by Meg Ripley
“If you decide not to join the clan, that will go away in time.” Alexandra nodded slowly. “You can meet the rest of the clan. Spend some time recuperating from your wounds. I’ll even sleep in the living room if you want.” Alexandra raised an eyebrow, looking at him.
“No, you will not,” she said tartly. “You are not going to go from getting me off twice in less than thirty minutes to sleeping on the couch.” She shook her head. “You’re staying right here, and as soon as I work my head around the fact that you can become a bear, you are going to get me off again.” Sasha chuckled.
“As many times as you want,” he murmured. I will get you off as often as you can stand. Alexandra pressed closer to him; while she hadn’t decided, she thought that unless there was something even more off-putting than turning into a bear in Sasha’s life, she would be happy to at least see how this mating arrangement could play out. She had never had better sex in her life; she wasn’t about to just cast it aside when she could have as much of it as she could stand. “You are so impatient,” Sasha whispered. “At least let me make sure you haven’t pulled any stitches before you climb on top of me.” Alexandra blushed. At least, she thought, very privately, if he could read her mind—he would always know what she wanted.
THE END
PART TWO
Taken By The Wild Werebears
One fateful night, as Ben and Dov of the Nita werebear clan are out foraging, they find their usual wanderings interrupted by the unexpected arrival of an intriguing woman: the new employee at the logging company where they both work.
Upon first impression, curvy Daphne seems nervous and tightly-wound—certainly not an object of interest for two hot alpha male werebears looking for mates. But as she wanders through the woods, Ben and Dov can’t ignore the overwhelmingly intoxicating pheromones given off by this beautifully curvaceous woman.
Will Dov and Ben cooperate and form a joint mating bond, or will they find themselves competing to claim the privilege to enjoy all that insatiable Daphne has to offer?
Ben fell onto his front paws as he scented the air, seeking something interesting to eat without having any particular goal in mind. A few feet away from him, he felt the mental presence of Dov, one of his oldest friends within the Nita clan. Someone in the woods. The thought came to him in something less than words but more than instinct, a suggestion—an impulse between animal thinking and human. Ben snuffled, shaking his head from side to side. Someone in the woods—unless it was a hunter—represented very little trouble to him in the form he had taken on; there weren’t many people either in the town of Green Tree or in general who would deliberately trouble a pair of fully-grown brown bears in their nocturnal search for food.
So what? He sent the thought in Dov’s direction, sniffing the air once more. He caught a fleeting scent—berries, sharp and sweetly pungent in the humid night air of the forest—and turned in that direction. He coughed, alerting his friend to the proximity of food as he approached the bushes, illuminated faintly by the waxing moon’s light.
Dov had been his friend for as long as Ben could remember; the two of them had undergone their first, ritual transformation together, they worked on the logging crew together, and even when the rest of the clan was busy with other things—spending time with family members, going out to take in the few diversions that the little logging town offered, or, as was the case with their Alpha, staying in for the night with a mate—he and Dov found their way into the woods together, exploring what the night held for inquisitive animals that had no need to fear predators.
Ben began to mine the bushes for ripe berries, his keen nose and keener instincts tugging him away from those still green. After a moment, Dov joined him, shifting down onto his rump to eat in comfort. They exchanged soft growling chuffs, enjoying the sweet-tart taste of the fruit as eagerly as any bear could. The only thing better would have been honey; but Ben had no interest in dealing with bees that night, and he knew Dov didn’t either. Unlike real bears, they had the advanced thinking skills and the money to buy honey if they wanted it; there was little sense in raiding a hive when there were jars and jars of honey at the local market.
I smell her. That woman—the new one. The fragmented thoughts, filtering through Ben’s mind from Dov’s, were accompanied by a faint image; a short, curvy woman, who had moved into town only a few weeks before, hired by the logging company to do administrative work. Ben had met her briefly; he had been careful not to get too close to the woman—her pheromones, feminine and possibly fertile, would have been nothing but an incitement to him, and he knew, as everyone in the Nita clan did, that the animal instincts had to be kept in check amongst the “normal” humans of the town. She had honey-colored hair kept tightly in a bun dead center at the back of her skull, and a slightly tightly wound air about her that put Ben on alert.
Of course, Ben thought as he meditatively munched on wild berries, sinking down onto his hindquarters in the filtered moonlight, there were plenty of members of the clan who were not quite so careful; they went out to the bars every night, picking up whatever girl would come home with them and showing up the next morning as likely as not with a hangover. He let out a snort of disgust. Since the few women who had been born into the clan were closely related to its other members, they had been married off—a decision by the Alpha, though not one that had met with universal approval. Ben himself could feel the low, pulsing animal lust inside of himself on a near-constant basis: the need to mate, to claim a female as his own. For werebears such as himself, mating was a permanent attachment. The less steady members of the clan, slightly younger—some of them just old enough to drink—were willing to slake that desire as best as they could with one-night stands, taking care of the physical problem.
But Ben held himself back, and Dov had taken the same cue; when they had first been inducted into the Nita clan formally, as teenaged werebears, they had agreed that they would follow their Alpha’s edicts as long as they weren’t harmful, and Ben had never gone back on his word in his entire life. He didn’t intend to start doing it just because he had the mating itch.
Next to him, Dov let out a soft trill. Coming our way. Ben sighed; they would have to decide whether it was worth it to risk the panic of a woman encountering two bears in the woods at night, or if it would be better to vacate the area, keep away from the stranger. The Nita clan had lived in the town of Green Tree for as long as it had existed; the original shape-shifters who had formed it had been loggers, just like the majority of the town’s men. Their existence was precarious, however. None of the normal humans in the tiny town knew the true nature of the members of the clan. There were occasional murmurs about some of the stranger behaviors of the “local bears,” but in spite of the occasional sighting of someone coming out of the woods, transformed back into a human, the members of the community seemed content to turn a blind eye; but if they were confronted with the true fact of the Nita clan, there would be consequences—deadly ones.
Move on? Ben rumbled, turning his head and scenting the air, trying to catch the trace his friend had noticed. In his human form, he had better-than-normal senses of smell and hearing; but in his animal form, Ben’s senses were even more acute. He caught the scent that Dov had found: richly female, with the sweet, slightly musk-laden undercurrent of fertility, it was enough to briefly make the promise of even the sweetest, ripest berries pale in comparison. How the woman had managed not to attract every human male in the town—along with the unattached Nita clan contingent—was beyond Ben’s ability to comprehend. A jolt of fiery need shot through him at her smell. Breathing deeply, trying to settle the hormones surging through his body, Ben picked up the answering scent of Dov’s pheromones; he was beginning to respond to the smell of female fertility as well.
Better leave, Dov’s hurried, not-quite-panicked thought reached him, and Ben let out a grumbling growl to confirm his agreement. They moved deeper into the woods together, and as they moved further away from the alluring, distracting
smell, Ben felt his thoughts beginning to clear. If they could just keep downwind of the woman, he thought, they would be okay. He sniffed at the air, sorting through the scents that painted crystal-clear pictures on his ursine mind, identifying each one. There was carrion nearby, but he was unmoved by it; there was a tree somewhere close to them that had—to his keen nose—perhaps a few ripe fruits for the picking. He ambled off on all fours, meandering through the underbrush and putting the new woman out of his mind as completely as he could. She was not for him—even if she smelled appealingly like she should be. He would not fight Dov over the right to take her; he would rather lose the opportunity to mate completely than be in opposition to a man he considered his brother, his own flesh and blood. Ben barked a quick sound in Dov’s direction, heading towards the appealing smell of more food.
****
Dov’s mind was not so easily turned away from the woman whose scent he had caught on the breeze. As he followed Ben carelessly, the woman’s pheromones lingered in his nose, spurring the animal arousal that bubbled inside of him. That she was fully human—not a werebear, or even another kind of shape-shifter—was a problem, but even as he tried to focus on enjoying the night’s explorations, Dov’s brain filled with fleeting, flickering images. He had met the new woman around the same time that Ben had; he had taken his cue from his friend, knowing the Alpha’s edicts about mating, and knowing that with the climate within the clan, losing control could spell their doom, but the small, curvaceous woman had attracted his attention nonetheless. Blurred, animal images flitted through his mind: what the woman must look like naked, the shape of her breasts, and the idea of her nestled firmly in his arms. He could imagine the smell of her arousal, the taste of her sweat and fluids on his tongue.
Dov had caught his friend’s pheromones as well; he knew that Ben—in spite of resolutely turning away—had felt that same tug, that same animalistic drive to reproduce. In their current forms, it was more difficult for both of them to suppress instincts. Dov knew that of the two of them, he was the more impulsive; he was the one who had spurred Ben to go on more than one skinny dipping trek when they had been in high school together, and he had been the one who had started their somewhat solitary wanderings in the forest they worked in, telling his clan-brother that there was nothing for them to fear—the other bears in their sleuth would not mind, and there were few things in the woods to harm them apart from the occasional hunter.
Some nights, they would hunt together, skulking through the woods quietly until they came upon a deer. Other nights—like this one—they simply wandered, browsing the bushes and trees for treats, enjoying the freedom that their fearsome bodies provided them. Ever since the night when their Alpha had rescued a human female from a pack of wolves, the pack had been wary of impinging on the bears’ territory, keeping their predations to the perimeter. There would be problems from the pack in the future, but Dov looked forward to dealing with the wolves; the battle would bleed off some of the testosterone charging through the ranks, and it would be instructive for some of the younger members of the clan, just coming into the full flush of their adult forms.
In spite of the joint resolution to avoid the woman, Dov caught her scent again, once more coming closer to them. He turned his thoughts towards his clan brother. Let her see us, he suggested. She might scare. Run away. That would solve both of their problems, after all; if the woman left, then there would be no more tempting, warm-sweet smell to distract him, and Ben’s worries about dealing with her would be moot.
Ben snorted into the underbrush, turning a bright-eyed gaze towards him, and Dov received a series of impressions from his friend’s mind, images tinged with bear-like emphasis: screaming woman, panicked, possibly armed, going back into the town and telling the others about bears in the woods. Possibly shooting them. Messiness. Questions. She’s not armed, Dov countered, his thoughts becoming more and more human as he struggled with his animal impulses. Do you smell a gun? Ben snuffled at the air, rising up onto his hind legs for a better vantage point, for a better scent to catch. Dov chuffed and barked, twisting his head from side to side. He knew there was no gun; he knew the woman was unarmed. She would be frightened by the sight of two bears, but there would be no other problems—she would likely run back into town, and never come into the woods alone at night again. More’s the pity, he thought fleetingly, imagining—briefly—the possibility of changing back into his human form, of bearing the woman down onto her back in the soft leaves of the forest floor and taking her. It is not to be, he reminded himself firmly.
****
Daphne wandered aimlessly, looking around her as every step carried her more and more deeply into the forest, hands trailing on tree trunks, pinching off the occasional leaf after a quick visual inspection confirmed it was non-noxious. The smells of the velvety-soft evening filled her nose, calming something she hadn’t quite known was coiled tightly inside of her, relieving some stress she hadn’t realized she bore. Every step into the woods seemed to drag more of the weight off her shoulders, lightening her feet, making her hands wander more carelessly over the plants that caught her eye.
She had taken the job in Green Tree on an almost-whim; there was nothing for her in her hometown, hundreds of miles south of the little logging town, ever since her fiancé had been abruptly wrenched out of her life in a chance, tragic accident. He had been driving from his little college town to meet her, when a semi-truck had overturned onto his fragile, lightweight sedan, crushing it to almost nothing, and killing him nearly instantly. When Daphne had gotten the phone call, it had felt as if she herself was being crushed, as if the walls of her apartment had come tumbling down onto her. After she had done what she knew was required of her: attending the funeral, putting her lover to rest, discarding the wedding dress and the other items she had already started bringing together, Daphne had decided that she needed to get away. Not just from her apartment, full of memories with Aaron, but out of her town altogether—as far as a decent job opportunity would take her. When she found the job posting for an administrative assistant in a logging company, she had immediately submitted her resume, and had eagerly driven up for her interview, accepting the position the moment it was offered.
Now that the dust had settled, now that she was slowly building a routine—getting up early enough to get in a little exercise, taking a shower, going to work, coming home—Daphne felt a deep, gnawing kind of hunger. She hadn’t given much thought to forming any friendships within the small, tight-knit community, but she felt lonely. She needed to be out of her lonely, empty-feeling house at the corner of the town, she needed to wander, and clear out her mind. Daphne had been warned that there were both wolves and bears in the forest, but in spite of the danger she knew was present, she couldn’t resist the draw of the expanding, oddly welcoming woods, less than a mile away from where her home sat.
Daphne paused, not quite certain of what precisely had made her steps come to a stop. Breathing in deeply, she caught an unmistakably musky smell—a wild animal smell, clean but earthy—and a spurt of something like fear flowed through her. Whatever kind of animal she smelled, it had to be big; Daphne doubted that a rabbit or a weasel would put off such a strong scent. She licked her lips, thinking. She had tucked a can of bear-mace in her pocket as a basic precaution before leaving the house, but she hoped—she prayed silently to herself—that she wouldn’t have to use it. Most bears, she remembered, were generally fairly peaceful; grizzlies would kill a person as soon as they looked at them, but if she did stumble upon any of the other species, she could possibly carefully back away, imitating submissive behavior, and get out intact, without having to give the poor thing chemical burns to the face.
She took a deep breath and decided to risk it; wolves, she thought, would be barking, or howling—something—in response to her presence. And maybe, she considered hopefully, it was a deer, something like that. Just because the animal was big, didn’t mean it had to be an omnivore or carnivore.
Daphne stepped forward, making her way towards a clearing she could barely make out through the silvery moonlight that shone down in dappled flecks, filtered by the branches and leaves overhead. Somehow, a clearing seemed safer. A clearing would give her the chance to see any approaching animals, take evasive action by climbing a tree before they could reach her. There are animals that can climb trees. Animals that live in trees. Daphne pushed the thought aside; it wasn’t very helpful. She strode forward, keeping her ears as alert as possible to any movement she might be able to hear, occasionally sniffing to catch that elusive animal trace that had alerted her to the fact that she wasn’t quite alone in the depths of the forest.
Stepping through a tangled veil of overgrown vines, Daphne’s foot crunched on dead leaves and then rustled faintly as she came onto the grass. She took a deep breath, exhaling on a sigh as relief flowed through her. She glanced around, appreciating the island of light and calm in the otherwise busy nocturnal life of the woods. She had begun to sink down onto a conveniently placed, flat rock when she heard rustling a few feet away. The sound was followed by a chuffing, slightly stuttering growl, and she was on her feet once more.
Before she could even think of finding a tree to climb into, a pair of bears—huge, to her night-frightened eyes—emerged from the tree line, communicating to each other in trills, barks, and growls. They came to a stop just a few steps away from the edge of the woods, barely in the clearing, and seemed to both look up at her at the same time, staring at her watchfully with soulful, yellow eyes. Somehow—though Daphne couldn’t say how or why—she started to feel her fear ebbing away. There was something like recognition in their body language; there was almost a sense of gentleness. “Hey, boys,” Daphne said, her gaze flicking down to catch sight of their genitals as the two bears stood upright on their hind legs. “I’m sorry I interrupted your foraging.” She smiled, trying to project a nonthreatening demeanor. “I’ll go away, if you want. Do you want that?” One of the two bears looked straight at her and let out a low, querying trill. The other barked an almost-question at the first bear.