Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance)
Page 3
It caught Elwood in the side of the head with a sickening thunk. The big, round-headed bear fell to the ground, but came up quick, thrashing and biting as he did. Ricky caught a shot to the side of the jaw, but he turned with it, and lashed the chain out again, ripping straight through Elwood’s sleeveless button-up and leaving a nasty mark down his chest.
“The fuck are you doing?” Mitch shrieked as the pipe came down on his back. “Ah! You goddamn, idiot boy!”
Orion tensed his muscles, breathing heavily, and felt the beginnings of the change come over him. His vision went a little wavy. His sense of smell began to pick up hints of distant dirt, and rainclouds on the horizon and...
His moment of clarity was shattered with a fist that connected hard with Orion’s jaw and sent him reeling backwards. Tasting blood, he threw back his head, unleashed a terrible roar and charged.
Fire blazed in Mitch’s eyes and inside Orion’s belly. Mitch took another swing, but at the last second, Orion stuck the pipe up, and his father’s arm smashed into it. The second’s worth of shock gave him all the chance he needed.
“I’m doing what I should’ve done years ago,” Orion said.
Mitch opened his mouth to say – or rather, scream – something else, but he was interrupted by a lead pipe right on the middle of the face. His hand shot out, grabbed ahold of Orion’s shaggy hair, and then just fell limp to the side.
“Come on!” Orion yelled to his new companion. “Yours down?”
Orion turned just in time to see another whip of the chain connect with Elwood’s unconscious body. He ran over, grabbing Ricky and spinning him around. “Enough! You don’t want to kill him!”
“I don’t?” Ricky asked. His eyes had rims of gold around the deep green irises, and the hair on his chest, arms, and face had grown wilder and longer. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never wanted anything more.”
“That may be true,” Orion said, reaching past the man and grabbing his backpack off the ground where he’d sloughed it off. “But we have other shit to worry about right now.”
“Yeah? Like what?”
In the distance, hidden by the dense trees, sounds of angry bears started up. “Must’ve heard the fight,” Orion said. “But we got a lead on them. They’re as stupid as they are strong. We’ll lose them in the woods. And Ricky?”
“Huh?”
“I owe you one.” Orion grabbed Ricky’s hand, squeezed it tight and shook. “But for right now, let’s get the hell out of here.” He slung his heavy rucksack over his shoulder and pushed Ricky, who had started shaking a little now that the adrenaline was wearing off, toward the woods.
They broke into a hard run, branches and leaves and roots whipping past as they charged through the thick, tangled undergrowth.
Well, there goes everything, Orion thought. Everything I knew, gone. And now here I go, out into a world I never thought I’d see. What the hell.
He grinned as he ran, and the branches thrashing his face felt good for some reason. It must have been the freedom, or maybe the fact that he finally got to cold cock his dear, old dad. He’d had that coming for like thirty years.
Orion was on his own. On his own and on the run. And it had all happened so fast that there was no grasping it, not just yet. He’d need to run, and keep running. He knew that. If the Devils ever caught him, he was as good as dead.
But for once? He was living for him and not for them. He sucked a deep breath, letting the scent of the forest and the rotten leaves and the rainclouds that were gathering overhead fill his lungs.
For once, he was free, even if it didn’t last.
The harder they ran, the faster they went, the more Orion’s thoughts turned to fantasies. With a new life came new dreams.
Dreams he’d given up a long, long time ago.
-3-
“I’m always up for a field trip. Or visiting an actual warzone. It’s hard to tell the difference sometimes.”
-Clea Kellen
“Miss Clea! Miss Clea!” Leena Lee, the world’s tiniest strong-girl-bear, barreled up the steps of The Cubby Hole and ran straight into me.
Good thing I’m a lynx. I can’t imagine trying to keep someone like her from getting this exuberant, or taking her love headbutts, as someone smaller.
“Hi, Clea,” Lilah Lee said as she and her new mate, Rex, came up to my door, and Leena ran inside screeching the name of her other best friend, Millie Mathers. “You sure you’re up for this?” Lilah had a huge grin on her face, watching the little bear pinball around hugging everyone. That little cub couldn’t have found herself a better mama.
“Always ready,” I said, with a smile that belied my panic. Field trips were always a lot of fun for the kids, but always about six degrees north of deep, dark hell for teachers. Or, for pre-school daycare mama lynxes. “Nah, I love these things. They’re exhausting, but it’s fun to give the kids a chance to run around the woods and act insane for a day.”
“It’s good for ‘em,” Rex said. “Good for us, too.”
Lilah blushed, I grinned and before I knew it, those old familiar pangs hit me right in the chest. I’ve wanted what they have – love, a family, all that – for as long as I can remember, but things always got in the way.
By “things” of course, I mean my ex-husband. We were only married for a handful of years – me in my early twenties, him in his thirties – but... yeah, after Liam turned me into a hollowed out ice cream shell of a female lynx, I spent a couple of years with my head in the sand.
Then I opened this place.
At first The Cubby Hole was just my way of forcing myself to leave the house, but it turned out that I was some kind of natural-born, lynx version of Mary Poppins. I got through to kids, probably because I honestly get kids. Anyway, the point is, that with everything going on, love never seemed to find a way in.
Of course, that could only happen if I had given it a second chance. Which I absolutely, positively had not.
“Well, either way,” Rex said, interrupting my little trip down shitty-memory lane, “you’re braver than I am. Eight of ‘em? I mean, sure, they’re all cute as they could possibly be, but... damn. Yeah, just... damn, I can hardly keep up with Leena most of the time.”
I chuckled. “You could always come along, you know. Maybe do you some good to get out in the woods and let your bear-self go wild?”
“I think I’ll pass,” Rex said with half a smile. “I think we’ve got other plans this weekend. But seriously, thanks. You’re great at what you do.”
One completely platonic side-hug later, I was just about on edge. And it wasn’t from the cubs running around either. I looked around the room, letting my eyes fall on all of them for just a second. There was Leena, of course, but also Jett and Jack, the two raccoon twins and beside them, sat Millie the bear girl with shockingly red hair. Rolf Hollister, one of the two fox kits I took care of – the other threw up in the car and had to go home – was balancing on the end of a bench. Ishi, Kishi and Tishi, panda triplets, rounded out my strange and wonderful pack.
“Clea, we got a problem.” Dean Cranning, my best friend and first employee, was fretting, as usual. He couldn’t really help it, as fretting is kind of a coyote thing.
Absent mindedly, I tugged on the diamond stud that always goes in the top of my ear. I never take it out, ever. When I shift it stays right where it is the rest of the time – the pointy tip-top of my ear. My mom was my hero for a whole lot of my life, and it’s all I really have left of her. It’s one of a pair – my dad kept the other when she died – so it’s sort of my worry stone.
“What’s going on?” I asked. “And is it actually a problem, or is it a problem only you would think is a problem?”
Dean wrinkled his forehead in thought. “It’s... yeah, no it’s actually a problem. Millie decided she’s deathly afraid of the woods, and has to go home. I told her I’d call her dad to come get her, but then she started crying because she doesn’t want to be left out.”
“Yup!” she said, before blowing a raspberry. “I’m not scared of the woods no more!”
“What’d you do?” I asked Malia.
She shrugged. “I just told her that I met Dean in the woods, and so magic happens out there.”
“Magic!” Millie shrieked. “I hope I see a unicorn!”
“Around here?” I asked her, poking her in the stomach until she giggled. “You just never know. Okay! Everyone, quiet down! The van just pulled up and I’m ready to get going! The sooner we get there, the sooner we can swim and play! Does that sound fun?”
An eruption of sheer joy burst out of every tiny mouth in the room.
As far as us adults went, our expressions ranged between excitement, terror, and cautious optimism.
“Everybody out!” I shouted. “Make sure you have your stuff! You don’t want to have to ride home in the same clothes you rode out in, you’d smell...”
“Like Mister Dean!” Leena squealed, finishing my standard joke before the whole room burst out again.
And this? This is my life. It might be crazy, it might be wild, but it’s what I love.
There’s just one tiny thing missing – a piece of my heart that I think... honestly? I’ll never have again.
*
Setting up the tents went from a simple procedure to taking up a pretty good chunk of the morning. Leena and Millie kept rolling theirs over, the panda cubs somehow kept putting the tent poles on the inside instead of the outside. The raccoon twins managed to get theirs up so fast that they got bored, took it apart, and then couldn’t manage to get it back together again.
Things get weird when you’re trying to keep the peace with a bunch of different species, and also get something done at the same time. Keeping them all happy and semi-productive at The Cubby Hole isn’t much of an issue because there’s always stuff to do, and we’re always watching. But out here? When Dean, Malia, and I had our own tents to put up?
We wondered if there were going to be any problems with getting set up when we were driving out here. Dean even had the nerve to say he thought we’d be done with setup less than an hour after showing up at the campground and we could get right into the water.
So, did a bunch of cubs and three semi-competent adults have problems getting a bunch of two-person tents set up?
Does a bear shit in the woods?
But once we were done, a feeling of incredible peace came over me. I was able to take a few minutes and sit on the bank of the fairly big, but fairly pokey, Jamesburg River and wiggle my toes in the rocky sand that made up the riverbed.
Dean and Malia were playing with Leena, Millie and the raccoon babies in the water, the three pandas were taking a nap and everything was just kinda... well, it felt right. I let my thoughts drift some, and stared out at the dense greenery that surrounded us on all sides. Pulling a deep breath into my nose, the scent of grass, of earth, and just the slightest hint of decaying leaves all mixed with pine and oak and jasmine.
The breath I let out was slow and trickling, just like the river I was rooting around in with my toes.
I watched them wiggle for a second. Each of them was painted a different color, like I always do. There wasn’t any reason I started, no profound meaning to the hues I chose, but it just felt like my little rebellion that no one cared about except me. I didn’t need to get all huffy or tell anyone off when they made me mad because I could just paint my toes, instead.
I used to like dying my hair all kinds of crazy colors, but something about going from twenty-nine to thirty and opening a business removed that particular outlet from my coping-with-stress playbook.
Did I miss having someone? Yeah, almost all the time. It was still weird, after the years alone, to go home to an empty house out in the middle of the woods and listen longingly to every animal call, every roar and howl and cracking stick, wondering if maybe the wolf howling in the distance, or the bear who broke that stick was the one for me.
Then again, waiting for fate is about the dumbest thing I can imagine. I’d waited years for Liam to stop being an asshole, and the only thing that got me was a mortgage I could barely pay and a dog that I loved more than I loved my husband.
God, he’d made me hate myself. Not in an overtly cruel kind of way, he just... I’d dress up for him, put on a little maid outfit, or try some cute panties, and he wouldn’t look at me. He’d just sail past on his way to the TV, or out to the Tavern with a handful of his friends.
I got the dog to love me, and he had his friends. But underneath it all? I didn’t have much of anything except a hole in my heart that he used to fill. People told me all the time that I needed to figure out my own path, my own happiness. I’d listen to them and agree, because I really did understand that the only real happiness comes from in your own heart, but holy shit if it wasn’t hard to believe.
A dragonfly landed on my nose. He rubbed his little mouth parts together, and when I puffed a breath at him, he hovered in front of my eyes for a second, gave me a really good staring-at, and then went on his way. Whenever something like that happens in Jamesburg, I get to wondering if it’s actually a dragonfly or if it’s someone I know in disguise.
Anyway, the years came and went, Liam got nastier and less receptive, and then finally I just shut down. I felt like I was dying, alone, in a hole in the ground without anyone to bother helping me up.
One day he didn’t come home. He had a band that he played with on the weekends, and I was used to him staying out late and drinking, but we had a rule that no matter how late he stayed out, he had to come home before the sun came up. I didn’t care if he was too drunk to stand up, he could call a cab or have a friend drop him off. Well, this one day he just didn’t show up.
I let myself have a few seconds of reprieve from reliving my own nightmarish twenties with another look around the forest. In the distance, maybe a half mile down the river, a huge, strikingly beautiful bear emerged from the woods. He stared straight at me with the knowing, intelligent eyes that told me he wasn’t wild.
Well, he might have been wild, but what I mean is that sometimes he was also human. My lynx eyes let me make out the vaguest hint of tattoos encircling his pale, cool, brown eyes. At first, I just stared back. The bear and I, we seemed to have some kind of common ground, some kind of understanding.
Either that, or I was going completely ape-shit from being alone too much. I chuckled softly, since really, what else could I do?
The longer I let my gaze rest on the huge shifter hanging out in the river, and the longer he stared back, the more I started to feel other things. Tightness in the pit of my stomach preceded a wash of goosebumps that made my entire back prickle. Gentleness behind those half-wild eyes that I couldn’t explain warmed me from the top of my head down to my painted toenails that I dug in the sand.
Are you the one for me? I wondered. After all this time, to find my mate in the river? Talk about too good to be true.
I laughed softly under my breath again. It beat the alternative – crying about being a whack-job.
Slowly, the beautiful creature walked to the side of the river, slapped at something, and made his way to the riverbank opposite mine. The sun glittered off the water the way it only can in the middle of a late spring afternoon, when it looks like a sidewalk made of light stretching into infinity.
He shook his head, flinging droplets of water in every direction. I wished he’d talk to me, roar, something. I wished he’d come over and nuzzle me, then let himself turn into a man and run his hands up and down my back.
I longed for him to kiss me, to caress my skin, to whisper bullshit nothings in my ear and suck my neck and hold me and—
“M
iss Clea, Miss Clea!” Millie ran up to me with some kind of floppy animal in her hand. “Look!”
“That’s... wonderful, Millie, what is it?” I wrinkled my nose as the little amphibian looked up at me and opened its mouth for a second, then closed it with a snap. “Is that a salamander?”
“Yup! That’s what Mister Dean says it is!” Her wiggly little friend managed to twist some, and was hanging by a leg just opening his mouth over and over again. The little dude looked panicked.
“Well why don’t you let your friend go? You know, he likes to be in the water and in the mud just like you like to sleep in your bed at home. We all have places we feel comfortable.”
“Uh-huh,” Millie said, with a disappointed pout. “But I like him.”
As I watched the golden bear disappear into the woods, he took one last look in my direction. “If you like him, Millie,” I said, conscious of how hollow my voice sounded, how distracted I was, “then that’s even more reason to let him go. Get Dean to take a picture and then let him go back to playing where he likes to play.”
That brought a smile to the precious little girl’s face. “That makes sense!” she said. “I wouldn’t like it if somebody kept me from my friends, or if they held me by the leg.”
“Exactly,” I said smiling despite the nagging pain in my guts. “Look, he’s already looking happier.”
“Yeee!” Millie squealed, running off with her hapless, slimy, little friend and before long a picture was snapped, and that undoubtedly traumatized salamander was back, slithering around in whatever gross stuff salamanders called home.
Contentment.
It’s a word that I’ve wrestled with my whole life. It’s why I decided to start The Cubby Hole in the first place. I figured that if I couldn’t have a family of my own – and I did, oh God did I ever, want one – I may as well make a try and help other people’s families.
Jamesburg has a few other day cares, but none of them quite like mine. Actually, I was surprised as all hell when I opened the doors the first day and already had three little cubs waiting with their proud parents out front.