Reign: A Royal Military Romance (77 page)

“She’d love to kill Jake’s mate while she’s waiting for him,” Regina went on.

“I’m not Jake’s mate,” Ariana said.

The two of them looked at her skeptically.

“It’s only been a month!” she said. “Mating is a big commitment, and I don’t want to rush into anything, it’s kind of complicated...”

Regina put one hand on the other girl’s arm. “You don’t have to explain yourself now, but she’d still love to kill you,” she said.

Ariana rubbed her eyes with one hand. “Is it really as simple as going out in public?” she asked.

“Only one way to find out,” said Boone.

“
H
ow’s it going
?” Ariana asked Harold, the forest ranger on duty. She tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, even though her heart was hammering in her chest and she knew her blood pressure was through the roof.

“No bears yet,” he said, shrugging. “Probably nothing today, the attacks seem to come at night.” He had a huge rifle slung over his shoulder. Earlier he’d assured Ariana that it was filled with tranquilizer darts only, and that her boyfriend Jake had been nice enough to come down late last night and estimate the size of this grizzly.

“Jake feeling okay?” he asked. “He looked a little rough last night.”

“I think he’s coming down with something,” she said, distantly. “He stayed home from work today.”

So far, Ariana had done two laps around the downtown area, always staying within sight of Boone and Regina, who were doing the least covert following job she’d ever seen. She didn’t know how to get her scent out, but it seemed like the best way.

“So you’ll take it to Montana?” she said.

“Most likely,” he said. “It’s got a big grizzly population that’s pretty far from any kind of population center. Should be okay.”

Ariana just nodded.

“Well,” she said. “Good talking to you.”

Thus began her third lap of the downtown Evergreen area. Truth be told, it was boredom punctuated by spurts of terror, when every so often she remembered that she was here for the sole purpose of being attacked by an enormous grizzly bear.

It’s for Jake
, she reminded herself.
You can be brave for an hour for his sake
.

She was also beginning to wonder when they’d just give up. Maybe Violet wasn’t actually interested in her — maybe she was interested only in Jake, and wasn’t going to risk being seen in public just to get at Ariana.

Humming to herself, her head buzzing with her third cup of coffee, Ariana stopped and looked into a store window full of little carvings of bears.

Behind her, a shadow moved in an alleyway, behind a dumpster. She didn’t see it.

Those are kinda cute
, thought her sleep-deprived brain.
That one looks kind of like Jake.

The shadow moved again, taking a couple of steps.

Then, the grizzly moved out of the alleyway at a jog, heading right at Ariana. She was still crouched down, looking at the bear statues.

“Hey!” shouted Harold, watching it unfold.

He took the rifle off of his shoulder and pointed at the bear, moving fast. Bystanders started screaming and running, doors of businesses slamming shut.

Finally, Ariana turned around, only to see the bear, closing distance fast.

Her mouth went dry, and her vision filled up with nothing but teeth. It was all she could see — just Violet’s enormous teeth, getting closer and closer.

In the corner of her field of vision, she saw Harold cock the gun.

Don’t move
, she thought.
Just stay still and he can shoot her.

The bear came closer and closer, running now, and Ariana’s resolve began to falter. Now she could nearly smell the bear, all dirt and funk and fur, and she could hear her panting and oh, god, she was so close and her heart was beating right out of her chest—

There was a very small noise from what seemed like very far away, and Violet slowed.

Then she stopped, and she turned to look at Harold, who was still pointing the rifle at her. She roared at him, her long head tilting upward in the sunlight. Ariana felt like everything was moving in slow motion, like she could see every speck of dust and mote of sunlight move through the air.

Then Violet looked back at Ariana and took another step forward, and another step — but then it seemed like she somehow missed the ground, stumbling a little, her front legs dipping.

Then she stumbled again, and this time her leg gave way, spilling the huge bear to the ground. She tried to roar again, but it came out soft, more a mew than a roar.

Then Violet stopped moving and she just lay on her side, twitching a little.

All at once Ariana felt her heart start beating again, out of control. She gasped for breath, a huge inhale, and just sat down on the pavement of the sidewalk. Her coffee fell out of her hand and onto the sidewalk, but she barely even noticed.

Carefully, Harold approached the enormous bear, the rifle still cocked at her. He stood over her for a good while, watching carefully to make sure she was really out.

On the ground, Ariana started clenching and unclenching her fists. Her brain almost refused to believe that anything she was seeing was real, and she was trying to convince those were really her hands, really connected to her body, really sitting on a sidewalk in Evergreen.

Finally Harold came over to where she was and offered him her hand. Ariana took it, letting him help her up from the ground, shakily brushing herself off.

“Bear’s out cold,” he said. “Looks like a female. Really unusual that it was so aggressive, especially during the day.”

Ariana just nodded and swallowed. Slowly, she could feel the adrenaline draining out of her, and she just felt shaky and oddly hollow.

“She was really booking it for you,’’ he said. “You carrying around steaks or something?”

“Ha, ha,” she said, her tone conveying that she didn’t find it funny in the least.

“Well, you’re fine,” he said. “We’ll get the bear transport over here in a few and then it’s off to Montana with her. Bet you’re awake now, huh?”

“Still not funny,” she said, looking at Violet, asleep on the asphalt.

J
ake was tired
and dirty when he finally came to his senses, somewhere in a deep valley full of pine trees, next to a stream. Still in bear form, he could see a line of trees with deep gouges in them. He only vaguely remembered doing that, his memory coming and going in blurry patches.

He remembered being in the truck, Ariana driving like hell, shivering and sweating at the same time, using every last ounce of willpower he had not to shift.

He remembered opening the truck door and jumping out, shouting at Ariana to drive away, and then the sweet, almost orgasmic rush of shifting. Then he remembered her tail lights. He hadn’t hurt her, had he? There was no reason to think that. The last thing he really remembered was her driving away — she wouldn’t have stopped and come back, right?

His claws had blood on them, but he’d also killed a deer.

Of course Ariana was all right.

The rest was a blur of running and destruction. The tiny, old cabin that had been in the clearing he’d torn apart, plank by plank, utterly destroying the thing until it was a pile of timber on the ground. He remembered doing that in flashes, here and there, and then he’d moved onto knocking trees over, chasing after and killing anything that moved...

There was a swath of destruction in his wake, and he could barely remember doing it.

Jake bent and drank from the creek, the cold water feeling good on his snout. He wasn’t exactly sure where he was, but he knew he had to get back to Ariana as soon as he could. Then he’d have to go deal with Violet, but he could do that later, and only after he was back with his mate.

Girlfriend. Not mate. No matter how sure he was about her, no matter how deep his certainty was, she was nervous about taking things too fast, and he was going to respect that.

Jake shook himself off and tracked the sun, figuring out which direction west was. That was, more or less, the direction of the cabin, and the closer he got to it the more likely he was to know his surroundings.

* * *

W
hen Ariana
, Boone, and Regina got back to the cabin, Ariana called in sick. She just told David that she was feeling a little under the weather, declining to go into details about her current predicament, which relied heavily on people who could turn into bears at will. As normal as it seemed to her by now, she was afraid that if she tried to explain to anyone else, they’d lock her away in the loony bin.

Of course, she’d hoped that when she returned, Jake would be there, waiting for her, drinking a beer on the couch or even getting ready for work. The other rangers had to wonder where on earth he was — he hadn’t been one of the people trying to shoot the bear, but so far no one had said anything about it.

She stood at the window in the kitchen, looking into the tree-filled back yard. It was still only early afternoon, and the sun was streaming through the branches.

Jake, where are you?
She thought.
Please come back,
she thought.
Please.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” said Regina, coming up behind Ariana, as if she could read the other girl’s thoughts.

“I know,” said Ariana, even though her voice sounded unconvincing to herself.

“He’s survived much worse,” Regina said softly. “To be honest, until Coleman found us a few weeks ago and told us Jake was in love with a human, we thought these three were dead.”

“You did?”

Regina nodded. “I was only ten or eleven when they — when everything happened, but I remember it really well,” she said. “That doesn’t just happen, most of the time. Teenage boys get beat up for all kinds of stuff, but most of them come crawling back to the alpha, they apologize for whatever they did, and then everyone gets on with their lives.”

“I don’t believe you,” breathed Ariana.

Regina shook her head. “I know it’s hard to,” she said. “Shifters are capable of a very strange kind of pack mentality, almost a type of groupthink. We’re taught from birth that the pack is the most important thing, far more important than our own lives.”

She was quiet a minute, and Ariana heard Boone walking through the living room, toward the kitchen.

“Almost no one just leaves,” she said, and then turned her head. Boone walked into the kitchen.

“What do you think?” he asked Regina.

Regina looked at Ariana, studying her. “Do you want us to stay?”

Ariana chewed her lip. Part of her didn’t want to be alone — what if Violet woke up and escaped, somehow? But most of her wanted to take a long, hot bath and try to decompress and forget everything that had happened today.

Besides, she was going to be a nervous wreck until Jake got back, whenever that happened, and nobody needed to be around to see that happen.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“He should be back before too long,” Boone said. “It’s been almost a day. That’s a long time already for grizzly fever.”

Ariana saw them exchange a look, and her heart plummeted again.

“Grizzly fever?” she asked.

“It’s our dumb name for the mania you get when you shift for the first time in a while,” explained Regina. “Just a name.”

Ariana narrowed her eyes at the two of them. “When this happens to someone, they always turn back into a person, right?”

Boone hesitated just a moment too long. “Of course,” he said, but he didn’t meet Ariana’s eyes.

“Tell me,” she said.

“It was a really long time ago,” Regina started. “He hadn’t shifted in almost two weeks.”

“The details are kinda lost to history,” said Boone. “But the legend goes, there was an alpha way up in Canada who didn’t shift for too long, and then he disappeared. His pack saw his bear form again, but he never returned to them as a human.”

“That won’t happen to Jake,” Regina said, then searched the other woman’s eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay?”

Ariana nodded.

Boone took a pen from a drawer and scribbled a number on a phone pad. “This is me,” he said. “Texts usually get through better in the boondocks, out where I am.”

“Thanks,” said Ariana.

Then something occurred to her.

“You two are leaving together?” she asked.

They exchanged another glance, and there was a long pause.

“I’m making the first leg of my journey back with Boone,” Regina said, unconvincingly.

Ariana just raised both of her eyebrows at them, glad for something besides Jake to think about, however briefly. “Sure,” she said.

“Come on,” Boone said, his deep voice brusque. “Let’s go before it gets dark.”

They said goodbye, and then quiet fell over the cabin as the two of them disappeared into the woods.

* * *

T
he grizzly lifted his head
. He’d been trudging through the forest, somewhat toward the sun, for an hour now, and everything was finally starting to look familiar. Jake worried that he was losing his directional abilities, going soft living the human life. Hadn’t he been a bear for years? Hadn’t he known where he was most of that time, and hadn’t he found a place to go when he needed it?

He walked up another steep hill, the pace punishing even for him.
Ariana, Ariana,
he thought with every heartbeat, the thought of her face the only thing that kept him going.

Suddenly he stopped. He sniffed the air once, and then again, new knowledge flooding his senses:
that
was Boone, for sure, and he was pretty sure the other scent was Regina, both as bears.

He had to be close. He just had to get to the top of this ridge, and then he’d know where he was, and be a little bit closer to her...

* * *

A
riana tried to take a long
, relaxing bath, but she couldn’t stop thinking about Jake.

I never should have driven off,
she thought. Even though she remembered the look in his eyes, that animal look that had said
don’t come near me
.

What kind of girlfriend just left the man she loved alone in the woods like that on the worst day of his life?

He told you to
, she thought.

I shouldn’t have listened
, she thought back at herself, miserably.

She tried to make dinner — if Jake came home soon, she thought, he’d definitely be hungry — but she burned the chicken in the oven and the salad had gone bad, so she ate a peanut butter sandwich instead. Not even
Friends
on Netflix, her favorite down-in-the-dumps activity, could cheer her up or get her mind off of it.

By midnight, she still hadn’t slept. She couldn’t make her brain stop thinking:
what if he’s lost? What if he’s hurt?

What if someone found him and shot him, and now he’s dying in a ditch somewhere, all because you left him?

Even though her tear ducts felt nearly dry, they began that familiar ache again.

“Fuck this,” she said out loud to the empty cabin, standing from the couch.

She couldn’t sit and do nothing.

No, she was going to go look for her man.

F
ive minutes later
, she had a steak knife in her pocket and a huge flashlight in her other hand, and she was trudging through the woods in their backyard. She quickly realized that her sense of direction was almost nil — she wasn’t even sure which direction the clearing she’d dropped him off at was in. It was west of their cabin, true, but... what direction
was
west?

“JAAAAKE!” she shouted at the top of her lungs. There was a flurry of wings in the tree right above her as a couple of night birds took off, but otherwise, nothing.

She waved the beam of the flashlight through the trees, hoping maybe he could see it and magically know that it was hers.

“JAAAAAKE!” she screamed again, as loudly as she could.

There was nothing, of course, besides the white-brown of the trees in the beam of her flashlight and the hush of a forest at night.

She lost her mind a little.

“JAKE!” she screamed. “JAKE JAKE JAKE JAAAAAAAAAKE!”

Nothing.

I’m an idiot,
she thought. She clutched the steak knife, in her pocket, and went back into the cabin. She’d look again when it was daylight — no point in getting lost in the forest herself.