Bear Naked

Chapter One

When you’re twenty-six years old, you’re old enough to know it’s a bad idea to listen at doorways. But when you’re a were-bear with super-enhanced hearing, and your name comes up during a meeting of the clan families? You kinda have to stop and listen.

I’d known there was a meeting of the bear clan elders in my father’s basement office that evening, but I hadn’t realized they were meeting about me. I paused at the doorway at the top of the basement stairs, frowning. Maybe I was imagining things. Maybe they weren’t talking about me after all.

“It’s clear that Nikolina’s going to go into heat in the next month or two,” I heard Janna Bjorn say. “The men are starting to notice her scent a lot more. We need to solve this problem.”

An embarrassed flush crept over my face. Okay, so they were definitely talking about me. I paused at the top of the stairs, my glass of water in hand, and grew completely still, listening.

“Does she realize that she’s going to?” Minda Tolfson asked. “How sheltered is she?”

I realized this was directed at my father a moment after he began to bluster and mumble through an answer. God, how embarrassing.

I knew I was going into heat. I wasn’t stupid. I had shifter cousins and had grown up in the were-bear community. I knew what it meant when I started having wet dreams every night, got totally aroused over everything, and my hormones were out of control. I’d figured it out when I’d gone to the grocery store and cleaned out an entire shelf of chocolate bars.

I just hadn’t brought it up to anyone else yet, because I hadn’t quite figured out what I was going to do.

Going into heat meant I was ovulating. Like our wild counterparts, if I went into heat, it meant babies. Shifter females had a very lax reproductive system; we only went into heat a few times in our lives. Each time, a shifter female had to consider more than just her own wants and needs. If she went on birth control and elected not to have the baby, there was a chance she was depriving her already small clan of another member.

I could elect not to have the baby, I supposed, but…I was in limbo as it was.

“What about Ramsey? Can’t someone go back and round him up now that we need him?”

I heard Janna Bjorn snort. “That errant boy has taken a mate. A werewolf.” She sneered the word. “He’s not asked to rejoin the clan, and I don’t see that he’d ever be allowed with a mate like that.”

I tried not to flinch at the sound of Ramsey Bjorn’s name. Tried, and failed. Stinking Ramsey Bjorn. I hated the man. He was the cause of my predicament. The bear clans were five families from Norway who had emigrated into the Ozark hills of Arkansas back at the turn of the century. Since bear shifters were rare, we stuck together. We kept the old ways. Old names, old habits, old everything. Our families had grown up intertwined, and a bear shifter knew from birth exactly who he or she was destined to marry. It ensured bloodlines stayed strong and family trees didn’t get too inbred.

Ramsey Bjorn had been my betrothed since I’d been born. He was the only possible mate for me out of our small clans. He was blond, tall, surly, and we’d never been all that friendly. Never really had to. It was just assumed that we’d rub along until we got married.

Ramsey had also been exiled at fifteen when he’d sided with a were-cougar ambassador over his own family. The bear clan didn’t forget things like that. If there was one thing that was pounded into a were-bear’s head, it was that family was everything. Ramsey had betrayed his, so he’d been exiled. Now, years had passed and it seemed that he wouldn’t be coming back at all.

I was screwed. No mate? No family. I’d be condemned to be a spinster for the rest of my life, simply because there was no one eligible for me to marry. Everyone else was related or…human. And a were-bear simply couldn’t marry a human. They couldn’t know about our animal side, and they’d never, ever understand it.

And I wanted a family, desperately. I’d been on the outside looking in for what felt like forever. I was included in family events, but I was treated like a twelve-year-old daughter, not a grown woman. Why? Because I wasn’t married. Sometimes, the bear clan could be a little backward.

Okay, a lot backward. But if I rebelled, I’d be exiled, and the bear clan was all I had.

Someone downstairs spoke again.

“If Ramsey has a mate, do you think she would mind if he made a…” a throat cleared. “A donation?”

“Would you mind if it was your mate?”

I flinched again. Jesus.

“Good point.”

“So do we have anyone that’s unmated and unrelated? What about Kristof?”

“Cousin,” my father answered. “Too close to kin.”

“And Dag?”

“Second cousin.”

“Mattias?”

My jaw dropped. Mattias was sixty if he was a day.

“He’s a widower,” my father said, considering. “But Nikolina is young. Far too young for one such as Mattias.”

“Sigurd Aasen,” Janna said in a stern voice. “We do not have many options here. Your daughter is twenty-six and unmarried. She is about to go into heat, and we have no mate for her. This is critical. We cannot have her elect to not have the baby. Our clan is too small as it is.”

“As is evidenced by the fact that there is no one for her,” Minda pointed out. “So what do we do?”

“What about the married men?” Jokkum Hanssen finally spoke up.

“What about them?” Janna’s voice was stern.

I pressed closer to the door. Yes, what about the married men? I wanted to hear this, too. Not that there were any married men I wanted to sleep with, but I was curious where he was going with this.

“Why don’t we have one of them…you know. Take one for the team.”

Take one for the team?

My jaw dropped. They talked of impregnating me like they would mopping the floors or taking out the trash. This wasn’t a volunteer situation. This was my body.

“Nikolina is not unattractive. I have seen some of the men watching her lately. I know there are some that would not object to mating with her simply for the sake of a child.”

Janna snorted. “Some like yourself, Jokkum?”

“If I must.”

I wrinkled my nose in disgust. Jokkum was older than me and had a beer gut. He also drank too much.

“That still does not solve the problem of her being unmated,” Minda pointed out.

“This is the twentieth century,” my father said. “She can be an unmated mother. Lots of humans do it.”

“Or we can place the child with the father’s family,” Jokkum said. “Or someone can take her as a second wife, as the Mormons do.”

I wanted to point out that the Mormons didn’t really do that anymore, and gross.

“And what about Nikolina’s choice in such things? She is my daughter and I am responsible for her. All of the choices you present here are not good ones for our family.”

You go, Daddy, I thought to myself. You tell ‘em. It would have been nice if he’d have defended me a bit more instead of the family, but I’d take what I could get.

“Gunnar Ludvik, you are quiet,” Janna said. “What are your thoughts?”

I heard Gunnar clear his throat. The quietest clan leader, he was a man my father’s age with a kind smile and sad brown eyes. I liked Gunnar best of all the elders, save my father, of course. “I was simply thinking that this would be easier for everyone if my boy Leif was here.”

I bit my lip to hear Leif’s name. Everyone knew he’d gone crazy after the death of his fiancée. Still…

“But he is not here,” Janna said sharply. “We need solutions. Not wishes. And we need solutions fast.”

“So,” Jokkum said. “We are back to this. Which one of the married men wants to take one for the team?”

I tiptoed away from the door at that, carefully placing my glass on the counter. I kept my steps light so no one would hear me, and then when I was out of ear-shot of even shifter hearing, I ran back to my apartment above the garage, all thoughts of getting a drink refill gone. Despite being twenty-six years old, I still lived with my father. That was just how things were done with the bear clans. I raced up the stairs and shut my door to give myself the semblance of privacy, and leaned against the wall.

I had to leave, at least until the whole mating thing was figured out. I could disappear for a few months. Leave the territory so the males wouldn’t be able to follow my scent, and hide out until my hormones went back to normal. Then I could return…and continue my spinster lifestyle…

…which I hated.

Out of five families that intermarried, I was the only lonely single of the lot. Ramsey Bjorn - damn the man - had been my betrothed. If it was true and he’d taken another mate, that left me out in the cold.

Forever.

I supposed I could always head to the Paranormal Alliance of shifters, like Ramsey had. Find myself a nice werewolf and settle down…but even as I thought it, I knew I didn’t want to.

If I mated outside of the bear clans, I’d be exiled just like Ramsey was. The bloodlines had to be kept strong. And what if I bore a child that wasn’t a were-bear? Would I have to give it up and hand it over to the father’s shifter clan to be raised? What would I do then?

No, mating with another shifter would be messy. I needed a were-bear.

I thought of Jokkum’s offer and shuddered. I didn’t want to be his second wife, or his mistress, or whatever he suggested. Nor did I want to do that for anyone else. No family would want to absorb a second wife, and I didn’t want to share a husband. I thought of the bear clan men, and wasn’t attracted to any of them. That wasn’t an option, either.

I thought of Gunnar’s words. If my boy Leif was here.

I sat on the edge of my bed, thinking. If Leif was here, it would be simple. Ramsey had left me alone and unmated, but Leif’s intended bride had died at eighteen. We were two broken pairs that would naturally be right to stick together. I vaguely remembered Leif; I’d been ten when Katja had died. He had laughing brown eyes, dark hair, and was rangy and tall. I remembered him ruffling my hair as a child.

If he was still alive, he’d be thirty-four.

Unmarried. Unmated.

He’d be perfect.

I…just had to find the man.

I bounded up from my bed and immediately began to pack a bag.

3 weeks later

“You so owe me.” Mikkel Tolfson shook his head as we stood on the deck of the ship, the Antarctic air crisp and biting. His cheeks were windburned a bright red, but then, so were mine. I liked the air. It felt good against my all-too-frequently-lately flushed skin.

“I don’t owe you shit,” I said easily, stuffing my hands into the pockets of my parka as I leaned into the ocean spray. “You’re my cousin. This is what we do for each other.”

“Yeah, but the clan leaders are going to kill me dead if the find out I’m the one helping you go on this wild goose chase. You know they want you to stay home so someone can come fill you up with baby batter.”

I smacked him on the arm. “Don’t be gross, Mikkel.” But I was laughing. Mikkel was my age, and as mischievous as a naughty boy. He was my favorite cousin, which meant I was able to tolerate his moods despite my increasingly wild ones.

Mikkel was also a traveling photographer, so he had connections and the ability to get away for long periods of time to remote, exotic locations. His connections were what was helping me out at the moment.

We stood on the deck of the small ship, staring out at the remote, icy Antarctic island in the distance.

It was my destination.

Once I’d found out that the clan elders had no plan for my oncoming heat other than “pass her off to someone and get her pregnant,” I decided to take matters into my own hands. I’d left home that evening without telling anyone where I was going…just like Leif had done years ago. Except I didn’t disappear off the map. I knew that wasn’t possible. To get anywhere, you had to have connections or money - or both.

So I used mine. I visited cousins. I told no one about my troubles (though Mikkel had guessed and demanded the truth) and tracked down Leif’s trail. He’d left the Ozarks and wandered for a time. With my savings account, I’d hired private detectives to follow the financial trail he’d left behind so long ago, and had tracked him down to a research expedition down to Antarctica more than ten years ago. He’d been interning for a scientist.

He’d also never returned.

Seeing as how Leif was a bear shifter, I’d had a hunch that he’d gone native - simply transformed into bear shape and never returned. Someplace as remote as Antarctica would allow him to escape notice for a long time, maybe forever.

And so I’d convinced Mikkel that he needed to set his latest photo shoot in the Antarctic, with his lovely cousin Nikolina as his assistant. Nobody would really question the fact that I had no photographic experience, considering I was tall, blonde, and pretty. They’d simply assume Mikkel had hired me for obvious reasons.

So we went to McMurdough Base and while Mikkel set up a shoot, I mingled with all the men. I laughed. I talked. I flirted. I teased. And I asked a lot of questions.

We’d been at McMurdough for less than a week when a drunk Swede had confessed to me that he’d been so high on weed that he’d thought he’d seen a grizzly bear out on one of the islands. I giggled at his story and teased him about seeing leprechauns and unicorns next, and hid my excitement.

A lone grizzly bear? Out here in the Antarctic?

Bingo.

I’d flirted heavily with him to get more information from him. Which island, exactly? Half Moon Island – one with an old base on it that was only inhabited every few years. When had he seen it? A few months ago, he told me…and then proceeded to mansplain about how it was just the drugs. No grizzly would live this far south, he explained to me in a condescending tone, and the only things that lived on that island were chinstrap penguins.

His information had been scattered, but I had enough to go on, and I told Mikkel about my plans the next day. I wanted to go out to Half Moon Island and set up my camp.

Naturally, my cousin didn’t like that idea, but I’d won him over. Mostly.

“It’s the Antarctic,” he told me for the thousandth time again as we stared at the island in the distance. “You need permission to go anywhere, and we don’t have permission to be poking around there.”

“It’s a deserted island,” I told him. “Just drop me off and we’ll pretend you don’t know where I went.”

“This is nuts, Niko. We can still turn this ship around.”

I merely patted him on the shoulder. “We can’t turn the ship around. And I don’t need permission. Just don’t tell anyone I’m there.”

“Nikolina,” he said patiently. “Come on. Be reasonable.”

“I am being reasonable.”

“No, you’re asking me to abandon you onto a remote Antarctic island for the next six weeks because you want to track down a missing shifter in the hopes that he’ll impregnate you.”

“Well, when you put it that way…”

“Come on. You have to have options.”

I gave him a level stare, my pocketed hands clenching into stubborn fists. “I’m going into heat in the next week or two, Mikkel. So unless you want to be a proud papa, this is the only route I have.”

He blanched at my suggestion. “God, Niko, that’s gross.”

“I know it’s gross,” I said, calmly staring out at the distant snowy island. “That’s why I said it.” We were cousins, but our families were so close we’d been raised as brother and sister more than cousins. The idea was as repugnant to me as it was to him, but I was running out of options. “Look at it this way. I’m a bear shifter. The cold won’t bother me. Considering that my temperature is running a few degrees hotter right now because of the heat thing? It really won’t be a problem for me. I have food supplies enough for two months. There’s an abandoned base. No one’s going to bother me. And if Leif isn’t here, it’ll just be a lonely month for me and I’ll be well out of the way of anyone and everyone that might be affected by the heat.”

Poor Mikkel still looked unconvinced.

I reached out and patted his sleeved arm. “I’ll be fine.”

He shrugged my hand off. “Just, uh, don’t touch me. The heat thing. It makes things…weird.”

I wrinkled my nose, the hoop in my nostril chilly in the brisk weather. “Sorry. I keep forgetting.”

“Me too.” He grimaced. “You sure you’ll be okay?”

“I’ll be perfect.”

And I would be, if Leif was truly actually on Half Moon Island. What I remembered of Leif was vague, but I recalled that he was a kind, dreamy boy. I remembered he’d loved to sculpt figures in wood. I still had one of those tiny figures he’d given to me. It was tucked into my bag at the moment. He was an artist. Polite. Friendly.

Which was ironic, because I was cranky, ballsy, and stubborn. I figured if I met him here, I’d be the one that got my way.

And if I didn’t, well, I had a nice, long solo vacation…and a bullet vibrator.

I sighed, staring out at the lonely island. If he wasn’t out there? It was going to be a long, long heat cycle.

By the end of the next afternoon, I was on the shore of Half Moon Island, waving goodbye to Mikkel as the ship pulled away. The small inflatable raft I’d used to get to the shore was temporarily parked on the beach, and Mikkel had instructed me to hide it at the abandoned base so no ships passing through the area would see and think the place was inhabited.

If someone did stop in, I had plenty of camera equipment, forged permits from Mikkel that showed I worked for him, and a cover story that I was filming a documentary on chinstrap penguins that inhabited this island.

As I watched the ship pull away, I rubbed my nose. With my shifter sense of smell, I was already trying to pick up the scent of another bear. Unfortunately, all I smelled was penguin and penguin shit. It’d take a few days for my nose to adjust to the ‘common’ scents.

When Mikkel raised a hand to wave, I returned it until I could no longer see him.

Then, I was entirely alone on a remote Antarctic island. Yeah. I grabbed the hauling rope on the front of my raft and began to drag it inland.

Half Moon Island was pretty. Pretty bleak, that was. There were weird tufts of dried-looking grass stuck between rocks, and there was snow. Lots, and lots of snow. But other than that, it was vast, silent, and empty. There was no sound but the wind and the distant caws of penguins. The beaches were rocky and cold, and I could smell no other inhabitants. I lifted my face to the wind as I walked and circled the island twice, but there were no signs of anything other than an army of chinstrap penguins. There were three long buildings, but I avoided them. I didn’t want the smells of other humans contaminating my nostrils, not when I was trying to find the delicate scent of one particular shifter.

That, and where there were buildings, there was also the possibility of someone showing up to check out those buildings.

So I set up my small tent on a sheltered inlet, between a few large rocks that would protect me from most of the wind and out of sight of the bay. The ground was hard and unforgiving, but I unrolled a small mat for under my sleeping bag. It’d have to do.

I’d been camping dozens of times as a small girl surrounded by a horde of brothers and cousins. I knew how to build a fire and fish, and set up a tent. I wasn’t afraid of being out here on my own.

I was terrified I wouldn’t find what I was looking for. That thought scared me more than anything.

The air was incredibly dry, and my face felt chapped by the end of the first night. The weather was bitterly cold, but as a were-bear, I was more tolerant to the weather than most shifters, and with a heavy jacket on, it wasn’t so bad. I spent my first evening on the island bundled in my tent with my camping blankets tucked around me, an electric lantern set up in the corner as I checked and rechecked the camera equipment I’d brought for my cover story.

Morning came soon enough, and I bounded from my chilly bed and did a quick circle of the island, sniffing for hints of unfamiliar were-bear.

All I smelled were penguins, more penguins, and my own familiar scent.

I was disappointed, but I wouldn’t let it bring me down. I had plenty of time.

Three days passed without luck. Three long, miserable days. If Leif was here, he was acting like most natural bears did and avoiding human contact. My smell - despite the were-bear scent of it - would stink of unknown predator, and he was probably avoiding me.

Time for a new tactic.

I dug through my laundry, pulling out my dirty clothes. My panties were fragrant with my scent, thanks to the copious filthy dreams I’d been having (which hadn’t stopped now that I was in Antarctica, but had only grown stronger). Just pulling them out of my laundry bag made my small tent saturate with the smell of musky, needy sex. I flushed with embarrassment. God, was this what I smelled like to the other were-bears when I was in heat? That was…awful, and far too intimate. It was a good thing I was far away from everyone at the moment.

I took my hunting knife and ripped the panties into shreds, sucked down my pride, and rubbed them on my groin one last time to get the scent nice and fresh. And then, I scattered the scraps around the island. “Come on, Hansel,” I said bitterly. “Come on and follow Gretel’s breadcrumbs.”

The heat was coming on to me harder and faster with every passing day. If there had been uncertainty before as to whether I was truly going into heat, there was no doubt in my mind now. My breasts ached and I was sensitive to the slightest touches. Just a dirty thought could be incredibly arousing.

If Leif was in the vicinity, he’d smell me and come to check it out. He’d have to. His hormones wouldn’t be able to resist.

The weather was cold, but clear. I elected to sleep outside, just in case Leif could smell me and wanted to come check out the source for himself. I bundled up in my sleeping bag, stared at the bleak, chilly ocean, and waited in the darkness.

Being all alone and on your own is exhausting, though, and I was unable to keep my eyes open. I fell asleep before an hour passed, lulled by the distant sounds of penguins and waves.

My dreams were naughty and full of unfulfilled desire, as usual. It was formless, mindless need. Thanks to the sheltered life I’d led as the were-bear daughter of a bear-clan leader, I was a virgin. The bear clans were not the most forward-thinking of families and certain parts of our lifestyle dated back to, oh, the Middle Ages. Things like arranged marriages and keeping your legs together until your arranged marriage were a given. Anything else and – you guessed it – exile from everything and everyone you knew.

I wasn’t entirely sure why I put up with it.

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.”