Taming Her Bears: A Reverse Harem Paranormal Romance

by Jade Alters

  I could tell by the warm current that we were going into shallower water. The captain veered toward a small depression in the outward swing of the rocky strip of land and entered our hidden cove. The Ursa was nowhere to be found. We had hoped they would leave, but had not really expected them to. A small suspicion had lurked that they would defy us because Natalia was involved, and that was what she did. Josh snorted in what could only be interpreted as relief. The boat probably lit out with the first sound of chopper blades. Those were Pete’s instructions. I wondered how well he was keeping Natalia at bay.

  I felt my feet claw at a sandy bottom that gradually rose until I was padding through seven inches of water to a thin strip of beach. I ambled through the brush unhurriedly, listening to the soft snuffle of the others shouldering their way through the forest matting. Once we were in the dense woods, we sat down for a little rest and bear talk.

  Lee chuckled low in his chest. “Did you see that? We turned their hair gray. One guy pooped in his pants.”

  I rolled back on the velvety moss. “Did you get him, Captain? Did you get Denisovich?”

  Josh was scratching his back blissfully against a tree. “I did.”

  “You bet he did,” confirmed Darkhorse enthusiastically. “Denisovich tried to get away. He was hanging out around the swimming pool, sitting in a deck chair, soaking that fat gut with sunshine. A couple of his crew were there, some guests and their sun bunnies. He had a girl oiling his skin.

  “When he saw the captain, he grabbed her and tried to shove her in front of him in a bear offering. The poor girl was so terrified, she stumbled and fell to the floor, but Josh just ignored her. He walked right past her, showing his teeth and growling. Fat Gut jumped into the pool! Maybe he thought Josh wouldn’t go after him in the water. It was quite a show. Did you drown him or fillet him to death, Josh?”

  “A little of both,” said Josh, satisfying his itch with a sigh. “If Pete followed my instructions to the letter, we have a journey ahead of us. I told him not to stop until he was back in U.S. territory. We’ll be mostly on land. I know all the shallowest crossings. If we remain in bear form, we should be back in Ketchikan within three days.”

  It was a good thing it was early winter and not mid-summer, or the heat in this southern region would be unbearable while wrapped in a polar bear skin. I stuck to the darkest, densest parts of the woods, which was a good strategy for another reason besides staying cool. The islands were full of brown bears, but from an aerial view, a white bear would stand out like a sore thumb.

  We were making good time. One thing about the Panhandle islands, their length consistently ran north to south and their width was always narrow. They chained together so tightly that many of them were a shallow, easy crossing. We were also getting hungry. We had crossed two islands and were halfway through a third when we burst into a clearing covered with blueberry bushes. Josh sighed and sat on his haunches. “Time to eat, ladies.”

  I should have been starving. At first, I shoveled the berries in, but the sight of the girls wouldn’t leave me. I understood now how Lee must have felt when he saw the girl tied to the bed. The hopelessness of being unable to protect her. Seeing her horror. The blueberries no longer tasted so sweet and I dawdled, picking at them with disinterest.

  Josh waddled over next to me and grunted as he squatted on the ground. “Something on your mind?” he asked.

  I scratched at my nose so he wouldn’t see the wet fur. “I saw the girls, Captain. They were all drugged up and put out on display without a stitch of clothes on. These rat bastards were putting their nasty hands all over them. Pretty village girls, some really young. I wanted to kill them all—the rat bastards, I mean, not the girls.”

  “It’s good they were asleep,” growled Josh. “They won’t remember it. They’re safe now. They’re being rescued. You did your job well, Roy. C’mon. We’ve got to haul ass a few more islands to make it to Ketchikan.”

  The territory was becoming familiar. As we crossed one stream that veined out from the channel, we saw the bits of wreckage from the exploded speed boats, and a few body parts caught up in overhanging brush. We were coming up on the deserted Christina. We sped across the island, lifting our snouts and flaring our nostrils to track her. She wasn’t alone. Clamoring over a hill, we looked down at where she was docked. Anchored beside her, bobbing in the water, was the Ursa.

  Had Josh not been in bear form for an entire day, he probably would have popped into it now, but he had spent all his juice on swimming, fighting, and cross-country travel. He took human form before the raft they sent for us arrived. Josh put on his clothes without a word, climbed into the raft and floated to the boat with his arms over his chest, then tramped up the stairs to the pilot’s cabin two steps at a time. “I thought I told you not to stop until we reached Alaskan waters,” he barked.

  “Yes, sir,” said Pete, holding up his hand in a painful salute.

  “Then who gave the order for you to stop here?”

  Natalia handed Josh a cup of coffee. “I did.”

  He was eager for the hot brew but sputtered. “You did? You can’t give orders to a military officer. You’re civilian personnel.”

  “And a state trooper investigating a civilian crime committed on Alaskan soil.”

  “We already talked with a Canadian vessel,” said Pete, coming between the two before they had a real chance to quarrel and Josh had to go through another cooling-off period. “We are here to retrieve our vessel by order of the Alaskan governor.”

  “You told them that?”

  Pete hedged a little, then straightened and looked Josh in the eye. “I was telling them that when they received another call. I guess it was more important. They told Natalia she could check for signs of criminal activity, then left.”

  “You lucky son-of-a-bitch.”

  We decided to pull the Christina out while we had a chance. The men that had spearheaded the operation were all dead. The Christina, sitting in Canadian waters, would just complicate things. The dead snipers, blown to bits by our own Miss True Heart, were just a complication of Kidnapping Gone Wrong. Let the Canadians sort it out.

  It was an unusually clear evening. The stars and moon gave off so much sparkling radiance, we scarcely needed our lights. We had all moved out to the main deck, propping folding chairs close to the guardrails so we could sprawl back and listen to the constant murmur of the ocean. A large cooler full of beer sat between us. The boat chugged gently, pulling the ghostly cutter behind it. It felt like a funeral procession.

  “McCarthy was a good man,” said Josh, waving around a beer bottle. “He was one of the first advocates for special shapeshifting units.” He poured his drink over the side. “Drink up, McCarthy.”

  “McCarthy even tried to create a unit for beavers,” chuckled Darkhorse with that husky voice people use when digging through memories. “They make damned good construction workers, but they weren’t the best at search and rescue. They drowned more dummies than they rescued.”

  “Beaver shapeshifters don’t do well at Arctic operations,” I said. “We had to rescue a few who were chasing down a pipeline saboteur. They were lost and suffering from hypothermia.”

  “Here’s to McCarthy,” said Darkhorse. “His heart was always in the right place.” He leaned over the rail and watched as the liquid streamed from the bottle and into the ocean. “We got them, old man. The rat-sucking, girl-thieving, back-stabbing bastards. We got them. Rest in peace.”

  I stood up just a little drunkenly and waved my bottle toward the rail. “McCarthy, may the Valkyries carry you on wings to the place where only the brave and noble of heart are allowed to enter. May you endure the kisses of a thousand beautiful women.” I poured my bottle over the rail and nearly toppled over with it. Natalia caught me, pulling me back.

  “All right, Eric the Red. Come back to earth now. We all love you, even when you put on your war helmet.” She gave me a kiss to prove it and made me sit back down. She remained standing, p
ropped against the railing. “I never met McCarthy, but he was a member of our finest military force and a friend to everyone on this team. That’s good enough for me. Captain McCarthy, this is in your honor.” She poured out her beer.

  Lee had been unusually quiet. He sat back in his chair, a dark scowl on his face. I knew he’d looked up to McCarthy, but I didn’t think the attachment had been that strong.

  “I killed the lieutenant,” he blurted. We all turned to him in wordless surprise. “I killed the man who sold him out. The one who led Denisovich to McCarthy’s house.” He stood up and yelled toward the Christina, “Did you hear that, Captain? I saw the lieutenant on the yacht, and I killed him. I killed the traitor.” He raised his beer high, then dumped it.

  Josh tried very hard not to appear perturbed and finally managed. “I think McCarthy should be drunk enough by now.”

  Lee threw himself back in his chair and popped open another bottle. “I damned sure hope so. We need some for us.”

  The lights of Ketchikan were twinkling in the distance. I closed my eyes and relaxed in the cool northern air. It was good to be home.

  Natalia

  What? Not a single embrace? Not one person thanking me for saving them two days off their savage ramble through the wilderness? I suppose I should get used to it. Their instinct was to grumble. They would grumble if Gordon Ramsay invited them to dinner. I think Josh was relieved at the chance to grab the Christina without having to jump through a lot of diplomatic loops, but he certainly didn’t want to show it. He pulled the whole military/civilian rank on me, but it worked both ways. As a civilian law officer, I wasn’t obligated to take his orders.

  I didn’t really have to strong-arm Pete. I knew the cap would be easier on him, though, if he thought I was the culprit. Pete didn’t want to leave without the team, either. As soon as we were within range of the abandoned cutter, it was easy to convince him to wait for them there. We had a good cover story, and the Canadians didn’t want a quarrel with us any more than we wanted one with them. He’s not used to gambling but he was able to drum up a good poker face, probably from all those years of following the chain of command.

  Pete’s an all right dude. He doesn’t look half-bad, with short-cropped hair leaning more toward brown than blonde, hazel eyes—which, contrary to opinion, did not reflect his emotions. They were always murky, unless he was wearing blue. Then, they looked like the ocean on a clear day. He was stacked, too. Not off-the-chart powerhouse stacked like my four hunks in furs, but enough to show nice muscular definition under his Coast Guard button-up. He’d make a good catch for any single girl without a lengthy waiting list, just not me. The chemistry wasn’t there. He didn’t have the pizzazz. The shapeshifters did.

  It’s hard to think clearly when I think about my boys. Sometimes, I find it hard to separate them—except Roy, who looked like he stepped off a nineteenth-century Norwegian whaling ship. He didn’t think quite the same as the others. He didn’t have their competitive streak. Often, I felt like he was holding his abilities back and channeling them into his hobbies. Yet they respected him as though he was a senior officer instead of an ensign. Darkhorse told me that Lee once broke the ice away from a tugboat by himself and manually pulled the boat into an ice-free zone. The pilot was so amazed, all he could do was get down on his knees and bless Iliamna, the goddess who rules the Bristol Bay, for sending her angels. He didn’t see Roy as a bear, but a vision of white light. I’ve seen him shift. He doesn’t look like an angel of light—he looks like a mountain of fur, claws, and teeth.

  When they are human, they are just like any Arctic sea-faring men I’ve ever known. Their eyes are always fastened to the far north with its black winter storms. They spend months living right on the edge of death. When they come to port, they love music and dancing. They love their women and treat them like queens, even the women who don’t stay true to them while they are gone. It’s the wild seas that call them. It’s their loneliness that tames them.

  Just like seamen, they get grumpy, but they are the only seamen I know that literally turn into bears. It’s okay with me if they tear off their clothes and jump into a pool of water whenever they get mad, but I didn’t want them to think, even once, they could use their bear faces to intimidate me. And I thought they should be at least a little happy to see me. Instead, they were grouchy as, well, bears.

  Their faces glowered while they supervised the crew preparing the winch to haul out the Christina. They didn’t like the way the boat was being handled and hooked up the winch themselves, easing the cable by hand until they got her into deep water. Then, in a black funk, they dragged out a cooler full of beer, flopped down in some chairs, and began to drink themselves silly.

  What’s a gal gotta do to keep her northmen happy? I complained to Pete. As my co-conspirator, I kept him in my confidence. He was the one person who could teach me about living around shapeshifters. I had no question I was going to live with them. For me, it was just a matter of figuring out how. Now that we were in Alaskan waters, Pete had a peaceful expression on his face. He remained at the wheel, his eyes fixed on the spotted seascape sliding by the windows, and didn’t answer right away.

  “I see the antacids worked,” I quipped dryly.

  “What? I’m sorry. It wasn’t that apparent, was it? The ulcers?”

  “I’ve got a dad.”

  “Yeah.” We cleared the last of the chain and churned out into open water. He turned the controls over to the second lieutenant and walked with me into the galley. “When they shift into bears, all their instincts are the instincts of a bear. They know they are human in bear form, but the longer they stay bears, the harder it is for them to remember the difference. They remained bears a very long time. They are trying to become human again.”

  He poured some of the cook’s brutal coffee and added sugar to make it more palatable. “There is a story of the first woman to tame a shapeshifting bear.”

  “Didn’t she trick him during a spirit dance?”

  “No. Spirit dances are sacred, but in ancient days, shapeshifters weren’t always reliable. Sometimes, when they shifted, they would return to the wild and forget about their human part, especially if they were young. This happened to a young man the first time he shapeshifted at a dance. He ran into the forest and didn’t return. They searched for months before giving up on him.”

  “The girl found him?”

  “Don’t spoil my story. I heard this straight from a Native American elder.” He adjusted his wounded arm, either for sympathy or because it really was uncomfortable. Maybe a little of both. He had been stalwart. “The village forgot about the young man. It had been three years since his disappearance. One day, a family was traveling across the tundra when they were faced with a sudden storm. The storm was so thick and furious, they couldn’t see two feet ahead of them. They huddled together to ride it out, but when the sky cleared, they discovered they were missing their sixteen-year-old daughter. All that could be seen for miles around was an unbroken blanket of snow.”

  I had heard, throughout my life, at least a dozen stories about shapeshifters, but they’d all had an urban legend quality to them—until now. Now, the stories all seemed to be true, except a few that had been warped and twisted for scaring children into behaving. According to Roy, there are a lot of things we should believe but don’t, and a lot we shouldn’t believe, but do.

  I watched the team through the galley windows. Their expressions were softening; their brows weren’t so heavy. In full human form, Lee and Darkhorse didn’t even have beards, and very little body hair. Their skin was like velvet. Right now, though, they looked like hairy mountain men. I turned my attention back to Pete. “So, he found the girl.”

  He leaned across the table, tapping his finger at my coffee cup. “My story has a point. You should listen closely.” He cleared his throat, as though teaching in a classroom. “The parents searched a long time for the girl, then went to the nearest village for help.”

  “T
he same one that had lost a young man.”

  “Yes. The girl was lost and alone in the tundra. She called on the caribou for help, but the caribou ran away. She called on the raven, who took the tiny red ball of the setting sun and handed it to her. She put it in her mouth and ate it just as the new sun was coming up. The red sun in her stomach attracted the shapeshifting bear. At first, she thought he would kill her and was terribly frightened, but he picked her up and carried her to the edge of the forest. There, he changed back into a human for the first time in three years and guided her to his village.”

  Pete took a final sip of coffee, deciding his break was over. “The legend is, the tiny red ball in her stomach tamed him. From that day forward, there were those who were able to summon the shapeshifting bears and keep them human when they started to go wild because they carry a piece of that tiny red sun. The team believes you carry a piece of that sun.”

  I gave a short laugh that sounded quirky to my ears. “You don’t have to believe it,” he said, returning to the pilot’s cabin. “The thing is, they do.”

  I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to take his story. The whole idea of a tiny red sun glowing inside my belly that only shapeshifting bears could see was ridiculous. But what wasn’t ridiculous was how I felt for them, and how they felt for me. Maybe it was some sort of strange magic, and maybe I should take advantage of it. It was silly not to go out into the nice weather. The guys didn’t look grumpy anymore. Just sad. I leaned over Josh and ran my fingers through his hair. It was dark brown and thick. When I buried my hands in it, it sprang up between my fingers like the lush hair of a fur-bearing animal.

  “Is it about McCarthy?” I asked, and he nodded. I cradled his head close, swaying thoughtfully with the ship. “We should hold a proper wake.”