by Kyrii Rayne
Finally they managed to drive the beast backward into the cage, and the largest of the four limped forward to slam the cage door. One of the other grizzlies shrank down into his man form, and calmly locked the cage while Graypaw roared in frustration and shook the bars. Anna watched, eyes widening. The man was Anthony.
“Damn it, Anthony!” grumbled one of the other bears as he turned back into a salt-and-pepper-haired man in orange highlighted autumn camouflage. “That... that... abomination of yours just ruined the whole hunt!”
The two other men nodded, one of them holding a bloody arm that looked to be slowly healing as he stood there. It had already stopped freely bleeding.
Anthony folded his arms while the creature behind him nearly knocked the cage trailer over testing its confinement.
“I would like it if you did not refer to him in that fashion.”
“For pity's sake, man! You let that thing loose to track the prey, and it ended up running ahead and slaughtering four of them that we know about! It went on a damned rampage! We've got two of our prey missing, and two of our own missing as well — probably to the same fate!”
“He would not attack bear shifters.”
The wounded man stared at him.
“Excuse me? He just attacked the living hell out of me!”
“He would not attack bear shifters without provocation,” Anthony corrected coldly. “And he has now been confined to prevent his taking the last two prey. I will personally lead a search party to find our brethren - given that we are talking about James and Carl, they are very likely drunk somewhere.”
The other three glanced at each other, and the wounded one shrugged — then winced.
“Okay, you have a point. But still. Even if the last two prey are still alive, we're stuck with slim pickings because of that... that thing you bred in your experiments—”
Anthony stiffened.
“Do not speak of my son in that way.”
The bear beside Anna grunted in horror and shrank down to Jake's usual form rapidly. He stared across at his father in absolute shock.
“Your son? It's a bear hybrid. It barely has any human in it, it's violent, it's unstable and it's too stupid to keep from fucking up the hunt for everyone else!”
The bloodied man was in Anthony's face now, grabbing him by the shirtfront with both hands now that his arm had healed.
Jake's breath rasped softly beside her and she reached over to grab his hand, which was clammy, and he held her too tight, but she didn't try to get him to let go.
“My son is pure-blooded. The she-bears on this mountain make excellent breeding stock. He has more of nature in him, and less of human pollution, than any bear shifter who has ever lived.”
“More of nature? Bears in nature don't eat people! They're not psychotic!” He gestured past Anthony to the thing in the cage, which was slowly calming down as it realized it... he... Graypaw... Jake's brother... was hopelessly locked in.
“He simply requires more training. He grew up in full captivity, and his adaptation to full freedom is taking time.”
Anthony's voice sounded too reasonable, almost patronizing, and the others shook their heads.
“So what now?” asked one of the unbloodied men.
“Now, we take our rifles and we see if we can't track those last two prey. I'm especially looking forward to bagging one; she thought she was going to marry my other son, and pollute our line even further.”
Jake sucked air and it was Anna's turn to start shaking. But it wasn't with fear; it was with anger. Jake rubbed her back and whispered in her ear something soothing but she couldn't hear it around the banging of her heart.
“I got a bead on one of those bastards' heads right now,” Mark growled.
“That will leave three, and they will probably send that thing out after us.” Darrin's jaw was set. “I hate it, but we're better off going to call for help.”
Mark glared down the barrel at Anthony. But slowly he became aware of Jake watching him. Mark turned his head to look at him, and Jake said quietly, “If someone's going to blow my father's head off, it's going to be me. Okay?”
Mark eyed him, but after a moment seemed to understand the sentiment, and put up his rifle.
Darrin sat back, nodding and sighing.
“Okay. We cut up the hill, pass their location further up the fire road and go all the way up. Chances are they'll take the fire road down so they can get Graypaw back to wherever they keep him before they go on. Otherwise he might just escape.”
Jake looked between them all.
“Okay. Then we should get moving. They will think to check the fire tower eventually so we had better get up there and get that message out.”
Anna held his hand as they started hiking again, as much for her comfort as for his.
Chapter 11 - The Fire Tower
Finally, the fire tower's spidery outline loomed against the night sky, blotting out stars and rags of cloud. They headed for it, and her breath burned in her lungs as she struggled along.
The fire tower was a weird piece of architecture. There was a gated, fenced-in wooden spiral staircase at its base, between support struts of steel, which rose up a hundred feet above the tree line before culminating in a round, two-level building with rooms shaped like pie slices around the central stair shaft. Picture windows looked out over the forest from almost every room, which were divided evenly among storage, bunk rooms, gear rooms and the top-level observation center. They kept the lights off to avoid giving themselves away. Jake helped her over to one of the couches in the observation center. She set the rifle and her makeshift bag aside and flopped down on it, her whole body aching from exhaustion. He caressed her hair briefly, then went over to talk to Darrin, who was pulling out his smartphone and holding it up to check for a signal. “What have you got?”
“Three bars. Thank God they kept this thing up.” He dialed, and waited.
Mark moved over to her and heel-sat next to the couch.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, I'm doing all right. Really could use that burger about now. And a shower.”
“And that drink.”
“Hell yes.”
He coughed and glanced over at the two others.
“So your boyfriend's one of these bear people, and he didn't tell you? How long have you known him?”
“Three days.”
“Well, I guess that's better than going weeks or even months without knowing. But these guys give me the goddamned creeps. I figure we should cooperate as long as they're fighting to help us, but jury's still out on trusting them.”
“I'm still trying to figure out what to think myself,” she admitted, her voice shaky.
“Hang in there. Things may be weird as hell but we're still way better off than we were this morning.”
He touched her shoulder, and then moved over to a closer seat to where the two... werebears… were trying to make their call.
“It keeps dropping, hang on.”
Darrin tried again.
“Okay, the encrypted line finally let me through. I am getting her message service. Helga! Darrin. Look, we have an emergency. I need to hear from you as soon as you get this. Anthony's gone around the bend. He organized a hunt of kidnapped humans, six of them. We just rescued two, two more are dead, two we're still going to have to find. We're holed up in the fire tower. We're outnumbered, and there's something out here we haven't seen before. It's huge as a shift form and it talks mentally but it doesn't change shape, and it seems to be completely crazy. Look, we need help or we're not going to make it, and even if we don't, someone has to stop Anthony. Call me back.”
He gave his number and hung up, his shoulders sagging.
“Okay, well, it's a start.” Jake looked back at the two of them, sighing. “I promised you an explanation.”
Mark folded his arms.
“That you did.”
Jake took a deep breath.
“Helga used to collect legends about b
ear shifters, trying to figure out which ones were closer to the truth. The thing is, no one really knows where we came from to begin with. Some stories say that a god or goddess blessed us with our abilities. Others call it a curse. Some of our modern theorists say we're just a form of parallel evolution to human beings, who just happen to be genetically compatible.”
He settled into a chair near Anna's couch, facing the two of them. Darrin kept watch out the windows.
“So none of you really know?”
Mark's voice was thoughtful, and a little skeptical.
“No more than humans know their true origins, or at least all the specifics.” Darrin spoke up quietly, one leg crossed over the other as he leaned against the control panel. “But basically, shifters come in different breeds. Bears, wolves, what have you. We're all relatively rare. We keep to ourselves, and most of us don't mean humans any harm. We certainly don't eat people.”
“That thing back there did,” Mark snapped. “I saw it.”
Anna swallowed bile and covered her mouth with her hand. Oh God, that's what he heard and didn't want me knowing about. That creature, the one Jake just found out is family, it... ate... Tori. She fought down a fresh wave of horror to focus on the conversation. She needed to know these answers just as badly as Mark.
“We saw it too,” Jake said in a thick voice, full of horror. “It's been trained to eat humans. My father taught it to see humans as food.”
“Why did he do this?” Anna asked softly.
Jake sighed, and reached over to touch her hand as she curled on the couch. “There's an argument among shifters about how to deal with humans. A lot of humans could never handle discovering they're sharing the world with another race. We couldn't survive it if humans made war on us again, like they did back during the Inquisition. It almost wiped us out in Europe. These days, with modern technology, humans... well, some of the older shifters, who have already lost their human mates and don't have any tie to humanity, they talk a lot about how humans are a threat.”
“We're a threat to you.” Mark's eyebrows went up, but then he shrugged and shook his head. “So these guys figure the smartest thing to do is to start making us disappear?”
“That's my guess.” Jake rubbed his face, the horror clear in his tone. “They're not the majority. But everyone in the Lodge has a lot of money and power, and my Father has a lot of influence because he owns the land and building.”
“Still trying to figure out how he thought this hunting humans thing was a good idea and wouldn't be noticed.” Mark sounded very skeptical.
Jake drew a deep breath and let it out in a sigh.
“My father's crazy. My Mom was killed by a serial murderer a little over a decade ago, and ever since then he's gone further and further off the deep end.”
Anna stared at his dim shape in the darkness, her heart pounding.
“Oh God, Jake.”
“Yeah, it's... not the kind of thing I felt I should bring up yet, but now... seems kind of relevant.”
He smiled tightly, and she sat up and reached over to put a hand on his arm. He sighed and relaxed a little.
“So. Crazy guy with superpowers leading a team of other guys with superpowers who just straight up hate humans. And they all have way too much money, because of course.” Mark's scowl filled his words. He sounded so bitter that she almost wanted to reach out and comfort him as well — and then had to stop and take a good look at herself for that.
“Yeah, well,” Darrin spoke up, “They're the lunatic fringe. There are three times that number who are like the rest of us—wanting to coexist. Bear shifters marry humans regularly. None of us who are connected with a human family of any kind end up like this. It's the loners. They forget where they come from, and what it's like to care for a human being and be cared for by them.”
She and Jake looked at each other as best they could in the dim light, and he reached out and squeezed her hand gently.
Darrin went on. “Nothing like this has ever happened in our society before, as far as I know. Once the rest of us find out, these guys are going to go down.”
“Good.” Mark's voice just got darker and stonier. “That will save me the trouble.”
Darrin and Mark took first watch while Jake took her hand and gently led her downstairs to one of the bunk rooms. It wasn't very cozy: steel framed cots, each double wide and with ladders leading to the top ones. No bedding, but the mattresses were still sitting on the cot springs. A bench lined the far wall: lamps they couldn't turn on hung overhead. But when he turned and engulfed her in his big, warm embrace, she didn't really care about how it looked in there.
“I thought I would never see you alive again,” he breathed softly in her ear, and then kissed it. “I just want to be with you. I know this is a lot to get used to. But nothing's changed.”
“Everything's changed,” she whispered against his lips. But she kissed him anyway, and he moaned gently into her mouth and returned it. In that moment, finally back in his arms, she felt suddenly that maybe, this would really all turn out all right.
Strangeness and all. All they had to do was stick together. There was a rift between them now; the shock and the bear shifter thing and his crazy father had done it. But she knew a way to reach across it.
They shed their clothes impatiently and slid onto one of the bunks, clinging together in the chill of the room. Anna was trembling, her body even more responsive now to his every touch for having spent so long thinking she would never feel his hands on her again. They kissed and twined their arms around each other, and rolled back and forth on the slick mattress until he pinned her gently and started covering her body with kisses. She squirmed and whimpered under his mouth as he licked and suckled her nipples, then down between her breasts; his tongue trailed lower, brushing lightly down the curve of her belly and around the rim of her navel.
Her eyes widened, and then she let her head fall back to the mattress as he parted her thighs. “Jake,” she gasped out, and he kissed the insides of her legs before working his head and shoulders between them. He parted her vulva with his fingers, opening her and caressing inside, sliding his fingers up and down until she shivered and lifted her hips. Then he bent down and started kissing her, running his lips over her folds lazily before settling in to swirl his tongue over her clit. She arched her back, gasping for air, eyes wide and yet only vaguely registering the dim underside of the bunk. The world blurred past her vision, her mind occupied entirely by her pleasure nerves and the way he played them like an instrument.
The sensations he lavished on her grew to almost painful intensity soon enough; her toes curled, and she squirmed under him, panicking a little and trying to pull away from his mouth.
He grabbed her by the thighs, grip firm as he forced her to stop fighting against her own pleasure. She sobbed, shaking all over as his tongue drove her a little further toward the edge with each soft stroke.
She panted, trying her best not to cry out. It wasn't a big complex. The others would hear. She dug her fingers against the mattress as he licked and nuzzled and sucked, and felt her body tense and shudder violently. “Jake...” she whimpered. “Jake…”
She covered her own mouth a moment before she lost all control. Her voice rose past her fingers in a soft, musical moan as the tension in her body uncoiled in spasms of pleasure. Her hips rolled rhythmically against his face with every wave, and she heard him growl with lust as he held her steady with his hands. He kept working his tongue against her, drawing out every last aftershock until she settled back to the mattress to catch her breath. Then he eased off and stopped, chuckling against her skin before climbing up to crouch over her.
“Oh,” she whispered as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and then dew dropped kisses over her face. “Oh my God, Jake, I haven't... that was....”
“Guess you missed me a little bit, huh?” he teased breathlessly, and she laughed with tears in her eyes and nuzzled his cheek. But his heart was pounding hard against he
r breasts, and she felt him shudder with need.
“Yeah, I did. C'mere... you've waited long enough.” She wrapped her legs around him loosely and ran her hands over his shoulders, eyelids lowering.
He had to guide himself in; he filled her almost painfully, and groaned and gasped as he forced himself to slow his entry.
She reached up and gripped his buttocks, lifting her hips to take him in — the ache of being stretched around his thickness eased by post-climax bliss. He trembled, moaning into her shoulder, and she tightened her arms and legs around him as he started thrusting.
He wasn't human. But he was her man. He adored her; he would kill or die for her.
Out there in the cold, even with Mark doing his best to keep her on an even keel, she had thought of him constantly, even dreaming of him while her head was on Mark's shoulder. And despite the insane situation and the creatures even now looking for them in the dark, she felt again that sense of safety that being in his arms always brought her.
He shuddered with each thrust, his breath exploding from him in little shouts that grew more and more strained as he moved against her. His hips rolled harder, his movements speeding as his hands clutched her against him. She whispered in his ear, telling him how good he felt, how he pleased her, how she had missed him. But the harder he moved against her, the better it felt, until she was crooning wordlessly instead.
The waves broke over her softer this time, and she writhed luxuriantly under him even as he shook the whole cot frame with his last, frantic movements. He bit back a groan that sounded almost anguished... and then his rigid body went slowly limp over her.