his clothes at once. He practically chased her into the shower.
As she bent over to turn the water on, he pressed up a
gainst her and she let out a gasp as his grande cock entered her. Vicky held onto the wall as the warm water splashed against them and he thrust himself in and out of her. The water made her extra slick against him.
He grabbed the soap and lathered her up, making love to her from behind, and kissing her back and shoulders and face. “I love you,” he said.
When he pulled out, she turned to face him and he held her in his arms, inserting himself again. She bounced against him there. “Oh oh oh!!” she yelled. If they kept this up, they were going to do more damage to the apartment.
The warm water made it harder for him to hold off, and he came inside her within a few blissful moments. They finished cleaning each other and then stepped out of the shower, wrapping her pink and green towels around themselves.
With all of her stuff packed up in boxes that had been taken off to who knew where, Vicky did not have a reason to stay in her building. “I guess I need to end my lease, and my art classes,” she said sadly.
Amos shook his head. “Yeah, end your lease but don’t give up on your classes. I’ll pay for them if need be.”
“Can you pay for the rest of rent I’ll have to pay?” she asked, laughing slightly bitterly. “My class is at least mostly paid for with a scholarship.”
“I can do that, too,” he said, leaning towards her and kissing her chin. “C’mon now. Let me take you to your new home.”
They got back on his motorcycle and he drove them back in the direction of the bayou. They did not go to the same bayou however. When he’d finally parked the bike in a new bayou, Amos smiled at her. “Welcome to your new home. This is Bayou Segnette.”
Vicky looked around, smiling. “It’s about as hot as I suppose one might expect,” she said. He led her by the hand up to a large cabin. It appeared to be much more spacious than the other one. “Does this one have a shower?” she asked, squinting up at him as the sunlight blinked through the trees at them.
Amos chuckled. “Just go inside and see.”
They walked in together, hand-in-hand.
The cabin was definitely bigger. This one had an actual living room, a larger kitchen, a bedroom and – best of all! – a bathroom with a shower and tub!
“Now, it’s not exactly meant for a large family, but I figure it’s a start?” Amos said.
Vicky leapt into his arms, kissing him. “I love it!” she cried. “I love you!”
EPILOGUE
After everything that had happened to Vicky, she was not going to continue working at Zydeco. She hadn’t disliked the place, but it was not the safest place for her to be. Not only that, but the heat exhaustion and second-hand smoke were liable to kill both her and the baby if she stayed.
Instead, safe with her biker bear, she focused on her artwork and taking better care of herself. It turned out that Amos was a bouncer at one of the local dance clubs; he made enough money to support them until she became a successful famous artist.
Her pregnancy did not last as long as a normal pregnancy. That was because, as Amos explained to her, “Werebears do not live by human rules.”
Four months after they moved in together at La Grande Grotte, Vicky gave birth at home to a healthy baby boy. They named him Sylas. “Sylas Steele” just sounded like an awesome name to Vicky, and Amos was not going to argue with that.
The time spent away from Zydeco did wonders for her work. Vicky still went to classes every so often, but she was devoted to her baby and did not want to leave him at home. It didn’t seem to matter if she was still taking the class or not. She continued to improve and explore new techniques that she incorporated into her pieces.
One morning, Vicky sat outside on the cabin’s back deck right over the bayou. The baby was in a rocking cradle right beside her, staring up at her canvas as she attempted an oil painting. As she watched the familiar sunrise over the water, she did her best to let the colors of the water and the trees and the sky inspire her.
“Who is this?” she asked little Sylas, cooing down at the little boy as he looked up at her, smiling and eager to know what the hell was going on. She’d felt like that pretty recently. She had a lot in common with their baby already.
And he had a lot in common with his daddy.
“This is Daddy,” Vicky said excitedly, pointing her thumb towards her portrait of Bear Amos. He was done up in blues and yellows, but it was him all right. “This is your daddy.”
“Oh, that needs to go up on the wall,” Amos’s voice said behind her.
She turned and smiled at him. He came up to her and they kissed. Vicky brought her hands up to his face and accidentally got blue paint all over him.
Well, maybe it was an accident.
Maybe she was simply imprinting on him.
The End.
Time of the Werebears
“And to the left you'll see a portrait of Lord Lachlan, who ruled with an iron fist. He had a deep intolerance for Highland rebels and pushed for their total annihilation. In the display case to your right is his sword, which shed the blood of countless Highland men, women, and even children, though some were taken in to be re-cultured in the ways of the crown.”
Studying the blade sent a shiver down Sadie McNeil's spine. She was enjoying the tour of her family's castle, and although her heritage trip had just begun, she couldn't wait to see what might happen next. She hoped to learn about her distant family's history as much as possible. The guide spoke on about Lord Lachlan, painting a vivid image of the tyrant in her mind. She could imagine the man's stern face in battle, his eyes narrow and ready to spill the blood of anybody who dared defy him. A series of his portraits lined the walls, and by the time they reached the end of the hallway, she was sure she wouldn't have liked him.
Suddenly, she thought she heard somebody yelling her name. A faraway echo made her turn, her heart thudding rapidly. Where had it come from? Nobody here knew her; she had traveled alone. She looked around the group; nobody else seemed to have heard it.
“Sadie!” it called again. She heard it clearly this time, a man's voice; urgent and afraid. She broke away from the group, following the sound of her name. Everybody else was engrossed in Lord Lachlan's sword. She looked around for the man who seemed to know who she was. She walked slowly, staying close to the wall where the paintings hung proudly in a line. Suddenly, the man's voice seemed to be right in her ear, an intimate breathiness that brought a shiver down her spine. She turned to her right and, to her surprise, found herself gazing right into her own face. At first she thought she had encountered a mirror, but quickly noted the frame, and theother people surrounding her. Somehow, her likeness had been captured in the middle of an ancient painting.
She backed away as if the portrait was on fire, clutching at her heart, and then stared again. That was her all right, right down to the mole on her left cheek, and the fiery red curls that she pulled back into a braid. But how could it be? Surely it was just some ancient ancestor. Still, the resemblance was uncanny. She wondered if her mother had ever noticed.
Sadie studied the painting more closely, holding back the urge to touch it. The woman, who looked identical to Sadie, was standing next to the fierce Lord Lachlan. The tour guide caught up with her and began telling of the painting's history.
“Here we see Lord Lachlan with his wife, just before the execution of a particularly meddlesome Highland rebel. You see, he is holding the sword from the display case. Lord Lachlan liked to dispose of the rebels himself, told his troops to keep them alive until he dealt with them personally.”
The group moved away from the painting, but Sadie stayed rooted in one spot. She was suddenly overpowered by an intense nausea, and she ran out of the room, desperate to get away from the image of the terrible man and her doppelganger, standing mournfully beside him.
She raced down the hallway, turning a corner and pausing to catch her breath. She had been seized by a momentary panic, but if she could just distract herself, maybe she would feel better. Her eyes wandered to the painting in front
of her – a group of muscular men scowling and attacking three large bears head-on. The absurdity of the image made her burst out in laughter. The sound of her own voice comforted her, and she took a deep breath. It was reasonable to be uncomfortable; the painting in the other room probably didn't actually look that much like her. She had just been under a lot of stress lately with the divorce looming over her head. Most people wouldn't be holding up anywhere near as well as she was under the same circumstances. Her entire life had just been turned upside down.
She was filled with anger as memories of her soon-to-be ex-husband's infidelity penetrated her. She had trusted him more than she had trusted anybody. Maybe that was because he was a solid, reliable type, whose wandering eye had been carefully concealed behind his thick glasses and gentle smile. He hadn't been particularly exciting. In fact, the most her heart had raced for him was in the anger after discovering that he had been cheating on her with any woman who pitied him enough to sleep with him. He had made her out to be some sort of insufferable hag, never having time for him because she was so busy with her own career.
“You know those types of women,” he would have said to his conquests. Independent. The kinds of women who said they didn't want kids and meant it, or who made sure they had their own bank accounts to rely on. Terrible wives and mothers, the lot of them, according to common knowledge. He had been distressed when she asked him to wait to start a family until she was more settled into her career and held it over her head any chance she got. The most unfair part about it was that, yes, she did want kids. She just wanted to wait to feel more settled and fulfilled first. But he had taken it and ran as a reason to resent her. He certainly felt justified in destroying her trust and their marriage. Stupid Alfred. Good riddance to him anyway.
But she was in Scotland to forget about all of that. She wandered absently into the first doorway she saw. She peered into the dim room, realizing that it probably wasn't scheduled to be on any part of the tour. In fact, she was surprised the door wasn't locked. Inside, the haggard green curtains were drawn, letting only small streams of sunlight in to illuminate the old antiques strewn recklessly about, as if somebody had been rummaging through it, discarding what they didn't deem useful. Broken glass cracked under her feet as she peered onto tables and shelves, fingering old relics of the past that were within arm's reach and not partitioned away from her through a glass box.
