Shifters in the Snow: Bundle of Joy: Seventeen Paranormal Romances of Winter Wolves, Merry Bears, and Holiday Spirits

by J. K Harper

  Opening the doors had been a controversial move. A lot of the old timers were unhappy about it. You could see them grumbling when you walked the farmer’s market on Saturday mornings—old men and women, leaning together, their faces pinched and red with indignation. One or two had tried to share their concerns with Sebastian as he walked the streets downtown.

  “Bearfield is for bears,” Marcie Jackson said, dabbing her nose with a tie-dyed handkerchief. “These wolves and ravens and who-knows-what need to find their own place.”

  Next to her, Eddie Chigliak, the owner and operator and projectionist and usher of the town’s one-screen movie theater agreed. “The old ways work. They keep us safe. I respect the heck out of your daddy, Sebastian, but this here is a boneheaded move.” The man had black hair slicked straight back from his forehead and had been wearing the same leather jacket every day for thirty years. If there was anyone you could expect to resist the future, it was him.

  Sebastian smiled in what he hoped was a warm manner, but which he worried was condescending. “Look, we needed to do this. The town can’t protect itself with just three bears, especially when uncle Matt spends all his time with his baby. My niece. You know what I mean.”

  “Just watch yourself, Alpha,” Marcie said. “All these new shifters in town—you don’t know who you can trust.”

  Sebastian grinned and flexed his arms, showing off his newly enhanced muscles. He was getting bigger every day as a side effect of the ritual that had empowered him, lending him his grandfather’s strength. “I’m pretty sure I can handle anything,” he laughed.

  But Eddie and Marcie just pursed their lips harder, like they were slowly transforming into ducks, so he left them to their old ways and their bitterness.

  * * *

  He had a job to do today. One of the hibernating bears had woken up and needed to be acclimated to the future. It was one of the Alpha’s most sacred tasks.

  Deep under Bearfield, under the mountain, was a massive cave. And in that cave slumbered massive bears. And in that massive cave those bears healed their wounds and rested their hearts and dreamed massive dreams. And sometimes, when their wounds had healed and their hearts had rested enough, they stirred from their slumber and remembered they were men and not bears and came back to live amongst the good people of Bearfield.

  Now, most of those who wake up never shift again. They spent so much time as bears that they never want to go back. And they lived out their days grumbling around town, sitting in the Lodge’s spacious bar swapping stories of the old times, playing bingo at the hall and just generally behaving like the old souls they were. They resisted any sort of integration into the human community and kept to themselves.

  And then you had the other sort who woke up, like Lucky Winthrop.

  He’d be the first to tell you his full name was Lucky-in-the-Face-of-Danger Winthrop, a name given to him by the peculiar nuns in the orphanage where he grew up two hundred years ago. He’d tell you with a twinkle in his eye and a hint of a smile on his mouth, framed by a neat black mustache.

  Sebastian found Lucky sitting on what had become in the three days since he’s stumbled out of the great cave, his favorite bar stool, right in the middle of The Growler. He’d scarcely moved since he woke, except to go sleep off a bender in the woods before returning the next day. The man drank free. All of the woken did. Bearfield took care of its own.

  As Sebastian walked toward the woken bear, his aunt pulled him aside.

  “Sebastian. Or, my Alpha? What the hell do I call you?” Allison waved the complexities away. “It doesn’t matter. You have got to get Lucky out of here.”

  “Is he drinking too much? The guy’s been asleep for like a hundred plus years, y’know, I think we can give him some leeway.” Sebastian smiled reassuringly. He had eighteen days of being Alpha left and he wanted to enjoy every second. And for nothing at all to go wrong. The town had looked down on him for so long—this was his chance to prove to them he had what it takes.

  “Oh yeah, he’s drinking his way through the liquor. But thankfully he’s starting at the bottom shelf. I gave him some of my experimental moonshine and that seemed to take the edge off for him, but it’s not the drinking. Well, it isn’t just the drinking. He’s also trying to get everyone who walks in to play poker. He started a bar fight last night—or tried to. No one would actually fight him. He hit Matt with a chair, but Matt just gave him a big hug and showed him baby pictures until Lucky left.”

  Sebastian nodded. That sounded just like Matt. If you added in stuffed a sweet roll into his mouth the portrait would be perfect.

  “But he also refuses to take that gun off in here and he’s freaking out the mortals. People walk in here and see a goddamn giant cowboy at the bar, pounding moonshine and fingering his revolver, and they take their business elsewhere. You have got to help. I can’t run a business with this loon sitting here.”

  “Of course,” Sebastian said. “I’m acting Alpha. I’ll handle this.” He must have said it wrong, because Allison gave him nothing but side-eye.

  Sebastian pulled out a stool next to Lucky and sat down. Before his butt had touched the chair, the old bear had slid him a shot of whiskey.

  “Well, hey there, future man,” Lucky said in his cowboy drawl. “Why don’t you share a drink with an old fossil?”

  Sebastian sipped the drink. It was like fire on his tongue, only made worse by his enhanced senses. He still wasn’t used to being a shifter. Once he was done coughing, he asked, “How do you know what a fossil is?”

  Lucky laughed and held up a smart phone. “I’ve been doing some research. Getting used to living in the future. Some of this stuff, though,” he shook his head.

  “Some of it surprise you?” Sebastian asked.

  “We really sent a man to the moon?”

  Sebastian nodded. “Planted a flag and everything.”

  “God bless America,” Lucky laughed as he downed another shot and filled Sebastian’s glass to overflowing.

  Sebastian didn’t know how to broach the topic at hand, so he just came out and said it. “We need to find a place for you in Bearfield, Lucky. We’re a little short on houses right now, after my dad opened the doors, but there’s a place here for all the souls that need it. That is, if you plan on staying around.”

  “You worried I’m just gonna pitch my tent in here, kid? Maybe in front of the bar so’s I don’t have to wander far?” Lucky grinned, winked, and tapped a finger to his forehead by way of apology. “Sorry, Alpha.”

  “I just want to help you find out where you fit. Back before the big sleep, what did you do?”

  “Oh, a bunch of things,” Lucky drawled. “I herded cattle. I farmed a bit. I shot a bunch of folks who deserved it and a few who didn’t. I was a Marshall for a blink of an eye and a bounty hunter for a bit longer. Though my first job was panning for gold out in the Sierras with my daddy.”

  “You like any of those jobs?”

  “I liked being a farmer,” Lucky said. “But I can’t go back to that.”

  Sebastian nodded. He’d seen the file. The Ladies Quilting Society of Bearfield kept immaculate records. Lucky’s was pretty slim, though. He’d found his fated mate. He’d had a child with her. They had a farm together but one day Lucky came home to find them murdered. The files didn’t say by what, but hinted it was some supernatural creature.

  “I gotta say, you weren’t the Alpha I was expecting,” Lucky said.

  “How about we go for a walk and you can tell me who you were expecting?”

  Lucky nodded, rose to his feet with only the slightest of drunken wobbles and put his cowboy hat back on. They walked outside and down one of the hiking trails, letting the crisp mountain air clear their heads.

  “I dreamt of an Alpha who was as big as a bear, even as a man. He never smiled. He listened, but not too much. He fought, but never unnecessarily. He had a broken heart and a son he adored and he fought to walk in the light, where his father had only walked in shadow.” />
  “That was my dad,” Sebastian nodded. “Is my dad.”

  “The bear dreams are odd, kid,” Lucky said. “I coulda swore that Alpha had a human son, but I can’t be sure because the dreams like to trick you with promises and insights that are nothing more than spun sugar.”

  “It’s a long story,” Sebastian said. “I wasn’t born a shifter, but my grandfather passed his power onto me, so now I am.”

  “Not that long a story,” Lucky grinned.

  Sebastian picked his way down the path. It was more overgrown than he’d remembered. The poison oak was too close to the trails. He’d need to talk to the council about doing some trail reconstruction before the tourists arrived.

  “That’s the short version.”

  “So you’re a bear, too? I gotta say, I get a weird sense of you. You smell a bit like a skinwalker, only you also have a soul.” Lucky’s fingers brushed the handle of his gun. Was it a threat? Or an unconscious gesture brought on from the old cowboy’s fear?

  “I’m not a bear shifter or a wolf shifter or any kind of specific shifter,” Sebastian said. “And this part is secret, so please don’t go spreading it around. Only my dad and my uncles know.” Sebastian sighed and reached out, feeling for whatever animals were near. A snake, a gopher, a squirrel—what should he be?

  He settled on a squirrel and let the change come on. The world twisted and grew large around him as his human body vanished only to be replaced with that of a squirrel.

  Lucky jumped back. “You’re a squirrel shifter?” He hooted with laughter.

  Sebastian shook his little squirrel head. He reached out with his senses and found another animal, a hawk, and shifted, marveling at the lightness of his raptor body, at the strength in his talons.

  Lucky stood still now, watching Sebastian with a cold glare.

  Sebastian reached out again and shifted into a mouse, a fox, a wolf, a raven before finally turning back into himself.

  “That’s skinwalker magic,” Lucky said through his teeth. “That’s pure evil.”

  “No,” Sebastian said with a tired smile. He’d had this conversation with his father, his uncles, his friends in the local werewolf pack. “This is the magic that skinwalkers stole and perverted. This is something better. A gift freely given. A connection to all living things. A strength as deep as the roots of the mountain. The great bear spirit has spoken to me and given me her blessing, as has the mother of wolves, and Father Raven, and many others.”

  Lucky gave him the eye again and they walked in silence down the mountain path, toward Sebastian’s home. It was his father’s house, but Marcus had built it big, with dreams of having a whole pack of children. He only had the one, though, just Sebastian, and so the other bedrooms were for guests or offices or video games or whatever. It’d be the perfect place to stash Lucky, at least until the man acclimated a bit more and stopped fingering his pistol like he was looking for an outlaw to shoot.

  “So much has changed,” Lucky said, breaking his silence when they were halfway down the trail. “And I don’t just mean because y’all have automobiles and airplanes and magic books named Siri that can answer any question. Son, I’ve been sitting in that bar for three days now and do you know what I’ve been doing?”

  “Getting piss drunk?”

  “Well, yeah, yeah, a bit of that. But mostly I’ve been watching people. Listening to them. See, all of this stuff, these computers and polyesters and micro-brew distilleries—they’re just things. Folks have always been inventing new things and they always will be. The things aren’t a surprise to me. When I was alive—back in the day—I saw railroads and revolvers and all sorts of marvels. Stuff is just stuff, y’know?”

  “But the people surprise you?”

  Lucky nodded again, surveying the thick woods with a glint in his eye. “People are less afraid now. They have enough to eat, at least around here. They’re smarter and don’t even realize it. It’s all kind of amazing. It’s like I went to sleep and woke up in a future where everyone is a professor, but that’s not really the surprising thing.”

  The trail widened and the scent of the forest grew familiar. It smelled like Sebastian’s father. They were near home now.

  “It’s the women. The women surprise me. And it’s not just that they’re prettier, because they are. Or that they’re smarter, which everyone is. No, it’s the freedom.” Lucky laughed and removed his hat, as if just thinking about women triggered some respectful instinct in him. “Like that Allison woman, your aunt. That establishment she runs—” Lucky shook his head.

  Sebastian braced himself for the comments that would follow. Not every shifter that woke up was happy with the state of America.

  “It’s beautiful, son. Just beautiful. People can do what they want, where they want, and no one tells them no. They don’t need to hide or make safe spaces for themselves. They can do it, wherever they want. Freedom was always a promise, but to these old eyes it looks like a promise that’s coming true.”

  Freedom. Sebastian let the word roll around in his head. Was he free? Was his father? Marcus loved to grumble about being trapped in Bearfield, about how his Alpha responsibilities made it so he could never go on a holiday, never see the sun set over a different vista. And maybe he felt trapped. But Sebastian didn’t see it like that. Sure, his father had responsibilities but he also had a community. He had a place where he belonged. Maybe he wasn’t free from all of the work a man needed to do, but who was? Only the dead or the lonely. Freedom meant something more to Sebastian, it meant having the opportunity to really be a part of a place, to take off your shoes and wiggle your toes and know that the land had a place for you, and that the people would open their hearts for you. When he was mortal, he didn’t have that. Shunned wasn’t the right word, but it was what came to mind. He was the Alpha’s son and he was supposed to be a fierce and loyal bear, just like his daddy. But that wasn’t how he’d been born.

  Growing up he’d gotten used to the look of pity in the eyes of the Bearfielders. It was the only look he ever saw. But visiting his mother’s people in the city had been different—they’d looked at him and seen a huge country boy with dirt under his nails and hay behind his ears. He couldn’t ever tell them that compared to his father and uncles, he wasn’t that big because that would have led to some difficult questions. So he kept quiet and they thought him simple and eventually looked at him with the same pity the Bearfielders gave him. He just couldn’t win.

  In high school he’d read Gulliver’s Travels and the similarities had been a shock to his system. In one world, Gulliver was small and weak and a curiosity, like Sebastian in Bearfield. But in another he was a giant, regarded purely for his physicality, like how his mom’s people treated him. At least Gulliver could travel back to England, where could Sebastian run?

  But it all changed when his grandfather had woken from hibernation, when he’d come to Sebastian in secret with a plan to pass on his power. Everything was different for him now and yet he was still finding his freedom, still wriggling his toes in search of community.

  Sebastian searched for a way to articulate all of this to Lucky—the man was new to the community after all. He didn’t have any preconceived notions of who Sebastian was. He was about to start talking about Gulliver’s Travels when an odd scent hit him. It was the scent of a stranger—at least three strangers—including a wolf and a fox and a bear, and they were in his father’s home.

  “Lucky, I know you just woke up and all, but how do you feel about watching my back in a fight?” Sebastian unbuttoned his shirt and removed his shoes, the better to shift in.

  The cowboy shifter pulled his revolver free and cocked back the hammer. “Lead on, son. Lead on.”

  Chapter 3

  The house’s security system was out of date. Sly little Katie dismantled it in the space of two breaths. Duchess ranged ahead and took the front door off the hinges with one punch and then they were in.

  Jordan’s pack were no strangers to robberies—g
irls needed to eat and catching game in the woods wasn’t always as satisfying as straight up ordering a pizza or filling their bellies at Trader Joe’s. Money made the world go round but when you lived off the grid, it could be hard to come by. In a typical year they’d range up and down the coast, taking legit work where they could find it and illegitimate work when they couldn’t. Over the course of their years together they’d fallen into a pattern—helping out with the harvest in Humboldt in the fall, wintering in Mexico, spending the spring working fields and farms in the Central Valley and summering up in Oregon or Washington.

  When the farm money dried up, they freelanced. One winter they’d hunted Wendigos in the Sierras. One summer they provided security for a witch in Baja. They had rules about the jobs they’d take—they’d never hurt children or women; they’d never reveal themselves to mortals; they’d never steal from the poor.

  Robbing the Alpha of Bearfield didn’t break any rules, technically, but it was still a pretty stupid thing to do.

  With the security system offline and the front door in pieces, it was Mazzy’s turn. She was a werewolf but she’d been born under the new moon. The walls between worlds were thin to her. Spirits spoke to her. She knew things. She saw things.

  She stepped into the house barefoot with the golden bells around her ankles chiming softly. Her long skirts swirled slowly, as if caught in a wind that Jordan herself could not feel.

  Mazzy closed her eyes and smiled, twirling in the center of the room. Her skirts spun and the broken glass and splinters from the door swirled up and around her in a dust devil.