Page 26 of Taming Her Bears

“Your dad was the bear?”

“Yes. He was from another village, but he knew things about the bastard. The hunter had married his cousin. He knew the hunter beat his wife and abused his daughter. My dad met him in the woods to confront him about it, to warn him. They got in an argument and the hunter swung around his rifle. Dad said he didn’t even think; he just shifted. The hunter was completely petrified. His hair turned white. Dad mauled him but spared his life.”

“How did your dad hook up with your mom?”

I laughed. Her eyes were no longer deep and sorrowful. They glittered brightly with interest for my story. “My dad never strayed far from the hunter. He didn’t want him to die, just to be nice to his family. When he saw my mom lug that worthless piece of shit up on the snow machine, he decided, right then, that was the girl he wanted to marry. He introduced himself to the village, which had terrible effects on the hunter. Every time he saw my dad walking through the streets, he would start jabbering. After a while, the hunter got the nickname Monster Man because he was the man who saw monsters.”

I stroked back her hair, loving the way the strands curled around my fingers. “We are a funny people, Natalia. We jeer at people like the hunter who lose their wits over a shapeshifter; but we all know the truth. The elders know. The shaman always sees right away. When we hold the long dances in the dark night, the shapeshifters always appear. We can’t help ourselves. The shadows betray our spirits. My mother knew what he was soon after they started dating, and eventually she learned the whole truth about the hunter, piece by piece. She says it made her love him more.”

She rested her cheek against the window, her face so soft and tender, I wanted to kiss her raspberry lips. “What do your parents do now?”

“Mom gives first aid courses. Dad is an electrical technician. Hates the job. He says every time he gets jolted, he changes into a bear. But you can’t get him to do anything else.”

“My dad’s a state trooper,” she volunteered. “My mom’s a regular housewife. They didn’t really like me following in dad’s footsteps, but these are modern times. A lot of young people are marrying outside the Russian communities. We’re creating new businesses. The Russia we’ve been clinging to for three hundred years isn’t the same motherland.Thisis our motherland now.”

The raspberry lips turned upward as she looked into my eyes. “They understand. I don’t want to go back. I want my own life.”

“You can have your own life,” I promised her. “I have land in Galina. I could quit the Coast Guard and join forestry. We could open a mom-and-pop store. You can be whoever you want to be. I’ll be there. I’ll support you.”

Her luscious lips wrapped around mine, giving me a taste of her sweet saliva. It was like nectar. She broke away just as my mouth began opening hers. “You can’t do that, Lee. Your team needs you.”

“They need Roy. Roy can swim among the ice floes in sub-zero weather. I’m a land animal.”

“You love your job.”

There was no arguing with that. I liked challenging jobs, jobs that pitted me face to face with Mother Nature’s wrath, and the Coast Guard was the most challenging of all. There was more to it, though. I liked search and rescue; I loved being the first line of defense. It was times like these when I was reminded our skills went beyond our ability to fight all obstacles. They were the stealthy hand that cut the fuse on the dynamite. Everything we did from this moment on could prevent or provoke an international incident.

If Natalia understood she was sitting on a disaster waiting to occur, she didn’t show it. As the ship sailed deeper into Canadian waters, the crew tensed and readied their weapons. Captain Josh took over the helm.

Josh knew his ship the way a man knows his woman. He was the best navigator in the Arctic and understood the island archipelago like no other. He guided the boat through thin, narrow channels, scarcely causing a ripple on the nearby shores. The engines purred, soft and low, as we slipped along a seascape dotted with secret passages.

Two shots fired into the air, one from an enlisted man’s upright rifle and one from across the water. I grabbed Natalia by the arms and pulled her into a crouch. “Stay low. I’m joining the captain.”

I didn’t need to join him. He was rumbling down the stairs toward me, bent at the waist, his knees jogging in front of him. He pointed to the stern. “Get the others. Let’s go. We’re shifting.”

I slapped once at their doors as I raced toward the metal ladder at the back of the boat. Josh was already halfway down and shifting by the time I reached it. I threw off my clothes and swung over the side, dropping into the water like a torpedo. Three other furry muzzles popped up around me. Another shot fired in our boat’s direction. We swam around to the side to have a look at our assailants.

There were two of them, in a streamlined skiff built for speed and very little else. It wasn’t a fisherman’s practical boat. It was vulnerable to capsizing in choppy water. Josh began swimming in their direction, and we followed. If we got there before they noticed us, we could tip them.

One of the ambushers fired another round. Afraid of attracting the Canadian guard, our ship remained silent. The assailants had started reloading when one tugged at the sleeve of the other and pointed toward us. Instead of firing at us, though, they started their engines. Even with high-powered rifles, they were reluctant to take on four massive bears, one of which was, inexplicably, a polar bear. We began paddling furiously behind them but knew we couldn’t catch them, not in a high speed chase.

A whistling noise sped past my ears toward the skiff. There was a “pop,” then the engine blew sky-high. Our two attackers rained down in a fury of flaming boards and engine parts. They lay still on the water, face down, arms stretched. I turned toward the boat, looking for whoever was responsible for the shot. Natalia stood on deck, carbine in her hands. She looked smoking hot.

Roy

Idon’t pretend to know much about women. They play by their own rules and have their own goals. The one thing I do know is, they can twist you up and get you so confused, you find yourself doing things you swore you would never do. You make compromises against your better judgment. You tell them your secrets. Natalia had that effect.

We should have left her in Ketchikan, but instead, we took her with us. Though I couldn’t tell the others, I assisted her. I gave her access to the computer and showed her how to open first level files—the kind of files the police and state troopers would read, not the encrypted ones. She may have sent a few phony e-mails to her superiors stating how the team needed her on the case, but if it ever came into question, I hadn’t seen a thing.

That was the effect she had on me. It was worse on Josh. He’d given her a gun! He’d let her come with us on a dangerous mission. And now… hot damn. She had fired the gun. Josh remained circling in the water a good ten minutes longer than necessary before climbing up the side into the boat. Slowly and methodically, he retrieved his clothes, inspecting each piece with his mouth downturned before putting it on. Natalia arrived on deck just as he was tucking his shirt into his pants. “You blew up a boat,” he said stiffly.

She straightened his collar and brushed at his shoulders. “True. They were getting away.”

“You blew up two people.”

If she was dismayed about her singular act of violence, she didn’t show it. “We couldn’t afford to have them informing the cruise ship. Besides, they shot Pete.”

I thought he was going to shift again, right on the spot, but he controlled himself. “What? Where?” he sputtered, his face flushing dark, then pale. “How bad?”

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