Owl Be Bear For You (Camp Shifter Book 1)

by DJ Jennings

  “Mate.” She tried out the word on her tongue. It rolled so smoothly. Looking up—way up—she grinned. “Is this supposed to feel so right?”

  His eyes narrowed slightly, making his brown eyes seem even warmer. More loving. “I wondered, too. But I don’t feel a shred of doubt.”

  “Me either.”

  “You spend most of your life thinking that big life decisions are supposed to be filled with turmoil and grief, with contemplation and analysis, and then you meet a girl in the ER one day and poof! Done. You fall in love and that’s it. Forever is shoved in your face.”

  Fall in love.

  Mara gaped at him.

  He smiled back, tightening his hands on her waist. “Yeah. Love. I do love you, Mara. I know it as surely as anything else I’ve ever felt in my life.”

  “I love you, too, Jack. I know it deep in my bones.” She swallowed hard, her mouth dry, tears in her throat.

  Happy tears.

  Their stomachs growled in unison.

  “Let’s eat!” he said, pulling her to the door, her eyes blinking hard as they adjusted to the light.

  And with that, Jack took her hand and led her back toward the center of camp, where she heard groups of people headed in the same direction.

  Toward the start of her new life.

  “Dr. Bear got him some quim and trim—” Roscoe started to say before Jack gave him a mighty shove that threw him off the bench in the dining hall, sending him into the mid-side of a wolf shifter named Bernie, who just growled at him and went back to reading his newspaper.

  “What the fuck was that for?” Roscoe shouted.

  Jack just stared him down.

  Roscoe sniffed. “Ain’t my fault I can smell qui—uh, love in the air.”

  Jack caught Mara’s horrified expression out of the corner of his eye. Great.

  “Mara!” A woman younger than Mara, with a long nose and a tight face, came running over. “You okay? I heard they had to vaccinate you during the shift.”

  Mara turned beet red. “You knew about the vaccine?”

  Sally nodded, then shrugged. “Remember? Mom and Dad are shifters. They didn’t have the vaccine back when they were kids, but they told me about it.”

  “Does everyone know more than me about being a shifter?” Mara said with a sigh.

  Jack squeezed her hand. “It’s okay. You’ll get the hang of it.”

  “Listen to Dr. Bear, acting like he’s the expert. Guy’s been here for ten days and he knows everything,” Roscoe muttered. He licked his lips as he looked over Mara for two seconds longer than Jack liked. The weaselly man stuck out his hand, eyes on Mara’s rack. “Hi. Roscoe. You need a real man to show you around, I can—”

  His words faded as he flew across the room.

  “Jack!” Mara gasped.

  “What? I tripped. Lost my footing.” Jack looked at the pile of weasel shifter on the floor. Jack’s hard shove had pushed him into a group of brand new women, eighteen year olds from the look of it, Roscoe’s face practically motorboating some poor woman’s tits.

  “Hey,” she said, with a grin that made it clear she didn’t mind.

  “I did him a favor,” Jack muttered.

  “You’re ten times his size,” Mara whispered fiercely.

  A woman with gloriously long, pale hair and squared shoulders that declared confidence walked by – completely naked. Tall and curvy, she wore running shoes and a look that said, Don’t fuck with me.

  “Who is that?” Mara squeaked.

  Jack smiled. “That’s Risa Deveneau. She teaches Naked in Public 101. Practices what she preaches.”

  Only a handful of people gawked at Risa. Jack guessed they were all new, like Mara.

  “Do we have to do that? Walk around camp in front of hundreds of people naked?” She turned the color of fresh cream.

  Jack shrugged, patted her shoulder and kissed her cheek, then walked to the food line, where he grabbed a tray and filled it to the brim with food to share with Mara. She’d adjust. It wasn’t as if she had a choice.

  But he was here to help her.

  By the time he returned, she was chatting and laughing with a group of women he recognized. Half of them had come on to him during his first day here.

  And the other half had tried to mate with him during DarkNight.

  Mara looked over the feast he’d brought. “There’s enough here to feed an army!”

  “Or a bear,” one of the women—Nora?—said, eying him like she wanted Jack for dessert.

  “Start eating,” he said with a laugh, “and you’ll see how fast it’s gone. Appetites work differently here at Camp Shifter.”

  “Sure do,” Nora said with a purr. Which was appropriate, because she was a cougar.

  Mara sat up a little straighter and gave Nora a gimlet eye, then snuggled in next to Jack as he took his seat next to her, her hand resting territorially on his thigh.

  There we go.

  That was better.

  For the next ten minutes, they mostly ate without comment, Sally chattering away and filling in all the need for conversation. Nora drifted away when Roscoe caught her eye. As Jack’s belly filled, a diffuse peace came over him.

  This was it.

  He’d found his mate.

  The rest of his life was settled.

  What a strange, wondrous relief. And the fact that she was nice, smart, and smoking hot made Jack feel like he won the lottery.

  “...and you have to try out all your options tonight!” he dimly heard through the noise Sally made with her mouth. Mara’s body language changed, and he forced himself to pay attention to the words.

  “Because life’s a buffet, so sample a little bit of everything before you really mate!” Sally’s eyes glittered with mischief.

  Jack glared at her, curling his arm protectively around Mara’s shoulders, his jaw so tight he could crack rocks.

  “We’re mated,” he announced.

  The room went dead silent. Two hundred people, all eating dinner, came to a grinding halt. Only the sound of machinery in the kitchen and the crashing waves of the ocean could be heard.

  Sally’s eyes bugged out. “Already?”

  “It happens,” said Missy, who walked by with an empty tray. Jack turned toward her voice as action and talk resumed in the room. Blood pounded through him, his body on alert. The reaction in the room confused him.

  “People come here mated already,” Harry added, reaching to touch Missy’s shoulder. Jack smiled at his new friends, though his face fought to move. He was angry and protective, excited and cautious all at once.

  “But people don’t arrive here and find their mate as fast as Mara did!”

  “We knew each other before,” Mara said. “Sally, I was trying to explain—”

  “He’s your one-night stand?” Sally shrieked, pointing at Jack.

  Who turned and gave Mara one hell of a look.

  Mara turned bright red again, cringing. “I knew I was oversharing on the ride here,” she muttered.

  “You told me about him on the bus! How he left you because he figured out you were a shifter!” Sally leaped to her feet, furious, yelling at Jack. “How dare you be so bigoted! How can you reject her and turn out to be a shifter yourself?”

  Jack gave her a withering look. Not the brightest bulb on the string, was she?

  “That’s the point,” Mara said gently. People at tables around them openly gaped, eavesdropping and gossiping. “Jack didn’t know I was a shifter. And I didn’t know he had an uncontrollable shift at the end of our date and the USA got him.”

  Sally frowned, then her mouth dropped open in shock. “That is the best love story ever!”

  “You don’t get out much, do you?” Roscoe said, walking by and licking an ice cream cone lasciviously, like it was a clit. He caught Sally’s eyes and kept that tongue going.

  Jack couldn’t watch.

  “I get out plenty!” Sally protested. “I’ll be out tonight, for sure!”

  Ros
coe winked at her. “Save me a dance.”

  “DarkNight,” Mara said under her breath. She gave Jack a raw look. “Do I have to?”

  “Have to—what?”

  “Have to go to DarkNight?”

  “No,” he said quickly, shaking his head. “You don’t.”

  “Have you gone to DarkNight?”

  All the oxygen left Jack’s brain.

  “No, no,” Mara said quickly, shaking her head. “It’s okay. Don’t answer. I shouldn’t have asked. I don’t have a right to ask.”

  His skin tingled. Even Roscoe stared at him from the doorway, licking his ice cream cone, waiting.

  “You have every right to ask.”

  “What happens at DarkNight stays at DarkNight,” Sally whispered.

  “Yes,” Jack said, manning up, reaching for her hand. It felt cold and limp. “I went once. The other night.”

  “Oh.” Her one syllable shattered him.

  “But I couldn’t find anyone to fuck.”

  The room filled with outraged chatter. He knew why. All the women who tried to mate with him during DarkNight were suddenly pissed.

  They had no right.

  Mara’s tight shoulders released, her mouth turning up with a smile as she looked at him. “What? There are so many people here. And Sally said that DarkNight means no rules. You can frolic and have sex and do whatever you want.”

  “All I wanted was you, Mara.”

  A collective “awwwwwww” of female voices filled the room.

  And a couple of guys, too.

  Mara laughed. “Now you’re just shining me on.”

  His kiss was the only answer he could give.

  A slow clap from across the room made Jack deepen the kiss, tasting coffee and lime on Mara’s tongue, her essence pure warmth and sweetness.

  “Get a room!” Roscoe called out as he left.

  He smelled a group of angry fox shifters as they stormed by, huffing. Jack barely noticed, buried in Mara’s body.

  “No, seriously,” Sally said, her voice tense. “Get your hands off her boobs and Mara, quit touching his cock in public. That’s fine for DarkNight, but not here.”

  Separating from Mara, he cleared his throat and shoved his roaming hands in his front pockets, surreptitiously adjusting himself.

  “Young love,” Danielle said, appearing out of nowhere. “But do it in your cabins. Unless you want an audience, in which case, go to DarkNight tonight and find each other.”

  “Find each other?” Mara asked.

  “You really don’t know anything,” Sally sighed. “If two shifters are already mated, they can still go to DarkNight. You just shift and play in the wild, then go into human form for sex.”

  “Midnight sex? Outdoors, in the nude? Wouldn’t you get cold? What about poison ivy?” Mara asked.

  “Funsucker,” Sally muttered.

  Mara’s face crumpled for a second, then she pulled herself together. Jack wanted to grab her and run back to his cabin and stop all this, but he knew he couldn’t save her from everything.

  Damn it.

  “We can still be part of DarkNight?” Mara looked at Jack with a shy excitement that made him hard again. She happened to say the words as there was a lull in the overall conversation level in the dining hall, and a few people in a group across the room cheered “Dark Night. Dark Night. Dark Night.”

  Jack looked over at them. Harley and his wolf shifters. He glared and they all turned away, slowly quieting down.

  Except for Harley, who just stared at Mara.

  You snooze, you lose, Jack thought, shooting Harley an evil grin before kissing Mara on the cheek.

  “We can avoid the poison ivy by not going out at all. My cabin has a nice, soft bed. And a shower. And me,” he teased.

  “Add chocolate and wine and I’m in heaven.”

  “Deal.”

  “You have to try DarkNight, though!” Sally exclaimed.

  Jack simmered, ready to tell her off, when Missy cut in.

  “She kind of has a point, Mara,” she said softly, Harry nodding. “We’re mated, and we love DarkNight.”

  “Why?” This was a perspective Jack hadn’t considered.

  “The energy. Everyone shifts and we all become the animals we are.”

  Harley and his pack of assholes across the dining room started howling.

  Missy rolled her eyes and waved them off. “Ignore them. They like to play tough by hitting on all the women.”

  “And a few men,” Harry grumbled.

  Jack gave him a look. “Harley hit on you?”

  “Not Harley. Gasket.” Gasket was Harley’s omega.

  “Huh. That must have sucked.”

  “That’s exactly what he wanted.”

  Jack grimaced.

  Harry shrugged. “Hey, man. You never know. The guy backed off right away. To each his own.”

  Jack looked back at the pack of wolf shifters, who were huddled together and looking at Mara like she was their next meal.

  Over my fucking dead, enormous body, Jack thought.

  “What makes it special for mated couples?” Mara asked sweetly, making Jack’s heart squeeze. He could hear the wonder in her voice.

  And the worry.

  “It’s a claiming,” Harry said, eyes going dark. “You’re telling the rest of the animals here that you are each other’s, and each other’s alone.”

  “It’s like saying he is mine a thousand times until the others feel it in their bones,” Missy added.

  “No trespassing,” Jack muttered.

  “Exactly.” Harry gave Missy’s shoulder a squeeze, leaning in and inhaling as his nose nearly touched her neck. The gesture was intimate and vulnerable, but when Harry’s eyes met Jack’s, he was anything but weak.

  “I see,” Mara said in a small voice. Jack felt the sudden wave of shyness in her. She didn’t know he knew.

  He knew she also didn’t see the wolf pack in the corner eyeing her. She was naïve and sweet in ways he found endearing.

  And needed to protect.

  Chapter 24