Page 13 of Big Lone Bear

Chapter Nine

Separated from the other cabins by a smattering of young trees the resort had planted a couple of years ago, cabin thirteen was preferred among families who were looking to keep their distance from other guests while enjoying the forest. Normally, Espie’s mom made sure each cabin looked warm and inviting, with comfortable amenities and blooming gardens; yet the place didn’t seem nearly as inviting after twilight as it could be on a sunny afternoon.

Because the forest was practically their front door, that meant there was always the chance that some critter, big or small, might get curious and come to take a look at the human exhibits that occupied the little cabin. After all, it was isolated enough to make it a prime target as far as the forest creatures were concerned.

Knowing the human occupants were warm and safe back at the main building, Espie wasn’t too concerned with sniffing around their house herself. She paused for a moment to look up at the sky. Lightning crackled across it, but she wasn’t surprised. She had felt the storm coming on long before it hit. The air had been thick with unshed raindrops since morning. Now the clouds rolled in across the night, darkening as the winds picked up. Finally, the clouds let loose and the rain fell.

Espie scowled. So much for the plan not to ruin her clothes by removing them during her shift – now the weather had done it for her. Sighing, she stomped off into the trees, far from the prying eyes of any guests occupying the lodges during this time of year, and wriggled out of her soaked clothes in silence.

In the blink of an eye, she went from woman to bear, her inner grizzly finally getting a chance to stretch her legs. She dug her paws into the somewhat spongy earth, feeling the mud seep between her toes and over her black claws.

In her bear form, the world was heightened—even beyond the somewhat sensitive senses of a shifter. When she closed her eyes, she could almost hear every pitter-patter of rain on the leaves overhead. She could smell the earth in all its primal glory, washed clean and renewed by the dense rainfall.

Beyond that, she smelled something foreign. Something not quite right, something out of the ordinary. She huffed, inhaling deeply and exhaling hard, trying to get a taste for the new scent.

Still, she couldn’t place it, and that made Espie nervous. Her inner bear preached patience, preferring to move through the trees and study cabin thirteen from a distance, but Espie pushed her out into the open. Even when she wasn’t in human form, Espie was still in control—for the most part.

Stop being a big baby, she thought to her other half. Maybe her grizzly just didn’t want to get wet. Although her fur was thick, the rain would eventually penetrate right down to the skin, soaking her as she plodded along, head up and nostrils flared, trying to get a hold on this mysterious scent.

She sniffed the base of the building, working her way around its entirety and up to the front door. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary, nothing they needed to be concerned about. Clearly, whatever creature that had been bothering the family had not made it up to the cabin directly, but its scent was still in the air, growing headier the longer she stayed out in the storm.

Thunder boomed overhead, making her ears flatten for a moment at its rattling rumble. Espie stood on her hind legs to glance through the little glass window on the front door, trying to see if there was any movement inside. As she peered in, the wind brought a much stronger trace of that strange scent her way. Whatever it belonged to had just stepped upwind, further exposing itself.

Possibly even on purpose, she thought. She dropped down onto all fours and sidled off the small front porch. The wood creaked under her bear’s immense weight. As soon as she made it back down to the soggy ground, she found the source of the smell – and it made her heart skip a beat.

There, just beyond the shelter of the nearby trees, was the biggest cougar she’d ever seen. Sleek with rain, it appeared to be watching her. Espie stiffened, noting the broadness of its front legs, the squareness of its head. Most of the local wild cougars were lithe and nimble. Strong, sure, but not bulging in stature like this one.

Besides, they tended to steer clear of town and didn’t usually venture up the mountain, preferring to do their hunting way over on the ram’s side of the mountain range where they could avoid contact with humans. This one’s presence at the resort didn’t make any sense.

So the Robinsons hadn’t been paranoid; something dangerous had indeed been lurking around their cabin. And as of right now, it was baring its teeth at Espie in an unnecessarily aggressive snarl. She and her grizzly aligned, both of them switching to protective mode in an instant.

Wild cougars were dangerous, but this one had a spark of intelligence that set Espie on edge. Most wild animals would flee from shifters in their creature form, sensing that they were up against something more powerful than they were. Looking at this cougar, with its tawny fur and yellowish eyes, Espie still couldn’t rectify its scent. Was it a wild animal or something else entirely? It might not smell like a shifter, but it certainly seemed to act like one.

Espie’s bear was a powerful creature in her own right, yet the feline easing into a crouched position, like a track runner waiting at the starting block, would prove a very worthy opponent should it attack. Those claws. Those teeth. That strength. Espie had a lot of confidence in her abilities, but she wasn’t Ivo. She wouldn’t underestimate her opponent for the sake of her ego.

Cat shifters were said to be especially fierce, almost as much as wolves, and while most cats (besides lions) were solitary in the wild, shifters of the feline variety were fiercely loyal to their clans—and that was saying something, given that Espie would die for anyone in her clan. Cats went above and beyond with everything, according to the stereotype, anyway. Espie had never seen one up close in her lifetime, and she wasn’t interested in tangling with one today.

With a warning chuff, Espie stomped her front feet in unison, pounding the ground as a show of strength, then she rose up to her full height—just shy of six foot two. Miguel’s bear was nearly seven feet when he sat back on his hind legs. She could really use the back-up he would provide right about now.

Lightning streaked over the dark clouds above, illuminating the battlegrounds for a brief moment before darkness blanketed them again. But the porch lights from cabin thirteen kept the cougar in her sights. She had its scent now, strange as it was. Espie would never lose it.

When it didn’t immediately flee from her attempts at intimidation, Espie dropped back to all fours to protect her belly, and then she squared up. If the cat hadn’t fled by now, it wasn’t going to. She issued a charge, stopping a few feet away and backing up again, trying to show that she wasn’t one to be tangled with. Espie could pull her weight in a fight—only she wished she didn’t have to right about now.

The cougar’s face screwed up as it pulled its lips back and revealed a mouthful of sharp teeth, just before it emitted a yowl Espie could only interpret as confrontation. So be it. This cat was on bear lands—and it was throwing its weight around just a little too close to home.

Espie snarled right back, thumping her great bear paws on the ground, posturing and trying to make herself as big as possible, which was a challenge, given that the rain had slicked all her fur down.

Just as she was about to attempt another fake charge, hoping this time it would send the cougar running, the creature’s backside wiggled for a moment before it pounced, its long, thick tail puffed-up and acting like a boat rudder. She braced herself for those claws, those teeth, the moment passing in slow motion—until someone decided to intervene.

One second the cougar was in the air, teeth exposed and claws ready to sink into Espie, and then a wall of white came barreling through, tackling the cougar to the ground with a roar so fierce that it shook her to her very core.

She staggered back, slipping in the mud, blinking the rain out of her eyes—and blinking hard again to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. Because there, on the lawn in front of cabin thirteen, a polar bear was savagely attacking a cougar.

A freakin’ polar bear. In New Mexico. At her family’s resort, of all places.

Espie blinked hard again, both she and her inner grizzly struggling to make sense of what they were seeing play out right before their eyes.

She stumbled back as two titans of the predator kingdom clashed. While the fighting was brutal, the cougar hardly stood a chance. Bright red, stark on the bear’s fur, signaled the first blood of the fight, but in the end, it was the cougar who limped off, its side nearly torn open and left eye nearly undetectable under all the bleeding.

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