Two Bears are Better Than One (Alpha Werebear Romance) (Broken Pine Bears Book 1) (2 page)

Fred Stanton stared at her over the top of his square-framed glasses. His hair pulled back in a tight, thin ponytail that only barely brushed against the collar of his shirt, he had a jowly frown on his face that accentuated the lines on either side of his mouth.

But underneath his perpetual scowl, Fred Stanton was the best friend a scientist could ever have: he was a grant writing genius. The two of them finished a request to the EPA to do a huge, year-long field observation on a very strange species.

“We’re not hunting Bigfoot yet,” he said, when he noticed she was spacing out. “That doesn’t start for a month.”

Jill cleared her throat. “We’re not hunting Bigfoot anyway, Doc. Somehow I think that an unknown bear species in the southern part of the Appalachian Mountains is slightly more believable than a teleporting man-ape.”

Stanton grunted a laugh, and finally cracked a smile. “He teleports now?” a little chuckle puffed out of the old man’s nose. “Anyway, Dr. Appleton, please meet Doctors Eckton and Marley. Right?”

They both nodded and smiled in the fake way that immediately told her they wanted something. Two little men, significantly shorter than Jill, stood and shook her hand. They exchanged their pleased-to-meet-you’s and all took their seats again.

Almost immediately she felt their eyes on her. Or thought she did, anyway.

This was her mental hitch. No one really seemed to understand why being tall and wide-shouldered was such a horrible thing for someone like her. The thing was, she didn’t
feel
big. She felt like she was just Jill, but standing next to her made all but the most absurdly tall of her dates look small, and as it turned out, none of them had ever been comfortable enough with themselves to look past that.

But still, she always felt eyes on her, even when they weren’t really there.

“What is it you want to do with our research, gentlemen? Why do you need to be in on this one? What are you looking to find out there except a group of bears who seems more sociable and community-oriented than others we’ve seen?”

Fred’s grumpy question dragged Jill back to reality.

“What does your wanting to tag along have anything to do with us? The grant that was approved was just for the two of us, it’s got nothing to do with you, or your employers. This is simply a nature observation and—”

“Ah, yes,” the shorter, and slightly more sweaty-lipped of the two said. “Yes, I – we – understand your concern. However, the group feels otherwise. These creatures—”

“Bears,” Jill cut in. When eyes turned in her direction, she continued. “They’re bears, they’re not creatures. We know what they are, they’ve been observed before, and we’re not going to drag some experimenters into their incredibly small homeland to do God knows what to them.”

“Anecdotally,” the shorter of the two – Eckton – said. “They’ve never been caught on film or video, or even satellite images. Farmers,” he shook his head disdainfully, “hill people. You’re going on anecdotal evidence that says they even exist.”

Jill’s skin was burning hot. “If it’s such a terrible idea, why did the EPA approve the grant? If it’s so ridiculous that there’s an endangered and unknown species of bear in the Appalachians, then why was another group found about four hundred miles north of where I think this group roams? And if you’re so concerned about all that, why are you trying to beg a ride-along?”

All around that birthmark on her chest, she felt lines of prickling heat seeping out in all directions, like an untreated infection that went far enough to get red lines radiating out.

The two men just stared. Fred, for his part, was too, but he was smiling and tugging the point of his beard. “I,” she stammered momentarily. “I don’t know what any of this has to do with anyone except us. No, you can’t go.”

“But ma’am,” the other of the two said. “You don’t even know what we plan to
do
at the camp. You walked in, late, and just started making assumptions.”

She shot a quick glance in Stanton’s direction, and he returned her look with a short nod. Just as she began to speak again, he raised a hand. “Gentlemen, I think we’ve had enough for the day. If your employers wish you to accompany us, they’ll have to satisfy me that they’re not going to do anything harmful to the creatu—to the bears,” he corrected himself. “Until then, you can see your way out.”

The two rose and left, collecting briefcases and jackets.

“Who were they?” Jill asked as the door closed. “You kept saying ‘organization’ like it was some sort of secret society or something.

A cryptic smile spread across Stanton’s lips. “Not exactly like that,” he said.

“Not exactly?”

“Jill, listen,” he began, standing up from the table and collecting his ever present coffee mug. She saw it was mostly empty, but he kept sipping at it anyway. “Some strange issues have arisen.”

“Yeah,” she shot back. “I can see that. We’ve got some Project Bluebook, Area-51, X-Files guys wanting to come along on a camping trip to see if we can videotape some bears and see if we can watch them hump each other?”

Fred laughed for a moment. “Well, that’s the hope anyway. But that’s not exactly what I was getting at. Those two are,” he paused and then waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about them. Just put them out of your mind, for now anyway. Understand?”

A brown curl fell down in front of Jill’s face, freed from her bun. She tucked it back behind her ear and squinted. “There’s something you’re not telling me.”

“There’s a lot I’m not telling you,” Stanton said. “For good reason. The good reason is... I’m not even sure myself what’s going on. But for now, they’re gone, right?”

Jill sighed. “Yes, Fred, they are apparently not here anymore. So, why did you call me down here in the first place?”

“Were you busy?”

Jill frowned. Stanton didn’t bother to pursue that any further. “Sorry,” he said. “Look, the reason I needed you is because I need
someone
.”

“Oh God,” Jill said with a slightly mischievous grin. “Don’t get started with all that. You’ve got way too much energy for me, you old letch.”

Wiggling his gray eyebrows, the old scientist smiled. “Those, my dear, those were the days. Actually it
is
something like that, although not quite the same direction. I’ve got some bad news.”

“Don’t tell me, Fred,” Jill sat forward. “What’s wrong? I mean, do tell me, but what’s wrong?”

“Nothing serious,” he said. “I just have some slightly funny numbers on my physical. So I can’t go, not at first anyway.”

“You
what
?” she asked. “What do you mean, funny numbers?”

“Oh just old man bullshit, kid.” He saw the look on her face with the raised eyebrows. “No, I’m serious. My blood pressure’s a little high, heart rate a little high. I’m an old man, Jill. I’m not sturdy enough for treks into the woods anymore. At least not that anyone knows about,” he trailed off.

“Okay, all right, fine,” she said. “Won’t be the first time I went out in the woods by myself to go looking for a bunch of deadly animals. Oh wait, yeah this is exactly the first time.”

They sat in silence for a moment before one of Stanton’s patented grins spread across his face. “So that’s a yes? You’ll have a radio, and that pilot, whose name I’m always embarrassed to forget.”

Jill took a long, slow, deep breath. “Jacques,” she said with a vague smile. She and Jacques had dated for a few months after her last trek into the woods. That one was accompanied by an entire team, though.

“Right, Jacques. Nice guy, good pilot. And you’ll have a radio.”

“Oh good, a radio. Will there also be water for me to drink or am I supposed to rig up some kind of—”

The thing on her chest tinged again, cutting off her survivalist joke, and reminding her of the way that man in her fantasy touched her neck, how he trailed his fingertip down to her chest, and then vanished. She put her hand there, covering the birthmark with her palm. “Yeah,” she said. “As long as it’s temporary.”

“As soon as my numbers are right, I’ll be with you.”

He said more – a lot more – about preparations and first aid readiness and all sorts of other things, but Jill? She was a million miles away.

––––––––

F
licking his head to the left, and then immediately to the right, King sighed slowly. The whole clan was accounted for, except for the second alpha, who was... somewhere. He’d gone ranging days before.

From where he sat, in the only shade the noon-time sun afforded, the muscled alpha of the long-hidden Broken Pine Clan watched the few remaining cubs going about their daily chores. Some fished, some had gone into the forest for grazing, still others were practicing combat, which was a fancy way of saying “wrestling and hitting each other.” He ran his hand through his long, golden-brown hair and massaged his aching shoulder.

The cubs milled around below him, though their numbers dwindled dangerously. The clan had its two chiefs, its two alphas, in Rogue and King, but no queen.

“Slate!” King shouted as one of the adolescent werebears grew unruly and surprised his older brother with a sucker punch as the older one stood in a stream, waiting with a paw cocked in the air for a trout. “Let your brother hunt!”

“Yes, Alpha,” the smaller bear – so small he had yet to earn his tattoos – said, slinking back to the rest of the clan.

A smile crossed King’s bowed lips as he watched the younger cubs play, and the older ones hunt. One of the adolescent bears, called Arrow, sauntered into the middle of the makeshift camp and shrugged a sheet off his massive neck before shifting back into a lithe, long human. “Berries!” he announced. “Fresh, black and blues. I found a new clutch of bushes a half hour from here. I hope we can stay here awhile, at least until the berries are gone.” He looked in King’s direction.

The young bear had gotten his tattoos five years back, and was born with the mark of a Broken Pine alpha: one amber eye, to go along with his other one. He was the closest thing King and Rogue had to an heir, except another one had never been born. Tradition held that there were always two alphas, each with one amber eye, which made the clan whole. For King, the traditions and history of the clan were all that mattered.

For Rogue? Not so much.

“Get up, you old, fat bear! You’re going to sit there until you turn into a toad.”

Rogue mounted the last step into the alpha’s cave. Everywhere they camped, there was an overlooking space, just like this one. Behind them, the cave wound in a labyrinth, where they’d all sleep if the weather was bad, or there were lupines – the werewolves who had no order, they were just wild – making problems.

Oh
, King thought.
There he is, right on cue.
Despite himself, the older – and not at all fat or in any way toad-like – bear, hopped to his knees and then his feet, and grabbed the second alpha by the forearm in a traditional greeting. For his part, Rogue insisted on a simple handshake followed by a hug afterwards.

For a few moments, the two alphas stared into each other’s eyes. Both of them had the Broken Pine alpha’s mark – one amber eye, and one of a different color. Rogue’s was dark blue, the color of a stormy ocean. King’s bright, burning green. Both of them were enormously tall, although King was slightly taller. But what he lacked in height, Rogue made up for in raw power. The muscles of his shoulders and neck flexed with every move he made. His chest tightened and relaxed with every breath he took.

The other thing? They saw the world in a completely different way.

King celebrated the old, Rogue the new; King treasured the memories he held of past times, and Rogue found them dusty and useless to the point of endangering the future of the clan. From King’s perspective, the
only
thing keeping the clan together and alive was tradition. Once that was gone, there’d be nothing left.

The generation before King and Rogue took over was a normal one. As normal as all those before, for as long as the clan had a history, either written or otherwise. But then tragedy struck. The women were taken by some shadowy force that never quite made sense. They swept in with their helicopters, like cowardly thieves in the night, and took everyone they could.

Bears had shifted, had fought like hell itself unleashed, but in the end, the strange humans in their slick black suits, with their electrified nets and shock sticks and relentless numbers, won out. That all happened only months after Rogue and King were named successor alphas. They knew from the start that their road would be a hard one.

Rogue’s way was to embrace change. King’s was to hunker down.

King shook his massive head, bringing himself back to reality. “How was the ranging? Anything to worry about?”

Rogue laughed, curling the left corner of his mouth in a mischievous smirk. “There’s always something to worry about, King. But right now, things are at peace. Although, while I was out in the wild world of the mountains, I thought about something.”

“You didn’t go into one of those human towns and drink them dry again, did you?” King smiled as he asked. He already knew the answer.

“No, of course not. Not completely dry, anyway. But when I was most of the way through their supply Fat Tire, a thought occurred to me, and I might be stupid, but—”

King snorted a laugh. “You were eating tires?” Rogue grinned, and sighed. “It’s beer. It’s delicious.”

“They make beer out of tires? Why would anyone drink that?”

Rogue heaved a heavy sigh. “As I was saying, there is a whole hell of a lot of country out there. Why do we have to stay here?”

“The clan’s rites, Rogue,” King said with a sigh. “You know this. We’ve been over it before. We’ve been over it as many times as you’ve gone ranging and gotten drunk.”

Rogue shook his head. “This time it wasn’t like that. The craft beers, you know, they have this sort of heaviness to them. You can’t drink as many as you can of the other things. Fills me up and makes me feel bloated and confused the next morning.”