HAPTER ONE
Elizabeth Marston loved her house. From the first moment she laid eyes on it when she was twelve years old, she had known it would be her house someday, and she started hiding money away in places she knew her father would never be able to find it, earning it in any and every sort of odd job she could convince people in town to give to her. By the time one of her teachers helped her get emancipated when she was sixteen, she had enough to buy it outright.
That wasn’t because she was especially talented at saving money but because the house was falling apart, and no one else wanted it. It had been ever since she first saw it, and she had fallen in love with it anyway. She dropped out of school that year, got a slightly more stable job, and started dedicating every spare cent and spare moment to putting the house back together, until it was once again the beautiful Victorian she had always seen it as—pale grey with dark blue accents, plus a wraparound porch and a latticed foundation. It was her perfect little hideaway from the world.
She was twenty-three by the time she really finished repairing it—construction had never been her forte, and most of her work on the house had involved some level of trial and error—and though it had taken a while, she was content. She had gotten her GED, and even if college wasn’t in the cards at that point, she did have a better job than working at the farmers market, as the farmer up the street had been quite happy to hire a set of extra hands.
(Well, okay, ‘up the street’ was still a two-mile walk. She didn’t exactly live in a bustling metropolis.)
And then one day, her perfect little hideaway was stolen from her.
She was walking back to her house late in the evening, returning from work. A few of her acquaintances always looked at her a bit oddly whenever she mentioned that she made the two-mile walk twice a day, five days a week, but she never thought much of it. Even making the walk at night had never been much of a worry; it wasn’t a particularly dangerous area. The local wildlife was probably more dangerous than any of the scattered people, and the animals didn’t want anything to do with her or the very large stick she got into the habit of carrying with her.
She was unaware that there were other sorts of dangers she needed to worry about until she stumbled upon them.
She was just a few hundred yards from her driveway when she heard a ruckus that was very definitely coming from her yard. She immediately burst into a sprint, work boots kicking up stones along the gravel road until she practically skidded to a halt at the top of her driveway.
When she heard the noise, she had assumed she was going to stumble upon someone trying to break into her house.
What she saw, instead, was a pack of wolves duking it out with a gathering of bears. They were not normal wolves or bears, though, even ignoring the fact that they weren’t really common in the area. The wolves were the size of her boss’s horses, and the bears each looked like they could have taken down a semi-truck just by standing in its path. The bears were clearly larger, but the wolves outnumbered them at least two to one. And for whatever reason, they were all very avidly attempting to kill each other in her yard, as if her house wasn’t even there.
Elizabeth stood at the top of her driveway, still as a statue, as if she had frozen in place. She knew she should run before any of them saw her, but she couldn’t get her legs to cooperate, and her eyes remained fixed on the claws and the teeth and the spraying blood.
Someone else had to be hearing it. Regardless of how far away her neighbors were, it was not a quiet or subtle brawl. Surely someone else had to hear it, and someone would come along to investigate the noise and help her out.
Or they would hear it, and they would assume it was just animals fighting in the woods. They wouldn’t be wrong either.
With one shaking hand, she began to reach for her phone, fingers trembling so much as she drew it out of her pocket that she nearly dropped it, and then she just stared down at it blankly. Who was she supposed to call? Animal control? The police? She supposed if she just called 911 and explained that there were animals fighting in her yard and that she couldn’t get to her house, the dispatcher would probably have some idea of what to do. She started dialing, but as she was still shaking like a leaf, she had to redial it half a dozen times.
Then, one of the wolves squealed in distress and landed in front of her as it was thrown aside, and she whipped her head up to stare at it. For a moment, it didn’t move, simply lying on the ground, dazed and twitching. And then, it rolled its eyes to look at her and laboriously hauled itself back to its feet. Panting slowly, it took a step towards her, and Elizabeth’s phone tumbled from her fingers.
She could see its teeth as it opened its mouth and licked them, and she was pretty sure it was drooling as it took another step closer to her. She needed to move. She needed to run. She knew she should, and every instinct she had was screaming at her to do just that. But she couldn’t get her legs to move, as if her feet were suddenly stuck in concrete.
Faster than she could really process what was happening, the wolf approaching her was thrown aside with a yelp as a bear barreled into it like a freight train. The bear hadn’t been part of the fighting, though. The only reason she knew that was because she had seen it come charging out of the woods.
The bear planted itself in front of her like a barrier and snarled, its teeth bared. The wolf scrambled back to its feet and paused, like it was thinking the situation over, only to go running back towards the fray as the bear’s snarl ratcheted up a few decibels.
Once it was apparent that the wolf wasn’t going to come back and that the rest of the wolves and the bears were still quite busy attempting to kill each other, the bear standing in front of Elizabeth turned to face her, first looking over its shoulder at her and then turning around entirely.
She flinched when it prodded her with its nose, but it made no efforts to hurt her, and when she didn’t move, it simply gave her another poke with its nose, urging her into motion. She stumbled backwards a few graceless steps before she finally turned and started walking in the direction the bear was urging her towards, and after a moment, it pulled ahead of her leading the way.
She was following a bear. There was something utterly absurd about that, and if she hadn’t been terrified, she would have laughed out loud instead. She wasn’t sure how well the bear leading the way would take that though, so it was probably for the best that she couldn’t actually muster up any sort of giggles just then.
Instead, her thoughts jumped back to the fact that she was following a bear, an entirely non-native bear that was also the size of an SUV. By all logic, it should have been trying to kill Elizabeth for daring to be as close as she was to it. Instead, it just looked back at her every so often to make sure she was still following along behind it. Though the urge to turn and run continued to nag at her all the while, she ignored the urge. She knew there was no way she would ever be able to outrun a bear if she made it angry, and considering it didn’t seem particularly inclined to eat her just then, she wasn’t going to needlessly push her luck.
She wasn’t sure for how long or how far she followed the bear. It wasn’t any sort of distance she couldn’t walk, though, considering her almost daily habits.
She wasn’t sure whether she was more or less surprised when eventually they came upon another house, enormous and set deep into the woods with a driveway that wove through the trees. It looked vaguely familiar, but it still took a few moments for her to recall that she had seen it a few times during her explorations of the woods. Technically, it was one of her neighbor’s houses, but that didn’t mean much when her neighbors tended to be several miles away and very well hidden.
She continued to follow the bear up onto the porch, where, at last, it paused. It looked around slowly, almost seeming confused—or maybe even distressed—as it looked at Elizabeth in something akin to consternation. Finally, it heaved a sigh as if in resignation, and where once there was a bear, there was very suddenly a man, naked as a jaybird and looking at Elizabeth with something like sheepish expectation.
He gestured towards the front door and offered politely, “You can make yourself comfortable in the living room while I find some clothes to put on.” And with that, he turned and entered the house. Feeling like she was in a daze, Elizabeth quietly followed along on his heels.
*
She waited in the living room for only a few minutes before her…host…returned, fully dressed and still slightly sheepish. He ushered her to follow him with one hand, and she trailed after him into the kitchen. Within a few moments, she had a mug of tea sitting in front of her as she sat at a kitchen table that had probably cost more than all of her house’s renovations. She curled her hands around it, and the familiar feeling was at least sort of comforting. Once he had prepared his own mug, her host sat down across from her.
“Are you alright?”
They were the first words out of his mouth, and Elizabeth hadn’t been expecting them. She wasn’t actually sure what she had been expecting, in all honesty. Maybe some sort of demands about how much of the fight she had seen, or a bribe to stay quiet about everything she had seen. Just going by his house, he could probably afford to bribe just about anyone.
Slowly, she nodded, though her voice was more of a mumble as she informed her mug, “None of them touched me. But—what was all of that?” Her voice sounded so tiny, and she lifted her mug to drink from it to distract herself from that thought.
Her host sighed out a slow breath. “My name is Ambrose Baxter,” he stated, before he lifted his mug to drink from it. Once he set his mug down again, he carried on. “I’m sure you noticed that I’m not exactly human.” There was a tiny, wry smile on his face, crooked though it was. “Those animals fighting outside your house were like me.”
“You didn’t try to eat me or rip anyone else apart,” Elizabeth mumbled to her mug, her grip around it tightening until her knuckles began to ache. “So, what was going on back there?” She peered up at him cautiously as she asked.
Ambrose set his mug down and ran a hand over his hair, fingers briefly curling around the back of his neck as he sighed once more. “Not everyone like me is quite as…civilized,” he replied, as if he was picking his words very carefully. “Sometimes, even if it’s rare, they give up on being human all together. While not all of them in that scuffle were quite that far gone, I suspect the one who tried to attack you had long since given up on being anything other than a wolf.” He didn’t seem particularly thrilled about the observation as he made it. “As for the rest of them, that was…a territory dispute. Much of this county has belonged to the bears for quite some time, and your property is right on the edge of it. I suspect the bears tried to claim it, and the wolves took issues with the bears encroaching.”
“It’s my house,” Elizabeth pointed out sharply, her tone surprising even herself, “my property, my territory.”
Ambrose arched one eyebrow slowly. “Do you think they really care about that?” he wondered mildly. “Like I said, some don’t even think of themselves as human anymore. They don’t care what you think.” Though the words were blunt, his tone was at least sympathetic.
Elizabeth stared down into her mug, until finally she wondered slowly, “What do I do, then? I can’t go back.” Not, she thought, while they were still feuding over her land.
Ambrose was quiet for a moment, before he offered slowly, “You could stay here, if you wanted to. Or if you have a friend or family you could stay with, I would be happy to help you make the move.”
She didn’t know why he was being so nice. They didn’t know each other. She felt tears beginning to prick at the corners of her eyes. “All of my friends have families of their own,” she mumbled. She made no mention of her family, and Ambrose didn’t pry. “I…I guess I’ll stay here until I can go home again.”
Ambrose nodded once and drained the last of his tea. After a few more careful sips, Elizabeth drained hers as well. At Ambrose’s gesture, she got to her feet and followed him down the hall and up the stairs to a guest room that dwarfed Elizabeth’s main bedroom. There was a bathroom across the hall, and as Elizabeth lingered in the doorway, Ambrose strolled away, only to return a moment later with a t-shirt and an unopened package of boxer shorts. “I don’t keep women’s pajamas stocked,” he explained wryly, “but I figure these will do.”
Elizabeth managed to offer him a shaking smile as she accepted the clothing, and he moseyed on his way soon enough.
For a moment afterward, Elizabeth just stood in the middle of the guest room, staring blankly at the window but not really seeing it. It took a few minutes before she was able to shake off her daze and make her way into the bathroom, where she had to pause to stare at her reflection in the mirror.
She looked completely disheveled with curly black hair a mess from the roots all the way down to her shoulder blades, dark skin streaked in sweat, and brown eyes wild and ringed in smudged make up. She only needed to look at herself for a few seconds before whirling around to face the shower and turn the water on. She quickly shucked off her clothing, leaving it in a pile on the bathroom floor before she hopped into the shower.
Her shower was brief, but it helped to clear her mind a bit regardless and helped her realize that maybe her situation wasn’t all that dire. Granted, it certainly wasn’t great, but she was safe. If it was a territory issue, then she doubted any of the wolves or bears would actually go into her house, so her stuff was probably safe too. And the dispute had to come to an end, so she would be able to go home eventually. She didn’t have to work tomorrow, so she didn’t need to worry about acting normal in front of her boss (he was an eagle-eyed man, honest and kind but shrewd, and he would be able to spot that something was off before Elizabeth even started on her tasks for the day).
She was calmer by the time she got out of the shower, and she relished in that feeling as she poked through the cupboards until she managed to find an unopened toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.
By the time she was wearing the t-shirt like a dress with a pair of boxers underneath, it felt like the clash between the wolves and the bears had happened both five weeks and five years ago; it was all fuzzy around the edges, so she couldn’t quite think about it. She left her clothes in a pile in the corner of the guest room with her boots sitting on top and toppled into the bed, only barely remembering to turn off the lamp before she pulled the blanket over herself and passed out for the night.
All things considered, she slept much better than she would have expected to. Her dreams weren’t exactly pleasant or restful, but they weren’t what she would call nightmares. On the whole, she felt safe. That alone was sort of impressive, and she wasn’t going to argue with it.
*
Elizabeth woke up to the smell of sausage cooking and coffee brewing. She stared at the wall in front of her for a moment, wondering where the hell she was and who was cooking, until the events of the night before caught up to her, and she remembered that she wasn’t in her own house. She was in Ambrose’s. Presumably, Ambrose was cooking. It was his kitchen, though he was definitely wealthy enough to have his own cook, just going by first impressions.
Slowly, Elizabeth sat up, prying herself away from the pillow with a force of will, her blanket falling away until she was sitting at the edge of the bed, her feet on the carpet. It took another moment before she managed to actually get to her feet, feeling as if she hadn’t slept at all. She reached up to run a hand through her hair, cringing as her fingers caught on tangles and knots, and she gave up on the effort almost immediately. She didn’t bother with putting her clothes back on, instead making her way back to the kitchen in the t-shirt and boxers she had slept in.
She came to a halt in the kitchen entryway, and finally she used it as an opportunity to get a good look at her host. It hadn’t really occurred to her the night before, considering everything else that had been going on.
Ambrose was a tall man. Elizabeth wasn’t short, but she was pretty sure the top of her head would only come up to about his nose. He looked like he was about a decade older than her too. He had dark, mocha-colored skin just a few shades lighter than Elizabeth’s, and his hair was dark brown and wavy, shot through with gold and auburn. After a moment, he glanced over his shoulder at her, and she could see that his eyes were a strange color, caught somewhere between dark brown and black.
He grinned, evidently completely at ease with having a stranger in his house, and he offered a pleasant, “Food should be ready soon. Make yourself at home.”
Elizabeth nodded slowly as he turned his attention back to the stove, and she took a moment to watch the way his shoulders moved through his shirt. She was pretty sure he would be able to bench press two of her without even breaking a sweat. She pulled her gaze away before he could catch her staring and wandered into the living room portion of the great room, strolling leisurely around the perimeter of the room as she glanced over the various photographs, each of them in frames on the walls.
He had a big family. None of the photos were labeled, but there were a dozen different people in the pictures in various combinations, and there was enough of a family resemblance to make it obvious that they were related.
They all looked so happy, each and every one of them. Maybe it made her a bad person for feeling a twinge of jealousy over that fact, but she didn’t think it did. Her family life had never been picture perfect, after all. And the photographs on the wall made it seem as if it was being flaunted at her. It was an irrational thought, and she knew it, but she couldn’t quite tear her gaze away until she heard Ambrose inquire, “Everything alright?” from in the kitchen.
At last, Elizabeth wrenched her eyes away from the pictures to look at him, and she cleared her throat. “You’ve got a really big family,” she observed, inching her way towards the kitchen table again before she could get sucked back into her own internal monologue. Ambrose was plating food by then, so it seemed like a good time to take a seat regardless.
He grinned and headed for the table, a plate in each hand. “Yeah, there’s basically a whole tribe of us,” he agreed. Elizabeth had a question which seemed sort of important, given the current circumstances, but she wasn’t actually sure about the etiquette of asking such a question. Luckily, Ambrose seemed to have some idea of what was on her mind, as he added, “And yeah, a lot of us are bears. Not all of us—my dad wasn’t, so it skipped a few of my siblings and of course my cousins and my aunt on his side weren’t—but more than half of us, at least.” He set a plate down in front of Elizabeth, set the other plate down at his own seat, and fetched a pair of forks and knives. Once he handed Elizabeth her silverware, he finally sat down.
Breakfast was sausage, eggs, and toast. The eggs sort of gave the impression that they were initially supposed to be sunny side up before that failed and they turned into scrambled. None of it was over- or under-cooked, so Elizabeth was pretty content with what was in front of her, especially after she scooped some eggs onto a slice of toast, took her first bite, and promptly realized she was starving. She hadn’t had time for dinner last night, in between finding a pack of enormous not-really-animals feuding in front of her house and then walking three miles, on top of the four miles she had already walked that day.
Within just a few minutes, she had scarfed down the entire plate, and she couldn’t even bring herself to feel embarrassed about it. Considering how long she had lived alone, tended to herself, and worked a job where nine times out of ten she had hay in her hair, being appropriately lady-like had never really become a priority. If Ambrose felt inclined to comment, he offered no sign of it and said nothing about it, instead finishing his breakfast at a more sedate pace.
Elizabeth fidgeted in her seat until he was finished, and finally she could hold her curiosity in check no longer. No sooner did he set his fork down on his plate did Elizabeth burst out, “So, what are you? Are you, like, a werebear or something? Do you transform on a full moon—no, wait, it wasn’t a full moon last night. Scratch that one. Can you turn people into a bear if you want to? Are people who turn into animals a super common thing I’ve just never heard about until now? What the fuck is going on?”
Ambrose’s eyebrows steadily rose as she just kept going on, until finally she got out everything she wanted to say, and apparently he couldn’t quite hold back a laugh.
“Ah…I guess you could say I’m a werebear, if you want. I’ve always just gone with ‘shifter,’ personally. Wolves are more likely to go with the were-animal naming convention, and even a lot of them just stick with shifter. And no, I can’t turn anyone else into a bear,” he replied dryly. “It’s a genetic thing. I got into it a bit earlier with my family. And we’re not…super common?” There, he didn’t sound especially sure. “I mean, I don’t actually know how many there are in the world, and generally if I meet others it’s because they’re having trouble hiding. The ones that are really good at blending in are…well…really good at blending in, so I’m not going to know about them.”
“And…what do I do?” Elizabeth wondered, and almost immediately words started spilling out again before she could help it. “I mean, I have to work tomorrow, and I don’t have a car, and even if I did it would be back at my house, and I don’t have any clothes, and…” She closed her mouth with a click when Ambrose delicately cleared his throat.
“I can drive you to work tomorrow,” he pointed out, “and we can head out to buy a few essentials this afternoon. Realistically speaking, they should be done with their scuffle in the next few days, so you’ll be safe to go home, and when I drive you to work and pick you up, I can use it as a chance to keep an eye on the situation.”
Slowly, Elizabeth sighed, and she pushed her plate away just enough that she could slump down onto her arms on the table. “I guess that’s all I can do, then,” she mumbled against her arms. “Thanks.”
She was grateful for the help. Really, she was. It just didn’t sound like there was much either of them could actually do until it blew over on its own, and that was a disheartening thought. Even so, she was glad she didn’t actually need to handle it on her own, and she was glad she wasn’t literally in the middle of the mess. She was pretty sure that would end up with her being a messy smear on her lawn. She just…had to hope Ambrose was right when he said it would only be a few days. But patience had never been her best skill, if she was being honest with herself.
At least her situation wasn’t hopeless. She had been in too many hopeless situations. She didn’t need any more than she had already dealt with.
*
Shopping that afternoon was a simple affair. Despite his rather apparent wealth, he was perfectly happy to respect Elizabeth’s wishes to pay for her own clothes, and he didn’t try to insist she buy anything fancy; she was content with a few basic t-shirts and a sturdy pair of jeans.
They chatted the entire time, surprisingly. Elizabeth hadn’t expected to have anything in common with him, but as it turned out, their interests aligned in more than a few places. Similar politics: they were both generally on the liberal side. Similar taste in books: they both enjoyed sci-fi and fantasy and anything that didn’t make them simply feel like they were reliving their own lives by proxy. Similar tastes in music: alternative rock was the best way to go, but anything with a decent enough bass would do in a pinch. Similar tastes in television: neither of them watched much, really.
They got on like a house on fire, strangely enough. By the time they were driving back to Ambrose’s house, they were swapping stories about high school as if they had known each other for years.
“…and, I mean, it seems like every school has some sort of senior prank every year, so I don’t need to explain that, but it could get so weird sometimes.” Elizabeth snorted out a laugh and rolled her eyes. “Like, one year, one of my classmates decided the best prank would be to bring in a quartet of sheep and let them go in the school before classes started for the day, and to make it even better, they were numbered one, two, three, and five.”
Ambrose grinned as he slid her a glance, before looking back out of the windshield again. “How long were the faculty running around like headless chickens before they realized that there were only four sheep to round up?”
Elizabeth grinned, sly but playing at innocent. “They didn’t ever realize it on their own. They had to call in the culprit, and he had to explain it to them, so they would chill out.” She was quiet for a beat. “He got suspended for the last few days of class, so he couldn’t even attend graduation. He said it was totally worth it, though.”
Ambrose looked thoughtful for a moment before he began to speak. “We had, ah…we’ll call it Drive Your Tractor to School Day. People got more and more creative with it as time passed.”
“Oh god,” Elizabeth groaned.
“One year, a girl decided to show up in a hot air balloon. Her parents owned a company, I think.” Ambrose shrugged one shoulder.
“A hot air balloon—”
Ambrose carried on as if she hadn’t interrupted. “I think she was aiming for the soccer field next to the school, but she missed and landed on the school roof. She broke her wrist, and it took a lot of people to clear up the mess. I’m pretty sure she had detention until the end of the school year, but the pictures in the yearbook that year were pretty spectacular.”
Elizabeth shook her head slightly in good natured disbelief. “You’re fucking with me,” she decided, tone light. “Your school was completely boring, full of preppy rich kids or something.”
“It was only about fifty percent preppy rich kids,” he protested primly. “And it was still rural as all hell. There are still rich people in the boonies.”
Elizabeth held her hands up in surrender. “My apologies for offending your delicate, rich guy sensibilities,” she assured him, mustering up as much of an earnest tone as she could manage. Ambrose snorted out a laugh.
It was actually pretty comforting, at a time when everything else seemed to be going wrong at every turn. Elizabeth appreciated it more than she would have expected to.