What a Bear Needs (The Wild Side) (3 page)

 Clouds moved overhead, a soft breeze blowing through and she didn’t know if the earth itself whispered the one word she dreaded to hear or if it was one of the many beasts that rested just inside her but Cree heard it just the same.

“Skin-walker…”

Two

Cree’s eyes steadily peeled open when she felt the presence of another person. A familiar scent hit her full force. She sighed and blinked up at the figure hovering over her.

“So,” Fallon said lowering herself to the ground beside Cree. “You’re naked.”

She gave her friend a wobbly smile, assuming that Fallon had tracked her down the same way she always did. “As the day I was born. Sans the amniotic fluids and screeching.”

“You do have a bit of a glisten though,” the she-wolf pointed out.

“Sickly or modelesque?”

“Is it possible for you to do anything
aside
from modelesque?”

“I dunno.” She shrugged. “I’ve never tried.”

“Pretty bitch,” Fallon growled but her smile belied the words.

“Oh come off it, Wilder,” Cree snorted. “Can’t tell you how many times I’ve caught the males contemplating how they could get a chance to hump your leg without losing half their face in the process.”

“Lies!”

“They treat me like one of the guys, Fal,” she responded. “I’ve been hearing things that no one should have to endure. Terrible things…things that involve parts of you that I never want to be associated with.”

Fallon leaned forward, her brows disappearing beneath the brim of her ball-cap as they winged. “This information both pleases
and
disturbs me. Tell me more.”

“Well, Anoki once said that he’d like to peel a grape and—”

“
Stop,”
the she-wolf waved her hands. “I want no parts of whatever sordid fantasies that vain bastard weaves when he’s not praising himself for breathing air,” she completed, referring to their resident whore Anoki Redwolf.

Cree chuckled.

“So the naked thing…” Fallon waved a hand at her.

The laughter died and she put her gaze back to the clouds. “It’s getting worse, Fal.”

“Ah, and by
it
you mean…?” Her friend made a series of beastly sounds.

“Was that a velociraptor at the end there?” she asked.

“Almost.
It was actually a bird of prey. Hawk, eagle, etcetera, etcetera.”

“I think the motioning of talons is what gave me the impression that it was a dinosaur.”

“Did I go too short with the arms?”

Cree held up her fingers. “Just a bit and considering the fact that I literally have
no
birds of prey…”

They stared at one another for a bit before Fallon said, “You’ll be
fine.”

“Will I?” she queried softly. “Or is this the fairy god-sister of optimism speaking?”

“I have no pixie dust or wands so I’m going to say it’s simply your friend. The one who’s become immune to seeing your nipples in broad daylight.”

She laughed. “You and your sassy new humor.”

“It
is
quite sassy now, isn’t it?”

“Very.”

Silence enveloped them.

“I want you to be the one to put me down,” Cree whispered into the disquiet that cloaked them.

“Shut up.”

“Fallon—”

“
No.”
That fierceness was back, the inflexible look Fallon sometimes wore when she was doing what she thought was best. “You don’t get to ask me that. You don’t get to tell me that I’ll have to—”

“You won’t have a choice!” Cree snapped, sitting up and standing. “If this gets too big, too wide
,
I’ll fall in and you won’t be dealing with
me
anymore. You understand that right?”

“I understand that my best-friend is asking me to euthanize her like a rabid dog,” Fallon snarled, following suit. “I understand that the likelihood of her going rogue is slim to none but she seems unable to see what I do.”

“You’re looking at me from a biased standpoint, Fallon.”

“No,” the alpha adamantly denied. “I’m looking at you like someone who
knows
you. You’re not going to suddenly snap your leash someday and wipe out the entire pack.”

“You don’t know that!”

“I do!”

Their gazes locked, held. Cree was the first to lower hers to the ground. Out of respect, out of the fear that she’d lose it and give into the tears mounting at the brims of her lids. She shut her gaze off, inhaled and focused just over Fallon’s shoulders when she reopened them. “I’m a liability, a danger.
I have too many things waging for control and my human side could be swallowed by that chasm; lost.
I’m asking you as someone who sees
me, knows
me, to end it the moment it’s beyond my control. Because
I
see and know you love me enough to do it. No one else will be strong enough.”

“I also love you enough to slap you for being so fucking melodramatic. Should I do that too?”

“Why are you—goddammit Fallon ow!” Cree put a hand to her forehead where her friend had popped her. “The hell is wrong with you?!”

“You’re monologue about liberty and death!” The she-wolf threw up her arms. “You’re making me mental!”

“Oh I’m sorry,” Cree bellowed. “I didn’t realize my medical condition was such a weight on your shoulders!”

Fallon popped her again.

“Stop doing that!”

Once more.

“Argh!” She stamped her feet. “I hate you!”

“Cree?”

Stopping at Fallon’s soft call, she looked expectantly at her friend.

“That need you’re feeling in the middle of your chest, the one where you want to fight—claw at me to prove a point—hold onto that,” Fallon said. Her lashes fluttered as she blinked rapidly. “Because despite what you believe, I’ll never
be
that
strong.”

“For fuck’s sake, Fal.” Cree rubbed between her brows. “You’re not going to cry are you? Swear to God that if you cry I’ll hit you.”

The she-wolf barked out a laugh. “Glad you haven’t lost your ability to sympathize with others.”

“My vagina was kissed by the sun involuntarily this morning and I’m pretty sure my lady hairs are now bleached, excuse me if I’m not exactly in the mood to spill emotions right now,” she retorted wryly.

Fallon’s eyes briefly lowered below Cree’s waist before she jerked them back up and slapped her hands over her face, dancing around like a spider had just crawled into her jeans. “Why’d you have to make me painfully aware of,”—she waved a hand to Cree’s nude form—“
that?”

“No one told you to do a perusal of my goods!”

“Your goods are on display and happen to be very, very obvious!” Fallon’s hands came down. “By the way…you need a wax.”

“And
this
conversation just got way too personal.”

“You would think that the availability of an entire spa on the grounds would keep these issues at bay…”

“Fal, do you enjoy having a head? Is it not a pleasurable way to go through life?” Cree bent over to pick up her destroyed t-shirt, trying to see if she could salvage it.

“Well, considering that Ransom is rather attached to my mouth and all the wonderful things it—Jesus Christ, Cree! I did not
need to see you from that angle!”

Standing, she shook out the mess of torn fabric and sighed, “Favorite soft V-neck, shot to shit.”

“You should’ve gotten naked before,
”
Fallon commented.

“I thought I could control it.”

“Would it hurt to shift into the wolf for a bit? That way you can get back to your cabin without exposing yourself like a trench coat bum in the park.”

Cree’s lips curved. “There goes the sassy humor again.”

Fallon picked up Cree’s boots, jeans and wrapped the torn t-shirt around her underthings. “Sassiness agrees with me. Don’t be jealous that I’ve mastered it better than you have.”

Backing away, Cree pushed her chest out, shook her limbs and said, “If you have to leash me, do it. Sometimes the wolf doesn’t want to leave when I let it out.”

Her body chemistry as a skin-walker was entirely different from her pack members. With more than a few beasts resting inside her, she had to regularly weed through the multiples to find the one that allowed her to camouflage herself among her pack—the wolf. This wasn’t an easy feat considering that she could shift the same way that her counterparts did but it was way harder to control the compulsions of her animalistic heart when she had so many tugging for dominance. This was why she no longer attempted stemming them in her cabin. She’d made that mistake once and left most of her bedroom and living room in
ruins.
That was the reason for the walk, the distance away from the rest of the lodge.

Cree’s greatest fear was that one day she’d lose her grip and fall into an abyss that would never release her. She’d become the thing that went bump in the night. She wouldn’t be able to reign herself in any longer because the human side would lose a hard fought battle against the creatures that lingered on the outer edges of her psyche; waiting to take over.

Each time she shifted, she gave them just a bit more headway getting into the door she needed closed. Fallon’s theory was that embracing them all would make them much more malleable…
calm.
But Cree knew better. She knew that hosting so many beings could drive one of her kind to the brink of madness and cause an internal hysteria that would leave nothing aside from devastation.

All these years she’d encompassed so many species and beings and yet it seemed as though every few months a new one made itself known. She wasn’t sure how much longer it could continue before she suffered the fate of so many before her, before she suffered the fate of her mother and father.

 “Does it scare you?” Fallon questioned. She, Makya and Anoki were the only ones here who Cree had told but it wasn’t voluntarily. Years ago when they’d first met and she made the choice to join the Wilders, Fallon and her people had been the ones to come across a too skinny and exhausted Cree. She’d been hitchhiking across the states after being pushed out of her own pack by those who saw her as nothing more than something to be quarantined and watched constantly.

The betrayal, the hurt, was still raw at the time and she hadn’t trusted them. It still amazed her that the Wilders had taken her in. She now understood that James and Helena had a soft spot for her because of the many losses they’d experienced before finally successfully conceiving Fallon. The bond that Cree and the she-wolf formed from there had remained impenetrable all this time and she wanted it to stay that way. This was why she found herself questioning if remaining in Glenwood Springs for much longer was the best decision for anyone around her.

Every so often she still saw their faces, the ones who’d been all too ready to mount her head on a wall. And then Cree shoved those thoughts aside, determined to forget.

Cree grinned and finally answered Fallon’s query about her fear. “
Shitless.”

“You could always do a naked walk through and give people that disturbing, blood thirsty, challenging stare.”

Her brows drew downwards.

“That’s it!” The alpha snapped her fingers. “That’s the one!”

Her eyes narrowed.

Fallon’s smile was all teeth.

Shaking her head, she took a step back and prepared to attempt something that had become taxing and difficult.

“Wait!” Fallon said.

Cree stopped.

Her friend sucked in a deep breath and took off her ball-cap. “I have a better idea. One that’ll be a lot less risky.” Then she began to strip…

***

Fallon Wilder had done some strange things in the name of love. Strange,
strange
things. It seemed as though today would be no different and she couldn’t find it within herself to be particularly upset about that because this was Cree and Cree was special. The woman in question had launched herself talons first at a polar bear in a supermarket once because he’d pointed out that a jersey Fallon had been wearing looked like it needed to be retired or burned. To anyone else this would constitute as psychotic, unreasonable behavior yet to Fallon, it constituted as loyalty. Of course she’d had to pry Cree off the poor male, after all five minutes of the raucous laughter she’d enjoyed at his expense, but she could appreciate the sentiment behind the act. There were very few people in this world like Cree and not even an identical clone made through dark magic could replace her.

Therefore, she could take that “
I want you to be the one to put me down”
bullshit and shove it because Fallon wasn’t listening. And everyone knew that when a canine was determined to hear only what they wanted, things went badly.

She’d sweep the earth like the gods before she let what happened to Cree years ago happen again. Why? Because the other woman took up a place in her heart that could only be trumped by the love she had for her mate and once you found a bond that strong—a connection with another being—you didn’t simply allow it to fall because they had the preconceived notion that their genetic anomaly would someday drive them insane. The first person to object to that reasoning would be the first person to see something Fallon hadn’t unleashed in months: her rage.

Cree, who was walking beside her, sighed and pointed out, “Your ears are back and your tail is sticking up harder than Anoki’s cock when he catches his own reflection. Whatever plans of death and dismemberment you’re currently contemplating,
stop.”

Fallon relaxed, only marginally, bumping Cree’s thigh with her shoulder.

In response, her friend scratched her behind the ear. “I love you but you can’t raze the world for me.”

She barked.

“Bullshit,” Cree argued. “I am not a good reason to go on a killing spree.”

Stopping, Fallon turned her fully shifted form and looked up at the other woman. She sat back on her haunches and simply stared.

“Don’t give me that,” her friend snapped.

Fallon tilted her head.

“I don’t care if I’d do it for you, it’s not the same and you know it!”