by Sable Sylvan
Goldilocks And The Three Bear Shifters
Bear-y Spicy Fairy Tales, Volume 1
Sable Sylvan
Published by Sable Sylvan, 2015.
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
GOLDILOCKS AND THE THREE BEAR SHIFTERS
First edition. July 3, 2015.
Copyright © 2015 Sable Sylvan.
Written by Sable Sylvan.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Epilogue
Sneak Peek: Little Red Riding Bears
About The Author
Chapter One
There were so many things that Goldilocks Evans would have rather been doing on a Friday night: watching TV with her friends at their shared rent control apartment while eating pistachio ice cream, going to an art gallery opening, even (and she hated to admit it) going clubbing, but instead, she was preening her hair and getting ready to go to the one event women in their twenties dread more than their thirtieth birthday: her five-year high school reunion. She sat in her car, in the old high school parking lot, and the idea of leaving seemed tempting: she could just drive away, and nobody would know that she’d been there and chickened out. Or, she could get out of the car, and confront her past.
She didn’t get to make the decision: somebody knocking at the window of her car made the decision for her. Goldilocks rolled down the window. “Hey, Deborah,” she said meekly to the woman outside her window: tall, thin, and brunette, Deborah looked the same as she had in high school, just taller from wearing heels, thinner from taking up smoking, and older from the aforementioned bad habit’s effect on her skin.
“Goldie! I haven’t seen you since graduation,” said Deborah. “Come on in, the party’s hopping! I came out for a smoke, some things never change, right?”
“Right,” said Goldilocks, getting out of the car and giving Deborah an awkward side-hug as Deborah held her lit cigarette away from Goldie and her face.
Deborah looked over Goldilocks. “Of course you look amazing. That dress is perfect on you: it really shows off your curves. And thank goodness you didn’t cut your hair.” Deborah looked over Goldilocks’ outfit: she’d picked out a silk kimono top in red with black slacks, and she looked like sex on legs, with her ample butt on display due to the slight, small black kitten heels she had chosen for the night. The red top matched her red cross body purse and Goldilocks’ black puffer coat was in the car.
“But you have short hair,” said Goldie. Deborah’s hair barely passed her ears, a chic pixie cut that showed off her high cheekbones.
“Right, because I don’t have gorgeous hair like yours,” said Deborah. “Blonde and curly, a perfect combination.” Goldie looked over Deborah: in a black tailored suit, Deborah looked corporate and androgynous, but it worked for her body type.
“It’s unruly and ratty,” said Goldie. “And I have half a mind to change my name, but my mom would flip out if I did.”
“I’d flip out if my kid changed her name too,” said Deborah, pulling out her smartphone. On the lock screen there was a picture of a baby girl in Deborah’s arms, the spitting image of Deborah. “Goldie is such a pretty name.”
“Pretty? As if,” said Goldie. “The doctors gave her morphine when she was in labor and she was still loopy when she filled out the birth certificate, that’s the only reason I have this dumb name...and the fact I was born with a full head of this stupid hair. My parents were going to call me Gina before my mom saw all this blonde, curly hair on me...I even had it as a baby.”
“Oh, stop,” said Deborah, taking Goldie’s arm into hers as the pair walked towards the front of the lit high school’s gym. “I can’t believe that you don’t realize how gorgeous you look...and I can’t believe I came all the way out from Chicago for this. Imagine us, the two city girls, back in this Podunk town.”
“At least it’s only for a night,” joked Goldie as the pair signed in at a desk outside the gym and picked out their name badges. Goldie hadn’t been very close with Deborah in high school: they’d shared a few classes but Goldie hadn’t had been one of the smoker kids who hung out behind the gym. She’d always had her head in her books in the library, keep her head down and out of drama...until drama had found her.
“Well, the boys seem to have grown up a lot,” said Deborah, folding her arms and admiring the tall men in flannel shirts and jeans that were a rarity in the cities but were a dime a dozen in the logging town. “I guess that’s what happens when you’ve got a town that’s what, eighty percent shifter?”
“Yeah,” said Goldie. “It was weird living here as a human.”
“And it’s weird for the shifters everywhere else,” said Deborah. “It’s too bad that shifter boys, heck, any sort of boys, get hotter after twenty: where were these studs in high school?”
“The men do seem to have gotten...bigger,” said Goldie, blushing. She had never talked so candidly about men in public with women she barely knew. Even though most of the men in the room were dressed plainly, the ones who had become shifters stood out: a man didn’t exactly become a shifter, as shifters always had the potential to become shifters. Instead, while others went through biological puberty, shifter men, often late bloomers, also went through a shifter form of puberty, but at the end of the day, both adolescences involved getting much taller, much more muscular, and of course, much hairier.
“Bigger...taller...firmer...more muscular, stronger, capable of carrying you over their shoulders and tossing you into bed, same difference,” joked Deborah, looking over the men as the pair made their way to the bar. Deborah looked through her wallet and pulled out a twenty. “Two martinis. Strong.” She slapped the twenty onto the bar and the bartender nodded.
“You didn’t have to get me a drink,” said Goldie. She looked around the room: the gymnasium had never seemed to be this crowded before, not even during school assemblies. It was because the men in the room towered over all the women and the men who weren’t shifters seemed shorter than average in comparison...but watching one of the tall men duck under the entry way to the gym brought things back into perspective. Men who had been scrawny or average in high school were now tall and buff but still retained their boyish grins...and many men were sneaking surreptitious glances to Goldie, the bolder men outright staring at the curvy goddess.
Deborah laughed. “Good thing that I didn’t. I’m going to need to get absolutely wasted to make it through tonight.” The bartender passed over the drinks and Deborah chugged the first drink, chewing the olive as she sipped the second drink. Goldie resisted the urge to laugh. The nerd and the cool kid: some things never changed.
Goldie scanned the room: the Port Jameson gym was decked out in chintzy décor and there was a table asking for “alumni donations” as if anyone really donated to their high school, which wasn’t exactly stellar on an academic or an athletic level. It was basically a diploma factory.
“What’ve you been up to since graduation?” asked Deborah, sipping her second martini.
“Nothing much,” admitted Goldie. “I went to college up in Seattle, majored in marketing, and stuck around there, working at various tech companies. The benefits are good.”
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br /> “You don’t come back here often, do you?” asked Deborah.
“No,” said Goldie. “My parents decided to “find themselves” and moved to San Francisco to become crunchy granola hippies.” It was true: they’d chosen their passions, leaving their safe jobs as CPAs and pursuing their true passion, yoga. They’d kept the house for Goldie, but she hadn’t used it in months. She’d visit ever so often to make sure the pipes and electricity were still working, but she never had a reason to stay in town.
“Whatever happened to you and those three guys you always hung out with?” asked Deborah.
“Nothing,” lied Goldie. Well, it was a white lie. In reality: everything had happened. Throughout senior year, all the boys had gotten their mate marks: their paws came in first, and then, their mate marks, and when they all had ended up with the same mate mark, everything had fallen apart...and when she left, she never contacted them again, even though the day that she’d left for college up in Seattle, they’d all shown up at her house, trying to convince her, each one of them, that she was their fated mate. She’d left, and pretended she’d never looked back, but she had, every day of her life, wondering how life would have turned out with tall, dark, and mysterious Brian, or with brash but adventurous Glen, or with the blonde genius Cliff. Five years later, she still hadn’t made a choice.
Goldie pulled out her pocket mirror to check to see if her makeup had smudged. She didn’t wear makeup often for work, as her workplace was highly casual, but when she saw that she looked even better, even sexier, in the low light, she couldn’t help but keep staring at her reflection. Her blonde curls were held back by a headband, keeping her hair out of her face while letting them spill over her shoulders, more beautiful than any gold necklace, she couldn’t help but wonder whether or not she looked too sexy for a night where she’d be seeing the men that she’d tried to forget about, but whom she thought about every day.
Brian. Glen. Cliff. They were the three men who she had grown up with, the men who she’d loved...and one of whom stood out in the crowd of tall, strong men, as one of the tallest and strongest of the whole lot. Clad in a dark grey flannel shirt with dark blue jeans and work boots, with black hair and emerald green eyes, there was no mistaking him for anyone but Brian Emerson, one of the men that had broken Goldie’s heart those many years ago.
And he was walking right towards her, making his way through the crowded gym, which parted for him as the other male shifters moved out of his way, with a stony look on his face.
Goldie turned towards the bartender. “Cosmo, and hurry, please,” she said, pressing a ten onto the counter. The bartender nodded and Goldie pulled out her phone, pretending to be checking her emails as the bartender made her drink. She felt like a coward: she’d come back to the town to bury her past, but as soon as she’d seen the three bear shifters that could send a chill through her spine, she’d need some liquid courage.
As Goldie sipped on the familiar sweet and sour drink, she felt a strong hand on her shoulder. “Goldie?” said the man. She turned: she knew exactly who it was, and she still turned, keeping her drink in her hand as she pocketed the phone.
“Hi, Brian,” she said meekly to the man who looked exactly like he had in high school, except for bigger, taller, and stronger, his jawline firmer and more prominent than before, his shoulders broader, and his eyes filled with more fire than she’d ever seen them filled with before.
“‘Hi Brian’? After five years, it’s ‘Hi, Brian’?” asked the man, glaring at Goldie, a look that she’d only seen a few times before, including the last time she’d seen him. Brian’s voice had changed: it was different, deeper and more mature than before. It was commanding, and like his body, had an undeniable presence. “Five years after you broke my heart and you left this town, you have the nerve to show up at our high school reunion...and you don’t even bother to call me and tell me you’ll be in town?”
“And in five years, you never made the effort to contact me over email, over the phone, or to come up to Seattle and find me?” asked Goldie, narrowing her eyes back at the man who somehow still made her weak in the knees even when she was sitting down and full of rage. “What, Brian, they don’t have the Internet yet in Port Jameson?”
“What we do have here is manners, which apparently, you’ve forgotten since you became a hoity-toity city girl,” said Brian. “And where I come from, where you come from, it’s polite to let your best friend know when you’ll finally be coming home. Bartender, three beers.” Brian slapped down a twenty onto the bar.
“My home is Seattle now,” said Goldie. “And let’s not pretend senior year didn’t happen.”
“Yeah, it happened...it happened five years ago,” said Brian, before chugging the first of the beers the bartender had passed him. He held the other out to Goldie. “And if I’m going to be talking to you, you better put down the girly drink and have a real drink.”
Goldie sighed and finished her Cosmo, the dregs of which she’d been nursing, before taking the longneck glass bottle from Brian. “Five years isn’t so long ago, Brian,” said Goldie. “You think it was easy for me, leaving town after what happened between us? You never even wrote to me.”
“You never gave me your address,” argued Brian. “And you told me you didn’t want to hear from me ever again.”
“I was mad, I was hurt, and I didn’t know what to say,” said Goldie. “And the last thing I wanted to hear was what you were saying. Did the three of you ever...”
“No,” said Brian, absentmindedly peeling at the paper label on the beer bottle. “Things haven’t been the same since that day, and I don’t know if they ever will be, but you’re back, and the two of us can still—”
“I didn’t come back to town for you,” said Goldie. “At least, not just for you. I need to put all this in the past, Brian...and that includes what happened between all of us, and between you and me.”
“I need you,” said Brian, pulling Goldilocks into his arms, no longer able to resist the urge to touch the woman he’d wanted to get his paws on since the moment she’d walked into the room. “Goldie, I’ve waited five years...at least give me tonight. I know you feel something too: I know it, and I don’t know why you’re trying to resist.”
Goldie lost her breath as the taller, stronger shifter male held her against his warm body, and for a moment, it was as if the world stood still.
“You’ll never understand what I feel,” said Goldilocks. Brian hadn’t held her this way in years, not that he’d had a chance, and now, the childlike innocence and the adolescent clumsiness was absent, and his manly grip sent a shudder down her spine.
She knew that she should yell at him to let go of her, but she had never felt so at home than she felt when she was in his arms. Still, she had to will herself to pull herself away from him.
She looked up into Brian’s green eyes, which looked as deep and dark as the piney forest in the low light of the gymnasium. “There’s no way you can: you’re a bear shifter, and there’s only one woman you or Glen or Cliff will ever feel anything towards, and me...well, humans don’t have a single fated mate, a single person that they will most assuredly spend the rest of their lives with.”
“Feel this,” said Brian, holding Goldilocks’ hand to his chest. She could feel the emblem through his shirt, and she could feel the strong calluses on his palms. The calluses, in the shape of a bear’s paw with a firm triangular pad in the center of each palm, surrounded by four smaller pads at the base of each finger, had become broader and firmer and bigger, just like Brian, ever since graduation. “You know what my mate mark is, Goldie. And you know what it means.”
“And I know that Glen and Cliff have the same mark,” said Goldilocks, turning Brian’s hand over and looking at it. The marks on his hand had turned darker, a black color, over time, not with dirty, but naturally, standing out against the pale skin of his hands. “And I don’t know what that means.”
“It means that one of us is fated to be your mate,
” said Brian with a sigh. Feeling Goldie actually touch him after all these years was a relief, and it was as if something inside of him, a ball of bitter twine, was being unknotted and unraveled with every second that Goldie spent touching Brian’s body. “And I know it’s me, Goldie. I’m the man you are meant to spend the rest of your life with, and it’s not the man in me that knows that, it’s the bear. I don’t know why the other two have the symbol: maybe it means something else, it has to, but I know what it means to me. It just confirms what I always knew, since I started to fall for you: that you’re the woman for me. I’ll be damned if I let a coincidence, a random biological glitch, keep me from the woman I love, and Goldie, that’s you...because I know you’re my fated mate.”
“You’re never going to give up on this idea of fated mates, are you?” asked Goldie with a sigh. She’d never put much stock into the shifter legends of ‘fated mates’ or the meanings behind the tattoos.
“Not until I know for sure that you aren’t the one, Goldie,” said Brian, pushing Goldie’s hair back behind her ears, where it wouldn’t stay for long, as it constantly bounced back to the front of Goldie’s shoulders. “But to verify that...you’d have to do something you would never agree to doing.”
“You don’t know what I will or won’t do, Brian,” said Goldilocks, chugging the rest of her beer. Who was Brian to judge her, after he had been one of the bastards that put her in such a bad position? “A lot has changed since high school. I’ve changed.”
“What’re you trying to say?” asked Brian, trying to remain cool and collected on the outside although all he wanted to do was let his bear burst free and take Goldie with him, to the woods, and claim her as his own, and end this game they’d been playing for years now, the game of cat (or rather, bear) and mouse that haunted his every thought, his every dream.
“If I’m really your fated mate, you’ll know, after we have sex, right?” asked Goldie. “I lived in this town long enough to know what shifters need to do to, as you put it, ‘verify’ whether or not the person they want is really their mate or not. You. Me. Your car. We’ll see once and for all whether or not I’m your mate, and if I’m not, which I’m not, you’ll drop this, once and for all. Agreed?”
