To Tame a Bear

by Emilia Hartley

  Without stopping to put on a jacket or even socks, she ran for Callie and Morgan’s trailer. She pounded on the front door, as frantic as her heartbeat. Something was wrong. She could feel it. Fear of the worst gripped her stomach. Bile burned her throat.

  Someone ran after her, a female voice calling out. She glanced over her shoulder to find a haggard and heavy-bellied Emmy gripping the door jamb. The sight of the pregnant shifter stirred something in Aimee’s memories. It was just out of reach, wrapped in a blanket of confusion and fear.

  Callie opened the RV door, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. The groggy expression turned to excitement.

  “Have you seen Dominic?” The words fell from Aimee’s mouth in a rush. She looked around, as if she might see him lurking in the trees.

  “Aimee! You’re awake. How do you feel?”

  “When was the last time you saw him? How about Morgan? When did he see Morgan last?” Aimee didn’t know what to do with the feeling in her stomach. Fear whispered in her ear and filled her with worst-case scenarios.

  Callie jumped down from the RV’s steps and put her hands on her friend’s shoulders, but Aimee shrugged her off. The feeling of wrong would leave. She couldn’t rest until she knew where Dom had gone.

  While she’d been sleeping, Dom had done something. He’d left, one way or another. Thoughts of the changed shifters who couldn’t control their beasts filled her mind. Morgan sauntered up to the door, face scrunched as he thought.

  Aimee didn’t wait for a response, she darted back inside for her phone. She called Orion. The youngest shifter had been on Dom’s case for a while. If anyone knew where Dom was, it had to be him.

  Disappointment hit her like a truck when Orion told her he didn’t know where Dom was.

  “Aimee,” he said over the phone. His voice was low and serious, holding none of the foolery he usually used with her.

  Her stomach tightened. She tilted her head back to avoid the tears trying to fall down her cheeks. Little by little, the veiled memories revealed themselves. They’d been on a date when a fight broke out. The Den had returned. She remembered driving. Callie had been bleeding.

  Richard had hit her. She remembered the impact, like being hit by a semi-truck. It’d stolen the air from her lungs. Her back had hit a tree. There’d been a small branch that had broken beneath her. It’d pierced her skin.

  She remembered lying in the snow, unable to breathe.

  That was it. Everything else was dark.

  She held a hand to her head. She hated being so small. All it had taken was one swipe of a hand and she’d been knocked out. As useless as she was in a fight, she should have stayed home like Dom had asked.

  “Where is he?”

  “He took off after the fight. Aimee, I don’t… I don’t think the man is in there anymore. He’s all beast now.”

  “No. That can’t be right. He wouldn’t walk away from me. Things were starting to get better. I thought we could…I mean we were…Everything was fine!”

  Callie appeared beside her, face lined with guilt. Callie wrapped her arms around her middle. It was then that Aimee noticed the dark bags beneath Callie’s eyes. Aimee lowered the phone and asked one question.

  “Is it over?”

  Callie was silent for a long time. Aimee’s mind swayed this way and that, weaving explanations and sequences of events to explain either answer her friend might tell her.

  “It’s over,” Callie breathed. Her voice was wracked with a sob right before she threw herself into Aimee’s arms.

  Callie was distraught, but not as distraught as she would have been had Dom killed Richard. Instead, he’d only been maimed. Callie’s father no longer had feet to stand on, literally. Dom’s beast had spared only his life. His leg and the other foot had been torn off or rendered useless. That meant Richard could no longer stand at the top of the Den’s power structure.

  Aimee knew that would leave a void for a time, but she couldn’t worry about that. Not while her mate was wandering the forest. She would get him back, one way or another, and worry about the Den later.

  Callie gave her permission. While Aimee would have gone permission or not, it warmed her to know that her friend supported her. Love was far more important than some far away power base.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Callie’s voice was wary.

  Aimee didn’t blame her for being tired. The past months had been exhausting for them both. Their lives had been turned upside down, all the monsters they’d lived with shaken out for the world to deal with. While Callie’s monsters had been more literal, Aimee had been forced to face her fear of being alone.

  She told herself it wasn’t that fear driving her to do this, but she wasn’t sure. There was a surprising amount of love pushing her as she shoved camping gear into her bag. Outside the window, snow drifted toward the ground. It was piling up, making her worry that she might die under a heavy snowfall in the middle of the night.

  Still, she remained undaunted.

  Shifters had one chance at true love. There were other kinds of love out there. The love she and Callie shared for one another was just one kind of love. They trusted one another, saved one another when necessary, but it wasn’t the love Aimee needed.

  She needed the kind that her mate could give her. And, he needed her love, too.

  She’d been relieved when Orion told her that Dom hadn’t died. The sensation of being adrift had terrified her. She’d feared the worst. While what happened had been bad, it wasn’t the worst. Over and over, she told herself that. She repeated it while she strapped her boots onto her feet, while she slung the backpack over her shoulders, while Callie tugged a hat over her friend’s head.

  Dom was somewhere in the woods, and he needed her.

  “I’m going to check up on you,” Orion warned her. He held up his hands. “I know you told me to stay away, but if you’re gone for more than twelve hours, I’m going to go looking for you.”

  She could see the tension in his body. He didn’t want to let her do this. He probably thought he was going to lose two friends. She reached for his hand and gripped it tight.

  “How about you go looking for a woman for yourself instead?” She offered a small smile, tight lipped and queasy as it was.

  Orion’s offer to check-up on her would have made her feel better if she didn’t think his presence would anger Dom’s beast. She couldn’t risk her mission, not even for her own safety.

  She blew out a breath and turned toward the door. It loomed before her. She wasn’t the outdoorsy type. Aimee preferred her warm kitchen and cozy chairs. To get herself to put one foot in front of the other, she thought of Dom’s perfect smile and the way his teeth shone against his dark skin. She would bring that smile back to the world.

  One way or another.

  ***

  It stopped snowing, to Aimee’s relief. The snow-shoes that Morgan had strapped to her feet were a bit cumbersome, but they kept her from falling through the already thick layer of snow and ice. She wondered, as she walked, what Dom was doing.

  Was he curled up in a cave, hibernating like a real bear? Or was he rampaging through some distant grove of trees, destroying everything in his grief? She knew now that Dom had thought she was dead. Fortunately for her, she was hard to kill. Still, it made her feel like a doll being thrown around, how many times she’d been knocked out in a fight.

  Next time, she would listen to her mate. He was a smart man. He knew what he was doing when he gave orders. He might have thought himself unable to think with the beast screaming in his ears, but his instincts had proven right time and time again.

  He was so much brighter than he gave himself credit for. Sure, the beast’s voice had grown stronger, but that didn’t mean his human side had grown weaker. If that had been the truth, he wouldn’t have done any of the nice things he’d done for her. He wouldn’t have made her breakfast in bed, wouldn’t have cooked with her.

  Aimee curled a
round the hope that Dom was still in his bear, that she could draw him back out. It kept her warm under the night sky. All around her were shifting shadows. She waited for faces to appear, as if the Den would keep hunting them. The fight was over, she told herself. There was only one fight left and it didn’t involve Den shifters or outdated laws.

  It was a fight of the heart.

  She rolled onto her back, clutching the thick blanket tight as she stared up at the stars. She wished she’d paid more attention to astronomy, so she could pick out the Ursa constellations. She missed her bear with a ferocity that made her chest ache. While he hadn’t been particularly close before his beast took over, she knew she’d been close to convincing him that they could make things work.

  “Are you nearby, Dominic?” She spoke to the darkness of the forest around her. It seemed empty, but she would never know if she didn’t try. She hoped Dom would hear her voice, that it would draw him near no matter where he was. “I came looking for you. You couldn’t be asked to stick around long enough to make sure I was actually dead, so I had to go looking for you.”

  She waited a long moment, but no answer came. Not that she expected one, but she couldn’t help but hope.

  “I promise I’m not a ghost,” she added. “Do ghosts even exist? That’s a pretty loaded question. Isn’t it? If we exist, then what else exists? Do you think mermaids and dragons are real?”

  Aimee rambled on for a while. Her words went in circles, often saying nothing of any real value. All she wanted was to hear the footfalls of a bear, to feel the press of his fur against her face to remind her that he was still there.

  “Stupid fool of a bear. You are the most level-headed man I’ve ever met in my life, but that beast you have is a dramatic fool. I can’t believe it took off like that. It should have learned from the fight on the work-site hill that I was durable. I didn’t break then and I didn’t break this time.”

  She sat up, ears straining. There was nothing. Not even the skitter of small creatures.

  Sighing, she lay back down and pulled the blanket over her head. The thought that this was a fool’s errand crossed her mind, but she quickly pushed it back. Aimee could do anything she put her mind to, even pull a man out of a bear.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The bear followed her.

  Always at a distance.

  It couldn’t approach her. Not after what it had done.

  The man she called out for was gone. The bear didn’t know how to tell her that. When she’d fallen, the man had faded. It wanted to curl around her and keep her safe, but the beast knew she would look at it as if Dom would appear at any moment. The beast had no voice, no way of telling her she shouldn’t hope for the impossible.

  So, it stayed back in the shadows and protected her from afar. There had been beasts that came prowling around her camp, but the bear’s presence had frightened them away. First, it’d been a cougar. The mountain lion was hungry, but the bear told her to find food elsewhere. Then, it’d been a hunter. The human wasn’t looking for Aimee, but the bear still did not want it anywhere near her.

  This was his mate.

  No matter what, he belonged to her. And she to him.

  The bear knew it could not keep her in the woods forever. Sooner or later, she would give up on her hunt. She deserved better, anyway.

  The bear still did not want to give her up.

  It lay low and listened to her speak, even if the words meant little to the beast. Her voice meant everything to him.

  ***

  Days went by and her food stores were dwindling. She waited for Orion to search for her, but he never showed up. It made her worry that she’d ventured too far into the wilderness. Boomer was still being sour about everything that had been happening, so she doubted he would aid in the search for her even though he was the closest thing they had to a mountain goat.

  Aimee smiled at her own joke and stored it away for when she returned. She wanted to see the look on his face when she called him that.

  “Dom, you better show up soon. I’m starting to crave civilization again. If you don’t show up soon, I’m going to drown myself in a very long, very hot bath. Then I’m going to pour myself a whole bottle of prosecco.”

  There was no response. Not that she expected it anymore. Every passing hour further convinced her that she’d gone on an extended camping trip for no reason. If she stayed much longer, she would run out of food. Exhaustion would keep her from making it back to Callie, back to Orion, back to civilization.

  Her dreams of opening her own restaurant would die with her. A part of her didn’t want any of that if she couldn’t also have Dominic. She didn’t know when her existence wrapped around his, but she didn’t know how to extract it either. Her future was tangled in his, making her pray that he would show up.

  When she closed her eyes, she went back to the date they never got to finish. It had been the beginning of a beautiful future, a night where they could both see what the universe wanted for them. The fight between their family and the Den had dashed it all the bits. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the small stuffed otter that Dom had won for her the night at the festival.

  She held it tight before standing and leaving it on a nearby tree stump.

  She needed to leave. Aimee wouldn’t let the rest of her soul die out here in the wilderness.

  ***

  The beast saw what she’d left, a small lump of stuffing and fake fur. It was a lie, the beast thought.

  No, Dom realized, it was a promise.

  The small stuffed creature looked at him with beady glass eyes. They reflected the beast’s shape, but showed him that there was a flicker of himself still inside the bear. He was nothing more than a candle in the wind, but Aimee’s flame would reignite him.

  He needed to get back to her.

  The bear grabbed the stuffed creature with its teeth, careful not to drool on it too much.

  They couldn’t give up. They couldn’t let her give up.

  Chapter Eighteen

  She spun around, startled by the sound of snapping branches. Her heart leapt into her throat. She tried to tell herself it was just a deer, searching for the last of the year’s greens. Instead, she saw something dark approaching.

  Her stomach clenched.

  It couldn’t be…

  A giant black bear emerged from the dead brush, a stuffed animal hanging from its muzzle. She slapped a hand over her mouth, trying to fight back the hope that slammed into her. She reminded herself that though she’d found the bear, it did not mean she could bring back the man. If Dom had given up entirely, there was little chance her presence alone could bring him back.

  The beast sauntered up to her. It dropped the stuffed animal at her feet, as if to say you forgot this, and then lowered to lay near her. Aimee, holding her breath, sat near the black beast. She buried her face in its fur and breathed deep.

  “Hey there, you big lug.” Her voice was low, near the point of breaking while tears burned behind her eyelids. She pulled back and looked the bear in the eye. This was only the beginning of a long and difficult process. “I need you to give Dominic back. Can you do that?”

  Aimee didn’t expect immediate results. Dom’s bear was wild and strong-willed. She knew that getting the other half of her mate back would take coaxing. She glanced back at her pack. There was almost no food left in it, nothing more than the crumbs in the bottom of a very unsatisfying bag of granola. She could ask the bear to lead her back to the cabin, but she didn’t know if it would stay.

  The bear followed her gaze and began to lumber away.

  “Hey! Where do you think you’re going? I just got you back and you’re leaving me already?” She jumped to her feet and raced after the giant bear.

  It gave her a sidelong glance but didn’t stop. Aimee had to run back for her pack and the stuffed otter and scramble to catch up to the beast. She hoped it wasn’t leading her deeper into the mountain woods with the idea that she would give up her humanit
y to live along side it.

  That wasn’t going to happen.

  Aimee liked modern conveniences too much. She liked modern cuisine, television, bubble baths, and sex. She very much enjoyed sex with her mate. There was no way she was going to give any of that up. Not when there was a chance she could still get Dom back.

  The sound of a babbling brook reached her ears, making her raise a brow. She stood back while the bear approached the stream. It stepped onto a log that had fallen into the water and stared down. Aimee wrapped her arms around herself. The cold must have been slowing her brain because she didn’t figure out what the bear was doing until it caught a fish.

  The salmon flapped in its mouth, slapping the side of the bear’s face with its tail. Aimee laughed at the spectacle as the bear brought it back to her. She stopped laughing when the bear dropped the fish in her lap.

  “I’m not one for sashimi.”

  The bear just looked at her. There was no hint of human comprehension in those gold eyes. It brought a sigh to Aimee’s lips. Her stomach was tight as she gripped the salmon by the tail. It had been a long time since she had to prepare fish, a whole fish.

  The little campfire she constructed was haphazard, but she managed to find a bit of cedar wood and placed her mangled salmon filet atop it. The bear dropped to the ground beside her, curled up like a content dog.

  “Here,” she said, tossing the salmon head to the bear. “If you want to act like an animal you get scraps like an animal.”

  She thought the beast narrowed its eyes at her, but she couldn’t be sure. The sun was behind her, probably casting a glare in the beast’s eyes. It was only her hope making her see things that weren’t there.

  When she was finished eating, she packed the leftovers in bags she’d brought with her, not before shaking out the leftover crumbs. It would last her for a couple more days, at most. The cold would help, but perhaps not as long as she needed. If she was going to coax Dom out of his beast and back to human form, she was going to have to expedite it.