I guessed because outside of the bear clan…I didn’t have much of anything. It was family, friends, and community all in one. No one left the bear clan.
Well, Ramsey Bjorn did, but I hated him because he was the one that got me into this mess.
I lay back in my sleeping bag and thought about Ramsey, my old betrothed. I supposed I could have been happy with him. My memories of him were vague, just of a tall, unsmiling blond man with shaggy hair and a stubborn streak a mile wide.
Looking back, maybe it was for the best that he’d ended up shacking up with some wolf girl. We’d have probably killed each other within a year. I thought about my cousin Mikkel. Even now he was sailing on an extended photography shoot because he was avoiding his bride, Gerda. Gerda was as tall as she was wide, and clingy. Mikkel…wasn’t a fan.
A rippling breeze dragged at my hair and I burrowed deeper into my sleeping bag, rethinking the wisdom of sleeping out in the open. It was cold. Normally, I just changed into my bear-form at night, because it was toasty-warm and the cold didn’t bother me too much. But changing into bear form also put the kibosh on sexiness and I needed to entice Leif here.
If he was here at all.
Maybe this was just a wild goose chase…wild bear chase…I closed my eyes and shook my head.
While I had hope, I’d keep looking. And if I couldn’t find him…I’d just stay out here until my heat passed…and hope that it wasn’t my one and only shot to have children.
I turned on my side and punched my camping pillow. “You’d better be worth this, Leif.”
Chapter Two
My dreams lately were all extremely dirty ones, and tonight’s dream was no different. Big hands, thick with claws and furred with hair, grabbed at my breasts. They pawed at my clothes, tugging them away from my body. I moaned at the feel of those hands on my body and arched my back, offering my nipples. I wanted them sucked on, teased, stroked, petted. But those hands simply jerked at my clothes, and it didn’t seem quite as sexy as it normally did in my dreams. My pulse was pounding between my legs, and I could feel a heavy weight on top of my own.
Yes, I thought. Yes, finally.
Dream-Nikolina gave a throaty growl in her throat, and it was returned by the male that covered me. The male whose hands tore at my sleeping bag, shoving my ripped clothes down my legs. The male whose hands hadn’t even finished transforming from bear to human…
I came awake with a start when the male flipped me onto my stomach so hard that it knocked the air out of my lungs.
I shook my head to clear it, disoriented. It was dark, pitch dark, nothing but the endless stars above. The only sound was the thick, heavy rasp of breathing. Had I imagined it? Dreamed so hard that I woke myself up?
A moment later, hands — barely hands, almost paws — dragged my hips backward, lifting them. I felt the prod of something hard and hot press against the junction of my thighs, felt claws digging into my hips.
Oh, hell no.
I bucked backward, hard, throwing the heavier weight of the male off of me. Panic flared through my body as I felt his cock shove against my backside, but it didn’t penetrate. I shoved harder, bucking him off.
He rolled off of me with a grunt and scrambled for me, even as I scrambled in the other direction, rolling away. I could smell the scent of unwashed shifter, now, thick with the scent of ocean and penguin and wet fur mixed with the fainter human odors.
Then he was on me again, his weight pressing on my back as he slammed me back to the ground. Again, I felt the thick bar of his erection and felt him try to pull my legs apart.
“Hey! No!” I protested, firmly keeping my legs locked together even as the male tried to mount me. “Leif, no! Get the fuck off of me!”
When there was no response to my entreaty, I rolled to my back and pushed at his chest with my hands. I barely caught a glimpse of wild beard and long, tangled hair before I flung him off of me.
I might be a girl, but female bear shifters were strong. I wasn’t about to let him rape me just because he was lost in the moment.
He scrambled back to his knees and his eyes glinted in the starlight. He hunched over a few feet away from me in the snow, just staring at me. His hands were still mostly bear paws, and his body seemed a too-muscled mix of fur and bear, more shifted than human.
He was a mess.
I clamped my legs together and dragged my torn sleeping bag over my now nearly-naked body. Great plan, genius. Got any other smooth moves up your sleeve? “Back off,” I warned him. My heart was pounding with fear, so loud that I was sure he’d be able to hear it and would decide that he could overtake me anyhow…and I wasn’t sure that he was wrong. “I want you to turn human – fully human – so we can talk about this.”
He stared at me from a distance, and I could see his eyes were still feral, still trying to process what I was saying. It was like he didn’t understand me.
It was like…he’d forgotten how to be human. He’d lost the human half of himself entirely.
That was not good.
“Leif,” I said, when he didn’t move. I gentled my voice. “Leif Ludvik. Do you remember me? It’s Nikolina Aasen. From the Aasen bear clan. You taught me how to ride my bike when I was eight.”
He gave a feral grunt, and then leaned toward me again.
“No,” I said firmly, and held the sleeping bag to my body tighter. “I’ll fight you if I have to. Don’t think I won’t.”
But he stopped. He stopped, and he stared at me for a long moment, eyes glittering in the darkness.
And then he turned and ran from my camp, on all fours, smoothly transforming back to bear form once more.
I trembled with shock, watching him go.
That had not gone how I’d wanted it to. Not at all. Shivering with more than just cold, I gathered the scraps of my sleeping bag and sleep-clothes and went back inside my tent, waiting to see if Leif would come back and attempt to force-mate me again.
I slept with a knife in my hand, just in case he was beyond reason. I’d come seeking Leif because I didn’t want to be forced to have sex with the elderly, the married, or the related. I didn’t come here to be raped.
But Leif didn’t come back.
I put on two layers of pants and piled my torn sleeping bag over my body, and lay in my tent, alert, until dawn came. Still no Leif. Eventually, I slept, and my dreams were full of teeth and claws and men with long, wild beards.
When I woke up the next morning, I was in a shitty mood. I hadn’t slept well, because I kept waking up every five minutes at the slightest noise.
A penguin squawked? I woke up.
A rock shifted in the distance? I woke up.
The wind rustled? I woke up, imagining it was Leif coming back to attempt mating me again.
Considering that I was alone with nature? I didn’t get much sleep, and I had Leif to thank for that. I didn’t want to be caught unawares again, especially if he’d gone totally feral.
The last thing I wanted was to be raped by someone in bear form.
I started a fire and boiled some water for coffee. I hadn’t brought much of the instant stuff with me, but I felt like today called for it. I was rattled, body and soul.
I couldn’t deal with a man that didn’t even remember that he was human. I couldn’t. And with me going into heat, I was going to be more and more vulnerable to his attacks. Actually, at some point they wouldn’t even be attacks, because if I needed to mate, I’d welcome his attentions, no matter how rough.
And they were rough, all right. I counted eight scratches across my breasts, one on my cheek, and three bruises on my stomach from when I’d been slammed into the ground. My hips ached, too. All in all, I hurt.