Authors: Vonna Harper
“I was born a human,” he began. “As a small boy, I believed my parents had died.”
“Believed? You mean it wasn’t true?”
“No. An elderly woman who I assumed was my grandmother raised me.”
“She lied to you?”
Much as he wanted to believe Rane felt sorry for the child he’d once been, he didn’t dare let that distract him.
“That was to protect me from saying things I shouldn’t to outsiders, to protect my true identity. A child accepts the world he finds himself in. Then
they
came for me. Said it was time for me to embrace my destiny.” He hated revisiting the emotions that had overwhelmed him that fateful day and had no doubt they showed in the way he held himself and how the words came out.
“They?”
“Bear shifters. We call ourselves Enyeto.”
“Enyeto?”
“Eskimo for walks as a bear. My
grandmother
and I lived in a small, remote village. I was too young to wonder how someone who didn’t work was able to keep a roof over our heads. A few weeks before I was taken away, she started acting different. Distancing herself from me. I thought I’d done something wrong, but we’d never been good at communicating, so I didn’t know how to ask. The day the Enyeto came, she told me she’d been trying to make things easier for me.”
“I don’t understand,” Rane said and sank back onto the couch. “You were doing whatever it was little boys in the middle of nowhere do. Living an ordinary life when suddenly these strange people—were they in human form?”
“Yes.”
She looked relieved. “Okay. So these men and women showed up and—”
“Only men.”
“Only men.” Her fingers trailed over the knife handle. “They knocked on the door and said pack your things, you’re coming with us.”
“In essence.” The truth was, the moment he’d looked into coal eyes much like his own, he’d known he belonged with them.
“I don’t understand.” Rubbing her thighs, she leaned toward him. Just like that, her impact doubled.
“You will in time. Because you fuck an elk shifter, you must know how it is for them.”
“How what is?”
“The way they are at birth. What are they, elk or human?”
Her hesitancy said she wasn’t sure she should answer. “Elk.”
“Tell me, please.”
“I, ah, guess. Every one comes from a cow elk. The females don’t shift. From everything I’ve been able to determine, they’re one hundred percent animal. For the first year, all calves are nurtured by the cows. Then they push the yearlings away to make room for the next year’s calves. The bulls move into the male society, where they’re guided into life as shifters.”
Her features sobered. “It’s always bothered me that after the first year, the males never have anything more to do with their mothers, and their mothers, because they’re what they are, forget who they gave birth to.”
“Oh.”
“You’re right, oh. Different strokes for different folks.”
What she’d just said made little sense, but then maybe he’d never understand the nuances of human speech. He often felt like an outsider during human conversations. Maybe, if things turned out the way they needed to between this mountain woman and himself, she’d guide him toward greater comprehension.
“When does a bull elk learn he’s more than an animal?” he asked.
She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “It’s different for each one but basically when adolescence begins. Songan told me it’s tied into sexual maturation. Older males are always there to insure that the youngsters understand what’s happening to them.”
“That’s good.”
“More than good—essential. There’s so much that needs to be learned. When does a boy start to become a bear shifter?”
Heartened by her curiosity, he granted himself a slight smile. “The process, which takes the better part of a year, begins before adolescence. I wasn’t yet nine when it started. I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s so an Enyeto grows up accepting his existence.”
“Wait.” She pressed her hand to her forehead. “Male bear shifters are born to human mothers, only somehow the Enyeto know which infants belong to them? They what, harvest them? My God, that has to be devastating to their human parents.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Looking as if she’d forgotten she had hold of it, Rane stared at her knife. He wondered if she still believed herself capable of using it on him, or if she had at the beginning. “What then?”
Getting her to fully comprehend might be easier if she was in his arms, but maybe if their bodies so much as touched, they’d never get around to words. And maybe his touch would repel her.
Chapter Eight
“Shifters are born to sows,” Ber explained. Saying the words made him feel as if he’d come to the end of a long search. Finally, he’d found a woman he trusted with the truth. “The male newborns, which are identical to human infants, are taken from the sows—I’ve done that—and placed with humans to raise for the first few years.”
“No way! How—damn, I don’t know what I’m saying—how do you get some woman to nurture a baby knowing she’d have to give it up?” She flattened her hand over her heart. “The vast majority of women aren’t made that way, and those who are shouldn’t have children.”
Knowing they’d eventually get to this point didn’t make it any easier. “We carefully select the surrogates.”
“Do you? Or do you rip little boys from the only mothers—or grandmothers, as in your case—they’ve ever known?”
“No.” He’d been sitting too long and needed movement, but the only place he wanted to go was toward her. “Rane, the Enyeto kind have always lived in Alaska. Near the Inuit.”
“Which is Eskimo for The People. Are you saying you have some kind of arrangement with them?”
“No matter how much whites study and think they know about Alaska’s indigenous people, they’ll never be privy to certain things.”
“Ber, I’m a wildlife biologist working for the Forest Service. Before my mom—I’d just accepted a transfer to Alaska. I know more than a lot of people about that incredible wild country, and yet I never—what kind of things?”
He had to tell her. Otherwise, they’d never move beyond this point. “A heritage that goes back to when the land bridge connecting Siberia to America existed. Tradition. Cultures people like you believe no longer exists.”
“Too much.” Mouth open, she pushed herself to her feet, plodded over to the window and looked out with the knife dangling at her side. She seemed to have forgotten he was there. “I can’t absorb all this.”
Aware of every heartbeat, he waited her out. If necessary, he’d continue the explanation but hoped she would start to put things together on her own.
Arms still dragging at her side and knife appearing too heavy to hold, she faced him. “What are you doing here? I don’t mean tonight. I’m talking about being in Oregon. Did you come alone or are others with you? Maybe they’re out there, closing in, taking over.”
“I’m alone.”
Closing her eyes, she started to lean back against the window. Straightening, she stared at him. “Why?”
“I was chosen to determine if this is where some of us will relocate to.”
“Go on.”
Her lips had barely moved. Despite that and her clenched teeth, her mouth was soft. If he pressed his to hers, she’d respond. Their tongues would dance, their breaths meet.
“We knew this would eventually happen,” he explained. “That eventually there’d be too many of us in one place.”
“Too many? You’re talking about Alaska.”
“Only a small part of it. A safe region where we’re accepted.”
“Which is where?”
“I can’t tell you, yet.”
“Oh.”
She’d better not say the word again because if she did and her lips softened as they just had, he’d be on her. Over her. In her.
Willing his thoughts to return to what needed to be said, he took a deep breath. “The Inuit there embrace us. We’re part of their culture and belief system. With their help, we’ve thrived. Too much so.”
“Overpopulation?”
Amusement looked good on her, but then her every emotion, even sorrow for her mother, captivated him.
“Yes.”
“So some of you are looking to, ah, move elsewhere?”
She was trying to put what was happening to the Enyeto in terms she understood. He just hoped he could deal with her sensuality and the effort wouldn’t make him lose sight of how vital she was to his kind’s survival.
“We need a safe place to live.”
“Why here?”
If he pointed at the couch, would she sit back down? He doubted it. “I told you. The humans who live in or near the Chinook Mountains accept elk shifters.”
“Yes.” She made the word last a long time. “We do. Most of us anyway.”
“Most?”
“It’s complicated. Do you really care?”
“I must.”
“Of course. That was stupid for me to say. Sorry. I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that we’re having this conversation.”
“So am I.”
“I, ah, didn’t think about that. All right, when the elk shifters are in human form, they’re strong, hard workers. Not a single
man
is motivated by money. They simply need to be doing something physical. Only this area doesn’t need any more strong backs. Men like some of those who were in the Sawmill resent having to compete with shifters for the few timber jobs.”
Much as he tried to comprehend what she’d just told him, human concerns mattered little. Physical activity was essential, being rewarded for that activity a foreign concept.
“A question,” she said. “One I never in a million years thought I’d be asking. When the Enyeto have on their human skins, what do they do? I mean, how do you earn a living?”
He held up his big, scarred hands. “I build.”
“Construction?”
“Because of the elements, road work never ends in Alaska.”
“Okay. All right. No.” Turning away a little, she pressed her hand against the windowpane. He imagined the night cold seeping into her flesh. “Not all right. Where do I fit into this?”
Much as he wanted to wait until there was more between them, he couldn’t. Better, maybe, to say it now. “As my mate.”
Shock transformed her, but even with the loss of color in her cheeks, she was still beautiful to him. Knife now clenched in both hands, she stalked toward him. “Get the hell out of here.”
“Rane—”
“Listen to me, Ber.” The knife tip touched the base of his throat. Her eyes raged. “I’m dealing with my mother’s murder. I’m a strong woman, maybe stronger than any you’ve ever known. I want nothing to do with you, get it? Nothing!”
When this was all over, she was going to head for someplace warm and sit in the sun until her flesh shriveled like a forgotten piece of fruit. She’d chug fruity drinks with tiny umbrellas in them and flirt with shirtless hunks. Hopefully bed a few of them. Maybe, although she was a bit young for it, she’d pick up a toy boy and parade him around. Of course she’d have to become something resembling rich if she was going to attract them, but she could dream.
Mostly she wanted the sun on her back and no worries. No murder mystery and absolutely no shape-shifters. Positively no damnable bear-man wanting to hump her.
Rechecking the front lock, Rane admitted that her crazy thoughts were a temporary shield against reality, a damn ineffective shield. Cabanas and bikinis aside, she was heading for her bedroom, which happened to be at the back of a house stuck in the middle of a forest and maybe a grizzly waiting outside.
No more bear thoughts, she warned as she crawled between the sheets. And no thinking about what Songan was doing to what tonight.
Stretching out, she willed the homeopathic sleeping aid she’d taken to do its job. Any other woman in her position would be fighting sleep. That woman would be sitting in the lighted living room with a loaded gun sweeping from the door to window and back again.
Then again that decidedly more intelligent woman would have already called 911 and be speeding away.
“Mom,” she whispered, “would you be disappointed if I just let the sheriff’s department do their job? I mean, what do I think I am, some psycho avenger?”
No, she wasn’t. Even at her most insane right after she’d learned her mother had been murdered, she hadn’t believed that of herself. She simply was someone who’d lost her mother in a way no
child
ever should.
To complicate her life, she sometimes had sex with a half elk, half human, and as of tonight a bear shifter was lusting after her and determined to return.
Lusting. Sex. Two conditions guaranteed to have her climbing the walls. Maybe not the wall thing. More like trying to ignore the hot fingers currently slipping over her body. Darn it, she’d had sex today. She shouldn’t be sliding her hand between her legs and jumping when a practiced thumb touched her waiting and willing flesh.
Her nipples tightened, prompting her to work her free hand under her nightgown and finger her sensitive nubs. A little friction made them ache and quickened her breathing. The hand against her sex quieted. Moisture oozed over her fingers. Fighting to ignore her body’s encouragement, she sighed and rolled onto her back. Bending her knees so she could play with herself seemed like too much work after the day she’d had. Besides, her nipples had started to soften.
She was exhausted, worn out physically and mentally and every other way. She hadn’t become less of a sexual creature simply because she didn’t feel like masturbating tonight. Tomorrow, if she lasted until then, was soon enough for…
Her breathing slowed, and the time between each inhale increased. At the back of her mind she wondered if falling asleep was the last thing she should be doing; still, it felt so good to let go.
At first, gray dominated. Then the fog thickened and was replaced by black. Night, probably. Night, and no moon and trees between her and the stars. Maybe clouds had gotten in the way of the sky.
Too much to think about. Drifting was better. Sinking into—into something.
She was walking, lightly stepping on packed ground and lifting one leg and then the other over random rotting logs. Being barefoot wasn’t a problem, because nothing was there to poke the bottom of her feet. It was good to have tough feet. And strong legs. And no clothes between her and the warm breeze.