Page 10 of Handcuffed to the Bear

Best to be honest. “Not very good, as either a human or a lynx. I could probably make it up a tree if it had lots of limbs close together. But ...” She gave the cuffs a little rattle.

He groaned. “This is gonna be tough.”

“Why did you want to climb a tree?”

“To avoid leaving a scent trail on the ground.” He shook his head and started forward.

The ground was rising, getting rougher and rockier. They had to scramble around and over some boulders, the cuff more or less constantly jerking on Casey’s wrist. At least she could see a little better now, but it didn’t help much when she was trying not to trip or fall into Mr. Stop’n’Go. It had been hard moving together when the ground was nearly level, but on the hill it was a nightmare.

When he yanked on her wrist for the umpty-zillionth time, she snapped. “Could you please not do that?”

“Could you try to keep up?” Jack retorted.

“Says the guy who keeps stopping all the time,” Casey shot back.

Jack started to say something, then paused. “You’re right,” he said in a more conciliatory tone. “It’s tough—I’m used to being able to move at my own speed, do my own thing.”

“Like climb trees.” She chewed her lip to stop the angry tears that wanted to spring up in her eyes. “I’m sorry I’m not better at this.”

“Don’t apologize. You’re actually doing really well at keeping up, especially if you aren’t used to it.”

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Thank you.”

“Do you want to sit down for a minute?”

She very badly did. But she didn’t want to slow Jack down or make him think less of her. “Can we afford to rest? I mean, if we are really being followed.”

“A few minutes won’t make that much difference,” Jack said. “I could use a break too.”

He was probably just trying to make her feel better—he didn’t even sound out of breath—but she was willing to take the kindness at face value. “Yes, please.”

They sat side by side on a moss-covered fallen log. It was cold under her bare butt, and she tried not to squirm too obviously. Around them, the forest had faded from black to steadily lightening shades of gray. Distant birds twittered sleepily in the chill dawn, their songs echoing through the trees.

Casey’s lynx instincts stirred, drawn to the twilight world that was the natural hunting time of crepuscular predators like the one that was the other half of her soul. She wondered if Jack felt it, too.

“If only we shifted into smaller animals,” she said. “Then we could get out of the cuffs easily.”

“Yeah, I wish. Never wanted so badly to be a small animal before.”

“Really?” she said. “I used to wish I could shift into a bird. Not only does flying sound grand, but it would’ve been nice to have a shifter self that could fit into an urban environment. People tend to notice a lynx roaming around downtown Seattle.”

“I was always happy being a bear,” Jack said. “Still ... are yousureyou can’t slip your paw out of the cuffs?”

“Have youseenthe size of a lynx’s paws? We’re adapted for walking on the snow.”

“So that’d be a definite no, then.”

“That’d be a no. Although,” she added, “my wrists in my lynx form aren’t any bigger than my human wrists. I probably could shift. I just wouldn’t be able to get out of the cuffs.”

“You might,” Jack said. “It’s worth a try.”

She felt terribly self-conscious about shifting in front of him, but she told herself she was being ridiculous. They’d just done somethingmuchmore embarrassing, after all. “Okay, but I’d better get down on the ground. I don’t want to dislocate my arm.”

Jack obligingly slid off the log, and Casey knelt on the ground. Normally shifting was effortless, a quick rush of energy that faded away to leave her in her other form, but the cuffs and Jack’s quiet presence acted as a powerful inhibitor. She had to close her eyes and focus herself inward, like she hadn’t since she was first learning to control it.

But she found it at last, that forest place inside her with hunters’ golden eyes gleaming through the dense underbrush. The lynx rose up inside her, and with it came a wealth of sensory input—a whole universe of smells and sounds, carried to her sharper feline senses. The cool night air, so uncomfortable to her bare human skin, was like a warm bedroom to the heavily furred lynx.

She opened her eyes to find the gray dawn light as bright as afternoon. The scents of the forest had become wonderfully layered, a whole novel in every inhalation. She could tell where the tiny feet of mice and voles had passed by; she could scent deer, and the salty breath of a not-too-distant ocean. Her whiskers quivered and her sensitive ears pricked forward, listening to the wind in the trees, the almost imperceptible rustles of small things moving in the dense layer of leaves and pine needles on the forest floor.

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