by Roxie Noir
One week before, when Ariana was still packing her things in Boston, Jake had called her and told her that Brock had died in the hospital. He’d never come out of the coma. Even though there had still been a pillow on his face when the nurses found him and he’d clearly been smothered, Ariana had still tried to console a Jake who was wracked with guilt.
“I killed him,” he’d said, as Ariana listened to his voice on the other end of her phone line, so far away. “I put him in that coma.”
“He would have killed both of us,” she’d said, sitting on the floor in the middle of a pile of boxes. “You know that.”
“I know,” he’d said. “But I can’t help it. He was... he meant a lot to me for a long time, Ariana. It’s hard to explain pack dynamics to an outsider.”
“I know,” had been all she was able to say.
There had been a long pause.
“Who killed him?” she asked, as delicately as she could.
“It had to be Violet,” said Jake, his voice sounding very far away. “She probably thought he’d rather be dead than lose alpha status. She’d a hard woman, Ariana. I hope she leaves us alone.”
Violet had been Brock’s mate. If that was what she did to the man she loved, Ariana had thought, what would she do to them?
Standing in the kitchen, Ariana’s stomach sank as she remembered the conversation, putting two and two together. It didn’t sound much like Violet was leaving them alone.
Jake’s steps came nearer again. “Thanks for calling,” she heard him say, and then he reached in beside her and hung the phone up on the wall, the cord bouncing as he did.
He didn’t even own a wireless phone for the house. Ariana made a mental note to change that.
“Bad news, babe,” Jake said. He ran one hand through his hair, making some of it stand on end. Where he’d looked happy and relaxed a few minutes ago, now his face was drawn and tense.
“What is it?”
“An animal has been killing people late at night in the towns along Highway Twenty,” Jake said. Twenty was the highway that connected the North Cascades to Interstate 5, the only real road through the area.
“First Burlington, a week ago, then Sedro-Wooley, then Lyman, then a camper in the state park. The police wanted to let the forest rangers know, so he called me.” He crossed his arms and stared at the floor, as if trying to read the answers to his problems there.
Ariana held her breath. The next town in that list was Evergreen, just a few miles east of Lyman.
“What kind of animal?” she asked, even though she knew the answer.
“A bear,” Jake said. “Witnesses keep reporting a grizzly bear, but the police don’t believe them. There are no grizzlies here, you know.”
Ariana didn’t say anything. Of course there were grizzlies: there was Jake, for one, and his two friends who were part of his makeshift pack. Plus, there was Violet, if she was still in Washington.
It sure sounded like she was.
“Is this one of yours?” she asked, a little hopeful.
“I don’t know,” he said, shrugging a little. “It could be, but I doubt it. Neither of them are stupid or suicidal. Coleman’s pretty quiet and keeps to himself, and Boone, hell, I don’t know if Boone’s been to a human town in the past ten years. I don’t think Boone has electricity. I don’t know where he lives.”
“Maybe this thing with Brock drove them over the edge.”
Jake just shook his head, then put his hand back in his hair, and this time he just held it there. “People are putting posters up on their own, offering a reward for anyone who brings in a dead grizzly.”
Ariana sucked in a quick breath. “That’s illegal,” she said. “They’re a protected species.”
Her knowledge of grizzly bears had grown impressively in the last month.
“It’s really only illegal if we catch them,” he said. “If someone turns in a bear pelt with a bullet hole in it, there’s a slight chance we could prosecute.”
“Only a slight chance?”
Jake sighed. “And if people are afraid that a grizzly bear is going to murder their children, the chance of them turning someone in for killing a bear is pretty low.”
Ariana went quiet. “I see,” she said. She reached out and took Jake’s hand in hers, in a way she hoped was comforting.
“We’ll take care of it,” she said. “We’ll get rid of her and you’ll be fine. Just don’t shift for a while, nobody will shoot you, that’s all.”
He sighed and closed his eyes, just for a moment, and then opened them again, looking right at Ariana.
“Babe,” he said. “It’s not quite that simple.”
She shook her head a little. “Why?”
“This hasn’t really come up yet in our relationship,” he said, slowly.
Ariana waited through his silence, afraid he was going to drop something terrible on her.
“We need to shift,” he said. “I know it seems optional to you, but — it’s not. I have to do it, and I have to do it pretty often.”
“Okay,” Ariana said, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“The longer I go between shifts, the harder it gets to stay human.”
“So if you go too long, you might just turn into a bear in the middle of dinner.”
Jake tried to smile, but he only managed half before turning serious again. “More or less,” he said. “It’s hard to describe. Think of the itchiest you’ve ever felt, and then imagine that you also had to pee really bad, and that’s what it’s like. Once I haven’t shifted in six or seven days, it’s almost impossible to think of anything else.”
Ariana ran her tongue over her lips. There was a very, very tiny part of her that was thinking about her apartment in Boston: she hadn’t gotten her security deposit back yet. Was it too late? Apparently there was much, much more to this whole shifter thing than she’d originally realized.
If he couldn’t control his shifting, what was to keep him from tearing her apart in the middle of the night while she slept next to him? How would they ever go on vacation together? Her secret dreams of a Caribbean honeymoon — not that she’d been thinking that way, they’d been dating for a month, thinking about marriage was ludicrous — her secret dreams were dashed. There was no place for a grizzly bear at the beach.
“I will never, ever hurt you,” Jake said, his eyes boring into hers, as if he could read her thoughts.
“I know,” Ariana whispered. “It’s just — there’s a lot,” she said.
Jake nodded.
“How long can you be a bear for?” she asked.
Jake shrugged. “At least five years,” he said.
She knew he’d been a grizzly for that long when he left his Alaska pack, after the leader beat him within an inch of his life and left him and his two friends to freeze to death.
“Without ever becoming human?”
Jake nodded again.
Does that make him more bear than person? Ariana wondered, despite herself. Of course he was human: he was standing right there in front of her, as human as you please. But what did it mean that he could be a bear for such a long time, and human for only a couple of days before needing to shift?
When she’d met Violet in a coffee shop before, weeks ago, the other woman had said something that stuck with Ariana despite herself.
You’ll never be enough for him.
Ariana shook her head free of the thought and smiled up at Jake. Now wasn’t the time for her to worry, now was the time for them to figure out the next step. Together.
“Forget Violet for right now,” she said, forcing herself to sound cheerier. “I’m starving. You want spaghetti and meatballs?”
“Hell yeah,” said Jake with a smile, sounding like himself again.
2
Ariana
As Jake got out of bed before six in the morning, he started humming a jaunty little tune to himself, getting up and stretching, scratching his belly, then cheerfully getting into the shower to start
his day.
He’s like a goddamn Disney cartoon, Ariana thought, still buried under a mountain of bedcovers. Then she went back to sleep.
An hour later she finally got up and wandered out into the living room, wearing only a flannel robe, to find Jake sitting on the couch and reading a paper.
“That’s yesterday’s,” she muttered, seeing the date across the top.
“Good morning, beautiful,” Jake said, tilting his head up. Ariana bent down and kissed him, morning breath and all.
“I take it from the office every night, so I’m a day behind,” he said. “But the Times-Dispatch won’t deliver out here.”
For another moment, Ariana stared at him, her brain not fully processing those words yet.
Then, she gave up and went into the kitchen. Her beautiful new french press stood, shiny and proud, on the counter. She boiled water and scooped grounds into it, then waited an excruciating five minutes.
Then, as she plunged, she thought, the paper won’t even deliver here?
What on earth have I gotten myself into?
She poured herself a big mug, pleased to find that the press had plenty of coffee left over.
“There’s more coffee,” she called toward the door leading into the living room, and she heard Jake stand and walk into where she was.
“You like it?” he asked, reaching to the tallest cabinet and getting down a teacup.
Ariana eyed the teacup. Jake really did have the strangest collection of housewares, she thought. This teacup in particular was green with pink roses on it, the edge of it delicately fluted in gold. Where the hell had he gotten it?
“It’s great,” she said, and watched him pour coffee into the tiny mug. It couldn’t be more than half the size of her own, and then he reached into the pantry for a bag of sugar.
Jake put three heaping teaspoons of it into his tiny cup of coffee.
“Ridiculous,” she said.
Jake looked up at her. “What?” he said.
She waved her hand indistinctly at the coffee. “You want some coffee with your sugar?”
“Are you going to make that joke every morning?”
Ariana stared at Jake over the lip of her coffee mug and took a long drink, then set it on the counter.
“Okay,” she said. “I need to be honest with you.”
“What?” Jake looked at her, a little alarmed.
“I’m not a morning person,” she said. “I know I seemed okay before, but I was faking it because I really like you and didn’t want you to know how terrible I am, but I’m really bad at mornings and it might be best for both of us if we didn’t interact a whole lot first thing. Why are you laughing?”
Jake chuckled, stirring his coffee-and-sugar mixture.
“What?” demanded Ariana, starting to get angry.
“You weren’t faking it very well,” he said.
Ariana narrowed her eyes.
“Don’t worry,” said Jake, still laughing. “You’re still my grumpy morning princess.”
Ariana opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Jake was bending down, planting a kiss atop her head, and then walking back into the living room.
He was still humming.
After the previous day spent trapped in Jake’s cabin, Ariana decided to head to the library to get some work done. She didn’t think it would really be healthy for her to just stay alone all day in a cabin, not seeing or talking to anyone.
“Stay inside,” Jake said when he dropped her off. “Don’t go walking through the woods. Stick to the main street if you go somewhere, and remember—“
“I’m smaller than a grizzly, run in a zigzag, toward people or get into a car,” Ariana.
“Sorry,” Jake said.
She knew he was doing his best not to worry that Violet was still after the two of them after her mate had died. Ariana wasn’t too concerned for herself, to be honest. So far, all the grizzly attacks had been very late at night, and they seemed random at best — the bear was on some kind of spree.
Besides, they didn’t even know that the bear was Violet. It could be a real bear who’d just gotten the taste for human flesh, even though Jake had totally dismissed that idea when Ariana brought it up.
She made her way up the steps to the library, knowing that Jake would be watching until she got inside. Even though she knew he was just worried, Ariana really hoped that his over-the-top concern would die down once this whole “murderous grizzly on a rampage” thing quieted down. She wasn’t used to someone being so present in her life all the time, so in her business.
Right as she entered the building, a corkboard caught her eye, full of paper and posters and things to do in Evergreen.
If I’m going to live here, I should probably make some friends, she thought.
As she was scanning the board, a short, perky girl came up to her.
“Hi there,” she said.
“Hi,” said Ariana.
Is she about to hit on me? She wondered. For some reason, she pinged a lot of lesbians’ radar as one herself, even though she was straight.
“Do you play roller derby?” the other girl said.
Ariana looked over at her: she had short, dark brown hair and very big, wide hazel eyes. She couldn’t have been more than five-foot-three, making her considerably shorter than Ariana.
“I don’t,” said Ariana. “Why?”
“Oh, that’s a shame,” said the girl. She had a perky, bubbly voice that was just a little bit raspy. “We’re recruiting, and you just sort of... look like you play derby, is all. I bet you could really check a bitch on the rink, you know?”
Ariana was almost annoyed at this girl, who assumed that because she was chubby and athletic, she played derby, but she couldn’t quite be. She was just so enthusiastic, and seemed so genuine.
“I haven’t skated since I was a kid,” Ariana said. “I’d need some serious boot camp.”
“We offer that!” said the other girl. She also had a messenger bag, army green with a big red star on it, and she was digging through it, finally producing a pamphlet that was clearly a copy of a copy. She handed it to Ariana.
“We’re on kind of a shoestring budget,” the girl said, apologetically. “But, if you want to just come and check it out, we’ve got skates and pads and helmets you can borrow for a while.”
“There are enough people in Evergreen to play?” Ariana asked.
“Just barely,” the girl said. “To be honest, we mostly practice in the summer and then play through the winter, when all the ski instructors are in town. You haven’t lived here long, have you?”
“I moved in two days ago,” admitted Ariana.
“Welcome!” the girl squeaked. “I’m sorry, I’m Jenn.”
Ariana introduced herself.
“I’ll let you go,” Jenn said. “Come by the rink sometime!”
Ariana went and sat at her favorite table, considering the handout. There was a practice every Thursday night, and it was Wednesday. She should go — even if she did nothing but fall on her ass, she was going to need to know someone in town besides Jake.
She put the handout into her bag and took out her laptop.
Ten unread emails.
Shit, she thought. She didn’t get too many emails, so ten was a lot. Her boss, a weirdo who seemed to have a lot of money, wasn’t really the communicative type, and her only real coworker, Theresa, had been out on medical leave for a long time following a mountain lion attack.
The subject line for every one of them was Please read — from David Lycan.
David was her boss, and he really didn’t understand email. She’d given up explaining that he didn’t need to put any of that in the subject line long ago, but it was a lost cause.
Each email except the last one was a link, along with the words Please read, as though putting it once in the subject line weren’t enough.
They were all reports of chupacabra sightings, int he northern Mexico desert. Ariana squeezed her eyes shut and pinche
d the bridge of her nose. Why did this have to happen now? After a few sightings right before the whole thing with Brock and Violet, when she’d flown back to Boston only to have Jake follow her and convince her to come back to Evergreen, they had died down and David had decided she didn’t need to go.
Now, it was looking otherwise. She had unpacking to do, dammit, and a luscious boyfriend in her bed every night. She deserved to take full advantage of their honeymoon period and get it on every day, instead of being long-distance from some horrible, cartel-filled desert.
One by one, she read them carefully, hoping there was some obvious flag. Maybe all the sightings were when the people had drunk too much, or they were high, or it was late at night and the person was a known sleepwalker, but there was nothing like that.
One was a ten-year-old kid who’d watched it take a sheep said it looked like a scaly dog with an alligator’s head; another woman who’d seen it through her window at night said it was half-dog and half lizard, with three-clawed toes on the front. There were five reports total, all slightly different, none instantly disprovable.
Well, she thought, I guess I’m going to Mexico.
3
Jake
After he dropped Ariana off at the library, Jake drove the back roads aimlessly for a while. He phoned the office and told them that, officially, he was looking or any signs of a grizzly bear on a rampage, but he just needed to clear his head.
It was worse than he’d told Ariana. He didn’t think she deserved to deal with all of his bear drama, no matter what she’d signed up for — after all, she’d just moved across the country to a new town and moved in with him. These were huge life changes, made bigger by the fact that they’d barely known each other a month.
He loved her, of course. He loved her so much that when he just thought about her, he got a little giddy, thinking about the fact that he’d get to sleep next to her that night, wake up to her grumpy face every morning. But he wasn’t an idiot. He knew it took more than that to keep a relationship together, it took time and effort and communication and more than just watching her soft curves as she undressed...