Authors: Isadora Montrose
Tags: #General Fiction
Until now, she had not really understood what he meant when he said she was his mate. But today her shift had made it obvious to her that he was hers. And that part of being a bear was being able to smell emotion. She spun around. Faced him. Her mouth opened and a low, urgent moan issued from her throat.
Steve responded immediately to the noise she had made. He moaned back at her on an even deeper note. But she knew his moan meant the same as hers. I love you. In bear, it seemed, she was incapable of lying to him.
She didn’t know if she could lie to other creatures, she supposed she must be able to. Bears were predators. And predators had to deceive their prey. But she was not Steve’s prey. She was his mate, and infinitely precious to him, as he was to her. She had not thought it was possible to be so happy, to enjoy her senses so completely. She gave herself up to the uncomplicated joy of being a she-bear romping with her mate.
* * *
Steve had fully expected that he would find Laura as desirable in her bear form as he found her as a woman. How not? She was his fated mate. But it had never crossed his mind that her bear would be so tiny.
She was only half-grown. A bear cub really. He supposed that if you never acknowledged your bear, never took it out for a run, it didn’t grow up.
Laura’s bear was a pale golden color that was not quite cream and not quite tan.
In fact, Laura’s fur was the same soft color as her muff. But she was pretty. From her little pale ears, to her stub of a waggling tail, she was adorable.
Springing this on her had been the right thing to do. She smelled happy. He splashed water at her. She responded by bouncing in the stream. Her little bear cub paws splashed him back. She wetted his belly. That was as high as she could make the water go. He feinted at her. She took off running, while he lumbered behind laughing.
Their game took them far upstream. Here the banks rose even above the water on both sides. The rocky shore gave way to reeds and grasses. On the far bank, salmonberry bushes grew out over the water and dangled temptingly over their heads. The berries had ripened. The fragrance was rich in the humid air.
He saw the moment that Laura noticed the pink berries. She plumped down on her haunches in the water. He could see she was trying to figure out how to get to the tantalizing fruit.
She stood up on her hind legs, but even with her forelimbs extended the fruit was just out of reach. He felt like a hero coming up behind her, and standing up so he could use his long forelimbs to force the branches down to his mate’s greedy mouth. She began to gobble as if they had not just eaten the picnic lunch.
He nibbled a few berries, but his delight came in watching his mate feed. But this was not just about provisioning his wife, this was about setting her spirit free. He had a feeling that Laura was never going to be the same again, and his spirit rejoiced with hers.
Her pale snout was stained pink by her feast, and still she wanted more. She scrambled up the deep sides of the stream bed, plowing through the rushes and weeds to get to the bushes. Steve followed behind. He was no longer hungry, but he suspected Laura was ravenous because she was in cub.
Probably there was no danger out here, where there were no people, but the thought of letting her out of his sight made him uneasy, and he had long learned to listen to his intuition.
The roots of the bushes were six feet above the water and the climb to the top of the bank was steep. Twice he had to shove at Laura’s bottom to stop her tumbling backwards.
The far side of the salmonberry bushes held even more fruit. The birds had not yet found the berries and the clusters were heavy. Steve crouched behind Laura enjoying the sight of her feasting.
Yet up here, on the higher ground, it was not only the scent of fruit that he could detect. The breeze carried the distinctive aroma of cattle to his sensitive nose. It took a moment, before his brain registered that there should have been no cattle to smell. None at all.
Laura had told him that this entire sector was being left fallow until June, as summer grazing. He nudged her gently with his shoulder. She turned and butted him playfully with her head, bouncing away. She began to scamper through the high grass, playing at hide and seek.
He was briefly exasperated. But, of course, in bear, Laura was just a baby. He could remember when his younger brothers and sisters had come into their bears. How annoying they had been when they were taken into the woods. They had frisked and frolicked and made noise, scaring the animals, and messing up their spoor.
Laura plainly had not yet smelled the cows. But the wind was bringing him the distinctive, musky aroma of domestic cattle, overlaid with the pungent smell of fresh dung. Since he had no way of telling Laura what he thought, he set off towards the smell. She bounced after him. He turned. She was invisible in the high grass. But the tall stalks waved in her wake, so he knew she was following.
He wondered how long it would be before she noticed the scent of cattle on the wind. He didn’t have long to wait. Two paws bopped him on the ass. When he turned and whuffed at her over his shoulder, she was excited and urged him on.
He headed into the wind. He listened carefully for people or vehicles, but heard nothing. They padded along for several minutes until they were close enough that he could hear cattle lowing. Now and again, a calf bleated and was answered by a deeper moo from its dam.
Abruptly the high grass ended, and the ground dropped away. They were standing at the top of a rise. Erosion had exposed a twenty-foot slope of white limestone on which nothing grew. Below them a vast herd of cows grazed in a natural pen formed by a hollow in the prairie.
Laura was bouncing about trying to get a better look. He turned sideways and braced himself. Annoyed, she swung her haunches into him. And then she realized what he meant. She braced her front paws on his back and looked out over his broad back.
Without warning, she turned and began to scurry back the way they had come. He couldn’t know of course, what was in her mind, but he figured she had something to tell him. The sooner they were back in human the better. He was damned if he could figure why there should be cattle on land she had told him was lying fallow.
Together they scrambled down the bank and crossed the stream and stalked back along the stony shore to where they had left their blanket. Steve took his human form again, and kept an eye on Laura who seemed to be having difficulties.
It was a little comical to see her round ass and lovely thighs take shape, when her torso and head were still pale and creamy bear. But her moans distressed him. He knew her shift was still painful and difficult, but he knew no way other than frequent practice to change that.
Laura would simply have to go through this phase as every other shifter had done before her. She looked tired, when she was back in woman. But she wrestled her tight leathers back on as quickly as she could.
“I have to call Gary,” she said urgently. “We need to put a guard on those animals.”
She had her satellite phone in her hand and was giving Gary Evans orders, before she had thrust her feet into her boots.
Steve deduced from their conversation that Gary was as astonished as he was. What the hell was this all about?
“I don’t have the exact coordinates,” she said. She gave Gary the GPS coordinates for their picnic spot. “I’ll expect you in an hour,” she said. “As soon as we get back over there, I’ll give you the updated coordinates.”
They packed up swiftly. “Do you know how we can get across the stream and back into the open range from the road?” he asked her.
“This is my land. You bet I know.”
“But first I want to know what the hurry is.”
“We’re missing two thousand head of cattle,” she said. “We figured they were taken by rustlers. But it looks like I found some of them. We have to get them moved before the cattle thieves come back.”
If Laura had slapped his face, he could not have felt more hurt. So much for her loving him. She didn’t even trust him enough to share her troubles.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Laura had a moment of panic when it seemed that she could not get her upper body to return to human. She glanced across at Steve. He stopped doing up the snaps on his shirt. She read dismay and sympathy on his face, not amusement, but it spurred her efforts to take human.
She didn’t know how he had managed his shift so quickly and without apparent pain. She once again felt as if her entire body was being remade by an angry giant. But at last the wrenching experience was over and she was back in human form, even if she was trembling and sweaty. It was hard to tussle her leathers on over her damp skin, but she managed.
She had to call Gary and get those cows where they could control them. Gary could hardly believe what she had found. He was full of questions, but she cut him off. The important thing was to get the animals secured and moved before whoever had collected them in this spot returned.
Steve’s blank face frightened her. He was moving with the speed that the situation called for, but he wasn’t happy. She began to pack up the picnic things. Steve folded the picnic blanket. She wasn’t surprised when he demanded an explanation. His face got even harder when she gave it.
He said nothing about the rustling. But he opened the lockbox in front of the driver’s seat, took out a pistol and a pair of field glasses and handed both to her.
“I hope you know how to use a handgun,” he said.
She checked the clip by way of answer. She fastened the buckle of her helmet, and was ready to ride. They were no longer two lighthearted lovers on an excursion, but hunters. And even though she could feel his dismay, she could tell he was still determined to keep her safe.
They rode slowly north along the gravel road until she found the gap that would allow them to enter the fields on the other side of the stream. A motorcycle was never a quiet ride, but Steve barely fed any gas, and she thought they would hear the approach of any other vehicles.
Taking the motorcycle through the tall grass was not risk-free, but Steve was a careful driver and ATVs had broken a four-foot path for them to follow. They bumped through four sections that had been fenced, sticking to the track that had been squashed into the grass as the small four-wheeled vehicles came and went.
The track continued past where the Double B fences ended, and their open range began. Eventually the ATV tracks turned north. They kept going west until they came to the rise from which they had spotted the herd. The motorcycle could not descend the slope safely. Steve turned off the ignition.
“I think this is the best place to wait for Gary,” he whispered. “It’s not perfect cover, but at least it provides some.” He laid the motorcycle on its side in the grass and pulled stalks of grass around it to conceal it. “We’ll only be visible if the rustlers come from the direction of the herd, but I don’t think that is very likely.”
“I agree,” Laura kept her own voice hushed. She pulled out her phone and called Gary back.
“I think I know the spot,” the foreman said when she read him her coordinates.
She called the Sheriff next. Ramirez promised to send a couple of deputies.
It was boring, sitting in the hot sun waiting for her hands to arrive, but she amused herself counting cows. They moved around so much, and there were so many of them, all the same glossy black, that she kept having to begin again.
“I got as high as eight hundred,” he whispered in her ear.
“I haven’t got past six hundred,” she whispered back. “I think there’s more than a thousand, but I can’t be sure.”
They were silent after that. She didn’t really think that they were going to catch any rustlers today. Those cattle had been moved and left in this secluded spot, to be collected when wanted. It would take a great deal of luck for their accidental spotting of the missing animals to coincide with the rustlers’ decision to move all or part of the herd. But the more she thought about it, the more audacious the entire scheme seemed.
It was a great relief, to see the convoy of Double B pickup trucks coming along the county road. Steve made her lie down on her stomach so that the grass would hide them from the new arrivals. It was uncomfortable. She was hot. She itched. But Steve was implacable.
She used Steve’s field glasses to be sure that the men driving the trucks were known to her. Gary was in the middle. That was like him. She suspected that if he’d wanted to take the lead, he could’ve made his men breathe his dust for the entire route. But of course he had taken his turn to ride behind others.
Gary had brought six pickup trucks loaded with ATVs. They made slow progress once they were off the county road. Between the high grass, the gopher holes, and the rocky outcrops that were just natural features of the terrain, they had to go slowly because otherwise they were likely going to break an axle or lose a wheel.
Steve stood up and brushed himself off and helped her to her feet. He picked up the motorcycle and pulled clumps of grass out of it and said, “Let’s go.” She touched base with Gary on the sat phone, put her helmet back on, and got aboard. They headed north to find the route the ATVs had used to get to the hollow.
She had never before realized how much the men who worked for her liked her. They slapped each other on the back and whooped and hollered with glee. They seem to feel that she had been especially clever to locate her missing cattle.