TWO
The next morning, Sarah woke early – she had been barely able to sleep the whole night. Everything she had been avoiding had hit her square in the heart. From her knapsack she had retrieved everything she needed, and double-checked - just to be sure. Knife, canteen, compass, matches, poly-cord. She put them back in the knapsack and looked at herself in the big ceiling to floor mirror again.
She chose light-weight cargo pants and hiking boots, and a thin Neoprene shirt that seemed to match every surface of her abdomen and chest and arms. Her black hair was pulled back tightly and threaded into a tight ponytail. I look ready, she decided, but at the same time, she wasn’t sure for what exactly. She knew the rules and the tradition – they would take her to an isolated and pre-chosen site in the woods. It would be up to her to try and find Connor in the wilderness.
For most people, it would be an impossible task, but she felt strongly about her survival skills – more than once she had isolated herself in the woods behind the Estate in Washington, surviving for weeks at a time with nothing more than a knife. But that had been in summer, and this was early autumn in a much more northern climate.
“You’re up early,” Caroline said behind her.
“I wanted to make sure I have everything I need.”
“You’ll do fine, sweetie,” Caroline remarked, “what’s bothering you? It’s more than just this marriage and the ceremony, I can tell. What’s going on?”
“What if I don’t like Connor? I mean, I’ve never even met him before.”
“You both come from noble lines. That makes you compatible.”
“That’s a bullshit answer,” Sarah snapped, and turned back to the mirror.
“Yeah, I suppose it is,” Caroline finally relented, “truth is, maybe you won’t like him. There’s no way to tell. If he’s Patrick’s son, he’s probably a hellion, I can tell you that much – watch yourself. Don’t take any risks, and keep your guard up.”
“You make this sound like we’re hunting each other. I thought this was a marriage proposal?”
“In a sense, it’s both.”
Caroline turned back toward the door. “C’mon, they’ll be waiting for us.”
A helicopter was waiting for them outside the chalet, a matte black vessel with a thrumming propeller that kicked up dust around it in small hurricanes. Caroline gave Sarah a small push from behind indicating for her to board it, and as she climbed into the cabin, she saw that Patrick was there also.
“Morning!” he said, “I hope you’re well rested.”
“Have you chosen a good spot?” Caroline said, over the top of him, her words drowned out by the helicopter’s propeller as it started to lift off. Sarah felt the contents of her stomach shift.
“Just beyond the northern ridge,” he said back.
From above, the chalet looked like a tiny toy castle, and it was another moment of shock as the landscape shrunk away from them. The mountains to the north now looked even more bitter in their inclines, and Sarah found her blood shivering with the anticipation of being stranded in that vast wilderness. It was both exhilarating and terrifying, and she did her best to hide both of these emotions as the pilot pitched wide, taking them toward a rocky outcrop that overlooked the valley.
All three, Sarah, Patrick, and Caroline, piled out of the helicopter to a safe distance. A huge hill of shale ascended behind them, arching up toward the high peak of one of the nearest mountain ranges. Sarah’s keen senses picked up the smells of other things as well – animals, flowers, wafting in from the valley below. She felt ready to explode – the Bear in her was anxious, testing the chains of her self-control that kept her in Form. “We can’t tell you where Connor is, I’m afraid. You’ll have to find him on your own,” Patrick shouted, “but he has a one day head-start, so he might’ve seen the helicopter. Do you have any other questions?”
Sarah looked back and forth between Caroline and Patrick, trying to wrack her mind for anything she might’ve missed, and when she couldn’t think of anything, merely shook her head. Patrick nodded and clapped her on the shoulder, a huge heavy pad of skin and bone that almost caved in her legs and she let out a small whoof as he returned to the helicopter.
As he turned, Caroline bent down low and grabbed her by the back of her the head, pulling her in close. The action scared Sarah, who reflexively tried to escape her cousin’s grip, but stopped when she heard the serpentine words whispered in her ear.
“Be careful, Sarah. Everything is not as it seems. If you get the chance… kill Connor,” Caroline murmured.
Sarah pulled back, a look of horror and confusion on her face, and felt something cold thrust against her. When she looked down, she saw it was a gun, a black sidearm with a single clip. Caroline pushed at the weapon again, sliding it under the rim of her pants above her coccyx with a look of lethal seriousness.
Then, she was gone, and the helicopter took off, its thumping knocking loose Sarah’s senses like a rockslide as she gaped. Kill Connor?? For a moment, she thought she had misheard Caroline, that perhaps there was something she had missed – but when she brought the gun out and held it in both hands, she knew there wasn’t any confusion.
Caroline wanted her to kill the heir to the Clawgrove Tribe. And, by default, her soon to be husband.
*
Sarah tried to keep her mind focused as she scaled down the incline of the mountain, sliding on the loose gravel and scree, which kicked up dust into her mouth and coated her skin and hair. She was already sweating and breathing hard by the time she reached the bottom of the valley floor and looked back up the way she’d come – she was making good time, but now with Caroline’s gift she wasn’t sure what she was heading towards. Questions came rushing back, and she felt a pang of nausea sweep over her like an undulating wave.
Why had Caroline given her a gun? And what did she mean that she needed to kill Connor? None of it made any sense. It was all too sudden, too surreal, for her to grasp it. She wanted to laugh. It seemed ridiculous.
She knew that the Clawgroves and the Greybacks had a tumultuous history. But blood hadn’t been shed in almost five hundred years. If it had, it would have started the war all over again – and now Caroline, the current matron of the Greyback Tribe, was actively trying to bring it about? Sarah shook her head again as she started to jog through the underbrush, but her cheeks filled up again and she felt tears streaking from the sides of her eyes and had to stop.
“What are you thinking?” she half-panted as she sat down by a small stream. Mosquitoes buzzed their protests, and the prehensile lapping of the water helped to calm her down.
She hugged her chest again, counted each rib with her finger, like a meditation. She could smell the pine sap in the forest, a sticky kind of odor that saturated everything. In another time, she would have been able to appreciate it as beautiful, but now it all seemed dark and foreboding. She got the distinct impression she was being watched.
She had to think clearly – everything depended on it.
So far, she knew only two things: that she had been preparing for a marriage proposal that involved tracking down her mate, the heir to a Former enemy of her Tribe, and two, that for some inexplicable reason her cousin now wanted her to kill that man.
What if Patrick gave the same orders to Connor? she thought suddenly. Maybe this wasn’t a marriage proposal at all. It was some cruel joke, some horrible game that played a member of each Tribe against each other. She started to hyperventilate and dug her fists into the soft ground to try and calm herself down again.
Patrick had seemed quite genuine – he had even mentioned that he’d known her as a child. Sarah couldn’t detect any malice in the old man, but neither could she completely ignore Caroline’s gift of a gun. There was a dangerous game being played, and she wasn’t even sure what the rules were. It was nearly impossible to trust anyone. Even myself, she realized with a sudden hint of sadness.
Once more, she checked her knapsack, wondering if Caroline had planted something else to give her a clue as to what to do next. Nothing, just the few items she had chosen to bring with her that were permitted. Fondly, she touched the moleskin journal haphazardly stashed in the back of the canvas and pulled it out. No, she thought. There would be time enough for reflection later – this was the immediate world. Gently, she stuffed it back and pulled the pistol from the waistband of her pants.
It was a semi-automatic Glock. She’d handled the type before, a bit of mandatory firearm instruction at the Estate, but to actually have it in her hands now felt like a bad omen. It was too heavy. Unlike the firing range, she had been given it with a very specific purpose in mind. Her throat swelled and she tried to swallow around it to no avail.
She tucked the gun deeper into her knapsack and sat up again. Whatever the case, the only real option was to try and find Connor – she didn’t know what would happen after that.
*
The Canadian forest was unlike the Washington forests, but Sarah was able to pick up several scents and followed them, more as a way to test her own reflexes than anything else. She suspected that Connor had definitely seen, or at least heard, the thumping of the helicopter hours earlier, and was more than likely on his way to try and find her – whether to secure their marriage, or assassinate her, Sarah didn’t have a clue.
It didn’t take long for her to find a scent that wasn’t a human or a bear, but something in between. Carefully, she took off all her clothes and set them beside her knapsack, including the gun, near an upended log – in the dwindling light, she was surprised at the sexual energy that was flowing through her. She bent low on all fours, raising the angle of her buttocks in the air and felt a gust of wind run between her legs, over her sex, and let out a small gasp of pleasure.
The transformation was immediate. Muscles bulged and a black hirsute layer of hair erupted from her arms and back. She lifted her muzzle toward the sky and shook her shaggy mane. It always felt like pulling off old clothes when she changed – it was liberating.
She caught the whiff again and followed it along a riverbank, keeping low and quiet. Finally, she caught sight of a black shape stirring in a bed of grass below and peered through the ferns. It was another Bear, like her, with a ruddy brown coat – not overly large and bulky, but clearly strong. He seemed to be sniffing in the grass, trying to root out grubs or roots.
Instinctively she knew it was Connor in Form. There was something quite un-bear-like about him, as if he hadn’t had much practice with his transformation. A red desire, halfway between blood lust and passion, bubbled in Sarah’s veins. This is the perfect chance, she thought. If Patrick had told Connor to kill her, it might be her only chance.
She took it. Without warning, she charged through the underbrush and barreled toward the lighter colored Bear, blindly thrusting her whole body toward him with claws outspread. Connor turned and his ruffled ears flinched, and Sarah thought he looked unusually complacent for someone being ambushed.
As she brought down a claw against his unprotected face, she was surprised at his agility – he deftly dodged and plowed his whole shoulder into her like a football player, an uncharacteristically bear-like maneuver that caught her off guard and she gasped trying to fill her lungs with air.
She growled and tried to swipe him again, but he was ready, ducking on his hind legs and swiping out with his own bared claws. Sarah felt several cuts indent against her belly region, a stinging pain that filled her whole body and she howled. Connor took advantage of the opening and lunged down on top of her again, pinning both her paws under her and raised his right paw high above his head in a threatening death-move.
Sarah closed her eyes and turned her head, waiting for the final blow and cursing her own stupidity and uselessness. But the blow never came. Slowly she opened her eyes. Above her, a lean young face stared sternly back, his fist raised. His tousled shaggy hair was the same color as the bear, but his eyes had become human – they reminded her of Patrick. Hard and uncompromising, but never reckless. Like me, she thought bitterly.“What the fuck?” she heard him ask.
His straight jaw had only the hint of hair on it, and he was quite handsome. His long tanned arms flexed with inherent muscles, a kind of wiry and ripped whipcord frame that bespoke of an athlete. He was still breathing hard, and his broad muscular chest was brimming with sweat. A hot drop left his shoulder and she felt it land on her abdomen, and realized that they were both naked – in her fear and acquiescence to her death, she’d unconsciously reverted to human Form, and so had he.
He seemed to notice it first and leaped off her, taking a few steps back. Sarah saw that he was at least six feet tall, and quite well-built. His abdomen heaved with washboard muscles, and the defined angle of his pelvis bent gracefully toward his groin where a full black shock of hair obscured his penis. She suspected that in the heat of their fight it had swollen, for it hung large and oblique between his legs.
“Why did you attack me?” he asked levelly.
Sarah tried to sit up and gasped when she felt a sharp pain in her abdomen. She looked down and saw three parallel cuts in her stomach, oozing blood. They ran in bright red rivulets down her thin mid-riff, and pooled in her navel for a moment before branching down over the scant stiff bristles above her labia. Connor’s eyes bulged and he quickly rooted around in the nearby grass, returning seconds later with a small med-kit.
“Hold still,” he warned, bending down beside her. The heat of his body was overwhelming, almost enough to distract her from the lacerations to her stomach.
He reached down and she tried to strike out again, this time in fear. The fact they were both naked seemed somehow secondary, and she grappled with him for a few panicked moments before he finally managed to pin her arms again. She had felt fear before, but nothing like this. Connor put his full weight on her legs, and she could feel the skin of his inner thighs against her shins.
“Would you knock it off,” he finally exclaimed.
It was enough to silence Sarah, who froze, eyes wide with fear and her black hair muddied by the grass. She looked down and saw that he had a water bottle and jolted when it touched her wound. From the med-kit by his knee, he withdrew a white linen bandage and put it onto the cuts. Sarah gritted her teeth against the pain.
“It’s not deep, but that’s a sensitive spot. It’ll hurt before it starts to feel better,” he said at last, standing up and walking back to the grass where he reclaimed a small backpack and a bundle of clothes. He tossed an emergency blanket in her direction without looking. “You should cover up. When you’re not in Form, you’re just as vulnerable to the elements as any human.”
Sarah looked down and saw her small breasts were erect, a bit paler than the rest of her body, and the pink nipples bulged from the broad perimeter of each dark areola. She sat up and saw that mud from their struggle in the grass had also stained the inside of her taut legs and dusted the round rise of her pubis. She quickly covered her crotch, but not before seeing Connor turn his head abruptly. If she hadn’t been in pain, she could have sworn he was blushing.
*
“Care to explain yourself yet?” Connor asked.
He had put on pants, a pair of heavy-duty cargos with pockets on the side, but he was still naked from the waist up. In the light of a small campfire he had built, his torso still brimmed with an untapped ferocity. He squatted down opposite her and prodded the ashes. Several squirrels were spitted on sharpened stakes above the flames.
She guessed he’d been hunting at the time she had attacked him, and her stomach growled in spite of her situation – she rubbed her stomach and tried to avoid his gaze as he continued to toy with the coals.
Sarah balked, and wrapped the emergency blanket around her body tighter. Connor saw the edge of the blanket slip down her leg, revealing a narrow slant of her inner thigh and the darkness that ran further up. She quickly pushed her knees together. In truth, she didn’t know what to say to him – she didn’t have a good reason for rushing him, and she felt ashamed and embarrassed about the events that had led up to it. Then she remembered the gun, still hidden in her backpack.
“I’m sorry… I… wish I could tell you,” she said.
The linens on her stomach tugged as she straightened herself. He had cleaned the small cuts on her stomach, which upon closer inspection hadn’t been as deep as she had feared. Some of her fears about Connor had been abated. If he, too, had meant to kill her, he could have done it a long time ago. He didn’t want to hurt me, he deliberately held back, she thought. No, the more she thought about it, the more she was willing to believe that she had been used as a pawn in someone else’s game. Force of habit prevented her from saying it aloud, but a name kept swimming in her mind. Caroline.
“You’re her, aren’t you? The Greyback girl…. Sarah,” he said, “I can't think of any other Bears who would be out here. And certainly no one ridiculous enough to try and sneak up on me when they’re upwind.”
His chiding remark hit her like a nail and she flinched. It was true, she had forgotten all her training and merely acted on reflex – that kind of thinking could get you killed out here, and it was a mistake she couldn’t allow herself to make again.
“You’re Connor,” she replied, as if confirming the fact.
“Guess we found each other,” he said grimly.
There was something aloof and cold in his tone, but it wasn’t the same as the sort of distance she had come to expect from the others in her family, such as Caroline – this was a distance created out of suspicion and exhaustion of rules. Maybe he really is like me, she thought. They were both anchored to events out of their collective control.
“I’m sorry about earlier,” she admitted.
“You still haven’t told me why you attacked me,” he said, raising his eyes.
“It’s difficult to explain. I wish I could tell you, it’s just-”
“It’s fine,” Connor interrupted brusquely, and tried to smile, but it was like he wasn’t used to using the right muscles, and it made him look more menacing in the dim orange light. “I’m sure you had your reasons, it doesn’t matter.”
No, it definitely does, Sarah said. She scooted forward on the log, and shivered in spite of herself. “I have something to tell you,” she said very softly.
“Wait, you didn’t start off in Form, did you?” Connor said, his eyes growing wide and comical again. It was a peculiar quirk of his, one which was in contrast to the gruff adult exterior – this side of him, when he became excited, was boyish. Almost charming.
“Uh, no, I… I took them off, and hid them. About a three kilometers back,” she said.
Connor stood up, and raised his arms above him in a stretch. “Well, I don’t recommend trying to track through the bush after nightfall. The mosquitoes will suck you dry before you get there. You can stay here for the night, I’ll try to erect a shelter.”
The idea of spending a night alone with the strange man whom she had only known in whispers gave her a thrill, and she felt a warm giddy feeling bubbling up in her chest, spreading downward.
“Connor, I know… what we’re supposed to do,” she said.
He stopped, and turned, and the adult façade disappeared again, the bashful boy staring back. “You mean the marriage, the ceremony… I know. Listen, I know that you’ve just been manipulated into this, just like me. We don’t have to… y’know,” he said, not able to actually say it out loud.
The first coupling was a very important part of the marriage process. Of all the aspects of her upbringing, Sarah had secretly wondered and yearned over this one the most. It was true, there were suitors on the Estate. And even after their marriage, it was quite common to find another suitor or mistress – their marriage in this remote wilderness was, as Caroline had put it, merely politics.
Still, she had never felt the warmth of another man. It wasn’t anything to do with propriety, it just hadn’t happened for her. She had read the books, that was it – and learned, in her own way, a number of things. But it was all theoretical. She felt another surge of warmth between her legs and pressed her knees tighter together until they hurt.
“I have to tell you something,” she repeated, raising her small childish features toward him. That stopped him again, because for a moment he seemed transfixed. It was a look Sarah had never been given before – one which was part awe, and part desire, a burning combination of the two that smoldered in her chest and made it difficult to breathe.
Connor stepped past the fire and kneeled down in front of her. His shaggy brown hair covered his brow and he looked up at her. For the first time, she saw how hazel his eyes were, a deep auburn hue that caught the fire and reflected it even brighter. He rubbed the square edge of his jaw again, as if trying to contemplate something – or find the right words.
Then, in a surprising gesture, one which was on par with Caroline being kind, he reached forward. But this time, she didn’t flinch. Gently, almost with abject curiosity, like a man discovering a woman for the first time, he touched her cheek. She held his gaze and blinked back and cursed herself again. It was all so stupid. She had embarrassed herself by attacking him, and now she was naked, with none of her possessions. On top of that, she was wounded, and probably looked like a mess – but she couldn’t move even to straighten her hair as he reached toward her. It was like she was paralyzed, waiting to see what he would do next.
He rubbed his fingers further up her cheek, and she let him touch the edge of her lips. They barely parted and she let out a slow breath, felt another surge of blood flood her legs and groin. His hands went further up the side of her neck and she quivered in spite of herself, which seemed to surprise Connor back to reality. He lifted a lock of the black hair over her ear.
“You have really black hair,” he said.
“Yeah, it’s a gift from my mother,” she said.
“You’re lucky,” he said, grinning a bit more naturally, “all I got from my mother was a bad temper.”
“You don’t seem that bad,” she said.
He shrugged. “You said you had something to tell me. Why don’t you fill me in while I finish the shelter,” he said, picking up a small hatchet among his belongings and indicating the tall cedar boughs that overlapped downward from the pale trunks of trees nearby.