She needs their courage—and their bodies. The feeling is mutual…
Law enforcement warnings be damned, nothing will stop Rane from returning to the Chinook Mountains to discover who murdered her mother, a fellow forest ranger. Except maybe the fact that her elk shifter lover, Songan, is in the middle of rut season.
The delay is just long enough for a newcomer from the far north, Ber, to enter the picture. A massive grizzly shifter with his own need—for Rane. His dark, brooding presence feeds dreams so erotic, she feels like she’s losing her mind. Yet keeping him at arm’s length isn’t an option. She needs his heightened senses, along with Songan’s, to follow the cold trail of her mother’s final hours.
With winter closing in, the threesome heads for the mountains, where, in a cramped cabin, their mutual lust explodes. But the mountains can't shield them from deadly danger.
Product Warnings
Menage with complications. Shape-shifting with complications. Outdoor sex, cabin sex, dream sex with ropes. Woman on a mission, and men with muscles upon muscles answering the call of the wild.
The off bear smell as well as the death stench guided Rane’s search. Studying the meadow’s east edge, she spotted a dark shape. At this distance, she knew better than to go by first impressions, but the bear seemed unusually large. It was just her luck that she’d have to run off a male in his prime. At least bear breeding season was behind him. Hopefully his testosterone level had dropped so his balls no longer ruled him. After determining the direction the bear was walking, she studied the ground until she made out a motionless mound some hundred feet ahead of the bear.
Sticking to the trees ringing the meadow would increase the amount of time she needed to reach what she now knew was a carcass, but she knew better than to conclude she and the black had the area to themselves. Other critters were fine. In fact, she’d love to see some deer right now, but something on two legs was a different story.
She’d recently been given stark proof of the evil man was capable of.
Stopping, the bear turned and rose onto its hind legs, obviously studying her. Huge! Even with so much distance between them, she had no doubt the beast would make the local record books. Hands shaking a little, she sighted through the rifle’s scope.
“Oh shit. Shit.”
Still cursing under her breath, she acknowledged the chill down her spine. What had she been thinking? This was no shy and unassuming black. The rich auburn fur alone told her that. More to the point, this creature had to go twice what a black weighed and sported a massive shoulder hump.
A grizzly.
Couldn’t be! The breed hadn’t been seen in Oregon for decades.
But it was.
Even as she noted the thick legs, small ears, long, tapering muzzle and take-no-prisoners body, something else occurred to her. The beast’s full attention was on her, which meant he wasn’t aware of any other humans in the area. Much as she relied on her own senses, she had even more faith in his, and he was telling her she had nothing to fear from one of her kind.
Her safety where he was concerned was a different matter. She could die today, a victim of claws and fangs. The rifle she’d hauled up here was probably worthless. If she hit it, all she’d do was make it mad.
Could she turn tail and get the hell out of here?
The strongest gust of wind so far brought her a metallic stench that sent shock through her already overloaded system. Blood. A lot of it. Undeniable proof of a savage death. More information sorted itself out in her mind. Whatever had died was pretty big. There was something stale about the smell, which told her the death hadn’t happened within the past few hours.
Her nerves tightened, and her awareness tunneled until only she and the bear existed. Lowering itself back onto four legs, it woofed.
Didn’t expect to see you here, it seemed to be saying.
“I didn’t expect to see you either,” she whispered.
“Don’t be afraid.”
Her heart lost rhythm, then reset itself. If she’d been anyone else and didn’t know about the rare creatures that called the Chinook Forest home, she would have been convinced she was hallucinating.
“I don’t want to be,” she admitted.
“Come closer.” The grizzly briefly turned his attention to the carcass. “You need to see.”
Driven by a force she didn’t comprehend, Rane started toward what in essence was a killing machine. Even if it charged, she doubted she’d shoot, because the grizzly was at home in a forest where it no longer belonged.
Her legs felt strong, and despite the uneven ground, her hips moved effortlessly. The combination of smells became more complex and deeply layered. Everything in her said she was supposed to be doing this insane thing. Erasing the distance between her and the great, rich-coated creature was all-important. As a Forest Service employee specializing in wildlife biology, she’d seen a grizzly up close, but that one had been drugged. Helpless.
When maybe fifty feet separated her from the massive beast, she dug her boots into the soft ground. She felt disconnected from herself and reality as she untied the backpack fastenings around her waist. If she was wrong about the connection between her and the bruin, she’d never be any older than today. Holding the rifle with first one numb hand and then the other, she slipped free of the pack’s weight. Momentarily unbalanced, she concentrated on standing upright. Once her equilibrium was restored, she again assessed the scent coming from the creature. She knew what a bear smelled like. This one was that, all right, and more.
The grizzly’s beautiful coat was thick and long, preventing her from getting a clear picture of the amount of fat, bone and muscle underneath. This time of year, healthy bears were putting on weight to insure they’d survive all but the harshest winter. Contrary to what many people believed, they didn’t spend the winter in deep hibernation, especially at this elevation, but their activity level decreased dramatically.
Looking into the small but shining eyes, she realized they were black instead of brown as they should have been. The bear was fully alert, but it was more than that—an intelligence.
“What are you?” she managed.
“I don’t know if you can understand.”
Shocked, she glanced over at the inert form. The instant she did, she could no longer breathe. Sick and scared, she stared. She barely recognized her strained, “No, no, no.”
“What is it?”
“An elk. Dead.” The inadequate words were all she was capable of.
“Yes.”
“Did you—”
“No.”
Whether she believed the grizzly or not didn’t matter. He might stop her from getting closer to the body, might swipe her out of existence. Despite the danger, she studied the carcass.
The elk lay on its side with its head at an awkward angle. Its eyes were closed, its slender legs useless. Its belly was well rounded. From where she stood, she couldn’t see its sex organs, but its unimpressive antlers told her it was—had been—a young male.
“Not you, Songan,” she managed. “Thank God, not you.”
Despite her relief, cold sweat coated her spine, and for several seconds she couldn’t hear anything for the roaring in her ears. Then, because she needed to know what had killed the youngster, she took three forward steps. The grizzly again rose onto his hind legs, revealing large, dark, nearly hairless sex organs.
Standing the way he was, the beast was close to twice her height, with claws capable of digging trenches in the earth—or her flesh—and startlingly white, potent teeth. His nose twitched, and his ears swiveled toward her, then back. She remained most aware of his eyes. Not only weren’t they the right color, they were larger than they should be and full of depth.
“Get down. I can’t handle this,” she said, her voice dropping at the end. Surprised by her admission, she was slow to comprehend that he was indeed again lowering himself. He wasn’t obeying her, never that. In fact, if she could believe the way his ears were working and his head’s sudden sharp jerk to the left, she’d suddenly become unimportant to him.
Repositioning the rifle so it was at the ready, she strained to locate what had captured the bear’s attention. A sharp crash nearly tore a scream from her. The bear whirled in that direction.
Even before the bull elk with the split-the-forest-size rack burst from the evergreens at the edge of the meadow, Rane knew what she’d see. Just the same, time snagged and nearly stopped. She smelled the rut on the elk, the prime in his thick neck. Clear of the underbrush now, he hammered himself to a stop, every inch shimmering and muscles threatening to burst through flesh and hair. No matter how many times she’d seen an elk up close, their potency awed her. In contrast to his dark brown legs, face and neck, the rest of his body was blond, the hair shaggy. The monster-size bull stood a three-second charge away.
A rutting bull elk’s bugle was a beautiful thing, eerie and erotic all in one, but the sound grinding out of the massive lungs and throat had nothing to do with seduction. Instead, it was all challenge. Letting the grizzly know he was ready for battle.
This didn’t happen in the natural world. An elk, which at his core was a prey animal even though a bull could be five feet high at the shoulder, attacked only to save his life or that of another of his kind. He’d charge another male elk to claim a cow in estrus but not a grizzly.
Again she nearly screamed. Then, chiding herself for almost playing the feminine card, she scurried backward. This was between two wilderness lords. Her only role was as audience.
Instead of charging the again upright bear, however, the elk plodded toward the carcass. His laborious movements were familiar.
“Songan,” she whispered.
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