by Lynn Red
At first I thought I’d be content with just taking care of kids. But then that turned into hiring Dean and buying a bigger place. Then it turned into growing into a pre-school, then it turned into two employees and almost thirty kids on any given day.
But you know what? I was still missing something. Successful business, good friends, and a whole lot of love flying around the ethers all around me... but something was still missing.
I knew what it was, of course, but I’d never admit it to anyone else. After all, wasn’t everything going right for me? Wasn’t everything good?
It was, I had to admit. Like, on the surface, everything was fine. I kept cool. I drank some wine with my friends on Fridays and took some nice vacations to the mountains. But under the water?
What’s that saying about ducks? How you never see how hard they’re working until you’re one of them?
I wasn’t ever very good at idioms.
Kinda like love, I thought with a shrug.
Crrrrrrrack!
It was like a thunder peal ripped through the sky, but it was much thicker, much heavier and more... wooden. I darted off my little sitting place, trying to find the source of the sound, but when you’re inside a forest, finding a tree isn’t the easiest thing in the world. It’s also pretty damn hard to figure out which direction you need to pull a bunch of kids in to keep anyone from getting hurt.
By the time I saw which one was falling – a massive, and I mean massive, fir on the riverbank – it was almost too late.
“Run!” I shouted. “Dean! Malia! Get them out of the river! That tree’s coming down!”
I charged for the kids. Dean had both raccoons under his arms, Malia and Leena were trying to get Millie.
Poor Millie, she could hardly swim. She’d just let her little salamander go and so she was out in the middle part of the river. Right under the falling tree.
My clothes ripped apart, my shirt tearing and my jeans splitting down the seams. In a half an instant, my muscles went tight and hard, tan fur surged out of me, and all around me the world became a thousand times more vivid and clear. Blood flowed through my muscles, making my entire body tingle.
I was running before the transformation completed, and by the time I was full lynx, I was blasting across the distance between the little cub and where I was standing.
With every ounce of strength I had, I charged toward the panicking bear cub. I dove, pushing her to the ground and roughly covering her. The sandbar in the middle of the river had a little give to it, but not enough to keep me safe. I gritted my teeth, waiting for impact.
At least she’ll be safe, I told myself.
I heard Dean shout and then I heard Malia scream. Leena, bless her heart, yelled something I couldn’t understand, and underneath me, Millie wept.
The tree, it was coming. I heard the wind rushing through the needles. I felt the blast of air.
A branch scraped my back. It was about to pin me down to this sandbar, I just knew it. My thick muscle would keep Millie safe, but me? Not a chance.
I closed my eyes, and held them tightly shut.
The pain I expected never came.
Instead, I heard a grunt. I heard a roar, and then I heard the tree crackle and split. I lifted my head to see what in the world had just saved my life.
Not what, I realized. Who.
“You?” I asked in the way you do when you’re staring at death and not entirely sure why you aren’t dead. “Is that... is that really you?”
“Might... want to move...” the massive, muscled-up half-bear groaned. “Like... soon.”
Immediately, I thought back to my feeling that fate was a stupid thing to wait on.
Yeah. This wasn’t the first time I was dead wrong.
-4-
“Mating is such a complicated thing. But right now? Seems really damn simple.”
-Clea
“You should marry him!” Leena squealed. “He’s probably stronger than my daddy and my daddy is real, real strong.”
The poor bear who had just saved me and a tiny cub from being smashed into paste underneath a tree trunk smiled uneasily. I could tell he wanted to escape, but something was making him stay. He looked a little like he’d seen a long dead relative reanimated and walking around.
Come to think of it, that wasn’t all that out of the ordinary in Jamesburg.
It took a few minutes for me to really come around to thinking straight again, but when I did, blown away are the first couple of words that came to mind. The stranger wore a tight, torn up cotton longsleeve, and old cut off fatigues that were shredded about halfway up his thigh.
That’s one of the main dangers of shape-shifting: the loss of wardrobe. I can’t even begin to list all the outfits I’ve lost to accidental shifts in the throes of passion. Okay, okay who am I kidding? The last time anyone got me excited enough to shift in mid-sex was... yeah, right, that’s never happened. But damn if looking at this mysterious stranger didn’t get me thinking naughty, naughty thoughts.
A complex series of tribal designs circled his thickly muscled stomach and crawled up his chest. On his face it was hard to tell tattoo from scar. Both were intricate and beautiful. The scars were like a torn spider’s web draped across his cheek, the tattoos a delicate collection of lines around his eyes and down both sides of his face.
But then when I looked into his, I saw something very familiar to me.
Pain.
Like the deep, burning kind that you keep putting away in bottles and trying to forget about, but it never actually goes away.
“Are you okay?” I asked my mysterious savior, putting my hand on his muscled shoulder. I noticed a slight tic in his eye and when it happened, his mighty shoulder flexed. “That was... I can’t... I mean, I can’t possibly thank you enough.”
“It was nothing,” he said. His voice was soft, but I could tell there was power behind his words. The man, whose name I had yet to learn, had shaggy, dirty-blond hair that tended to brown. I could see why his fur was golden.
“No,” I said. “That was most certainly not nothing. You saved me and this girl from being killed by... by what? Why did that tree fall?”
The man shrugged. “Looked chewed,” he said plainly. “I was close by when the cracking started. I didn’t see anyone else though.”
“Wait,” I said. “Are you saying someone did that on purpose?”
“Yeah.”
That one word sent a shiver through me, but then he put his hand on the back of mine to slide it off his shoulder. He squeezed it softly in his huge paw. What I thought was just a little bit of wildness in his light brown eyes was much, much more. The way he squinted, the complex eye tattoos, it all came together to make him incredibly intimidating... and really goddamn hot, I’m not gonna lie.
Especially after all those fantasies I nursed while I watched him in the river, having him right in front of me was almost too much.
The adrenaline coursing through my veins began to subside. The wave of heat that snaked down my stomach ceased, replaced by a shivering cold.
“Here,” he said, pulling his long-sleeved shirt off over his head and wrapping it around my shoulders.
“Anyway,” he said softly. “I should go. I’m not used to—”
“Wait,” I grabbed muscled forearm. “What’s your name? I owe you... hell, I owe you everything. At least let me buy you a drink or half a roasted cow or whatever I possibly can. You saved this little girl’s life.”
He curled his lip in an uncomfortable, unpracticed smile. “Not necessary,” he said. “Orion.”
“Orion? That is definitely a very bear name,” I said, trying to joke with him and put him at ease.
It didn’t work. I felt terrible for the guy. He was standing there, obviously nervous, but also not really wanting to leave.
I understood that too.
Thankfully, Dean and Malia both have more social sense than I do, as it relates to adults anyway.
“Well,” Dean said, comin
g up to us and cutting the tension that had appeared between myself and the giant in front of me. “I was thinking maybe we should leave, but...” he looked over at Millie and Leena who were right back playing in the river.
It almost seemed like a defiant act – like they were telling nature, or whatever knocked that tree over, that they weren’t going to be scared. Then again, grown-ups are the only creatures on this planet dull enough to dissect everything like that. For them, they were just splashing around. I guess it’s a little like the people who try to find Hitler in The Lord of the Rings.
“You want to stay?” I asked. Dean shrugged. “Do you think there’s any kind of danger?” I asked Orion. Just thinking his name put a little swirl in my stomach. His face was hard, the lines standing out on his cheeks, and the dimple on his chin... his tanned skin, he’d seen a hard life, but he was still absolutely gorgeous. Those pale brown eyes warmed me through my soul.
“Danger?” he asked. “No. Whoever did this is long gone. And anyway, I live here. These woods are my... my home.” He paused a little and seemed almost to rasp when he said the last word, like it wasn’t exactly true. “I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Somehow, hearing him say that, even if it wasn’t the truth, made me feel... warm and tingly, like when you pull a fuzzy blanket up over your head on a cold winter morning and put off waking up for just a few more minutes.
“Are you going to watch?” I asked, grinning. I was determined to loosen him up a little. It sorta felt like that’s what I owed him for what he’d done. “Like some kind of forest spirit? Just out there, protecting the young and helpless.”
He thought for a second, then wrinkled his forehead and simply said: “No.”
I stared at him, a little dumbfounded. Had I really lost all sense of joking and fun? Was I not actually as funny as I always thought? “You’re going to laugh or I’m going to make fart noises,” I said.
The sound that came out of Orion’s mouth was very close to a laugh, but it was pained and sounded like he hadn’t done such a thing in a very long time. At first his voice kind of waivered, and then it boomed, but only for a short time.
“There we go,” I said. I grabbed his hand again and held on tight. “I knew I wasn’t so boring that I couldn’t even get a smile out of you. You can stay with us, if you want. One more friend around the campfire just means one more ghost story.”
I caught the barest glimpse of a sad smile on Orion’s face before he shook his head. “I can’t,” he said. “I have to keep moving. I have to make sure nothing happens to... to you or to me. There are things in these woods that you have to watch. Always have to watch them.”
“What do you mean?” I asked him, but then I reconsidered. “No, no, it’s none of my business. You’re...”
I had no idea what to do. Just standing there I felt my chance to actually learn about this guy slipping through my fingers, but maybe I never had that chance in the first place. Maybe he really was just a weird forest guardian destined to continually save cubs in danger.
He was making a move to leave. I could tell he was uncomfortable, like he felt trapped.
“Okay,” I finally said. “But... but thank you. You saved two lives today, and saved a whole lot more hearts than that. Whatever your danger is, whatever you’re hiding, you’re a good man. Thank you.”
That got another scoff of a laugh. “I don’t know about that. But I’m trying.” He said it as an afterthought, partially under his breath, partially out loud. Orion turned back and pierced me with his eyes. “I’ll see you again,” he said.
My stomach twisted into a knot the size of Pluto. “You... will?”
A strange wave overcame me, pulsing, tightening my breath inside my lungs. “Were you gonna ask?” I asked with a smirk. “Or just tell me?”
“Tell,” he said. I swear half a smile crossed his lips for a quick moment. “But not now. Too much at risk.”
“Well, okay,” I said. “I don’t understand, but okay.”
I turned away for a second to check something that brushed by my ankle. It turned out to be a little gecko running through the leaves around my feet, but when I looked back, Orion was somehow gone.
Standing there, dumbfounded, I started to wonder if maybe I’d made him up. I wondered if my mind was going in some kind of early-onset dementia brought on my eternally foiled plans to find a mate that loved me as much as I loved him.
“Where did your boyfriend go?” Leena asked, running up and latching on to the back pocket of my soaking wet jeans. “He was big!”
Unconsciously, my hand went to my ear, looking for that security anchor to tug.
A knot twisted up in my stomach.
It’s gone. My lips tightened into a wrinkly circle. My earring – my mom’s earring. It’s... This can’t be happening.
That damn thing was my socially-acceptable-for-a-thirty-year-old version of a blankie. As stupid as it is, without that cheap little stud, I didn’t know what to do when I shook with fear. Somehow, almost having been killed had less of an effect on me than losing an earring. How was I going to cope with... well, with anything?
I had to force myself to calm the hell down. I couldn’t fall apart in front of all the cubs and my two friends. Dean and Malia would fall all over themselves trying to help me find it – they both knew why it was so important.
It’s just an earring, I told myself over and over. Just an earring.
I comforted myself a little by staring at the place Orion had disappeared back into the woods, wondering where the hell he went and how he did it so fast and why he wanted to run in the first place.
“Yeah,” I said, hollowly, when I remembered Leena said something a few moments before. “Big dude.”
I never corrected what she said about him being my boyfriend. “He said he’d be back, but then he just disappeared. Hard to have a boyfriend that disappears on you like that.”
She’d long since stopped listening. “If he said he’d be back, he will. I hope he comes with stuff to make s’mores because it all got wet or Millie left it somewhere, she can’t remember. I love s’mores, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I said, absently patting her back. “I’d like a boyfriend a lot more,” I said before I even realized the words were coming out of my mouth.
Doctor Freud would have had a damn field day with me. That’s for sure.
*
That night, everything was completely normal. We sat around eating junk food, telling scary stories, doing all the things you do when you go camping.
The tents were set, the moon was up, fat and yellow and low in the sky.
And all I could think about were those eyes and those rough hands and the way it made me feel when Orion had held me for that brief – and absolutely, positively, accidental – moment. It was a damn good thing that I had Dean and Malia with me, otherwise I would have never been able to keep up with all the little ones.
But, one by one, they fell asleep. The pandas went first, wandering off to their little tent and getting all snuggled up just as night fell. To be fair, they’d been napping most of the day anyhow, and they seemed so happy about it that no one stopped them.
I looked in on them a few minutes later during rounds. They were just all wadded up in a big pile. All of them had shifted as they fell asleep, so there were three big, happy pandas curled up and snoring.
They’re so peaceful. Such clean consciences that when they to go sleep they’re just dead to the world. The gentle rise and fall of panda chests brought a deep sense of calm over me.
But not contentment. No. The only thing that would make me feel content was something I could never have. At least, not within reason. Fantasies were fantasies. Reality? Well, in reality, I was just a lynx with a day care and who had never worn the same size top and bottom in her life – and the numbers on both were about four higher than they had been not long ago.
That was reality. Not my crazy fantasy about some bear that saved me from being crushed to
death under a tree.
Pulling myself away from the panda tent, I noticed that Leena and Millie were starting to nod off, leaning against one another. They were fighting to stay awake so hard that it was pretty great. One of them would close her eyes and let her head droop. It would hit the other one gently, and wake her up.
Finally, they both started breathing in a slower, even pace.
And all I could think about was the wild bear, my scarred protector.
I shook my head, slightly embarrassed at my total inability to focus on anything except my pretend boyfriend.
Boyfriend, I thought with a laugh. What in the hell is wrong with me?
The one thing I didn’t consider, as I stared at the inside of my tent waiting for sleep to overwhelm me, was that I was the only one sleeping by myself. All the kids had buddies, Dean had Malia. I guess in a way I had everyone, but then again when it came down to it, there I was, alone in a tent, staring at canvas instead of pale brown eyes, shaggy hair, and a smile that got me feeling all tight and warm and wiggly in the right places.
I didn’t just have it for a guy I never actually spoke to for more than a few seconds, I realized as I closed my eyes and saw his face on the back of my eyelids.
I had it bad.
But at the same time, I wasn’t going to be crazy. I decided I just wasn’t. I put a mental foot down, and then rolled over, got a notepad and a pen, and wrote down that I was not going to rush. I was going to go slowly. I was going to enjoy the ride, so to speak, and if anything ended up happening, then great.
If nothing happened? Still great.
Everything was fine. The world was going to keep turning no matter what happened.
Sliding my notepad back into the breast pocket of the shirt I’d taken off, I was absolutely steel in my resolve. Never in my life would I make the same mistake I did with Liam – jumping into love just to be in love. Never again.
I closed my eyes and felt Orion watching me. Not in a creepy I’m in your room and watching you sleep way. How it feels to walk around in a new place – like a new city or town – with a group of friends? You might screw something up, or not know how to speak the language, but you had people, right?