Stranded With The Snow Leopard

by Jade White

  “Hey...I’m sorry about the other day,” Kim said. “Did you get the tools?”

  “Yeah, thanks for bringing them back. I noticed I was missing a trowel though,” he said with a sly smile.

  “Well, I might need it to dig out weeds or something,” she replied evasively. She couldn’t bring herself to say that she wanted him to come back.

  “Ah.” They both deftly danced around the elephant in the room. Neither one was willing to face it quite yet.

  Tony returned to the kitchen, followed by Rusty. “Hello there, Kim,” Rusty greeted her. “Hope to see you back at the shop soon.”

  “I hope to go back soon,” she replied. “I really enjoy working there.”

  “I like having you. I hope this personal issue of yours gets sorted out sooner rather than later,” Rusty said while pulling up a seat.

  Tony reverently went to the coffee pot to fix the elder a coffee and Keith stood there wide eyed as the elder sat down.

  “You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” Rusty began. “It’s not just because I want you back to work. I think it’s about time you learned about this place. Your grandfather, when he came to the village, half frozen, found out our secret before we were ready to tell him. He vowed to never tell a soul, and from the looks of things, he kept his word.”

  Rusty nodded to Tony who placed the hot cup on the table. He placed his hands on the mug and looked at it pensively, trying to find a way to explain the village to the poor woman who had already been through so much.

  Keith and Tony looked at their feet and shuffled around nervously. They knew what the elder was about to say and they were both worried about Kim’s reaction.

  “I am the head elder, and shaman of the Predator Springs band of the Cree nation,” Rusty announced formally. “Our band has been purposefully isolated from the rest of the Cree nation for hundreds of years, almost thousands. Ever since the Cree settled the prairies of Alberta and the mountains of British Columbia, we have endured. In the Cree myths and legends, there are rumors of shape shifters. People gifted by the Great Spirit to change into the village’s totem animal. We are one of those villages.”

  Kim’s eyes went wide. She remembered hearing stories from her grandma when she was a little kid about the various villages with shape shifters. They purposefully stayed away from the main nation to keep themselves and the other villages safe, especially after the white man appeared.

  “Our totem animal is the mountain lion. The great and powerful cougar. All offspring in the village have the ability to shift when they come of age. There’s only one problem. Most of the offspring for the past fifty years have been male. So we need to try to bring women from outside to form bonds with so our men can find mates to pass on the ability to the next generation.”

  The elder took a sip of his coffee, to let his story slowly sink in. Kim was amazed at the sheepish look on the men’s faces. Her mind was going a mile a minute. Shifters? Mating? What the hell was going on?

  Rusty studied Kim’s face to gauge her reaction and continued. “The fact that you’re here at the beginning of the season bodes well. You have two strapping young men willing to become your life mate. You can only pick one, though. I know that some tribes encourage their women to have more than one, since it means that her children would be better provided for, but ours, you can only pick one to be your mate.”

  Kim looked at Tony, then to Keith, then back to Tony again. She looked at Rusty helplessly. “But...what if I’m not ready to pick?” she asked.

  “Well, if you’re not ready to pick this year, the burning will get stronger. You will become more influenced by their pheromones as they yours. You will drive them to heights of animalistic lust to the point that they might not be able to control themselves. Their animal natures will take over, and eventually they will stay in their shifted forms forever,“ Rusty answered with a ring of doom.

  Keith piped up. “You know, I’ve felt attracted to you ever since you moved in. I mean, not just physically but I know there’s something more there. I can feel it, you can feel it. I would love for you to stand up with me on the mating day. I will take good care of you and keep you safe. Please don’t let what I am put you off. If anything, I can keep you extra warm on long winter’s nights,” he said with a wink.

  Tony cleared his throat. “I feel the draw to you, and I want you to be mine. I couldn’t help myself yesterday. You drove me to the madness. Just the scent of you makes me wild. I want to possess every part of you. Please accept my offer,” he pleaded.

  Rusty looked at Kim, his black eyes piercing her very soul. He could see the conflict deep within her and knew she wasn’t ready to make a choice just yet. Eventually, though she’ll have to, he saw it in the bones last night.

  Kim looked at both the men and tears began to stream down her face. “I just can’t. I can’t get involved in a relationship yet. Not with anyone. I’m just not ready after all the stuff I’ve been through. Please let me keep my freedom just a little longer? I don’t want Smiley coming after you guys either, I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to either of you because of me.” She was already having a tough time coping with the fact he probably murdered her aunt and uncle because of her. If she would have just gone with him, they would still be alive. She wouldn’t, but one life versus the lives of an entire family, the trade-off seemed unfair.

  Rusty seemed to know what she was thinking. “Look, don’t you go and get some cockamamie notion in your head to go off and let Smiley kill you thinking it’ll keep us safe. It won’t. He knows where we are. He might not know what we are, but it has been the first time a white man has ever set foot in our village uninvited. That is a crime in these lands. Our ancestors fought to eke out this small bit of land away from the white settlers who tried to kill us off. We managed to preserve the old ways and the old legends while the rest of you were systematically brainwashed through residential schools. No white person is allowed here without express invitation of the Elder council, especially that white man.”

  Kim nodded as the elder spoke. “Don’t worry, I won’t,” she whispered. “I still, I’m still not ready for this kind of commitment, and especially to someone I have just met. I need to get to know them a bit better before I can choose. I’ll also feel safer if Smiley were caught.”

  “We can arrange that,” Rusty said confidently. “You have three months to pick. The autumn equinox marks the end of the mating season. If you don’t pick by then, the winter will become unbearable for you, Keith and Tony. The one you don’t choose will go back to being his normal good-natured self, don’t you worry. He won’t go feral because of a little rejection, but both will go feral if you don’t mate with one of them by the equinox, whether this Smiley fella is caught or not.”

  Kim nodded. What had she gotten herself into by moving here? she thought. Cougar shape shifters, life mates, and a shaman that seemed to be a genuine legitimate shaman, not just one in name, like on her home reservation.

  Rusty looked at her. “Do you have any questions for me?” he asked.

  “Well, kind of, but, I don’t know how to phrase it,” Kim stammered.

  “Try me,” Rusty said. “I’ve been around for quite some time and I have fielded many a question from a young woman about to go up for the ceremony. Everything from how the people shape shift to if their penis goes barbed during sex.”

  Kim blushed furiously. She didn’t want to talk about sex to her actual boss.

  “I can see you’ve already been with both of them, so you can answer that question for yourself,” Rusty chuckled.

  “That wasn’t my question. I think it’s more along the lines of, how bad will it get, like the mating burn, if I don’t choose by the equinox.”

  “It will drive you insane. You can’t shift into mountain lion form. You can’t escape the burn like Keith and Tony here can. Even in our human form, we have a heightened sense of smell. You’ve already been exposed to the mating pheromones of both Keith and To
ny. You’ve had a double dose, so if you don’t mate with one of them, you’ll slowly go insane, eventually killing yourself to make it stop.”

  “Wow,” Kim said looking at both Tony and Keith. Their lives, as they knew them, were in her hands. She didn’t want them going off and living as cougars for the rest of their lives, but she didn’t want to make any kind of long term commitment to either of them right away.

  “Okay, I’ll give it until the autumn equinox,” she agreed. Neither Tony nor Keith seemed like bad guys. Three months seemed like a reasonable time to get to know the guy one was going to settle down with.

  Rusty smiled slyly, knowing she might not have three months to make the choice, but he kept that little secret to himself for the time being.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Kim sat at the kitchen table, looking at her bacon and eggs, her appetite vanished with Rusty’s pronouncement. She had to pick one of the men, Keith Mountainside or Tony Underhill, before the autumn equinox, three months away. It would be extremely difficult to pick one of them with Smiley Rockborne, her estranged ex, skulking about, wanting to kill her and all those she held dear.

  She looked at all three men with tears in her eyes. “Please, leave my house. I need to be alone for a while.”

  All three men nodded solemnly and shuffled out of the house. Rusty stopped for a second, his piercing black eyes examining Kim. “You know, you were destined to come here. All this bad, there will be good to come of it in the end. Just be patient, child. I hope to see you at work soon.” With that, Rusty left the house.

  Kim walked to the living room and collapsed on the futon. She pushed a lock of her raven black hair behind her ear and started to tidy up the area. The duvet still smelled of Tony’s musky cologne. She shook her head and picked up the blanket and marched it to the washer -- the less stuff around to cloud her judgment, the better.

  Her mind played over the events of the past couple of weeks. She moved to Predator Springs to escape her psychotic ex, Smiley. She was glad that the band had accepted her membership transfer. First Nations communities didn’t like doing that unless it was a real emergency, and escaping a crazed killer did count as such.

  As Kim went through her house, tidying up, she noticed little reminders each man had left, the lone trowel that she had borrowed from Keith, one of Tony’s socks, and the most obvious sign, the garden mounds in the back yard, already beginning to sprout, which she and Keith put in the day after she had moved into the house.

  She couldn’t wait for the results of her hard work. She might have to talk to Rusty’s wife, Betty, for tips and recipes on how to preserve the bounty throughout the year. Wait, she was acting as if she were staying, when in reality she should be trying to find another area to live before Smiley came back and killed Tony and Keith.

  Her sky blue eyes stared dreamily out the back yard. She reminisced about that warm spring day she and Keith planted the garden; the stories they shared, the jokes they shared, and the smell of the earth as they carefully worked in the seeds. Kim remembered the way he held her while she broke down after she told him about Smiley. His smell, from the exertion, heightened his pheromone levels, and it erased all rational thought from Kim’s brain except for one thing.

  Keith was a very sensitive lover. Her body started to tingle at the memory of their one time together. She longed for his strong, sensitive hands to touch her body again. Keith’s powerful body next to hers felt absolutely right, and his soft, earnest face compelled her to feel again after she locked away all her emotions. She shook her head. No. She shouldn’t think such things. She needed to get out of here. Luckily, a good deal of her things were still in boxes. All the recent drama had put unpacking on the back of her priority list. At least it saved her some work.

  Then, there was Tony, cocky, strong, and relentless. His lean body felt like it was always coiled and ready to pounce and his sharp, handsome features gave his face a predatory cast. Once he found out that Smiley had been after her, he had stepped up his attention to the next level. He insisted on staying over, hoping to catch Smiley as he came for her.

  They wound up fucking as well. It was the only way she could put it. Tony was an insatiable animal, now that’s a bit of choice phrasing right there, she thought to herself. She rubbed her shoulder where he bit her. She needed to put some more ointment on it to help heal it.

  Rusty had told her that they were shifters, and the people in the band were isolated from the rest of the Cree community due to their ability to shift into animal form. The people at Predator Springs were able to change into mountain lions, also called cougars. Out of both men, Tony was the more cougarish type. Keith felt like a soft, cuddly housecat. She giggled to herself at the thought of having a giant feline lounging around the house, soaking up the heat from the wood stove. Seriously, though, she did feel quite safe knowing that the local people had that ability.

  She hadn’t seen one yet, or had she? The night Smiley attempted to abduct her; there was a mountain lion that had chased him off. Could that have been, Keith? She shook her head. It couldn’t have been. But all this was so out of this world, that she would probably believe the Pope was a bear in the woods by now. She had little reason to not believe Rusty’s claims.

  When her grandfather stayed here during that winter so long ago, he had witnessed the shifters hunting. He tried to help as much as he could, but the most he could do was dress the animals they had brought in, and distribute their meat to the rest of the village. He told her about the man-beasts of the isolated village, but she had just passed it off as some fantastical tale from an elder that had been spun to spark the imagination of a young child. As she got older, her belief in fairy tales and old legends waned. The more abuse she suffered, the less belief she had in either the foreign faith she had been force fed as a child, or the old legends of her people. Yet she found herself living in the middle of one.

  Her attention kept getting drawn towards the two garden mounds in her back yard. Maybe she shouldn’t leave. The community was wonderful. The people she met while working at the general store seemed genuinely warm and welcoming to her foreign presence. She might be Cree like them, well half, her father was white, but their village had been so isolated over the centuries that she might as well have been from another planet. The advent of the internet had propelled this remote band into the modern era. It was a nice escape from reality, even though now, the ever present threat of Smiley was hanging around.

  The thing was, if she stayed, she had to pick either Tony or Keith to mate with, for life. Picking one meant both would be able to keep shifting into their human form. If she refused, both would be locked in their cougar form, forever.

  This whole thing was confusing. She didn’t see the harm in getting to know either man, to be honest. She did promise to give them a chance, so she sat down and tried to come up with a proper dating schedule, to minimize conflict. Kim didn’t know what kind of dating life one could have in such a small town, but there had to be something. She grabbed her calendar and noticed there were three months until the autumn equinox. Barring work, and Smiley, she could feasibly fit in enough dates with each of them to pick one.

  She filled in the calendar with a specific color for each man and then found a push pin and stuck the calendar to her wall. Voila, all ready to go. Now to finish cleaning up the house. Her first date with Keith would be tomorrow.

  *

  Keith was sitting on his couch playing Xbox when a polite knock at his door startled him out of his game. He set the controller down and rose from the couch. He wondered who would be coming to see him. Tony was working, and Kim didn’t want anything to do with him as far as he knew. He opened the door and, to his shock, a smiling Kim stood on the other side.

  “Oh wow, hey,” he stammered. “Didn’t expect to see you. Umm, come in?”

  “Thanks,” Kim replied, smiling shyly as she stepped in the door. “Umm, sorry about how I’ve been acting. I just had no idea how to deal with all of this.”
Her eyes swam with tears as she blurted out the heartfelt apology. “Like...”

  Keith put a finger to her lips. “Shh. It’s okay, I get it.” Her full lips felt like soft velvet under his finger, and he struggled to resist the temptation to take her right there in the entryway.

  Kim felt a jolt as Keith touched her lips with his soft finger. She tried to push down the rising tide of desire that welled up within her. She coughed nervously as she gently removed his finger from her lips. “I mean it. I need to make things right between us, get to know you a bit better, and I’ll be honest, the same with Tony as well. I have to pick between you two, so I gotta get to know both of you,” she said, glumly.

  Keith nodded his head sadly. He understood why she had to date both. She was exposed to both of their mating pheromones before she made a choice. It was unheard of that two males courted a female at the same time. “Usually the elder pairs a boy and a girl at a young age, and they get to know each other throughout their lives. Once puberty hits and the pheromones kick in, they choose each other due to the fact they’ve known each other for so long,” Keith explained. “The choice is already made by the time the mating ceremony takes place when the couple hits eighteen and that is that.”

  Keith showed Kim to his couch. He brushed the Doritos crumbs off the cushions and moved the Xbox controller. They sat and Kim smiled at the game he was playing. “Dragon Age? I love that kind of game,” she said. “Anyway, you said that the kids are matched at an early age. What happened to your match?” She asked with genuine concern in her eyes.

  Keith’s soft face became etched with hurt. “She died during her first shifting attempt,” he replied curtly. The pain was almost too much for him, even after twenty years. “Well, not exactly died. She got stuck, couldn’t shift back, and had to be run off into the woods.” He looked at his hands as he revealed one of the most painful moments of his life. “Don’t know what happened to her after that. Getting stuck happens more to females than males, that’s why we don’t have many women around.”