A Blaze To Bear (Fire Bear Shifters Book 1) (9 page)

“Are you happy now?” Ian yelled at Zach, giving him a frustrated look. But Ian’s words were lost in the racket of the chain saws that echoed out across the forest. Ian kicked a large tree stump in frustration and went back to where their makeshift camp had been set up. His radio squawked with urgent voices from Boise, asking them to come in and update with where they were.

Ian let out an exasperated breath and grabbed the radio. “Boise, this is Ian. We’re fine. Had to deal with a bear attack, but it appears the threat has passed.”

“Roger that. We were worried at the long lack of communication. Did you guys terminate the bear?”

Ian rolled his eyes. Terminate? Was this a military operation or something? “No, we were able to scare it off. I think it was just confused because of the huge fire out here.”

“Alright. How’s the fire line progressing?”

“We need probably two, three more hours. How does the fire look?”

“It’s still moving steadily but it doesn’t seem like it’s speeding up. I think you guys are okay for the moment.”

“Okay. We’ll keep going as quickly as we can.”

“Sounds good. Keep us updated. And watch out for bears.”

If you only knew, Ian thought. He headed back to check on his crew, who were working harder than ever as they cleared the line. Ian grabbed an axe to help them, and tried to concentrate on the work at hand. But he found it impossible not to think about the fact that his best friend and girlfriend were both mad at him. He wasn’t even sure if Charlotte still wanted to be his girlfriend. Ian cursed himself over and over for not just telling her he was a shifter the first night they had slept together. Then she would have known from the start, and Zach would have never had the chance to convince him to hold off even longer on telling her.

Ian figured Zach would eventually get over his anger. Zach could be feisty, and a pain in the ass when he thought things were being done the wrong way. But he always settled down eventually. Ian would give him space, and ride out the storm of Zach’s wrath until it passed. But Charlotte was an unknown factor. Ian had no idea whether she would forgive him, or whether he had lost her forever. He felt his bear squirming restlessly inside of him, telling him to go talk to her. But Ian couldn’t. He had to give her space. Maybe after this job was finished, she would have calmed down enough to at least listen when he tried to explain things to her. Hopefully, she would understand that he had made a promise to his second in command to keep silent, and that he’d had to honor that promise.

Ian coughed as the smoke around him thickened. The wildfire moved steadily closer to them, but Ian no longer worried that they wouldn’t finish in time. The crew had almost finished the fire line, and would be able to set the back fire before the wildfire presented any significant threat to the group’s safety. As the early morning light started spreading over the horizon, Ian inspected the fire line and told Trevor to go ahead and light the back fire. Trevor got the flame torch and listlessly began lighting up the other side of the fire line. There were no whoops and cheers like last time. Everyone on the crew had reached the point of exhaustion, and tensions were running high with the uncertainty of whether Charlotte would now cause trouble for the crew by outing them as shifters.

Charlotte began packing up her gear for the hike out without a word. Ian’s heart ached at the sight of her. He wanted to hold her, tell her he was sorry, and beg for her understanding. But he didn’t know what he could say right now that would ease the pain he had caused her. So he did nothing.

Boise radioed in to say that they wanted the crew to immediately begin hiking to the pick up site. The fire still appeared unstable, and the crew needed to get to a spot where they could be rescued easily if necessary. Despite the fatigue threatening to overtake each of the crew members, they all packed up their gear and began the trek through the forest. Ian kept his eyes and nose alert, looking around and sniffing in case any more bears were hiding in the dense trees. But he only smelled a mixture of pine needles, dry wood, and thick smoke.

None of the crew talked or joked on the hike. It wasn’t just the tension between Ian, Zach, and Charlotte causing the problem, though. Everyone had reached a point where the effort it would take to speak was too much. Every ounce of energy needed to be conserved for the long trek out. Ian felt himself fading more and more with each hour that passed. Somehow he made it until dusk, when they finally reached the large utility truck waiting to transport them out of Yosemite. Everyone shed their jumpsuits, parachute rigs, and gear into the back of the truck, then climbed wearily into the front seats.

They made quite a sight—a group of large, burly men, and one very fit, toned woman—all with dark circles under their eyes and grimy, sweaty streaks covering their faces. Boise reported that the backfire was burning well. As long as the winds held steady, the two fires should be meeting within the hour. But the winds had been unpredictable, so nothing was a sure thing until the fires had actually burned each other out.

Ian leaned his head against the side of the truck and closed his eyes. He tried to fight the emotional and physical fatigue that was quickly overtaking him, but it was a losing battle. He drifted off to sleep before the truck had made it a mile down the road.

Hours later, he woke with a start as someone punched him in the arm.

“Hey, Boss, we’re back at base.”

Ian opened his eyes and squinted around. Hunter was standing next to him, looking concerned. The rest of the crew had already left the truck, and were unloading gear from the back.

“Are you okay, Boss? It took quite a bit of force to even wake you up,” Hunter said.

Ian focused on Hunter’s face, and nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just exhausted from the job, I guess. Any word on the fire?”

“Yeah, Boise radioed in. The two fires met and should be burned out soon. Everything is going according to plan.”

“Ok,” Ian said. “What time is it?”

“Something like 2 a.m. You should head in and get some sleep. We can finish unloading the stuff.”

Ian tried to protest, but Hunter insisted that Ian needed to take a break. So Ian stumbled into the bunkhouse, but decided to take a shower before hitting the sack. He could smell himself, so he knew the dirt and sweat was too much. He headed for the bathroom, thankful that this was one of the few bases that actually had private showers. He wanted a few minutes alone to wash away the soot, sweat, and anxiety of the last few days.

He tried to figure out what to say to Charlotte, but every explanation he played over in his head sounded wrong. He had to make her realize that he trusted her, but he had wanted to protect the feelings of his crew, as well. They had been through so much, and he wanted to protect them from any more pain and upheaval in their lives. Long after the soap he had lathered over his body had washed away, he stood there under the stream of steaming hot water, trying to figure out how his life had gone from so wonderful to so complicated in such a short span of time.

* * *

The next morning, Ian came up with a plan. After checking with Boise and learning that the Yosemite fire had burned out, and that right now there were no other fires needing a smokejumper crew, Ian packed a cooler with sandwiches and bottled water. Then he went to find Charlotte. She wasn’t anywhere on the grounds or in the bunkhouse, but when he found the rest of the crew in the hangar making repairs to their gear, he learned she had gone off on one of her long runs. Ian ignored the daggers coming at him from Zach’s eyes, and went out front to hop into his pickup truck. He knew the direction she usually ran in, so he drove that way until he saw her pounding out her frustrations one foot after the other on the pothole-filled road. Her strong, muscular legs made his body heat up with longing, but he pushed down the feeling for the moment. He had to worry about winning her trust back before he could think about doing anything physical with her.

He drove up beside her slowly and honked his horn. Startled, she stopped to pull out her earphones and give him a look of disdain.

“Can’t I get any time to myself around here?” she asked, her voice frustrated.

“No,” Ian said simply. “Hop in.”

To his surprise, Charlotte didn’t protest, although she did keep the look of disdain plastered on her face as she climbed into the passenger seat.

“What’s going on? Is there another fire?”

“No, not today. I’m going to show you something, but it’s going to be a long ride.”

Charlotte glared at him. “What if I don’t want to go for a long ride with you? Just because you’re crew chief doesn’t mean you can force me to spend time with you on off days.”

“Just give me a chance, Charlotte. I know you’re mad at me, but I want to try to explain.”

Ian half expected Charlotte to make a break for it even though the vehicle was already moving. But she just scowled at him and turned the radio on, switching the channel to a country music station and turning the volume up impossibly loud. Ian tried not to smile as he focused on the road and turned his truck north.

After an hour in the car, Charlotte finally turned down the volume and looked over at him.

“Where are we going?” she asked, her voice icy.

“Point Reyes. It’s probably another hour and half to get there.”

“Well, I’m hungry.”

“There are sandwiches in the cooler. Help yourself.”

Charlotte scowled but leaned over to the backseat to get herself a sandwich. Ian couldn’t help but notice how perfectly rounded her ass was as it nearly hit him in the face while she searched through the available sandwiches.

She came back with two sandwiches and two bottles of water, keeping one for herself and handing one to Ian without another word. He raised his eyebrow slightly, surprised that she had thought to grab one for him, too. He felt a small sliver of hope rising in his chest. Maybe she didn’t hate him as much as he thought, after all.

They rode in silence until they reached a small, dirt covered parking lot. Ian turned off the truck’s engine, and opened his door.

“Come on, I want to show you something,” he said.

Charlotte wordlessly followed him to a spot at the end of the parking lot, where a small wooden sign marked the beginning of a trail. Ian led her through a short grassy meadow into a thick fir forest. The shade from the sun felt good, and Ian enjoyed the calming influence of the trees. The beauty of the forest balanced the heaviness in his heart as he neared the spot where he would find out for sure whether Charlotte would forgive him and stay with him.

They came out of the forest onto the beginning of a high, rocky cliff that overlooked a beach area, and Ian stopped to point at a spot where the cliff had collapsed into a rockslide.

“This is what I wanted to show you,” Ian said.

“Okay,” Charlotte said, her voice uncertain. Ian took a deep breath and began to explain the significance of the cliff to her. He couldn’t bear to look in her eyes as he spoke, so he stared off at the pile of rocks near the bottom of the cliff.

“I’m a bear shifter, as you know. So are the rest of the guys in the crew. We grew up out here around Point Reyes, in a small group of bear shifters known as a clan. Our families wanted to keep us away from heavily populated areas, and the combination of beaches and forests here gave bear cubs plenty of room to roam. My childhood felt like a dream, with days of running in the sand and splashing in the ocean, then playing in these forests and stopping for berries whenever I got hungry. It was idyllic, until the day my clan tried to take refuge under this rock arch during a heavy rainfall. Late in the afternoon, the arch collapsed, and buried most of the clan. The day was horrific, as you can imagine. Only the five of us who are now the Burning Claws Crew survived. Zach almost didn’t make it, in fact. He still has a huge scar across his back where a rock boulder hit him.”

Ian paused his narrative and looked at Charlotte to gauge her reaction. Her face held a neutral expression as she looked at the large pile of rocks below them.

“We were young and scared,” Ian said. “We had just lost everything important to us, and had no idea what to do from there. We spent a few years trying to make it out here alone in the forest, but the memories were too painful, and at some point we decided to leave and try our luck at living among the full humans. The crew nominated me as alpha, which basically means I’m the boss or the leader of the crew. With my encouragement, we all joined the army together, and somehow managed to get stationed at the same base in a small, quiet city in Georgia. After the army, we became firefighters. My men needed the chance to do some sort of meaningful physical labor. But we were outed as shifters on our hotshot crew, and things got rough. A lot of the human hotshots weren’t understanding of our differences at all, and we thought we were going to have to leave firefighting. It was heartbreaking, because we all really loved the work. But then, Forest Service struck a deal with us to make us into a smokejumper crew. We were told we could be by ourselves, working alone without any outside humans. Of course, Boise didn’t and couldn’t know about the deal, and they insisted on assigning you to our crew. We weren’t worried about you not working hard because you’re a woman, like you thought at first. We were worried you were going to discover we were shifters and all our work at getting reassigned to a smokejumper crew would be wasted.”