As she stretched, Jill turned her trophy over, examining the lines that appeared on impact. The half-dollar sized hunk of silver was smashed out like a metal pancake. She held it in her palm, letting the silver cool her skin, as she cracked open one of about a thousand super-caloric army rations that Jacques delivered. This one was marked “TUNA CASSEROLE AND POTATOES” but when she opened it, it was just sort of a lumpy, gray mass with a sheen of what might’ve been fake butter on top.
It tasted all right, though a little salty. She took a chunk of what was either potato or meat, and chewed slowly, trying her best to avoid smelling the can. The taste was fine, but getting a nose full of that strange, almost cat food-like aroma was definitely not conducive to eating, she’d learned.
Something about the shape, and the afterglow she felt, took Jill back to about halfway through her sophomore year at MIT. She’d gone on scholarship, and if it weren’t for that, she wouldn’t have gone at all. Not that she grew up poor, but because her father was the sort who believed people only value what they earn for themselves. At first, she’d resented it a little. Her friends didn’t have to work as hard as she did, or they had more spending money or free time, or whatever.
After a while though, she started to understand. She ground herself into dust those first two years of school. She had to, if she wanted to keep up. She’d never been any sort of natural talent. She wasn’t ever the smartest or the fastest, and to her mind, she most certainly wasn’t the prettiest.
The one thing she did have, that even she couldn’t deny, was tenacity. Once Jill got her mind set on something, she never relented until she met the goal, or aced the class or... well, or fought to get the grant that had put her right here in the middle of the woods – in the midst of her destiny.
She sighed heavily and stood up, her knees popping as she straightened. Jill tossed the bullet onto the sheets she’d slept on top of – another remnant of her childhood – and got busy stretching. A few squats, a handful of deep knee bends, and then a long time spent bent over with her knees straight and her palms flat on the ground had her all limbered up.
With another sigh, this one of relief at how much the stretching helped, Jill sat down at her desk, flipped open her massive, ancient laptop and jotted some notes. She knew whatever she recorded was going to be subject to all sorts of review – hell, she’d promised at least an article about these bears if not a full book – so she had to be judicious about the details she shared.
Lupines in the area are aggressive, she noted. But not abnormally so. They howl at night, they carry on for hours, as wolves tend to do. The bears I’ve come to study continue to – she at first typed ‘amaze’ and then deleted it. Continue to evade me. So far, no sign of the new sub-species of Ursus arctos appalachia, aside from standard remnants – scat, some fur left on tree bark, that sort of thing.
She wanted to write so much more. She wanted to tell everything about these incredible creatures and whatever it was that was truly their nature, only she couldn’t. She wouldn’t do anything that could ever possibly turn unwanted eyes on this forest, on her bears.
I better watch out. Thinking like that’s going to get me feeling like a mama... Jill laughed at the mere thought of being a mama bear, but there it was – and she’d never felt anything stronger.
Daily notes made, daily half-truths recorded, Jill closed her laptop and pulled out the notebook she kept in the desk. This was where she wrote the real truth.
It rips me up, she began. Hell of a way to start a journal entry. She chewed her lip, laughed at the melodrama of what she’d written, and then smiled, accepting it as truth. Lying about all this. Pretending I’m not seeing what I’m seeing. These creatures are incredible, they’re amazing, and they’re utterly, completely impossible.
That word – impossible – stuck in her mind as her pen scratched across the paper.
Not impossible, just... not supposed to exist. They can change shape apparently at will, they are led by two massive, beautiful alphas, and, again, she trailed off, tapping her pen on the desk. Writing these things made them feel more permanent, more real.
Back in graduate school, when she was finishing her dissertation – a long examination of the effects of illegal human involvement – known to the normal human world as poaching – bear populations in Wyoming, she managed to keep cool and detached. Jill was a scientist after all, and she knew feelings were fleeting, emotions often untrue. Except... now? She was beginning to question everything she’d ever thought she knew. Sticking a missive about her personal biases in an article was one thing, but personally mating with the population she observed? That might be a little tough to sell to Science.
The safety, the relief, she felt, when Rogue and then King appeared the night before were more intense and incredible than any experiment she’d done. There was no observable variable, no experimental constant, just raw terror that was replaced by raw... love? She shook her head, smiling again and then laughing at herself, as if laughing at her feelings made them easier to swallow.
The two alphas came to me in the night. One of them came during the day, taking care of me as I healed from a bunch of bruises, strains and scrapes I got when I’d been surrounded by wolves and attacked on my way in. That one is called Rogue. Whether that’s really his name, or just what he calls himself to humans, I’m not sure.
Then another thought occurred to her. Was she really the first? The first human that had ever been a part of their clan?
Rogue left a gun. He left me alone when the wolves started howling. He told me to take care of myself, and I sure did. A wolf tried to break in, so I opened the door and shot him. Shot him right in the chest with a silver bullet.
Reading back over her words, she laughed again.
This sounds like a crazy person rambling at some late night talk radio show host. But unless I’ve gone from completely sane to completely bat-shit nuts, all of this is actually happening. I actually shot two fuckin’ werewolves with silver bullets. One of them just sizzled and disappeared. The other turned into a man first and then went through the same deal. They’re gone. The one called King – he’s bigger than the other one, but not by much – he seemed either amazed or upset that I was a human. He went on and on about mating this, fate that. And then he said something about how he didn’t know how I was going to be able to carry his children.
She looked off in the distance, out the window over her desk. The trees outside were still. No wind blew right then, no rain fell. Jill sucked a deep breath through her nose.
The only proof I have that they were here is that I can still smell them in the room. I smell their sweat, and our, she paused, giggling and then immediately feeling stupid about the giggling. Our sex in the air. I’ve never felt anything like that before, never felt more alive, more protected. Maybe there really is something to all that fate business in the first place.
Her hand went to the mark on her chest that tingled every time she thought of Rogue or King. This mark on my chest, she wrote, King said it was some kind of alpha mark, something that marked me as the fated mate of the two alphas. He said a lot of things though, and some of it seemed a little out there. But still, I have always wondered about this thing.
Without thinking about it, she realized that she was thinking about them. Her mind naturally went to Rogue and King, and whatever it was they were protecting in the forest.
They mentioned cubs, she wrote. But I don’t know if that means there are cubs already, or if they are the last members of a dead... tribe? Actually, as I write this, I realize I don’t know the first damn thing about them at all. But in the moment, details and sociology hadn’t been very important. The only thing on my mind was giving in, letting my animal instincts take over. Feral, wild, unreasonable. Maybe that’s the lesson here?
Her thoughts trailed off again, briefly back to those two strange men. Why would they want anything to do with this place? With these bears? They both certainly acted like they knew more than they were letting on.
Been here two weeks, she wrote. And I haven’t done anything. Jacques will be here – shit!
She wrote the curse, and then said it out loud. It had been almost a week since his previous visit. Another delivery was coming; food, water, medical supplies, medicine. And she needed to send something back with him to convince her colleagues, and her grant-givers, not to pull the project out from under her. Like a contractor with a half-finished house that he hadn’t worked on for a month, she needed to prove that she was actually doing something with the resources she’d been given.
“Well,” she said, “I guess for once in my life, it wouldn’t hurt to bullshit a report. I’m probably the only person I know who never has. First time for everything,” she said as she opened the laptop again and began to type out a bunch of horseshit observations.
Including threesomes with werebear alphas.
She laughed, then bullshitted the best bullshit she’d ever seen.
*
“Jill!” it was Jacques, shouting in his thick Louisiana drawl. “I thought maybe you’d been kidnapped by wolves or something!”