Sasha’s nose twitched as a foreign scent caught his attention. He looked around the woods, grunting to himself as he tried to identify the person that the scent belonged to. Female, human, fertile; the thoughts were more impulse than thought in his ursine brain, and Sasha struggled to bring his human consciousness to the forefront. The scent did not belong to anyone he knew from the town of Green Tree; that much Sasha was able to bring himself to think. He opened his mind, finding the warm and comforting presences of the rest of his clan, scattered through the woods on their own solitary errands—hunting, enjoying the cool, moist air of springtime or the glowing moon, some of them foraging. Stranger, he thought—the one word a huge effort. As his human consciousness began to assert itself, Sasha found thinking in words easier. Stranger—in the woods. Steer clear. The Nita clan had managed to avoid detection from both the town itself and the people of the area—hikers, conservationists, and loggers—by avoiding them; it was one of Sasha’s many responsibilities as the Alpha of the group to warn his clan brethren whenever something like this happened. With any luck, the stranger was simply lost, would find her way out of the woods and into town, and that would be the end of it. Someone just passing through; that was the hope that flickered in Sasha’s mind.
He went back to foraging, thinking in the human part of his mind about the state of his clan as a whole. Bears—of all of the types of shifters—had special problems; they didn’t breed quite as ably as the wolves, or as plentifully as lions, who seemed to constantly be bearing twins. While they were human, or at least half-human, it seemed to Sasha as if some of their trouble was the fact that their animal natures were not as easily reconciled with human living. Bears in the wild were solitary creatures, males mating with females and then leaving shortly afterward, the young going off on their own after a few seasons. Werebears like himself and the other men of his clan were much more social than their strictly-animal counterparts; but they were still insular. We will have to reach out to other clans, Sasha thought. Fights had started to break out amongst his brothers—it was time for many of them, particularly for Sasha, to find a mate, and tensions were high, especially now that spring had arrived. Sasha had had to send away the few females born into the clan over the years since he had assumed the Alpha title; they were too closely related to the other members of the clan, and if mating urges held sway, they would have a high rate of miscarriages and birth defects in the offspring. Where wild bears mated in a system of serial monogamy, werebears mated for life, bonding with their mates. It would have been a disaster for the clan as a whole if Sasha had not sent the women away as they reached the proper age for mating.
He wandered through the woods, sniffing and snuffling, considering the problem even as he contemplated what he wanted to eat. If he wanted to keep the clan stable, he would have to find mates for his brothers; and in the back of his mind, Sasha knew that some of his temper in recent weeks had come from his own need to mate. The spring brought it on in all of them—the drive from their animal minds to take advantage of the lengthening days and the safety that summer and autumn provided. It wasn’t something that anyone could avoid, and Sasha knew that sooner or later he would come up hard against the realities of the situation, if he didn’t take action now.
As he was contemplating which of the other clans to approach, the foreign scent filled Sasha’s nose again—stronger this time, with an undercurrent of fear like burned gunpowder. The scent disrupted Sasha’s thoughts and he looked around in the darkness. If the woman had come this deep into the woods, she was lost indeed; he would have to take some kind of action, and perhaps steer her in another direction, back towards the town. Has anyone seen the stranger? Sasha called out mentally. He needed to place her—whoever she was—in order to know how to handle the situation. The fear that Sasha could smell on the woman’s scent was more intense than the simple anxiety of being lost in the woods, and Sasha had run afoul of wolves in recent weeks, taking advantage of the improved weather and the better hunting. No wolf pack would challenge a bear without good reason, but a human was another thing entirely.
Flickers of thought reached him; Sasha realized that he had to be the closest to the woman of the members of his clan. He felt a rising sense of irritation that his time in the woods would be marred by the necessity of attending to a human woman who didn’t have the sense to avoid getting lost and exposing herself to the dangers that wild animals presented. Sasha lumbered in the direction of the scent, grumbling to himself in little growls as he made his way through the thick underbrush and tightly packed trees. The last thing he needed on a night like this was to have to steer some woman back to the road—she’d probably be frightened and scream at him the moment he showed up. In the distance, Sasha heard the telltale sound of a howl carrying through the air; the local wolf pack was nearby. He had to get to her quickly. She’s about to blunder on wolves, Sasha thought, projecting his mental voice to the other members of his clan. I need some backup. Armand, James, Holt—fall in with me. Sasha hurried his movements, torn between the impressive presence that his bear form would make—a better guarantee of deterring wolves—and the nimbleness and speed of his human form. Even if the human stranger irritated him, he didn’t want her to be attacked.