Page 34 of Taming Her Bears

“Does she know?” asked Josh, sounding a little alarmed.

I sat halfway up in bed. “Of course, she knows. She’s in Ketchikan. She has a room on the next floor. Who in Ketchikan doesn’t know?”

Josh put his fingers over his chest, drumming them. “It wasn’t the harbor master. It wasn’t the shaman. It must have been the nurse. Yep, I bet it was the nurse.”

Lee

Mama Bear talks straight up. I don’t know why it doesn’t work as well for me as it does for her. I’m always being told what I should and shouldn’t say. Darkhorse says it’s because I have too much of a bear brain. He should talk; I’m not the one who once threw a dead log at a poacher. These things are supposed to be left up to fish and game, but there you are. Bear brain.

Josh behaved like a sacred commandment had been broken when he learned Rhoda knew we were shapeshifters. It’s like Natalia said, though. The whole town knew. Some places, the ones that still did the dancers and practiced traditions, were like that. They could see straight into people, even summon their demons if they have any, and talk to the creatures inside them.

We’re not a secret in some circles, and that’s just the way it is. It was the government that covered us up. Once we went into services like search and rescue, firefighting and national defense, the government felt it was best to keep our shapeshifting abilities from the public. I already knew from early childhood experiences that some people really freaked out when they saw a shifter, but their concerns involved journalists, privacy, exploitation and a very long, tiring discussion on other countries and their combat readiness with shapeshifters. I think that was what bothered the government more than anything else. Shapeshifters will defend. They will rescue. But if there are shapeshifters on two sides of a war, they won’t fight against each other. Animals don’t go to war against other animals. So, the secret may have been to prevent shapeshifters around the world from knowing who is working for their government.

Natalia slapped me on the head for saying that, which was probably the most exciting thing a woman had ever done for me and almost made me want to give her a good roll on the spot. The government had a good point. We would not want the publicity, or the notoriety, she said. She said I couldn’t imagine what it would be like if millions of people knew of our existence. That much is true. I’ve never been in a city larger than Anchorage, and I’m told you could drop it in the middle of San Francisco and lose it. I was a Denali villager. My tribe is Athabascan. Like the Haida, my people could peer into the shapeshifters and see their animal. They weren’t millions of people, just a few thousand, and the most anyone thought about it was that bear shifters had the duty to protect and defend the tribe because they were the most powerful members. It all worked for me.

And the Coast Guard worked for me. We sailed all over the state. I’ve docked at so many ports, I’ve forgotten the names of them all. We were required for the toughest jobs; the ones battling the worst temper-tantrums Mother Nature knows how to throw, operating in areas that demanded extreme stealth and cunning. Just so you know, bears have a lot of stealth and cunning.

I didn’t see any harm at all in Natalia’s friend knowing we were shapeshifters. Darkhorse seemed to think it was minimal damage. “You’re never going to keep local people from wagging their tongues. Some will believe the stories. Some won’t. Rhoda is local.”

“She remembered me, even on drugs,” said Roy, puffing out his chest.

“Okay, so she knows,” said Josh finally. “What should we do? Put on a performance for her?”

“No,” said Natalia. “But she did give me some ideas.”

We all stirred uneasily. That’s what mama bears are for; to give us ideas, but ideas meant change and we liked routine. “What kind of ideas?” asked Josh, who had decided not to allow even one curly hair to grow.

“Ideas of what to do when your leave is up.”

“Oh.” It was a universal sigh, and we universally put our hands over our stomachs and looked at the ceiling.

Natalia folded her arms and stalked around the room. “Oh. None of you have thought past a minute beyond the next meal. In one week, your leave is up. You’ll be returned to active call.”

Josh tried to catch her up in his arms. “We’ll be docking in Valdez. We’ll still have some time together.”

She pushed him away. “I’m not going back to Valdez. I’m quitting my state trooper’s job.”

The deflated air went through the whole room. Josh scowled. “Then what are you going to do?”

“It isn’t about what I’m going to do,” she said. “What are you going to do? You live on a boat. I can’t just fly all over the place and meet you wherever you dock.”

We’re not good on the uptake when it comes to thinking things out. We usually dealt with emotional issues by popping out with furry hides, and Mama Bear didn’t put up with that sort of thing. Growing a very long face and rubbing his chin, Darkhorse said, “We could build a house somewhere along the coast the way other married seamen do, someplace we can come home to.”

“You mean, as if we’re all married?” asked Josh, turning to face him with astonishment.

Darkhorse scratched his neck. “Basically, we are.”

“Yeah.” Josh began stroking Natalia’s autumn wheat hair, the loosely twisting curls at the bottom wrapping around his finger. “Where would we build a house?” he asked dreamily.

“Nome,” suggested Roy. “We’re often in Arctic waters.”

“Only in the winter,” objected Josh. “And it’s not the most hospitable place to live for someone like Natalia. Kodiak’s a good place. I know people there. I could buy a house.”

“Bristol Bay,” said Natalia. “We should live in Bristol Bay. It’s perfect. It has the Arctic and the Pacific spread right out in front of you. It has nice summers. And Rhoda is going out there with her new number-one boyfriend to look at the lodge he just built.”

“Wait a minute,” said Josh, gravel creeping into his voice. “You’re not following that dizzy bitch on another adventure with another unknown man.”

“He’s not an unknown,” she countered, shushing him with a kiss on the lips. “She’s known him for three years. She only recently rotated him into the number-one position. He was the only one of her boyfriends to fly into Ketchikan to see her.”

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