I woke up the next morning and knew something was different. It wasn’t that I woke up with a smile on my face, even though I did. It wasn’t that there was a beautiful woman in bed beside me, because there was, and she was deliciously warm and asleep. It wasn’t that I felt satisfied, at peace, and maybe even in love.

It wasn’t any of that. It was that I felt Sasha. Her brain was asleep, her heart worked in her chest, her stomach worked to let her know she was hungry. I felt all of that, if I was quiet and breathed softly. I felt her heart beat, and her emotions as she dreamed. When she felt anxiety in her dream, I felt it, and it made my breath come faster. I couldn’t hear her then, so I made myself calm.

She was there, she was real, and it hadn’t all been a dream. I also felt something that made me uneasy. Her body had started to change. I’d given her my essence, my bear, and now she was about to change. Her wounds had healed in her sleep, her ribs repaired and even her arm was now fully mended. Everything had changed, in her sleep. How was I supposed to explain this to her?

I slid out of the bed, ran into the bathroom for a quick shower, and then made breakfast. By the time she got up and walked into the kitchen, her eyes squinted against the gleam of sunlight that bounced off of the snow outside, I had breakfast made.

“Something’s different.” She muttered as she came up to kiss me. I held her in my arms for a moment and wondered if she’d still be around when she found out, or if she’d run away.

“You’re madly in love and the world is a beautiful place?” I asked, with a kiss on the tip of her nose. I turned away, I didn’t want to see her reaction.

“Maybe. But that’s not it. Look at my arm...” Sasha held her right arm out for my inspection. The laceration had healed to a fine thin line that was barely even noticeable now. Another benefit of Bear blood; we healed nicely.

“Okay?” I went to the table with plates of biscuits, sausage, and a bowl of gravy.

“I’m certain my other arm is healed too. It feels fine, and there’s no pain. Anywhere.”

“No? I’ll have to check it all later. After breakfast. Come on, sit down and eat, baby girl. You’re going to need your strength today if we’re going hiking.”

“Alright. But I want you to look at my back later.” She was distracted throughout the meal and soon had me in her room, her nightgown thrown on the edge of the bed, but not for sex. Nope, she wanted me to look at her wounds.

They were all healed, even the scars had started to fade. I removed the stitches from her deepest lacerations, took out the ones from her stomach, and hoped she didn’t notice just how healed it all was. It was kind of hard to get some of the threads out, she’d healed so well.

“You’re, um, all better, Sasha. I guess we don’t need to worry about you much, then.” I hopped off the bed and dressed quickly. “I’ll just run down and see if anybody wants to join us from below.”

“Wait, what the hell has happened to me, Fell?” She looked upset, and I couldn’t blame her, but I also couldn’t explain right now.

“I don’t know exactly, but we need to go out while there’s still daylight, Sasha or we’ll be coming back in the dark.”

“Fell! Stop!” I just kept walking though. I couldn’t give her an answer right now.

Twenty minutes later I came back with Quinn and Travis, both wanted to join us. Sabina had kept both informed about Sasha’s condition and they were just as eager as I was to find out what her brother’s fate had been.

“You ready?” I asked when she came outside dressed in some warm clothes and a coat that Sabina had brought up for her a while back.

“Yes, but I’m not through with you yet, buddy.” She walked by me, her nose in the air, but I could feel her emotions. She was hurt, but she wasn’t mad. I had to live with that for now.

We walked for a couple of hours, and I’d started to wonder if coming out with snow on the ground was a bad idea. Everything would look different to Sasha in the snow.

“I think…,” she paused and walked around two pine trees that had grown around a boulder. “Yes, down here...”

She wandered off a little ways and found a larger tree, and stuck her hand in a hole I hadn’t seen. She drew out rags and a pair of trainers.

“Yes, this is the way.” She looked at me and I felt how her heart had started to race. She was close to panic, but smothered it without any help from me. My girl wasn’t a weakling, after all.

“This way.” We followed behind her, our feet crunched through snow so loudly that it would warn anyone within hearing distance that we were coming. That part was a bit annoying, but Sasha seemed to know her way now.

Her emotions buffeted me as we moved closer to a trail that led up the mountain a little. She moved through anger, defeat, and determination before she went back to anger once more. She wanted to find her brother there, and bang his head into the cave wall. She wanted to scream at him until he curled into a ball and cried for her to stop. Mainly, she wanted to make him stop his campaign of jealousy and leave her alone.

“Sasha.” I called out to her when my eyes caught a glimpse of a cave entry ahead. “Let Quinn and Travis go in first.”

She stopped, a little miffed about it, but saw the sense in it. If he was dead, she didn’t need to see it. We’d take care of the body and that would be the end of it.

“How deep does that cave go?” I asked and pulled a cigarette from a pack I found in my coat pocket. I lit the tip and inhaled deeply. I blew out the tension I felt with the smoke and relaxed a little.

“I don’t know, I was near to the front, in that kennel, and I never saw him go to the back. We were always close to the entrance.”

“That may be all there is to it. There’s cave systems all through this mountain range.” I looked around at the forest that covered most of the mountain, it was all covered in snow.

“Hey, there’s nobody in there.” Travis said as he came out, his head covered in a black knit cap.

“Any sign that he’s been there lately?” Sasha called out, her eyes on the cave entrance, not on Travis.

“No, just some rags covered in blood. He must have tried to clean himself up before he left.” Travis glanced out where I knew a dirt road should be. “That’s the road into town isn’t it? The one that crosses our land?”

“Yeah, he drove up it when he came that night. I should have tried to take the car, but I didn’t want to waste time looking for keys.” Sasha explained, her eyes on the path that was now covered.

“You made it out alive, Sasha, that’s all that matters. Not how you did it.” I took her hand in mine, her left one now that her cast was gone, and squeezed it. She looked back at me with gratitude.

“You always know what to say.” She came into my arms and I held her, but I didn’t stop looking around.

Quinn came out of the cave and he and Travis came back to us. The sun was out but I could still see our breath in the air. Sasha’s cheeks were pink and her nose was red. We’d have to get home soon or we’d all be too cold to move.

“Let’s head back. I don’t think he’s there. The place hasn’t been used in a couple of days, at least.” Quinn squinted up at the cave. “I’ll find out where he is. We’ll take care of him.”

I didn’t bother to ask what that meant. I didn’t need to. Quinn would contact one of the other clans, the ones that lived in the outside world, and Jim would likely disappear from the face of the earth. Nobody would be able to trace it back to Sasha and none of the fallout would fall on her.

We trekked back to the cabin in silence. I had questions to answer and it wasn’t going to be easy. In fact, I dreaded it. I had no idea how she was going to react, and I didn’t want to break her heart, or hurt her, or give her any more reason to hate the world. She didn’t deserve that.

I waved at Quinn and Travis as they left us and headed down the mountain to the bar. I knew I needed to bite the bullet and just reveal the truth to her. Now was as good a time as any.

“Sasha?” I called out to her and shifted, my bear form an immediate change that didn’t involve a lot of blood and snot and pain. It just was. It felt as if I’d just stepped into another form, like I’d changed clothes, not become an entirely different species.

“Fuck, a bear!” She screamed and tripped as she ran to the house. To be fair to her, she did scream my name as she ran. I didn’t move and she had time to get up out of the snow with a desperate look around and one more scream of my name.

I waved my massive head around in amusement and followed along behind her at a slow lope.

“Oh my God, a bear!” She screamed again and ran up on the porch. She threw open the door, ran in, slammed the door shut, and leaned against the panels.

If I was a real bear, the thin panels wouldn’t do much to keep me out, but “real” bears didn’t bother to come onto our land. I waited until I saw her face in the window, eyes wide and her face pale, and then I pawed open the door. When I loped inside she went quiet, but backed up until she fell onto the futon.

“Don’t eat me, please don’t eat me.” She said quietly, her hands up to defend herself. I was massive, over 12 feet tall when I stood up, and with the weight to match. I wasn’t a tiny man, and certainly not a tiny bear.

With little more than a blink I shifted back into my human shape and sat on the floor in front of her. “This is me, Sasha. All of me.”

“What…?”

I shifted again and she stood up with a squeak. She was brave, though, as I always knew she was, and came up to me. Her hand reached out and, despite a slight tremor, reached out to touch my fur.

“It’s so soft. I always thought bear fur would feel coarse.”

“I use a good conditioner.” I laughed as I shifted again.

“How?” Sasha asked and sat down on the floor with me.

“I don’t know. We carry the Mother Bear with us as an explanation of our story. She sent us down to keep the humans in check and to give the world some magic. We don’t know why we can do this, not scientifically, and we don’t want to know. Years ago, when the settlers came, we built this area as our own. It’s been here since the first white people showed up. Some were integrated, but the rest were kept away.”

“We, so there are more of you?” She was stunned, I could feel it from her, but she’d get over it. She was calm, and would stay that way. My brave little fighter.

“Quite a few, my dear. A whole clan of us, actually.” I traced her face with my fingertips. “I suspect you may be one now too. That would explain why your wounds have healed.”

“Pardon?” She looked at my with a quirked eyebrow, her face slightly turned away, as if she didn’t believe me.

“It’ll come in time. Sometimes it never does, you’ll just be strong, we’ll be able to communicate with each other in our heads, and you’ll heal quickly. Then again, tomorrow you might be sitting on the futon as a bear. It’s hard to say.” I didn’t know how she would take to her new bear life, it all depended on her and if she wanted to be a bear or not. She could suppress it if she really wanted to.

“Oh.”

“That’s it. Oh?” I’d been waiting on tears, threats, accusations, anything but a simple oh.

“What else can I say? You’ve given me some kind of bear STD or something, and now I’ll be a shapeshifter. What else is there to say exactly?” She looked rattled but amused.

“That I’m a bastard for doing this to you? That I should have protected you from it. Although, I should say that, as shifters, we don’t get ill, unless we’re separated from our mates. Otherwise, we don’t get STDs, cancer, viruses, any of it. We’re a hardy species.”

“I’m calling it an STD.” She growled, her eyes squinted at me. “It’s the only way I can think of it, considering how it happened.”

“Well, yes, it does seem that’s what caused it. I’m sorry, Sasha. Maybe I should have protected you from it more.”

“It was my fault too. I should have said something about protection. I just wasn’t thinking, at all.”

“No, I wasn’t either.” She took a deep breath then, and put her hand in mine.

“Are we mates then? Is that why you said I was yours, that the mother made me for you?” Her head was tilted in curiosity now, her eyes bright and inquisitive.

“Yes, that’s exactly why I said it. We’ll grow sick and die if we’re apart for too long, but otherwise, we will have a healthy life.”

“And love? Does that come into it?” She looked away, out of the window above us, to the sky.

“It can, it’s like an arranged marriage. Sometimes there is love, sometimes not. In our case, well, I think I already love you, Sasha. You’re bravery, your fight, and the beauty within you, it just amazes me after what you’ve been through.”

“Your life hasn’t been easy, either, Fell. You are so, defiant!” She’d struggled to find the word and spit it out in the end. “You were so determined to make me better, to give me everything I needed, physically and emotionally. I just, you amaze me too. If that’s love, then I’m falling hard. If needing you with me, wanting to know all of you, wanting to be with you, is love, then I’ve already fallen and I’ve fallen hard. I never want to leave this place, or you, Fell. Ever.”

“You don’t have to, Sasha. That’s the best part. You never have to leave me, at all.”

I watched her until she stood up and took my hand. Where would she take me now?