Owl Be Bear For You (Camp Shifter Book 1)

by DJ Jennings

  Basic decency stopped her.

  Barely.

  Her skin tingled with memory, clit crying out for more. She was so close to standing and making her way to the bathroom to rub herself into oblivion, to recapture the essence of that dream.

  A dream that made no sense.

  And then she jolted.

  Unless she was a shifter.

  My God. Was she dreaming about sex in her animal mode? Was this a thing?

  And what the hell kind of animal was she?

  “We’re now preparing for descent,” the pilot announced, the familiar ding of the Fasten Seatbelts light pinging through Mara’s head. She clicked herself into place and lifted the window cover.

  Ocean. Nothing but ocean below. A clearing in thick woods indicated a landing strip for the plane, but that was it. Confidentiality and security meant that no one knew the exact location of Camp Shifter. Mara and Nonnie lived just outside of Chicago, and the flight had taken about four hours.

  She could be anywhere.

  Anywhere with ocean, that is. Too disoriented to figure out whether she was staring at the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, or the Gulf of Mexico, Mara just willed her blood to stop dancing and tried to stay calm.

  Who was her lover in that dream?

  Jack.

  She sighed, the sound almost becoming a moan. She had to stop thinking about him. He’d dumped her. Clearly and fully.

  While Mara couldn’t help how she felt, she could certainly control what she thought.

  The descent was smooth, the landing unremarkable, and soon Mara, the other sixty or so women, and all their bags were loaded into large buses that carried them to the camp.

  “Excited?” As Mara chose a plush seat closer to the front of the bus, a woman in the row in front of her began talking to her.

  “Nervous,” Mara confessed.

  “Have you shifted yet?”

  “No.”

  “I’m Sally. Sally Jordian.” Sally was a petite blonde with dark brown eyes and a face filled with dimples. Her head popped over the seats.

  “Mara Scioto.”

  “I shifted for the first time already,” Sally whispered. “I’m a beaver.”

  “Beaver?” Mara thought back to her dream. Wouldn’t she know...?

  “It’s the same as my parents. They’re both beaver sifters. Are you a genetic legacy, too?”

  Genetic legacy? Mara felt so uninformed.

  “Uh... what does that mean?”

  Sally laughed. “Guess not. If both your parents were shifters, you’d know.”

  You’d know.

  Shame filled Mara again. She felt so ignorant.

  “I hear the food is great. Mom and Dad said they didn’t have Camp Shifter when they were younger. People just had an underground network and helped each other. They’re not sure this is the right way to go, but my older shifter friends say it’s cool. Danielle, Travis and Josh have really made the place better. You talk to Danielle before coming?”

  Ah. Sally was a chatterbox.

  “I did. Danielle was nice.”

  “She’s with Travis and Josh, you know.” Sally winked. “One of the perks of being a female shifter.”

  “Huh?”

  “Lots of shifter guys love sharing a woman. Especially the bigger animals.”

  “They do?”

  Sally shrugged. “That’s what my mom and dad say. They’re mated for life, but they think I should sow my wild oats while I’m here. You ever been with two men at the same time?”

  This conversation got personal fast.

  “Uh...”

  “I’ll take that as a no. Me neither.” She grinned, showing large front teeth.

  Beaver, huh?

  “Maybe we’ll be roommates!” Sally chirped. For the rest of the bus ride, Sally talked nonstop about every detail she knew about Camp Shifter.

  Which was many.

  Mara couldn’t think straight, too exhausted from the flight, too emotionally battered from adjusting to this new reality. Nonnie had been willing to give her the basics about her parents and nothing more.

  “It was so long ago, Mara. Back before we had the USA. If only your father had been bigger than a ferret. A ferret against a mountain lion was no match, no matter how hard he tried to protect your mother. The uncontrolled shifter broke her arm with the initial attack, and...”

  Who turned out to be an owl.

  Was Sally right? Her parents were beaver shifters, both of them, and Sally looked just a tad like a beaver in her human form.

  What would Mara be?

  “Don’t worry,” said a sly voice from behind her. “You don’t know yet what kind of animal is in your true nature. It’ll come. And genetics is only part of the picture. You don’t automatically become what your parents were.”

  Mara turned to see one blue eyeball peeking between the headrests of the bus seats.

  “Thanks,” she whispered. “I’m new to this.”

  “We all are, honey.” It was a sassy woman’s voice. “My mom and dad are bears, and I turned out to be a raccoon. Go figure. Genetics ain’t worth shit when it comes to these mutations.”

  Mara let out a small giggle, then cut it short. “Sorry. I shouldn’t laugh.”

  “Why not? It’s funny. I think it’s funny.”

  The bus came to a halt and people stood, grabbing bags and backpacks, makeup cases and laptops.

  “I don’t know why anyone bothers bringing makeup,” the blue-eyed raccoon shifter said in a loud voice. “It’s not like bears and wolves and hedgehogs wear it.”

  “There are hedgehog shifters?” Mara asked, wide-eyed.

  “If it has a spine, honey, it shifts.”

  I am so naïve, Mara thought to herself as she descended the bus and waited in the crowd for whatever instructions came next. Inside, she was a wind chime of nerves, jangling as the winds blew.

  “You got a boyfriend?” Sally asked as the blue-eyed mystery raccoon person walked off to talk to a staff member carrying a clipboard.

  “Boyfriend?”

  Sally sized her up, squinting with one eye open. “Girlfriend?”

  “No. I mean, no. No to both.”

  “Why’d you look so sad when I asked?”

  Mara gave her a closed-mouth smile. “I had a guy, but...”

  “Oh, honey,” Sally said, linking her arm in Mara’s. “We all had that guy.”

  A few murmurs of sympathy from behind her made Mara feel better.

  “Mine dumped me when I got the call,” raccoon shifter called out.

  “Mine only wanted to have sex with me in my animal form.”

  “That’s okay if he’s a shifter.”

  “He’s not—and I’m a sheep.”

  “EWWWWWWWW,” the crowd gasped, then laughed at the accidental pun.

  “Hello! Hello! Welcome, welcome!” shouted a big, buxom blonde with a friendly smile and long arms, waving to the crowd. “Gather round! You’re all here for the One Direction concert, right?”

  They all laughed at the silly attempt to get them to relax. Mara was grateful. She’d take anything that would help her.

  Anything.

  “I’m Danielle Johnson, one of the three people who run Camp Shifter. The other two are men—”

  A few very excited women hooted and cheered.

  “—and they’re mine,” Danielle added with a very convincing growl.

  The group laughed. Mara smiled, trying to unclench. No one here seemed weird. Sally was a Chatty Cathy but plenty of normal people were.

  Normal.

  This was Mara’s new normal.

  “You’re all assigned to cabins. You’re lucky—it’s a quiet week for some reason, so you get your own. Normally, we have about six hundred shifters here in any given week, rotating in and out of their month-long stay. You might get a roommate next week, so don’t get too comfy.”

  Sally frowned. “I’d rather have a roommate. I get lonely too easily.”

  Mara pretended not
to hear her. She wanted the solitude. Craved it.

  Danielle handed out packets, calling them by first name in alphabetical order. Mara was right between Ryland and Timan. Danielle greeted her with a smile, bright green eyes twinkling. As Mara turned, she felt a warm hand on her forearm.

  “It’ll be okay, hon,” Danielle whispered. “Some of us were more scared than others when we started. There’s no right way to come here and do this. Just keep an open mind.”

  Tears threatened to pour out. Mara had the feeling no one would judge her if she cried, but she wanted to hold it together in public.

  She wasn’t sure why.

  “Thank you,” she rasped.

  Danielle nodded and moved on to the next person. By the time they were done, people were already finding their way to the cabins.

  Mara looked around in awe. The campground was more like an enormous resort combined with an elite athletic training location. She saw archery target practice, giant logs—like in Scottish games she’d seen on sport channels—and a series of clotheslines.

  An enormous three-story lodge stood in the center of the camp, with what seemed to be hundreds of tiny cabins in a semi-circle, disappearing into the woods. A clearing at one point made her turn and look, sunlight streaming in.

  She closed her eyes.

  Waves.

  The ocean.

  Mara abandoned her bags and took off at a run, completely surprised by her impulse. She had never seen an ocean. Ever. Nonnie had promised to take her years ago, but she never could afford it. And then Mara started working, and Nonnie couldn’t fly, and none of her friends had the money or time to go to a coast.

  As she got closer to the water, she realized the ground sloped down from woods to grass to sand, a gentle, gradual decline that led to the water’s edge. She didn’t care anymore where she was as she slipped off her shoes and dipped her toes in the water, laughing, her face tipped up to the sun.

  Maybe it was going to be okay.

  Maybe.

  Chapter 18