Bear Fursuits Books 1-4: Bear Fursuits

by Montrose, Isadora

  * * *

  Pacific Daily Herald

  Mysterious Crash of Air Force Fighter Jet

  The crash of the U.S. Air Force’s experimental fighter plane on January 28, 2016 remains a mystery. No official explanation has been forthcoming. The plane went down over the Cascades National Forest during a test flight.

  The pilot, Capt. Roman Zhadanov of the U.S. Air Force, disappeared when his air craft crashed over the National Forest on January 28. The plane fragmented on impact, leaving a debris field of several hundred yards. A complex search and rescue mission was mounted by the Air Force, Social Forces, to which Capt. Zhadanov was assigned; the Forest Rangers; and local law enforcement. The five month search has seen a large contingent of local and national search and rescue teams deployed.

  The search was hampered by the extreme density of the area which in many places still approaches virgin wilderness, and by last winter’s unusually deep snow. Hikers, Paul McCabe and Hoyt Craig of Portland Oregon found the first sign of the plane three weeks after it crashed. “We like winter camping,” they explained. “At first we were angry that someone was littering in a pristine forest, but then we realized we were looking at metal that had been in a fire. We took our find to the Ranger Station.”

  Washington State Forest Rangers declined to comment on the crash. “We have notified the Air Force of this find. We are of course prepared to assist them in any way. Speculating on the cause of the crash, at this juncture, would be unhelpful and outside of our remit,” Ranger George Adamson of the North Cascades Station told the press.

  In May, the Air Force announced that the Black Box had been recovered from Capt. Zhadanov’s plane. General Peter Halifax read the following statement, “We expect this device to give us a clearer idea of how this terrible accident occurred.” To date there has been no official explanation for how or why an experimental aircraft that cost hundreds of millions of dollars to develop and build came to grief.

  Including the black box, eventually 1,687 lbs of metal and plastic were recovered from the site. The term Black Box is actually a misnomer. This onboard recording device is in fact housed in bright orange shatterproof plastic, which explains why it was among the first items recovered. Once a crash occurs, the Black Box emits a radio signal for up to seventy-six days.

  The body of Capt. Zhadanov has never been found. Zhadanov was a resident of Washington State. As a young child he was adopted from Ukraine and lived in the town of Hanover. He attended the Kittitas Regional High School where he played quarterback for the Kittitas Bears, and center for the Kittitas Wolves, before being accepted at the Air Force Academy. Admission to the Academy requires an exemplary academic and athletic record as well as a letter of recommendation from the applicant’s Congressperson.

  Capt. Zhadanov was a graduate of the Air Force Academy . He had been awarded both the Air Force Cross and the Air Force Distinguished Service Medal. “He had a brilliant future ahead of him,” his commanding officer, Col. Amherst told the press. “His death is a great loss to the nation.”

  Capt. Zhadanov was 28. He was a bachelor. He leaves a large extended family including his adoptive parents, Klara and Vanya Zhadanov. “He was our only child. He was brave boy always. Smart, very smart boy. Strong too. A fine son. A proud American.

  “We are sad but proud to have given our son to this great nation,” said Mr. Vanya Zhadanov, himself a naturalized citizen from Ukraine.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Pacific Daily Herald

  Parachute Found In Woods Could Be That Of Missing Air Force Pilot.

  A parachute stamped with the insignia of the United States Air Force was discovered by chance in the Cascades National Forest. Olympia residents Eileen Couto and Jim Hendrik were on a canoe trip in early April when they spotted debris in the tree canopy. “We just wanted to preserve the beauty of the forest, so we climbed up and cut it down.”

  The parachute is of the same type and manufacture as the parachute believed to have been worn by U.S. Air Force pilot Capt. Roman Zhadanov when the experimental aircraft he was flying crashed over the National Forest three years ago in January. A spokesman for the Air Force told the press that an attempt to identify the parachute was being made. “It would be premature to identify this chute with a particular individual,” announced Capt. Ralph Zimmer.

  Two years after the plane’s fatal plunge into the forest, the Air Force announced that they were now satisfied that the crash was due to mechanical causes. “We have found no evidence to suggest operator error, or terrorism, as the root causes of this disaster, as has been suggested. The loss of Capt. Zhdanov’s life remains a tragedy.”

  No trace of Capt. Zhadanov’s remains were ever found. The Air Force has announced it will shortly be mounting another search for such remains in the vicinity of the trees where the parachute was found. “It has been presumed from the first that Zhadanov died as a result of this event. At this time, we have no reason to believe this presumption will change,” Capt. Zimmer announced in his prepared statement. “However, the U.S. Military remains committed to finding the remains of all fallen service people.”

  The Washington Air Guard and the Washington Forest Rangers have agreed to assist the Air Force in the search for the remains of Capt. Zhadanov.

  * * *

  Spring...

  The Black Bear emerged from his winter sleep with a violent headache. He was hungry. He hurt. He felt reckless and angry. He left his den in the side of a knoll slowly blinking his amber eyes in the April sunshine.

  His massive rear paws kicked earth up over the entrance of his den before he followed his nose to horsetails growing by the river. He ate a vast number of them and waded into the water to drink. Silvery trout flashed past and he put out a casual paw and harvested one. It was fat and delicious and he caught another and another.

  When he was replete he wandered back into the forest and found a broad Douglas Fir that soared sixty feet into the air. He stood on his hind legs and marked the trunk as high up as he could. His claws left three foot long scars on the trunk that began fifteen feet up.

  Satisfied, the bear turned around and used the lower portion of the tree as a back scratcher. He left hanks of heavy, Black Bear fur in the bark when he resumed his patrol of his territory. He smelled a female. He followed her trail, stomp marking to let other males know to keep out of his land and away from his females.

  The sow was a comely young female. She was a little lean from her long hibernation and she had two cubs with her. She snarled at him and interposed her body between her cubs and his own male threat. The male shook his head at her and clicked reassuringly. He sniffed the air.

  This female was not his mate. He was not sure how he knew. Also she was not in season. He sniffed the cubs. They were not his. They were fine little fellows, tumbling after one another and too young to be as afraid as the bear dimly understood they should be. He thought it would be fun to join their game, but their dam rushed at him snarling and he ducked back into the woods reluctant to fight with a female.

  His domain was large. He set off to see if he could find his mate. He could not remember what she looked like but he was certain she was a fat, fecund, desirable female. Periodically he stopped to scent the air. Twice he had to threaten juvenile males who had had the temerity to try to enter his territory. They were much smaller than he was and backed down and drifted away unhappily.

  There were salmon berries growing by the pool in the deep woods. He remembered them from last year. He remembered something else. There had been danger here. The danger came from tall animals with sticks that made thunder. He knew he should know other things about those animals. But their scent made him feel angry and scared all at once. Puzzling over them made his head ache.

  He padded silently all around the brush that grew close to the pool. He could not smell the bad animals. Or only faintly as if it had been around a long time ago. He ate mouthfuls of delicious berries. The juices ran down his mouth and stained his golden muzzle
pink.

  He resisted the temptation to mark the pool and the bushes as his. He wandered on his lonely patrol. There was an elderly female in season moaning in a clearing. She had attracted a couple of boar bears with her mating calls and they were challenging one another.

  The black bear looked contemptuously at their lean flanks and compared them with his own muscular haunches. He was taller too. But this female did not smell right. She wasn’t his delicious mate. He was not going to fight for her. He climbed silently up onto a rocky outcrop and watched the duel interestedly.

  The older of the two competing males was a grizzled veteran with a black-brown head covered in patches of white that indicated his old mating wounds. The younger bear was cinnamon colored. His muzzle was pale cream and his head unscarred. He rushed at the older bear who feinted and let him rush past. When he turned to resume his attack, the wily old bear knocked into him hard enough to toss him in the air.

  The young bear pulled himself up and shook his head. He left the little clearing at a gallop. To the bear on the rocks, the entire battle seemed funny. He chortled in a most unbearlike manner. The boar and sow below attended to their business without paying him any mind.

  The sun was now high enough to warm the bear on the rocks. With a happy sigh he settled himself to have a nap in the spring sunshine. Later he would look for more food and for his lost mate. He dreamed in the sun, whatever dreams bears have.

  CHAPTER SIX

  As she had done for the last three years, Gabriella Malcom woke to the sorrowful realization that her mate—her one and only love—was dead. She had dreamed again of her handsome lover and her entire body ached with unfulfilled passion and grief. Roman was dead. She had to move on. Why was it so desperately hard?

  In the three years since Roman’s plane had crashed, Gabriella knew she had merely gone through the expected motions. She had completed her final year of engineering at Berkeley. She had taken a job in Germany when a favorite professor recommended her. She had fulfilled her German contract to the highest expectations of her employers. But that long anticipated opportunity, that once-in-a-lifetime chance, had been a weirdly joyless experience.

  When she returned to Seattle she joined the construction company that one of her moms, Jools Malcom, worked for. They had been eager to have Gabriella. She had worked several summers for them as part of various crews. They trusted her as an engineer because they knew she understood the difficulties of the actual work.

  It was all very well and good to draw plans to satisfy the building code. Gabriella’s talent was getting around the practical difficulties of the job, so that the guys with hammers could do their jobs safely and quickly, while respecting the parameters of the rules.

  It was a great job. One she had trained for pretty much her whole life. She did it well. She got raises. She got praised. But she knew she was going through the motions instead of imbuing her work with passion.

  She had moved out of her childhood home into her own apartment, mostly because she was tired of the moms’ constant comments about her social life, or rather lack of social life. It was so unfair. She attended family functions. She babysat regularly for Jack and Hannah. Hannah might only be her sort-of-sister, but she loved her dearly. And she adored her two nieces and one nephew.

  Ava, Olivia and Liam were the sweetest, naughtiest three-year-olds on the planet. She was never happier than when she had them to herself. When they were bathed and pajamaed and snuggled against her, listening to a story, she could imagine they were her own kids.

  If she and Roman had had babies they would have been just such bad, merry cubs. Dark haired and dark eyed. Energetic and intelligent. It wasn’t fair.

  * * *

  “Have you read today’s paper?” Ma asked.

  “No, Ma, I haven’t even looked at the news online,” Gabby told Winnie Malcom. “I just got up, and my coffee’s not even brewed. What’s up?”

  “Someone found a parachute in the Kittitas National Forest. An Air Force parachute in the canopy of a stand of maples.” Winnie paused. “Don’t get your hopes up, but what they didn’t find was bones.”

  Gabriella gulped and gripped her cell with whitened fingers. “Roman,” she whispered.

  “It could be. Maybe. The Air Force has issued a statement saying that the remains of Capt. Roman Zhadanov were never found after the crash of his aircraft, but he was presumed dead. And that they have no reason to believe that assumption to be false.”

  “Does Jack know?”

  “He called me. He didn’t want to get your hopes up, and he thought it would be better if the news came from me.”

  Jack Enright, Hannah’s husband, mate and father of her children, was Roman’s older cousin. They had grown up in the same tight shifter clan. Roman’s death had been a grievous blow to the entire family.

  “Is the Air Force going to look?” Gabby asked.

  “Yes. So they say. Not too hard, by the sound of it. Probably think he was eaten by bears.” Winnie’s voice was dark with bitter humor.

  “If he’s not dead, why wouldn’t he have come home?” Gabby question went to the heart of the matter.

  “If anyone could have survived that crash, it would be that boy,” agreed Winnie. “He was as tough as nails, and twice as determined.”

  “And a bear,” Gabby reminded her.

  “That too.”

  “If he was hurt, he could have hibernated the way Jack did when he was hurt so bad in Uzbekistan.”

  Winnie sighed. “No bear could hibernate for three years, sweetheart. He’d starve to death,” she told her daughter gently.

  Gabriella choked back her sobs. Not even the moms knew how deeply she still mourned her lover. “We’ll see what they turn up,” she managed. “Maybe if they find his body, it’ll give us all closure.”

  Fuck closure. She didn’t want closure. She wanted the strong and virile body of her stalwart warrior, her first, her only lover, clasped in her loving arms.

  * * *

  That night, Gabby slipped into a sorrowful slumber in which her cell phone rang fruitlessly. Roman hung up before she could find it. He left no message. Her dream altered.

  Her nocturnal lover came to her bed and kissed her with a kind of animal passion. She put her hands against his lean face and encountered a long and bushy beard. He growled when she tugged at it and thrust his tongue into her mouth to sweep the inside of her cheeks and palate with loving forays that aroused her passion, so that she fought him for control of their kisses.

  He was naked and so was she. Her demure flannel nightgown, which buttoned to the neck against the chilly April night, was gone. He laughed into her mouth as his big rough hands learned her curves afresh. His palms cupped the abundant flesh of her breasts and felt their pliant heaviness. Pleasure vibrated through his big hairy body as he lifted his mouth away from hers to taste the bounty in his hands.

  Gabriella felt her nipples pulse as he suckled first one and then the other, wakening them from their long slumber so that they swelled and distended almost painfully. A hot spear of delight ran straight from her enkindled breasts straight to the heart of her pussy. Her passage began to pulse in rhythm with his sucking and she felt herself grow first damp then wet.

  She could smell the musk of their two entwined and grappling bodies. His potent aroma was an aphrodisiac and yet she felt in the midst of this intense animal mating, a deep emotional bond with her lover. She wrapped her arms more tightly around him as if to anchor him to her forever.

  Her lover growled and kissed his way from breasts to navel, swept a scouring tongue in her little dimple, and finally pressed his nose into her bush. His mouth opened over the neat triangle of curling black hair and he breathed in with a grunt of satisfaction and lust.

  She squirmed with readiness. She was eager for either the hot provocation of his mouth and tongue on her tender flesh, or for the satisfaction of his granite hard spear. She had felt its adamantine force against her thigh and belly, and now it knocked
against her shins.

  Her lover tested her with a long forefinger, without any pretense of deference or patience. He obviously found her slick passage to his taste for she could hear him lick his finger with a growl of satisfaction. And then his cock, hot, long and thick was penetrating her tight and lonely sheath.

  Desperately, urgently, he lunged his full length into her welcoming depths. She responded by squeezing his cock with all her interior muscles so that even as he began to thrust he moaned like a man in pain. Gabriella wound her legs around his hips and set her heels into the hard twin globes of his muscular backside.

  As one they moved in the ancient dance. Their hot thrusts were noisily wet. Their combined scent rose in waves from their sweating energetic bodies. She came and he laughed in her ear, brushing his beard against the smoothness of her cheek and continuing his fierce pounding.