As night fell, Brock watched Ginger over the campfire as she ate her baked beans out of a can.

Even doing something as mundane as that made his body react in the most disturbing ways. It was as if he was possessed by some kind of rabid bear that kept him erect at even the slightest hint of Ginger’s presence. It was already driving him mad, and he’d only spent the better part of the day with her. He knew his bear’s tantrum would go away as soon as he mated with her. It was common knowledge among shifters that this kind of thing happened when someone found their fated mate. No matter how many times he’d heard the horror stories about it, he hadn’t believed it--until now, when it was happening to him.

If a regular human had this kind of thing happening inside their own mind, they would probably commit themselves to an asylum. Brock ate his baked beans but his mind wasn’t on his food. He was so excited he could barely digest. He’d spent most of the day hiding his erection from Ginger out of sheer embarrassment. He was a thirty-year-old man who ran his own business, and was not a stranger to the opposite sex. Even when he was a teenager, his body had never responded like this to anyone or anything. He was going to have to do something about it fast, or the man Brock once had been would be replaced with a sex crazed maniac.

He had to share the tent with Ginger tonight, which was probably going to be the most difficult thing he’d ever done in his life. He couldn’t very well pull down her pants and thrust himself inside her without a word, which was the very thing his bear was advocating inside his mind. Loudly.

Brock was not the kind of man to seduce the women he guided into the backcountry. Only on one other occasion had he ever become romantically involved with one of his clients, but she was a local he’d known for most of his life, and so wasn’t technically a client. He didn’t like having one-night stands any more than he liked having relationships. Considering his hesitance to get involved, his trysts had been becoming fewer and farther between as the years went by. When he was younger, he had been more willing to put himself out there. In the last couple of years, he just didn’t want to deal with the drama anymore.

When the elders of his clan began pressuring him to find a mate, all he could think about was the drama that dating always seemed to bring his way. Little did he know that the bear inside his mind would give him this kind of hell when he found his fated mate.

Brock took the cans and buried them in a hole in the ground so no wild bears would find them. He needed to go to sleep, he needed to be unconscious and get all of the growling and roaring and sexual desire out of his mind. The oblivion of sleep was his only release, and it couldn’t come fast enough.

“Time to turn in for the night,” he told Ginger. “Need to get as much rest as possible for the last leg of the trip.”

He climbed into the tent and pulled off his boots before slipping into a sleeping bag. Ginger came in behind him and zipped up the tent door. The smell of her sweat hit him like a ton of bricks, and his erection went stiff instantaneously.

God dammit.

He turned over on his side and squeezed his eyes closed, trying to block out how Ginger overwhelmed his senses.

She climbed into her sleeping bag beside him and let out a little moaning sigh. That was just too much. He put his hands over his face. There was no way he was going to be able to sleep in the tent with her tonight and retain his humanity. He had to get the hell out of here.

“I think it would be better if I let you have the tent yourself,” he said crawling towards the door.

She rose up on her elbow and looked at him quizzically in the flashlight’s glow. “Where are you going to sleep?” she asked, the concern thick in her voice.

“I’m a bear shifter. I can sleep in the woods. It will give you more space to rest, relax, and recuperate. What’s good for you is good for me because we need out to your father’s land tomorrow.”

“Well if you’re sure...”

Brock burst out of the tent and zipped it back up behind him. Striding into the forest, he peeled off his clothes until he stood naked in the chill, damp underbrush. His human skin beginning to prick with cold, Brock rolled his shoulders and threw his head back in a silent roar. His body grew, his back curved, sharp teeth sprouted from his jaw. Brock’s grizzly puffed in the night air, scratching the ground.

He scented his mate. His urge to take her drowned out his reason. The bear pivoted toward the tent, sniffing and scratching. The grizzly mind, now in control, wanted nothing more than to propel the human back to the tent to take his mate. Brock’s human mind wrangled with his animal instinct, forcing the beast to turn back around and head into the forest.

As soon as he broke through the underbrush into the woods, he shot into a run. He galloped past low hanging branches, and they broke against his chest and over his back. The slap and sting of drying leaves on his flesh braced his consciousness. The faster he ran, the farther away he got from the woman lying in the tent, the freer his bear was from the drive to claim her.

He came out of the forest onto the rocky river bank. He could smell the fish under the water, salmon thrashing upstream towards their spawning grounds. He dove into the water, his teeth gnashing at the wriggling, slick scaled creatures under the surface. He bit down hard on the large Chinook salmon, the taste of its blood and flesh bursting over his tongue. He brought it back to the shore and tore into it, gorging on the tasty treat.

Not full yet, he continued fishing. His bear would gorge until his belly was full. When finally the grizzly had satisfied himself, he wandered into the forest and curled up to sleep.

When the morning came, Brock shifted back to human form. He couldn’t let the grizzly walk back into camp and confront Ginger. Better to go back as a naked man, cold and shivering, then to frighten his would-be mate.

He hurried through the forest and came out into the meadow where they’d camped. She still wasn’t awake, and he could see the heat rising from the dying coals still in the fire pit. He pulled his clothes back on and stoked the fire, preparing coffee and breakfast for the woman still sleeping inside the tent.

When he poured the first cup of coffee, the tent zipper zipped open, and Ginger stepped into the pale morning sunlight.

“Oh my God, I’m so sore,” she said, walking out of the tent on wobbly legs.

She sat across from him on a log. He handed her a tin cup full of hot coffee. She took it gratefully and sipped the steaming brew carefully. Her hair was disheveled and sticking out in all directions around her head, making her look like an adorably messy little angel as the sun glowed behind her.

Brock smiled and poured himself his own coffee. Getting away from her last night was the best thing that he could’ve done. He didn’t want to think about what he would have been capable of if he had stayed the night in the tent with her. His bear was out of control, and being this close to the woman he was meant to mate with for the rest of his life was showing him that the bear could not be trusted in this delicate situation.

Last night, Brock had come to realize that there was no way around the mating. He would have to find some way to tell Ginger that she belonged with him, and hope that she felt the same way. Considering that she was a human, and did not have an instinctive fated mate like a shifter did, the conversation promised to be an awkward one.

He needed to find out more about her, get to know her, romance her the way that a human woman needed to be romanced. Too bad Brock had no idea how to do such a thing. If they had been at home, and not out in the middle of the wilderness, he might have asked his mother or one of the elders how to best handle the situation. But as it was, he was on his own. He would have to start soon or he would lose it completely. He didn’t want to know what would happen to him if he denied his bear any longer.