What a Bear Needs (The Wild Side)

by Nikki Winter

  Between herself and Fallon, Cree’s alpha had always been the one perceived as emotionless, hard. However, in all reality, her friend had a way about her that effortlessly touched others. If Cree touched anyone—outside of a select, beloved few—voluntarily then it was because she intended to deliver an unfathomable amount of pain. Not because it amused her or because she took pleasure in it but because hurting others, keeping them outside the small nuances that were solely hers in characteristics, saved her the pain of having them examine her too closely; it saved her from the pain of being almost pushed out again.

  Cree had spent the majority of her life dwelling outside the realm of the ordinary, watching as her pack mates, her friends, dove head first into bonds and relationships that couldn’t be broken or damaged. She always remained near that energy, hovering around it the same way cats sometimes burrowed under cars during the winter for heat. The glow that vibrated off those bonds—the love that radiated—skated across her skin in the lightest of touches. Like a succubus, she could feel it, grasp it if she wanted to but chose to leave it to those with hearts that were a lot less fragile than her own. Rejection wasn’t for the weak and in comparison to those around her, Cree lacked in her soul what she had in her hands—strength.

  Her sex didn’t make her a vulnerable creature but her experiences and her differences did. She’d seen for herself the prejudice, the fear and the disgust that could be exposed in others if they witnessed who and what she really was at her core. Her ability to become an entirely different species of mammal wasn’t what the gods had cursed Cree with and there were mornings that she gazed at her own reflection, wishing that it simply had been that.

  Maddox, no matter how good his intentions were, was a reminder of what she’d never have access to. She avoided and hid from him to tamp down on that reminder, to diminish it but like the grizzly he was forever connected to spiritually, he had Cree locked in his line of vision and clearly wasn’t ready to let her go yet. He needed to though. He needed to let go now before it got any harder, any rougher.

  She, like everyone else in their pack, had watched the effect his brother had on Fallon. Cree had observed the slow change in her friend’s behavior, the way she melted around her mate. In just a year’s time Ransom McKenna had managed to reduce Fallon’s wariness and induce the desire to show easy and open affection. The tendency to snarl and snap whenever the mood struck her was still there but she was different. Cree had never seen her so content, so happy. There were times that Fallon smiled for no reason at all, times that she didn’t have to be forced into pack bonding and times that she actually initiated social activity all on her own.

  Fallon’s easy demeanor may have had something to do with her brush with death and the realization that there were moments when she needed others to fight for her the way she constantly did for them. The acceptance hadn’t come easy considering that Cree’s alpha previously had a mentality that centered around, “If it doesn’t benefit the pack, it dies.” But Ransom showed himself to be very beneficial to the pack. As did Maddox.

  Goofy, wonderful, unerringly sexy, Maddox, who she had to stay away from lest she forget and find herself falling onto him while naked and writhing. The longer he continued his pursuit, the more poignant it became that she could never give him what either of them wanted. The stare he cast her when he thought she was ignoring him...

  Cree exhaled and began her walk once again. Just as Maddox assumed, her daily trek before the sun rose had a purpose. There was a build-up within her that occurred each day, one that had to be discharged. Otherwise the results could be…harmful.

  A certain grizzly wasn’t aware of exactly what could take place should he linger, hence the reason why she hadn’t entertained his advances the way she normally did. The playful banter had to stop because if it didn’t, he’d witness something Cree was pretty sure he wasn’t ready for. And no matter how much she enjoyed his presence, the mischievous glint in his hazel eyes or the way he always smelled like bundles of lemongrass, the best choice was to keep him at an arm’s length.

  The second she’d distanced herself far enough away from the lodge, Cree took in a fortifying breath and found a semi dry patch of grass to rest on in the lotus position. With her palms on her knees she allowed her head to fall back, her lids to close and her inhales to even until they were nearly barely perceptible. Her skin felt tight and irritated, the hairs on her nape standing at attention. Despite the fact that she still had Maddox’s scent trapped in her nose and his crooked smile hooked on her mind’s eye, it had nothing to do with him. No, she was wrestling with another beast entirely; many of them.

  Cree’s hands balled into fists when that first jolt of agony hit her in the gut. Sweat beaded her brow on the second. By the third, she was panting, determined not to lose this battle; determined that she wouldn’t let this thing control her. She controlled it. It didn’t get to rule her. It didn’t get to ruin her peace. She wouldn’t let it.

  When her spine shifted and realigned, her mouth dropped open in a silent cry, her nails digging small crescents into her palms. She breathed through her nose and waited it out but as each second ticked by, the pain grew in degrees. Cree hunched over when her ribs deviated, tearing at her t-shirt. Her boots were kicked off as her back hit the dirt and she arched upwards with tears in her eyes. Her fingers and palms bent at awkward angles, steadily altering until claws replaced her nails and fur sprouted, changing multiple times.

  She shredded her jeans, pulling at the constricting fabric until it released from her fluctuating flesh. Her chest felt as though it would cave in but she bit her lip and forced the sound of misery in the back of her throat down. Ringing bounded off in her ears, black dots dancing behind her lids and still she fought, still she wouldn’t relinquish the right she had to control her own form. The harder she warred with what was in inside, the harder it grabbed a hold of her, tugging and yanking, determined to take her over even if it had to beak her to do so.

  Canine’s pierced the bottom rim of her mouth and she yelped at the sting, her claws burrowing into the dirt. Cree gritted her teeth, growled and rolled over to her belly, heaving in gulps of air as every muscle screamed in protest to the changes occurring rapidly. Like shots leaving a gun, they fired off in quick succession. Her vision blurred and shifted as she reopened her eyes. The color and texture of her fur. Her size and weight. All of these danced back and forth in a never ending cycle until she regained purchase and shoved back harder than any of them could.

  Her hands balled and pounded the ground. “No! No! No!”

  Then finally, gratefully, it stopped. The fur receded as did her claws, her body reversing gradually the effects that a confined shift had started. Cree dropped to the grass and didn’t move; too afraid that even a twitch would bring it back, would bring them back.

  Swallowing, she rolled to her back and stared up at the sky as the sun finally broke through. As she curled into the earth, the sound of her heart hammering in her ears like the bass of a drum, she knew it didn’t matter whether she moved or not; today, tomorrow, next week. They hadn’t left, they’d never leave. They were a painful part of her; ingrained on her soul and etched in her DNA. She could fight, she could attempt to close the door on every single one but eventually they’d win and the damage that they’d leave in their wake would be incomprehensible. The damage they’d already done was incomprehensible.

  Clouds moved overhead, a soft breeze blowing through and she didn’t know if the earth itself whispered the one word she dreaded to hear or if it was one of the many beasts that rested just inside her but Cree heard it just the same.

  “Skin-walker…”

  Two

  Cree’s eyes steadily peeled open when she felt the presence of another person. A familiar scent hit her full force. She sighed and blinked up at the figure hovering over her.

  “So,” Fallon said lowering herself to the ground beside Cree. “You’re naked.”

  She gave her friend a wobbly smile, a
ssuming that Fallon had tracked her down the same way she always did. “As the day I was born. Sans the amniotic fluids and screeching.”

  “You do have a bit of a glisten though,” the she-wolf pointed out.

  “Sickly or modelesque?”

  “Is it possible for you to do anything aside from modelesque?”

  “I dunno.” She shrugged. “I’ve never tried.”

  “Pretty bitch,” Fallon growled but her smile belied the words.

  “Oh come off it, Wilder,” Cree snorted. “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught the males contemplating how they could get a chance to hump your leg without losing half their face in the process.”

  “Lies!”

  “They treat me like one of the guys, Fal,” she responded. “I’ve been hearing things that no one should have to endure. Terrible things…things that involve parts of you that I never want to be associated with.”

  Fallon leaned forward, her brows disappearing beneath the brim of her ball-cap as they winged. “This information both pleases and disturbs me. Tell me more.”

  “Well, Anoki once said that he’d like to peel a grape and—”

  “Stop,” the she-wolf waved her hands. “I want no parts of whatever sordid fantasies that vain bastard weaves when he’s not praising himself for breathing air,” she completed, referring to their resident whore Anoki Redwolf.

  Cree chuckled.

  “So the naked thing…” Fallon waved a hand at her.

  The laughter died and she put her gaze back to the clouds. “It’s getting worse, Fal.”

  “Ah, and by it you mean…?” Her friend made a series of beastly sounds.

  “Was that a velociraptor at the end there?” she asked.

  “Almost. It was actually a bird of prey. Hawk, eagle, etcetera, etcetera.”

  “I think the motioning of talons is what gave me the impression that it was a dinosaur.”

  “Did I go too short with the arms?”

  Cree held up her fingers. “Just a bit and considering the fact that I literally have no birds of prey…”

  They stared at one another for a bit before Fallon said, “You’ll be fine.”

  “Will I?” she queried softly. “Or is this the fairy god-sister of optimism speaking?”

  “I have no pixie dust or wands so I’m going to say it’s simply your friend. The one who’s become immune to seeing your nipples in broad daylight.”

  She laughed. “You and your sassy new humor.”

  “It is quite sassy now, isn’t it?”

  “Very.”

  Silence enveloped them.

  “I want you to be the one to put me down,” Cree whispered into the disquiet that cloaked them.

  “Shut up.”

  “Fallon—”

  “No.” That fierceness was back, the inflexible look Fallon sometimes wore when she was doing what she thought was best. “You don’t get to ask me that. You don’t get to tell me that I’ll have to—”

  “You won’t have a choice!” Cree snapped, sitting up and standing. “If this gets too big, too wide, I’ll fall in and you won’t be dealing with me anymore. You understand that right?”

  “I understand that my best-friend is asking me to euthanize her like a rabid dog,” Fallon snarled, following suit. “I understand that the likelihood of her going rogue is slim to none but she seems unable to see what I do.”

  “You’re looking at me from a biased standpoint, Fallon.”

  “No,” the alpha adamantly denied. “I’m looking at you like someone who knows you. You’re not going to suddenly snap your leash someday and wipe out the entire pack.”

  “You don’t know that!”

  “I do!”

  Their gazes locked, held. Cree was the first to lower hers to the ground. Out of respect, out of the fear that she’d lose it and give into the tears mounting at the brims of her lids. She shut her gaze off, inhaled and focused just over Fallon’s shoulders when she reopened them. “I’m a liability, a danger. I have too many things waging for control and my human side could be swallowed by that chasm; lost. I’m asking you as someone who sees me, knows me, to end it the moment it’s beyond my control. Because I see and know you love me enough to do it. No one else will be strong enough.”

  “I also love you enough to slap you for being so fucking melodramatic. Should I do that too?”

  “Why are you—goddammit Fallon ow!” Cree put a hand to her forehead where her friend had popped her. “The hell is wrong with you?!”

  “You’re monologue about liberty and death!” The she-wolf threw up her arms. “You’re making me mental!”

  “Oh I’m sorry,” Cree bellowed. “I didn’t realize my medical condition was such a weight on your shoulders!”

  Fallon popped her again.

  “Stop doing that!”

  Once more.

  “Argh!” She stamped her feet. “I hate you!”

  “Cree?”

  Stopping at Fallon’s soft call, she looked expectantly at her friend.

  “That need you’re feeling in the middle of your chest, the one where you want to fight—claw at me to prove a point—hold onto that,” Fallon said. Her lashes fluttered as she blinked rapidly. “Because despite what you believe, I’ll never be that strong.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Fal.” Cree rubbed between her brows. “You’re not going to cry are you? Swear to God that if you cry I’ll hit you.”

  The she-wolf barked out a laugh. “Glad you haven’t lost your ability to sympathize with others.”

  “My vagina was kissed by the sun involuntarily this morning and I’m pretty sure my lady hairs are now bleached, excuse me if I’m not exactly in the mood to spill emotions right now,” she retorted wryly.

  Fallon’s eyes briefly lowered below Cree’s waist before she jerked them back up and slapped her hands over her face, dancing around like a spider had just crawled into her jeans. “Why’d you have to make me painfully aware of,”—she waved a hand to Cree’s nude form—“that?”

  “No one told you to do a perusal of my goods!”

  “Your goods are on display and happen to be very, very obvious!” Fallon’s hands came down. “By the way…you need a wax.”

  “And this conversation just got way too personal.”

  “You would think that the availability of an entire spa on the grounds would keep these issues at bay…”

  “Fal, do you enjoy having a head? Is it not a pleasurable way to go through life?” Cree bent over to pick up her destroyed t-shirt, trying to see if she could salvage it.

  “Well, considering that Ransom is rather attached to my mouth and all the wonderful things it—Jesus Christ, Cree! I did not need to see you from that angle!”

  Standing, she shook out the mess of torn fabric and sighed, “Favorite soft V-neck, shot to shit.”

  “You should’ve gotten naked before,” Fallon commented.

  “I thought I could control it.”

  “Would it hurt to shift into the wolf for a bit? That way you can get back to your cabin without exposing yourself like a trench coat bum in the park.”

  Cree’s lips curved. “There goes the sassy humor again.”

  Fallon picked up Cree’s boots, jeans and wrapped the torn t-shirt around her underthings. “Sassiness agrees with me. Don’t be jealous that I’ve mastered it better than you have.”

  Backing away, Cree pushed her chest out, shook her limbs and said, “If you have to leash me, do it. Sometimes the wolf doesn’t want to leave when I let it out.”

  Her body chemistry as a skin-walker was entirely different from her pack members. With more than a few beasts resting inside her, she had to regularly weed through the multiples to find the one that allowed her to camouflage herself among her pack—the wolf. This wasn’t an easy feat considering that she could shift the same way that her counterparts did but it was way harder to control the compulsions of her animalistic heart when she had so many tugging for dominance. This was why she no longer
attempted stemming them in her cabin. She’d made that mistake once and left most of her bedroom and living room in ruins. That was the reason for the walk, the distance away from the rest of the lodge.

  Cree’s greatest fear was that one day she’d lose her grip and fall into an abyss that would never release her. She’d become the thing that went bump in the night. She wouldn’t be able to reign herself in any longer because the human side would lose a hard fought battle against the creatures that lingered on the outer edges of her psyche; waiting to take over.

  Each time she shifted, she gave them just a bit more headway getting into the door she needed closed. Fallon’s theory was that embracing them all would make them much more malleable…calm. But Cree knew better. She knew that hosting so many beings could drive one of her kind to the brink of madness and cause an internal hysteria that would leave nothing aside from devastation.

  All these years she’d encompassed so many species and beings and yet it seemed as though every few months a new one made itself known. She wasn’t sure how much longer it could continue before she suffered the fate of so many before her, before she suffered the fate of her mother and father.

  “Does it scare you?” Fallon questioned. She, Makya and Anoki were the only ones here who Cree had told but it wasn’t voluntarily. Years ago when they’d first met and she made the choice to join the Wilders, Fallon and her people had been the ones to come across a too skinny and exhausted Cree. She’d been hitchhiking across the states after being pushed out of her own pack by those who saw her as nothing more than something to be quarantined and watched constantly.

  The betrayal, the hurt, was still raw at the time and she hadn’t trusted them. It still amazed her that the Wilders had taken her in. She now understood that James and Helena had a soft spot for her because of the many losses they’d experienced before finally successfully conceiving Fallon. The bond that Cree and the she-wolf formed from there had remained impenetrable all this time and she wanted it to stay that way. This was why she found herself questioning if remaining in Glenwood Springs for much longer was the best decision for anyone around her.