Reign: A Royal Military Romance (64 page)

“All right,” Ariana said. “Let me go get dressed and collect Theresa.”

H
e felt better
as soon as they got out of town, like he always did. Jake felt at home in the forest, away from people. As soon as they got there he felt his senses sharpen, his ears prick up at every bird call. Over the smell of the road, exhaust and asphalt, he could sense almost everything going on inside the forest: rain, rotting wood, deer and squirrels and black bears, all that life just humming along. He nearly forgot that Ariana had a boyfriend.

They were on the trail by ten in the morning, which wasn’t bad considering that he’d wanted to get out much, much earlier. The first part was the hardest, so they didn’t talk very much for a while. Jake brought up the rear of their little hiking party. He could have hiked nearly twice as fast, easily — he could have gone cross country no problem if he’d shifted — but he stayed with the girls, not wanting to outpace them.

After all, he was there to spend time with Ariana. Even if she was taken, he found her totally irresistible. It was pathetic, he knew, but he just wanted to spend time with her.

For lunch, they found a wide, flat rock and sat down to eat sandwiches.

“How much further?” asked Theresa. She took a huge bite of her peanut butter and jelly, then chewed hungrily with her mouth open.

“About three miles,” said Jake.

“That’s not so bad,” said Ariana. She hadn’t spoken much today, and every time Jake looked over at her, she seemed deep in thought. He could sense that something bad had happened last night, and he just hoped it hadn’t been because of him.

Of course, that was just his luck. The only girl he’d been attracted to in ages, and she had a boyfriend already. Jake had the vague notion that other women were throwing themselves at him — at least, women were always very friendly to him, something he gathered was not always the case with men — but he had just never felt this for anyone else. Something about her just seemed
right
in a way he couldn’t quite put his finger on.

As the two of them brooded, Theresa chatted on. “It’s so pretty out here,” she said. “And we’ve only seen one other hiking party this whole time.”

“It’s not the most popular trail,” Jake said. He’d already finished his sandwich, and stuffed the plastic bag back into his pack. Leave no trace and all that. “There are some gorgeous waterfalls and cliffs on it, but they’re a two-day hike, easy. Once you have to overnight somewhere, the number of people interested decreases pretty dramatically.”

“All the better to see Bigfoot,” she said.

“Sure,” said Jake.

Jake thought he had a pretty good idea what Bigfoot was, actually, and he knew it was partly his own fault for the three sightings in two weeks. But, on the other hand, he’d gotten Ariana to come to Evergreen, and that wasn’t a bad thing.

The guy who saw Bigfoot by the lake, well, he was probably just drunk and seeing things in the twilight. It happened, and people got too excited.

The other two, though. Jake wasn’t the only shifter in the area — there were at least two others, and those were only the shifters that he knew of. In theory, there could be dozens, though he was pretty sure he’d sense a sudden influx of them.

But one of them, Boone, really liked the area around where the woman had seen Bigfoot. Moreover, it took a little while to fully shift in and out of bear form. Most of the change took place instantly, but the little effects could take a long time — the reason Jake himself had worn long sleeves on Monday. Had she seen Bigfoot, or had it been Boone, mid-shift, not worrying about being seen because there were never people around up there?

The third sighting had been him. He’d stayed too long in bear form that weekend and hadn’t fully shifted out before getting into his truck and driving back to town, and Dustin had seen him from across that parking lot. He’d thought he was more human-looking than that, but at least Dustin was an old drunk who told too many tall tales and the girls didn’t believe him.

“Most people think Bigfoot is an ape,” said Theresa. “
Gigantopithecus,
to be exact.”

“And that’s some sort of giant ape?” Jake asked. Though he’d been hearing about Bigfoot for years now, he’d never heard this particular theory.

“They allegedly went extinct a couple hundred thousand years ago,” she said. “But their range was over a lot of Asia, and there’s no reason to think they couldn’t survive in the Himalayas, and then cross the Bering Land Bridge to the northwestern U.S. at the same time humans did.”

“There’s also no real reason to think they did,” Ariana said. It was the first time she’d spoken in nearly an hour. She seemed better, having eaten lunch.

Theresa just rolled her eyes. Jake got the feeling that they had this conversation a lot.

“The Himalayas?” he asked.

“It’s a mountain range in Nepal and Tibet,” said Theresa.

He and Ariana exchanged a look, and he thought he saw a smile begin around her eyes.

“He knows what the Himalayas are,” she said.

“Oh, sorry,” said Theresa. “Yeah, the Himalayas have the Yeti.”

“Have you ever been there?”

“Not yet,” said Theresa.

“That’s a pretty tough one,” said Ariana. “We’d have to have pretty good evidence to get on that plane. Trekking through the Himalaya is a lot more serious than staying in a lodge in a cute Pacific Northwest town and going backpacking for a night.”

“Did you know the people who lived there actually evolved so that they could get oxygen out of the air better?” asked Theresa.

The three of them rose and strapped their packs on again, the girls taking the lead.

“It’s because they live at such high altitudes,” Theresa was going on. “Sixteen thousand feet at least...”

Jake was glad when the trail got too steep for Theresa to impart facts and hike at the same time.

* * *

F
inding
the log book and taking a picture of the names inside was almost too easy. They were done by five in the afternoon, long before the sun went down, so the three of them had a leisurely dinner of freeze-dried food reconstituted with water from a creek. The girls set up their tent and got their sleeping bags situated inside, while Jake put out his tarp and laid his sleeping bag on top.

“You didn’t bring a tent?” Ariana asked.

“I’ve got another tarp if it rains,” he said.

“What if there’s a bear?” she asked. “I saw that poster on your office door about grizzlies in the area.”

Jake grinned.
I’m the problem,
he wanted to say.

“You think your tent is gonna protect you against a grizzly bear?” he asked.

Both the girls were very quiet for a moment.

“There’s been one confirmed grizzly sighting in the past hundred years,” he said quickly. “It was from a helicopter in an area even more remote than this. They don’t like people. I don’t think you need to worry about them.”

Both girls relaxed a little.

“Now, mountain lions....” he said.

Ariana picked up a pebble and threw it at him. “Don’t tease us,” she said.

Jake grinned again. “But it’s so easy,” he said.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Your biggest threat is probably raccoons,” he said. “They love human food, and half of them are rabid.”

“Can they get through tent nylon?” asked Ariana.

“Less likely,” said Jake. “They’re smart, though, and they’ve got those creepy little hands.”

“They’re so cute though!” interjected Theresa.

Jake shrugged.

“So, are you from here?” asked Ariana after a long pause.

“Not originally,” he said. “I’m from Alaska.”

She whistled, low. “I thought we were far from civilization now.”

He laughed. “We’re only two and a half hours from Seattle,” he said. “That’s practically inside the metro area.”

“Why’d you move here?” she asked. “No lumberjacks in Alaska?”

He shrugged. “Alaska gets old after a while,” he said. “Even in the cities, it’s hard to get out. The roads are snowed over most of the year. It’s a weird place to be. Washington state is much better.”

These were all compelling reasons, but not the real one. The truth was, he’d left Alaska on bad terms with his shifter pack, but he couldn’t tell the girls that, obviously.

“Do you miss it?”

“Of course,” he said. He did: he missed the endless rugged wilderness, being able to be a bear for a week or more, feeling like he had the entire state to himself. He missed his parents, he missed having a whole community of other shifters around who understood him. “But the tradeoff is worth it, I think.”

Theresa yawned, then stood. “I’m gonna turn in,” she said, and walked toward the trees. “Man, am I gonna be sore tomorrow.”

She crunched off into the woods about ten feet, and Jake politely looked down into the fire. Ariana looked up, where she could just see the stars through the tops of the trees.

“You know any constellations?” she asked him.

Jake’s heart beat faster. Was she intentionally replaying the scene from before, in the tent in his office?

“Sure,” he said, and pointed. “You know Orion’s belt, right?”

“Show me,” she said.

Jake stood and moved his log next to hers. She leaned her head into him, suddenly so close. She smelled like shampoo and sweat, a soft earthy smell. For one moment, Jake closed his eyes and let her scent wash over him, feeling like everything was right with the world.

“Okay,” he began, leaning toward her and pointing. “Orion’s belt is right there, those three stars — the last one is behind that tree — and if you follow it, you can see—“

He was cut off by a scream.

Both of them jerked their heads toward the direction it had come from — the same place Theresa had disappeared to.

They heard a strange, half-strangled sob.

* * *

A
riana jumped to her feet
, then froze. She couldn’t move, not even to go help Theresa. What if it was a bear, or a mountain lion? She didn’t stand a chance against either of those, she thought, and she’d only be getting herself hurt in the process.

Still, she had to do something, and she took an uncertain step toward the forest, her heart beating almost out of her chest.

Then, suddenly,
something
happened right behind her. There was a noise like fabric ripping, and then, before she could even look, something huge and furry blasted past her. Ariana took a step away and tripped over the log she’d been sitting on, hitting the ground hard.

Theresa screamed again, and Ariana scrambled to her feet, then ran toward it. The hell with self-preservation. She batted her way through ten feet of dark forest, barely able to see anything as her eyes adjusted to the moonlight.

Suddenly, her foot hit something soft and heavy, and she squinted down, desperately trying to make out what it was in the dark. Something light and hard to move — Oh, Jesus, it was Theresa and she was just lying there, either passed out or dead.

A terrible noise sounded in front of Ariana and she looked up, blinking, willing her eyes to adjust faster.

Then, everything snapped into focus. The noise was a mountain lion, hissing and growling at a huge, dark shape, fully about to strike.

Is that Jake?
Ariana wondered.
Is he fucking insane?

The dark shape growled, and Ariana could finally make it out: a bear.

A very large bear. Her panic told her it was a grizzly bear, even though she knew that was stupid. Hadn’t Jake just told her they hated people?

The lion went for the bear, swatting at it with one huge paw. It connected, but the bear shrugged it off.

Ariana had had enough. She grabbed Theresa by her arms and pulled, adrenaline pumping through her body.

If I get her back to the fire, maybe I can fend them off
, she thought desperately. Theresa was totally limp, and Ariana knew she was probably scratching the other girl’s back on the ground, but felt it was justified.

Just as she was almost back to their little campsite, the warm glow of the fire nearby, she saw the bear stand on its hind legs and roar. It had to be eight feet tall, at least, and Ariana thought her heart might stop in terror.