Monthly story - male werebear x gn reader (nsfw) (Patreon)

Holy moly, folks, this one was supposed to be a 3k word story, ready to post in the middle of the month, and (a bit like the last one which was 12k) it morphed into nearly 15k of feels and fun... oof. Thank you so much to those who reassured me on Discord that it was ok to take a few extra days to make sure it was something I was happy to post. I hope you enjoy Celann the grumpy werebear...

Let me also just briefly take this opportunity to thank you for returning to Patreon to support me and for joining up since I relaunched in October. It means the world to me that you value and enjoy my writing enough to pay to have access to it once a month. Really, I cannot tell you what it means to me for you to give me this income and independence. I tear up just trying to explain it, even in words.

Anyway, apologies for the delay! I wish you a very merry festive season, and hopefully there'll be another little Christmas bonus for you too, as per the poll from a while ago. May 2024 bring you every happiness and blessing, folks. And here's to many more stories and characters to share and enjoy.

Content: gender and body neutral reader who is a healer/surgeon, a thinly-disguised Roman Empire/Iron Age Britain setting, a secondary character is seriously injured (no super-gory descriptions, only a brief catalogue of her injuries), a big, gruff and reserved loner werebear, brief brush with hypothermia from the reader, some good old 'cuddling for warmth', and some penetrative sex later on too.

Wordcount: a whopping 14,585!

Castle Rise Outpost, in the extreme, northernmost reaches of the Republic’s ever-expanding territories, was hardly the most illustrious or auspicious posting you could have hoped for.

As you and your tired horse plodded along the sandy track over the region’s high, wind-blasted heath, your heart ached for every last mile that stretched between there and your warmer homeland. It all seemed so far behind you now, but this was a new start and a new adventure as the surgeon and healer attached to one of the Republic’s vast network of military outposts, and you were determined to make a good life of it.

Gods though, this place really was desolate.

On your right, away to the east where the light was fast fading, a dense forest of gnarled and mossy oak trees looked as though it was spilling down from the rolling hills and tumbling inexorably down into the valley in a wild, green tangle, and below the treeline, a fast-flowing river cut through the landscape in a dark and sinuous ribbon. The water was rich with tannins from the falling leaves in the forest, and as the ebbing light caught it, you thought ominously of the colour of blood. Behind the forest, as the afternoon darkened towards the deeper hue of an early autumn evening, the far off shape of the snow-capped Highlands lurked on the horizon; their shape now black and foreboding as the stage background of a mummer’s drama.

The commiserations of your fellow graduates from the medical academy in the capital now rang in your ears as the wind picked up and you tugged the thick, woollen cloak further up around your neck to keep the damned weather out. The chestnut mare, your only constant companion for the hundred or so miles since the last major city, tossed her head and trudged on with her long, damp forelock dangling into her eyes and obscuring the white, asymmetrical blaze that dribbled down her ginger face towards her nose. She seemed half asleep on her feet, and you weren’t far off that yourself either.

A flock of rooks erupted out of a patch of dark elm and tall sycamore in the valley below on your right, tugging your mind back to the present. Your gaze tracked them as they sailed away like flakes of dark ash on the wind. Both you and the rangy mare shifted nervously, and you couldn’t help but remind yourself that the locals weren’t always friendly to the Republic’s advances further and further north. Stories of skirmishes and wild tales of shapeshifters and sacrificial magic swirled through the ranks of soldiers, but they were largely dismissed by those who had lived a comfortable life in the Republic’s neatly-planned towns and cities, with their hot bath complexes, intricate mosaics, and heated floors.

“Not long now, Copper,” you said, petting the horse’s mud-encrusted neck as much for your own reassurance as for hers. You’d named her for the vibrant colour of her coat, reminiscent too of beech leaves at the height of the season, but you’d been made to feel foolishly sentimental for giving such an ordinary horse a name like ‘Copper’ by the progressively rougher soldiers at the staging posts on the journey north.

The mare didn’t even flick her ear in your direction at the sound of your voice, and you sighed and pushed yourself back up into a better position in the saddle, shifting uncomfortably as your bruised seat-bones protested yet another day of riding. How the Messenger Corps managed, living almost their entire life in the saddle, you had no idea.

The fort itself came into view on the next rise in the road, and Copper’s ears finally pricked up at the break in the relative monotony of heather and sand and occasional rowan tree. Your own attention was caught, however, by the fact that ‘Castle Rise’ outpost was not, in fact, a castle at all. From that distance, it looked like little more than a grubby wooden palisade with a watch tower over the gateway, and a ditch running around it. Torches bobbed along the walls at regular intervals though, marking the sentries’ routes within, and when you reached the gate and drew rein, a woman’s rough alto yelled down at you.

“Announce yourself!”

You did, adding, “Healer and surgeon assigned to the outpost, until relieved of my duties by a replacement next year.”

“If you even survive up here that long!” she crowed back at you.

It was hard to make out the details of her face in the last of the light, but you saw her armour glint in the flames of a nearby torch and she made a gesture for someone to open the heavy gate for you. You nudged Copper on and entered the muddy courtyard of the outpost, swallowing down your trepidation and fear.

Castle Rise was built on the same plan as almost all the Republic’s fortified outposts, with the soldiers’ and servants’ barracks occupying about a third of the rectangular compound, with their squat, timber-framed buildings situated on either side of the main thoroughfare. The stone and brick headquarters, and all-important storage granaries, sat behind the barracks and occupied a more prominent position at the centre of the fort. At the far end was an open forum and training area which took up the final third of the space, with some stables and smaller outbuildings scattered around the perimeter.

There were several buildings outside the relative safety of the ditches and walls of the fort though, and you assumed they belonged to the locals who traded with the soldiers stationed there. Where the Republic favoured straight lines and clean angles, these were a collection of roundhouses made of interwoven hazel for the walls, which was then covered with daub and lime washed, and thatched on top with local reed from the riverbank. They almost looked like little, brown mushrooms that had sprouted outside the walls of the fort, and their conical roofs exhaled the smoke of their central hearth-fires in long, lazy drifts.

After discovering that Castle Rise was pretty poorly supplied since it was right at the end of a long supply line that stretched practically back to the capital of the Republic, you quickly realised that you were going to have to adapt a lot of your expectations to a new reality that was grim, damp, and freezing. The most common complaint, after colds and flu, were injuries that refused to heal; either because the damned soldiers kept poking and picking at them, or because they refused to follow your simple instructions on how to keep the wounds clean.

You were stitching up one particular soldier — again — with your head bent over your work and a curved needle held delicately in your hand, when a shadow filled the doorway and blocked out all the light.

“Fuck’s sake,” you hissed through gritted teeth as you looked up. “You mind? I’m trying not to make this worse than Hadvar already has.”

Your ability to think outside the standard medical supply box wasn’t the only thing that had evolved over the three months you’d spent at the fort: your language had changed shape too, growing coarser and more unrefined to suit the general soundscape of the soldiers in the fort. You’d also grown a much thicker skin, though only metaphorically; it was apparently going to take longer than the tail end of summer and a very wet autumn to acclimatise to this place and its miserable weather.

The stranger only grunted, but he did shift a little, leaning his bodyweight against the doorframe to watch you work, and allowing a little of the midday light to sneak back in like a hound seeking the warmth and shelter of a hearth. Poor Hadvar stifled a grunt of discomfort and you returned your attention to his cut ribs.

“Don’t give me that, soldier,” you sighed, continuing to stitch up the wound. “I told you not to train for at least a week, and you’ve done exactly that and split them open. If I have to see you a third time to stitch it up before it’s healed, I’ll put a poultice on it that will smell worse than the latrines in summer. See if anyone will train with you then. And sit still.”

“Yes, surgeon,” he wheezed rather pathetically, but he did at least stop fidgeting.

You didn’t give the stranger — the man who was still quite literally filling the doorway — any more thought until you’d tied off the last stitch and swabbed it down with some awful grain alcohol that the clerks used to clean their reed pens and the scout jerked and sucked in a breath. “Let that be a lesson to you. Take care of it, Hadvar,” you said, adopting a more kindly tone for the last admonishment, and he nodded and smiled shyly.

“Thank you, surgeon,” he said, knuckling his forehead to you in lieu of a proper salute, and sliding his tunic back on over the top of it. The quiet respect you’d earned from most of the soldiers in the fort had been largely thanks to the fact that you’d saved a beloved captain’s leg from having to be amputated after a truly horrendous break, and he was healing nicely, if slowly, in the relative comfort of his quarters until he was sound enough to travel south for further convalescence.

“I mean it, Hadvar! Take care!” you called after him as he nodded vaguely to the man in the doorway and slunk out into the rare, midday sun. The air was freezing though and you bit back a little whimper as you scrubbed your hands clean in a bowl of icy water before turning to face the newcomer.

After three months at the fort, you thought you recognised everyone there, but this man really was a stranger to you. He was a local though, of that you were certain. Tall, broad shouldered, with a mane of grizzled, dark brown hair that fell loose around his face and just brushed his shoulders, and a weathered, tanned complexion that spoke of a lifetime spent almost exclusively outdoors, he glared at you with eyes the colour of a cloudy winter sky; almost a perfect silver. His features were sharp, the lines etched quite deeply around his eyes and mouth, and into a sullen scowl that spoke of a habitually gruff disposition. He looked perhaps to be in his late thirties or early forties. It was very hard to tell though.

His clothes too were not those of a Republican soldier or scout, nor even of a fort servant. A greenish tunic fitted tidily over his broad shoulders and his solid chest and paunch, and his dark brown braccae underneath looked warm and sturdy. Wrapped around his shoulders and fastened with a simple, bronze, penannular brooch was a cloak the colour of the heathery underbrush, which helped to mark him as a local as much as his physique and features did. His fur-lined, waxed leather boots looked a lot warmer than yours and you eyed them enviously, wondering if you could scrape together enough of your pay yet to trade for a pair of your own as the winter wore on. The warmth of spring seemed like a myth or a distant memory to you.

“Can I help you?” you asked as you wiped your hands dry and then stuck them under your armpits to try and warm some feeling back into them again. You didn’t get a brazier in the surgery, but you did at least get one in your chambers. Most of the time.

“You’re needed.” His voice was a deep, scraping bass, and his words were thickly marked by the lyrical accent unique to the region; the ‘r’ rolling attractively around between the tip of his tongue and his top teeth like a pebble caught in a current.

“Well, yes, alright,” you said slowly. “That’s generally how this works, but how exactly am I needed?”

“Pack a bag.”

“A bag? For what?”

“Journey,” he grunted. “She doesn’t have long.”

“What?” All the fatigue that had been gradually pooling in your body throughout the course of a surprisingly busy morning evaporated, and you came to alertness quicker than a soldier roused by the watch. “What happened?”

“Bear,” the man growled, his voice and eyes darkening further and filling with something akin to fury.

“A bear? She was attacked by a bear? Fuck… What are her injuries? How far away is she?” Depending on the injury though, she could already be dead.

“Half a day’s walk,” he said. Then he eyed you up and down and amended that to, “Maybe a bit longer.”

“I’ll need to clear it with the fort’s commander,” you said, trying not to take any offence at his estimation of your fitness. “She’s not likely to let me out without —”

“Already done. We’re leaving now.”

And with that, he stalked out of the doorway and back into the main courtyard of the fort with a swirl of his cloak.

For just a stunned moment, you simply stood there, marvelling at the audacity of the man to speak like that to you, emergency or not.

Hastily, you shoved as many relevant supplies as you could fit into your pack, and practically fell out of the surgery door a few minutes later, locking it behind you.

The man was watching you from the shadows of the nearby granary building, arms folded across his broad chest, those silver eyes flashing oddly and catching the afternoon light in a strange and unsettlingly reflective way. “I have to give the key to the commander,” you called to him, waving the iron key for emphasis. It wouldn’t do for people to come and go into your surgery, and perhaps help themselves to your supplies and mess up your inventory.

He lifted his lip and growled something indistinct at you, but you ignored it and scuttled over to the headquarters, knocking on the door before entering.

The garrison commander was hardly any more refined than your stranger in many ways, but when she saw who had barged into her room, she nodded. “I see Celann has found you. Good. You’re to go with him and fix Ettia up as best you can. Sounds like she’s in bad shape. We’ll have to manage here without you for a few days.”

“Understood. Commander, can I ask… who is Celann? I’ve not seen him before.”

“Local scout we hired when we first got up here. Lived out in the woods all his life and half feral, by all accounts, but he’s a good man and he’ll see to it that you come to no harm.”

“Right.” Hardly a glowing recommendation, but it would have to do. Your commander was hardly likely to send her only healer off into the wilderness without good cause. “And this ‘Ettia’? She’s a scout of some kind too?” you asked hastily, aware that time was ticking, and while Celann might be a ‘good’ man, he was clearly not a very patient one. Then again, his comrade was probably bleeding out in the woods somewhere, so he might be forgiven for that.

“Yeah, she was one of our local guides as well for a few years. Chieftain’s daughter or something. Helped us forge friendly relations with the local inhabitants when we set up here five years ago, and secured us hunting rights in exchange for the kind of goods you can’t get here: grape wine, olive oil, dates, other dried fruits and the like. Now,” she added with a scowl and a shooing gesture with her hands, “You’d best get going. We owe her the best care we can provide, and right now, that’s you.”

“Thanks, I think,” you muttered as you offered a bob of your head that wasn’t quite a salute — you weren’t strictly military, after all — and you marched back out to find Celann standing where you’d left him, only looking somehow even more intense. “I’m ready,” you said to him, not feeling in the least bit ready.

He must have read it in your face or your voice, because he snorted and pushed off the wall in a nonchalant manner that reminded you of a panther you’d once seen in the gladiator ring in the capital. He certainly had the smooth, predatory paces to match, and you found yourself puffing along at an undignified trot to catch up with him.

Celann didn’t say a single word to you for the first three hours that you stumbled along behind him. To start with, you crossed familiar meadows and sheep pastures surrounding the fort, places where you came to gather mushrooms and wild herbs, but then he led you into the damp, mossy oak forest that encircled the land around the fort as far as the eye could see, and you started to feel uneasy as well as exhausted.

Despite the cold, sweat stippled your temples and then began to mist unpleasantly down your spine as Celann marched you faster than the fort’s centurion had ever pressed any of his legionaries, until you stumbled over a root and went down hard onto hands and knees with a grunt of pain and surprise.

For a long moment, you stayed where you fell, head bowed, breathing steadily to try and dispel the pain and shock of the impact from your palms and knees. Finally, you puffed out a breath and began to lever yourself up again, though it was tricky with the ungainly and poorly-packed bag on your back. To your surprise, a tanned and scarred hand extended down into your field of vision and you took it reflexively before you appreciated that it was obviously Celann.

“You ever heard the saying ‘too little, too late’?” you groused as he tugged you inexorably upwards. The motion wasn’t abrupt or forceful, but it made you realise just how strong he must be as he set you down on your feet and you stared up into his strange, silver eyes. He held your gaze with an intensity that made you squirm inwardly. “Never mind,” you muttered, trying to let go, but he held you firmly.

“I…” he began, but faltered. His throat worked and he blinked, then he released you and stepped back with a sigh. “I’m sorry,” he rumbled. “I… fear… for her. For Ettia. But I’m going too fast for you. It won’t help us if you don’t get there in one piece.” The way he spoke, like an old mill-wheel cranking slowly back to life after a long time rusting in disuse, softened you a little to him.

“Only bruised my pride this time, I think,” you said, examining your dirty palms, “But I won’t say no to taking it slower now that the light’s fading. You walk very quickly on those long legs of yours, Celann. It’s hard to keep up.”

His stern face ‘un-frowned’ a little and he sighed. “Come on. Let’s keep going while we can then.”

The gruff scout might have been trying for a slower pace, but he still marched you well past twilight and into the deeper velvet of dusk before he growled softly under his breath and, without comment, ducked off the deer run you’d been following.

Your stumbling footsteps faltered on the path and you stood there for a moment, gazing after him. “You taking a piss or should I follow?” you asked a little testily. For a man who had demanded your help, he wasn’t exactly being all that courteous.

“Follow.”

Rolling your eyes and exhaling a sharp, slightly bitter sigh, you stooped beneath the tired leaves of a young birch tree and staggered off into the darker shadows beyond. “Celann? I can’t see shit anymore. Where are you?”

Almost out of nowhere, the scout reappeared, still bent double beneath the wintry branches, and you nearly toppled backwards in surprise.

“Fuck, you didn’t have to leap out at me. I just needed to know here I was going.”

“This way. She’s through here.”

Those last three words shoved the tiredness back down once again and your mind sharpened, ready for whatever you were about to face. “I’ll need light when we get there, Celann.”

He grunted but didn’t slow his hunched pace through the underbrush and dense tangle of brambles.

“What the hell was she doing in here anyway?” you wondered aloud.

“She wasn’t in here when she was attacked,” he said, as if you were slow and stupid. “I brought her here when I knew she wasn’t going to make it to the fort for healing.”

“Oh.”

He didn’t deign to add anything else after that, and you followed him until he halted in a small bower that was clear of undergrowth and saplings. At the centre of it you could just make out the figure of a woman lying on her back on a cloak, and for a horrible moment, you thought you were too late. In the last dregs of daylight, she was white as a marble effigy, lying on her back with her hands at her sides. The smell of blood wafted around the still, stagnant air, and you grimaced. “Is she…?”

“She lives. Just. Do what you can for her.”

You nodded, and knelt beside her, sliding your pack off your shoulders and letting it settle gently on the ground next to you.

“Ettia? Can you hear me?” you asked, checking her pulse which was fluttering faint and fast beneath her skin, and her breath, though weak, passed through her cracked lips in quick, snatched pants. “Celann,” you said in a low, urgent voice.

“Here,” he said, crouching beside you, his handsome, weathered face intent and seeming slightly paler now too. The lines around his eyes were etched deeper with worry.

“I’ll need a decent light and a fire to boil water.”

The wounds had been bandaged already, but the undyed linen had acquired a completely new colour in the time between the attack and your arrival, and they were dark and sodden with blood. The claw marks lay across her chest and shoulders, and mercifully not her stomach and intestines, slashing downwards from her left shoulder, across her breast and down over her right arm. You could almost see the bear rearing up on its hind legs and retrace its slashing right paw across her skin.

You told her your name while you got out your field kit, and pushed her sweaty, mousy brown hair out of her eyes.

“I’m going to take care of you, Ettia,” you said.

You weren’t going to promise that you were going to fix her — you’d never seen trauma this severe outside of the surgery in the capital during your training, when a gladiator had been mauled in the ring by a tiger and brought in as a case study for the students to observe. You tried to recall everything your professor had done during that operation, though you had far fewer options, and you didn’t have the sterile environment of an operating theatre. Ettia’s chances were slim to none, at best. Still, she was alive, and you could work with that all the while her heart still beat.

Your hands never shook while you tended to her, and Celann held an improvised torch tirelessly for you throughout the whole procedure.

When you had done all you could for her, you sat back heavily and let out a long, unsteady breath. You stretched your neck out and looked down at your hands which were covered with blood.

“How’s that water?” you asked, eyeing the fire that he’d set up in the centre of the space, with the tiny, iron cauldron dangling over it. Its steam rose up into the air and you’d had him toss in a few sprigs of dried rosemary.

He eyed it and grunted, “Boiled about a quarter hour ago. I took it off to cool.”

“Good. I’ll clean around the wounds and bandage them. She won’t be able to be moved for a few days at least, and even then, you’ll have to carry her.”

He nodded, and some of the cold tension seemed to go out of his muscles. Celann allowed himself the chance to exhale fully, and he met your eyes with his own, steady silver gaze. “Thank you, healer,” he said. “And she’s tougher than she looks, I promise you.”

“Alright,” you said cautiously. “I hope so.”

With the wounds cleaned and the blood meticulously rinsed from your own fingers in what remained in the cauldron of water, fatigue crashed in on you and you barely had the strength to stay upright.

“I’ll see to the rest,” Celann said, looking around your makeshift camp. “Lie down.”

You didn’t mean to go to sleep, but the sudden and arduous trek through the wilderness in winter, followed by some extremely dubious field surgery, had sapped all your strength from you, and you closed your eyes as you lay down in your sheepskin bed roll, and sleep just claimed you.

It wasn’t until dawn had broken over the nearby mountains and a pale light had leached down into the glen of birch and ash trees that you stirred again, and it was to the sound of hushed voices that you woke.

To your surprise, you rolled over and found Ettia and Celann speaking in low tones, their native tongue rolling musically through the frosty campsite.

When you sat up sharply and goggled at the sight of the patient who had been on the point of expiring the previous night now sitting with her head propped against Celann’s rolled up cloak and with a slight flush of colour in her cheeks, they both stopped their talk and regarded you with matching, grey eyes.

“Ettia,” you croaked. “You’re… awake? How do you feel?”

“Like I might stand a chance at living another day,” she said, her words low and her accent thick, but her eyes were bright and clear, and she regarded you without the shroud of death draped across her face like it had been the previous night. Perhaps it had been the darkness and the contrast between torch light and the gathering night, but she had looked significantly worse when you’d finished stitching up and poulticing her wounds.

“Well, that’s good to hear. I hope Celann hasn’t been keeping you from rest though,” you added with an acerbic glance his way.

The older scout held up his hands but he did lift his grizzled lip at you in a little snarl. Now though, you couldn’t help but snicker at it. You’d seen just how worried he’d been for his friend, and there was no pretending he was a cold and heartless wildman after that.

You took a deep breath of icy air, feeling your lungs stretch and burn from the cold, and then shoved your bed roll back off your body and rose to inspect your hasty handiwork from the previous night. All in all, you’d done a really good job. The skin was a little red from the combined trauma of bear and surgeon, but it didn’t look like any infection had set in, and the bandages hadn’t darkened beyond a few spots here and there.

“You’re… remarkably tough,” you said to her, and she smirked attractively.

“You’re not the first to say so, healer,” she chuckled, though pain flickered across her face at the sound. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay where I am for a little while longer.”

“Yeah, that’s fine by me,” you said. “Perhaps our friend here can go and find us some rabbit or a bird or something. I’m starving, and I think a bit of roast meat will do you good, if you can face it.”

“Oh, I should say so,” Ettia grinned. “Go on, Celann. I’ll be alright.”

Celann gave you a piercing look, then stood abruptly and left the clearing, grabbing his hunting bow on the way out.

“Interesting man,” you mused as you watched his shadow melt into the morning mist that billowed and wafted around the wall of trees that circled the little den which had served as both hostel and operating theatre for the night, and Ettia smiled again.

“He is. Give him a chance.”

“He clearly cares about you,” you replied diplomatically. “Are you together?”

That puzzled her for a second and then she shook her head and laughed. “No, no, not at all.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. I just assumed…”

“He’s a dear friend,” she said, her words going quiet as her strength waned in the wake of her exuberant laughter. “One of the few I have left… now…” she said, with a certain significance on the last word.

Ettia slipped into a light, slightly restless sleep before you could ask her more, but she was slumbering more peacefully when Celann snuck back into the camp like a wolf returning to the den an hour or so later. He had a brace of grouse in one hand and a pair of rabbits in the other. All of them had been plucked and butchered elsewhere, and they were ready for the heat of the fire that you’d rekindled to a decent and friendly blaze in his absence.

“Good,” he said, eyeing it. His eyes had gone first to Ettia, and then to the fire, and finally, they landed on you. “You look tired. I’ll prepare the food. You can rest again. I’ll watch.” He spoke in short, choppy sentences, as though not used to using words to articulate himself, and you wondered just how much human contact this man had.

When the food had cooked, filling the little bower with the most mouthwatering aroma, Celann took one of the roasted birds off its dogwood roasting spit and tore it gently into shreds to feed to Ettia, leaving you to take your pick of the rest of the meat. He’d sprinkled it with seasoning he’d pulled from a small, wooden box in one of his many pockets, and whatever the mix of herbs and salt was, it tasted fantastic with the perfectly cooked fowl.

After you’d eaten, you used the last of your water supplies to swill out the cauldron and make a small infusion of willow bark to help with her pain, and you instructed Celann on how to administer it.

With Ettia sliding back into a restful sleep after midday, you turned to Celann and asked in a whisper, “Is there a stream or something nearby? I want to wash up properly.”

He nodded and pointed back out to the deer trail and said, “About two hundred yards north along the track. Don’t wander.”

So with that, you left your patient in his care and went to get clean.

The edges of the stream were bound with treacherously thin ice, like shards of broken glass, so you knelt in the winter-sapped grass on the bank and dipped your cupped hands in to sluice them clean as best you could, splashing your face afterwards. The water was clear and fast-flowing, and you drank deeply from it.

Behind you, a twig snapped and you froze like a hare in an open field.

Something was behind you.

A breath huffed out, loud and indignant, and huge jaws champed and clicked resonantly together. Then, the unmistakable, rasping grunt of a brown bear sent a primal, paralytic fear flooding through every muscle in your body. Perhaps it had smelled your meal, or perhaps it had come back to finish Ettia off, but either way, you knew you were about to get your first good look at a creature you’d never dreamed of seeing in person.

You didn’t dare turn around, but you couldn’t have moved, even if you’d been able to try.

The closest you’d thought you would ever come to seeing a bear were the savage wounds scored deep into the flesh of the scout lying in the dell some two hundred and fifty yards uphill behind you.

A roar sounded then, visceral and terrible in its fury, and you tumbled forwards into the stream in a blind panic, imagining the impending swipe of clawed paws or the slam of six-hundred pounds of muscle into your body, and you floundered out the other side of the brook with a choked yelp as the icy water bit through your clothes and almost seemed to burn your skin.

Scrabbling around in the thick, tangled grasses on the far bank of the stream, you turned, blinked, and tried to take in the sight on the short stretch of tired grass between the stream and the deer trail.

The bear was up on its hind legs, its jaw softly parted to reveal the hint of huge teeth, and it was regarding you with intent. Its breath huffed a cloud around its muzzle, and you screamed.

Without warning, a shape crashed through the trees behind the bear, and you gasped as a second, much larger creature tore from the cover and out into the frosty meadow with a roar like a waterfall in full flood.

Closest to you was the slightly smaller bear, with blond tufts on his ears and a scar across his mealy muzzle. The one behind it, was a true monster. Where the first was paler, his cocoa fur dusted with golden highlights over his head and shoulders, this one’s fur faded to a much darker colour over his hind quarters, and his ears were almost black. His eyes burned gold like the setting sun, and he reared and roared again, grunting and huffing with his chest heaving and his jaws foaming in his rage. Then his eyes rolled and he lunged for the smaller bear.

What followed was the most brutal thing you’d ever witnessed.

Luckily, it was so short-lived you barely had the chance to register the clash of these two colossal beasts as they scrapped and snarled and battled in the arena of scrubby grass. The blond bear bit at the back of the larger bear’s neck, but the fight ended a few minutes later when he’d twisted away with a bellow of outrage that ended in the jaws of the darker, larger bear clamped around the throat of the honey coloured one. He shook him like a dog shakes a rat caught in the granary.

Before he could kill the other bear though, he released him and roared right in his face, and the bear scarpered with his fur ruffled and slightly tinged with blood.

That still left you alone with the remaining brute of a bear, and he swung his great head around and regarded you, shaking on the river bank and with your teeth chattering from more than just the cold.

He dropped back to all fours with a thud that shook the ground and began to advance on you, huffing softly with each thunderous step.

Your breath caught in your chest and you tried to back away but you found only brambles behind you and cursed when your palm came away bloody from the thorns.

The bear waded through the cold water, his muzzle carving through the water to clean it, and then he closed in on you, muzzle getting ever closer to your face. The trembling merged into spasms from the cold and fear. Certain you were going to die, you turned your face away, closed your eyes, and sat there. What else could you do?

Just when the cold, wet nose of the bear pressed against your exposed cheek and neck, and his hot breath fanned across your frozen skin, a soft, wavering call sounded from the woods behind the bear, and he froze.

The sound came again and he looked over his shoulder and huffed something that sounded almost… frustrated. He returned his nose to your palm though, and licked at the blood that had welled there from the brambles.

Someone was calling, their voice weak and reedy on the still, morning air, but the bear responded to it and gave a low moan. Then he began to move away from you, back across the river and over the meadow.

You cracked your eyes open and dared to exhale as the bear retreated into the woods, leaving you soaked and shaking.

Only then, when his dark body disappeared into the scattered brown leaves and shadows of the wintry trees did you remember Ettia lying vulnerable in the bower, with only Celann and his bow to defend her.

Had that been her voice?

Suddenly though, your muscles seized from the intense cold and you cried out, and the mantle of shock slid unnoticed across your mind.

You had no idea how long you sat on that wet river bank, but you’d stopped shaking by the time a shadow slid over your face and a figure loomed into your view. A low voice murmured your name and you blinked sluggishly. A short phrase in a language you didn’t recognise sounded like a sharp curse, and then arms were wrapped around you, one under your knees and the other under your arms, and you found yourself lifted up out of the frosty grass and borne away.

As you crossed the meadow, you tilted your head painfully, the muscles stiff and protesting, and found a familiar, tanned face with long, salt-and-pepper hair framing it, and you found a name to put to it. “C-Cel-Celann…”

“Aye, it’s me. You’re soaked and half frozen. We need to get you warm.”

“Bear…” you gulped as you remembered, your lips slow to move and your tongue sluggish in your mouth. “Bears. Two… bears…”

“Hush, you’re safe now,” he said, tightening his hold on you. “Nothing will trouble us.”

“No, no, you don’t understand,” you said, gaining a little traction in your rising panic. “They were huge, and… and they fought… and the big one… he came this way, he —”

“I said hush,” Celann growled sharply as he set you down on your feet and let you stagger a moment before you managed to keep yourself upright. “We’re safe here. Now, strip.”

“What?”

“You’re a healer,” he said flatly. “You know what happens if you stay in those wet clothes. Strip. Get into your bedroll while they dry off.”

You cast your slowly-focusing eyes around and discovered you were back in the ring of birch trees. Ettia was lying where you’d left her, though she looked paler than she had when you’d headed out for the stream. “You alright?” you asked with a croak in your voice.

“I will be when I know you are,” she said kindly. Her hazel eyes looked wide and worried, and it was enough to bring you that little bit further back to yourself.

Impatient hands turned you forcibly around on the spot and you found Celann looming over you, his big, rough hands moving to your belt and roughly undoing it. “Off,” he barked. “I will not have you die out here, healer. Off.”

“Fine, fine,” you said, but your hands trembled as you fumbled with the buckle, and he lost patience again and swatted your hands away to yank it open himself with the clinical detachment of a surgeon, ironically enough. He tugged your tunic off next, dragging the material roughly over your head and sending your hair into disarray, but you found a blessedly warm cloak closing around your shoulders almost immediately.

It was his cloak, you realised distantly, and it smelled warm and woodsy. You burrowed into it, but he didn't give you any time to enjoy it. “The rest, healer. Do not make me force you.”

In the end, you were bundled up in his long cloak and then into your sheepskin bedroll while he draped your clothes around a makeshift dryer he’d cobbled together near the fire made of freshly-cut hazel rods.

It was only as he turned his back on you, however, that you noticed a bite mark on the back of Celann’s neck, just peeking through his hair which was dark and sticky with dried blood.

“You’re hurt,” you blurted and he turned sharply to look at you. “Something’s bitten you…” Your eyes went wide and all those madcap stories of shapeshifters in the north suddenly seemed a lot more credible out here in the wilderness.

He turned his silver eyes on you but remained silent and tense.

“What’s going on?” you asked, looking from him to Ettia, who looked guilty and uncertain. “Tell me.”

You stared and watched as she started to sit up carefully. The movement drew Celann to her side in three long strides, and he hooked his arm around her shoulders to stop her tearing her stitches open, and helped her to rest her back against the nearest tree trunk.

“You should be dead from those injuries,” you pressed, a touch hysterically, “But somehow you’re not, and Celann, you’ve got a bite mark on your neck exactly where I saw one of those two bears take a bite from the other. What. The Fuck. Is going on?” you demanded. Angry, confused articulation made the words sizzle and spit from your lips like water on hot stone.

“We’re shifters,” Ettia supplied, and Celann growled openly at her, the sound rumbling in his chest like a boulder rolling down a mountainside. “What?!” she snapped at him. “It’s not like we can deny it after everything that’s happened, and Lian might come back. What then? How will we explain it all then? Plus, you nearly went feral trying to protect me from him — again!” She did break off at that though, clutching one hand to her chest in evident pain.

“Calm yourself, Ettia. I’ll do the talking,” Celann grumbled.

“Not exactly your strong suit, friend,” she hissed dryly, but she did fall quiet, eyes unblinking and full of fire. She clearly had no intention of letting him back out now.

Celann sighed again and turned to face you, still crouching at Ettia’s side in a hunter’s stance. “Our clan has lived in these parts for thousands of years, and, like many of the people who live this far north, some of us can change our shape. Some become monstrous wolf-folk while others remain as ordinary wolves. Still more can become eagles, owls, deer, badgers… You name it, and there’s probably someone out here who can take that form. Those of us in our clan who can actually manage the shift take on the form of a bear.”

Stunned, you listened, eyebrows raised, curled in the wrappings of his cloak and the warmth of the fleecy bedroll beside the fire. Still though, your muscles felt like blocks of winter ice and your skin and muscles hurt.

“So… What really happened to you then, Ettia?” you asked eventually. You had a thousand other questions about how it worked and whether it hurt to change and whether they remembered who they were when they did, but that was the first one to fall out of your mouth, and you let the silence stretch after it had landed.

Her eyes turned sad and she shrugged. “I… I fell in love with one of your soldiers,” she rasped. “Not everyone up here is thrilled about your Republic’s presence, and my father is… is our clan elder. He was prepared to tolerate the soldiers at the fort if they brought in trade for things we’ve never had before, and so far, your people have treated us pretty fairly. I was the one who brokered the deal to let you hunt in our forest.” Again, she cut off sharply and Celann took over.

His deep, gravelly voice took on an even harder edge than before as he said, “She got close to one of your scouts. You know him. Hadvar.”

Your face showed your surprise, but you let him keep talking.

“They were planning to run away together, when Lian, her brother, found out. He lost himself to the rage and changed, and attacked her. Better that she die here than leave with one of your kind, or so he said when I made him shift back.”

“Made him? How?”

“The same way you saw me beat him earlier in the meadow. I nearly killed him, and he shifted back. We lose a lot of the nuance that makes us human when we change,” he said. “I let him shift back to explain why he’d nearly killed his own sister, and when I changed back too, he ran off and I saw exactly what he’d done to Ettia. I didn’t have time to follow him to finish the job — she needed healing, and the only place I could think of was the fort.”

He sighed, swallowed some moisture back into his throat, and went on.

“Even though she’s got the shifter’s magic, I knew she wasn’t going to make it there, so I left her here and ran on to find you. I knew it was a risk, that you’d probably find out somehow, but she and I have been friends all my life. I couldn’t let her die. Not like that.”

You nodded. “And Lian?”

“If he shows his face here one more time, I’ll tear him in half,” Celann snarled. “We have to get Ettia to the fort, then she and Hadvar can get out of here together.”

“But what of you?”

“I left the clan a long time ago. I live alone.”

“Oh.”

A wave of tiredness swept over your body, but your mind was buzzing. You were still too cold though, and you shivered.

Celann caught it and his lip twitched. “You’re not warming up, are you?” he said, and you were forced to shake your head.

Ettia turned to him and murmured, “Help me lie down again, and then you can take care of everything else.”

He gave her another draft of the willow bark infusion you’d brewed earlier, then eased her down and she lay back and let a healing sleep claim her almost immediately.

“You know the best way to get you warm,” he said dryly.

Reluctantly, you nodded. Your brief survival course had covered this, accompanied by many a snicker from your fellow students, but you found you didn’t particularly mind as he stripped off his boots and shirt, leaving his braccae on for decency. He had the gentle, solid paunch and chest befitting a man who could transform into a bear, and underneath you could tell he was immensely strong. That combination alone would ordinarily have sent a thrill of heat through you.

He slid carefully into the narrow bedroll behind you, taking the side which opened and leaving you with your chest facing the fold so that he took the draft on his back where it was obviously not going to close with two people inside.

Celann was so warm it was almost painful, and he sucked in a breath as your frigid back hit his chest and he slid his arms around your torso. He smelled musky but not sour, and you let your cheek rest on his right bicep for a pillow while his left arm drew you even closer to him. In the three months you’d been at the fort, you’d had one quick fumble with a soldier after dark, and that was about it. The contact alone was delicious, and for the first time in a few hours, you shivered from something other than the cold.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured in your ear.

“Don’t be,” you replied in a barely-there whisper.

Not long after that, you drifted off to sleep with his rhythmical breathing near your ear to guide you under.

You woke feeling almost too hot, and moaned quietly, easing into the solid, blissful heat behind you.

It was only as you moved that you felt something else; something unmistakable. Celann was completely, undeniably hard, his cock pressing between your cheeks through his braccae, and he had one hand clamped around your hip. His breathing suggested he was deeply asleep, however.

The next hour or so was quite the sweetest torture you’d ever endured, and when he finally awoke with a snoring grunt that might have been adorable under less strained circumstances, he went still and then groaned out a soft curse in his own language and carefully extricated himself from the bedroll without a word. For such a big man, he moved damned-near silently, and you lay for a while, wondering if he was even still in the clearing.

When you shuffled around a minute or so later, you found the camp quiet and still, with Ettia asleep on the far side and no sign of Celann.

He didn’t return for a long time, but when he did there was no sign of embarrassment in his gruff features and nothing to suggest he thought you’d been aware of his morning arousal. He simply nodded at you and asked you how you were before poking at the embers of the fire with a charred stick from the previous night.

“Your clothes are dry,” he replied when you informed him you were cosy and warm again, and he let you get dressed by turning his back on you and speaking quietly with Ettia in their language as she too stirred to wakefulness.

Once you were dressed and decent again, you said as much, and he glanced back over his shoulder at you. The light of the fire caught his eyes and you were reminded of the way a cat’s eyes flashed sometimes in the firelight. It was a reminder of the animal that lurked beneath his skin, and instead of being afraid you found you rather liked it. His nose tilted upwards just a little, and those eyes flashed once more; this time, it was of their own accord because he didn’t move a muscle.

“I’ll carry Ettia and we’ll make our way to the fort,” he said. “No point lingering here.”

“Right.”

That was a dismissal if ever you heard one, so you checked Ettia’s bandages one last time before packing up your things. Celann scuffed out the fire and then turned to pick Ettia up.

The journey back was slower and far more deliberate than the one to reach Ettia had been, and it took you the most part of the day, but as the daylight receded into the creeping cold of twilight and your breath formed trios of ghosts with each exhale, you reached the fort and a shout went up to open the gate when they saw it was you. A runner was sent to fetch the key to the surgery, and in no time, a brazier had been brought in and the little cot in the corner that you kept for patients who needed special supervision had been freshened.

All the while people scurried about to make things ready, Celann waited, silent as a standing stone, with Ettia in his arms and his silver eyes fixing on you more often than not.

At last, and on your instruction, Celann marched Ettia into the surgery and laid her carefully in the bed, but before he could speak to either of you, a commotion at the door announced the arrival of Hadvar, and you were forced to wrangle a terrified scout between the two of you and calm him down.

It was Celann who grabbed him by the collar and snarled at him through clenched teeth, “Control yourself! Think, soldier.”

In the face of this abrupt reprimand, Hadvar stilled though his chest still heaved. “Shit. I’m sorry.”

“A few minutes only,” Celann growled at him as he released him.

“Come,” you said to Celann, jerking your head towards the door that led to your quarters above the ground floor surgery. “Let’s leave them to it now.”

“I should go,” he said. “This… This is not my place.”

You sighed. “You’ve been through a lot too, Celann. Rest… Stay the night and head off in the morning if you must go.”

He looked torn, glancing around at the unfamiliar, plastered walls and the high ceiling with its bare roof timbers and its squared off angles. He looked out of place and uncomfortable. Not unlike a bear that had been taken out of the woods and forced into a Republic cage somewhere, you thought ruefully.

“You can have my bed here,” you said.

“Where will you sleep?”

You shrugged. “There are always spare bunks in the barracks while someone else is on duty.”

He scowled. “No. You could have died yesterday. You need to recover. I will go.”

A rough, sad exhale left your lips but just as he turned away from you to leave, you reached out and took hold of his solid forearm. “Celann. We shared a bedroll last night, almost naked. It doesn’t get much more intimate than that. You can share my bed here.”

His lips parted and he sighed. “I… don’t think that’s a good idea,” he said quietly.

“Why not?”

“Isn’t what happened to Ettia enough to tell you our kind shouldn’t get close? I know she’s told you at least some of their plans,” he went on in a hoarse whisper, taking a step closer to you. “Look how much danger they’re putting themselves in.”

Your stomach dropped at the memory of the deep claw wounds in Ettia’s torso and you pictured the same, or worse, happening to him because of you, and you let go of him abruptly. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to get hurt on my account.”

“That’s not —”

But before he could finish, you turned and strode from the surgery.

Celann wasn’t there the next day when you staggered in from a lumpy bed in the barracks to check on Ettia, and she told you he’d gone back into the wild. She looked sad, but unbelievably her wounds were almost healed, and you spent most of the day taking out all of the stitches that should have been in for a hell of a lot longer, had she been… human.

“Does Hadvar know?” you asked as you cleaned around the nearly-healed wound afterwards. “About… you know…?”

To your surprise, she nodded.

“When are you going to elope?”

“Solstice festivities,” she whispered. “There’ll be so much going on that he won’t be missed. We can get away then.”

“Where will you go?”

She hesitated.

“You don’t have to tell me,” you said hurriedly, squeezing out the blood-tinged cloth. “But I swear on my soul that your secrets are safe with me. And Celann’s too, for what it’s worth.”

“North east,” Ettia rasped around a little, grateful smile. “There’s a tribe of wolf-folk who will take us in. They’ve done it before with others who can’t be with their own people anymore for whatever reason.”

“I’m glad you get to be together,” you said rather pathetically, thinking of the press of Celann’s body against yours and the low, rough, enticing timbre of his voice.

Ettia watched the emotions pass like clouds across your face and sighed. “For what it’s worth,” she said dryly, echoing your own words, “I think he likes you. A lot.”

The only evidence you had of that was his cock pressed against your backside, which wasn’t exactly a marriage proposal, and you twitched your eyebrows. “Not enough to want to stay and let me find out though.” You knew you were being petty, and that the risk to him was a hell of a lot higher than the same for you or even Hadvar. You weren’t bound to the same restrictions as the Republic soldiers.

“Celann is skittish. He knows what happens when we get mixed up with your people — he’s seen it with me first hand. He won’t change what he is for anyone, and —”

“ — I’d never ask him to change who he is,” you interjected hotly, though you managed to keep your voice down to an indignant hiss.

“You might ask him not to shift, to keep the beast caged, which is as pointless as asking the moon not to shine. Though…” she faltered and turned a little sad as she lay back and her strength seemed to fade a little. “… He doesn’t remember much of who he is when he changes. He’s very… wild. It takes us all differently, but he’s a creature of instinct when he changes; more than most. It’s why he lives out in the wild instead of with our clan.”

“He didn’t hurt me,” you murmured, remembering his cold nose pressing against your skin as you sat in the aftermath of his fight, and of the warm billow of his breath against your waterlogged clothes and frozen skin. “He came over to check on me. Licked my hand… I think he might have tried to keep me warm or something if you hadn’t called him back. That was why he left, wasn’t it?”

She nodded and looked a little stunned. “He didn’t attack you? Or even threaten you?”

You shook your head. “No. He came over to me and nuzzled me. I think he was concerned about me, but it was hard to tell. I wasn’t really… paying attention to the nuances though, you know?”

Ettia snorted. “Watching two of our kind go at it like that is an experience, for sure.”

“That’s one way of putting it. How did you get him to come back to you?”

“He knows my voice, and I called his name. If you say his name a lot — if he gets used to the sound of it — he’ll remember who he is.”

You frowned and sank down to sit on the bed beside her, letting her words sink in. “It sounds… frightening for him.”

“It can be,” Ettia nodded. “But it can also be wonderful… To let go like that? You feel the earth beneath your paws, smell everything on the wind in the forest, feel the power running through you…”

“Alright, when you put it like that…” you sighed and then stood up, as though you could shake off the conversation, like crumbs displaced from your lap. “Look, I’ll let you get some rest.”

The solstice celebrations were still a few weeks away, but since Hadvar had to come in to get his stitches removed, he and Ettia got the chance to talk over their plans for eloping in the privacy of your surgery, and once they had finalised the details, Ettia stopped pretending to heal and left the fort, returning to the forest to wait. You didn’t ask if she was going to see Celann.

In the aftermath of your sudden, exciting mission to save Ettia’s life, your days took on a new torpor that had nothing to do with the cold or the grim conditions at the fort.

You treated more coughs and colds than injuries, fortunately, and found you had a lot of time on your hands to read the small library of scrolls and medical texts in the headquarters building. More often than not though, on days where you had little to do and the weather wasn’t dumping all the water in the northern hemisphere down on your sad little fort, you found your feet taking you out of the fort proper and into the small collection of roundhouses that nestled in the snow which had begun to fall in earnest a few days after your return with Ettia.

You knew many of the local people by sight, and some of them you’d even nursed through fevers or broken bones in your months at the outpost, and they smiled readily enough in your direction when they saw you. One older man had even made his way over to you and clasped your hands in his, nodding profusely and smiling, and saying in very thickly accented Republican Common, “Save Ettia! Dear child! Come, come,” and he had dragged you over to a roundhouse where he and another slightly younger man had been splitting hazel rods into spars to use in thatching.

His hands were rough and his face honest, and he pointed at the other man and said something in their language which made the younger laugh. He set down his iron billhook and came over to you, dusting off his equally rough hands. “Ettia is my niece,” he began and you nodded once in understanding. “And she’s dear to the pair of us.”

There was little to no family resemblance to Ettia in his features, and you wondered too if he could shift or not. He didn’t look terribly bear-like. Since you weren’t supposed to know anything about any of it though, you didn’t speak, and waited for him to go on.

“My sister married her father,” he explained. His accent was like Celann’s, and the deep, steady timbre of his voice called to mind the gruff, sturdy body that had been pressed against yours for so brief a time. “I hear she would have died without your help, healer,” he said.

“I do what I can with the skills I have,” you said awkwardly, skirting around the fact that any other person would have died before Celann had even reached the fort. “I’m just glad that Celann got me there in time.”

At the mention of the other shapeshifter, the younger man huffed a bitter laugh. “That man’s a strange one,” he said.

“Oh?”

“Lives in a house he built way out in the woods, outside of Bear Clan territory, and only comes out to trade with us here once in a blue moon. Won’t have anything to do with our clan themselves anymore.”

The older of the two men butted in at that point and said with great emphasis, “For Ettia…”

“Aye, for Ettia. She fell in love with someone outside the Clan, and he took her side. He’d lived alone before that though. Ever since the first shift came on him when he was only —” he broke off and cleared his throat. “Pardon,” he coughed and tried to disguise the slip.

You did what you could to hide any spark of recognition and said, “But you’re on good terms with him here still?”

“Oh, aye,” the younger man laughed. “He brings us a fat deer from the woods and we give him the deer’s weight in dried beans and peas and goods we’ve traded from your fort. Saves us the bother of stalking through the woods, and he gets to benefit from the Republic the same as we do.”

That thought brought a smile to your face. “I like the idea of him eating dates from my home country even all the way up here.”

They laughed again and nodded, and in the end, you traded with them for a pair of comfy, warm boots like the ones Celann had worn, and returned to the fort feeling a little more connected to the place than you had that morning.

The night of the solstice came round eventually, and the soldiers spent the morning gathering wood and piling it up into great bonfires that had been stacked in such a way that they would burn long into the night without tearing through the fuel in a wild blaze. Tables were brought from the refectory and laid out in the trampled snow and slush of the winter meadow between the bonfires, and meat was set to roasting on spits while stews bubbled away from the early hours. Luckily, it was a beautiful, clear day, and although it promised to be a bitterly cold night, you preferred that to the lashing snow and wind from the week before.

As the sun set on the shortest day, and the local clansfolk began a wild, haunting song and chant, accompanied by horns and drums that made the hairs on your arms stand on end, you tilted your face to the stars above and let the vapour of your breath carry your secret wishes for the new year and coming season into the night sky.

Lowering your gaze and closing your eyes briefly, you let the answering shiver pass across you and chalked it up to a stirring in the air that made the bonfires roar and the torches gutter and dance.

When you opened your eyes, you found someone approaching you, and your breath caught. It was Celann.

He walked with the measure of a dancer on long, lean legs, neither hurrying nor dawdling, but moving with the quiet determination of a river all the same, until he came to a halt before you and looked down at you, silver eyes glinting. You couldn’t deny the way your stomach swooped at the sight of him again. He was even more beautiful now in the baleful light of the stars and the midwinter fires.

“Hi,” you said, and though the word was small, the puff of steam into the air between you betrayed the depth of your emotions far more articulately.

The corner of his mouth twitched upwards and he blinked slowly at you. “Hi.”

“I… suppose you’re here to see Ettia and Hadvar off…” you ventured halfheartedly.

But Celann shook his head, the silver in his hair and eyes catching the light. “I’m here to see you.”

“Oh.”

At that, his little half smile grew into something amused and wry and just a little bit bigger.

And then, because you were honestly stunned, you blurted, “But… why? You don’t even like me?”

That smile turned into a hurt kind of grimace, and he exhaled roughly, temporarily obscuring himself from sight by the plume of his breath in the night air. When it wafted away towards the nearest fire, you looked up into his face to find him shaking his head. “I… I was wrong. The way I left things like that… I was wrong.”

“Not going to lie, it didn’t feel great,” you admitted.

“I’m sorry. Ettia… Well… She told me I might have been a bit abrupt with you. I’d… like it if you gave me another chance.”

“Dance with me.”

“What?”

“Dance with me,” you repeated, smirking at him. “And I’ll think about it.”

He swallowed, looking apprehensive, but he did follow you towards the spot where people were lining up to begin to weave in and out of each other under the instruction of one of the locals. It was the younger of the two men you’d spoken to — Ettia’s cousin — and you spotted her at his side too. Her cousin gawped at Celann’s apparently uncharacteristic behaviour, but Ettia saw you two together and nodded what felt like assent.

Celann rolled his eyes as he took his place.

It came as a surprise that he knew the dances. For some reason, you’d thought that a life alone in the woods meant he would be as unfamiliar with the intricate ins-and-outs of their dances as you were, but he never put a step wrong, and although he didn’t smile at all for the first two sets, he did wait for you to catch up when you turned the wrong way or missed a step, and when his rough hand enveloped yours or gripped your fingers for a turn, your heart skipped along with the leaping drum beats filling the meadow.

It wasn’t until there was a set with a lift in it that Celann’s gruff exterior cracked.

His hands closed around your hips and you gasped as he hoisted you easily into the air and set you down at ninety degrees from where you’d started. As your foot wobbled on the rough ground upon landing, you instinctively grabbed for his forearm, and he steadied you. “I’ve got you,” he said, and although the words were lost to the ringing music and shrilling flutes, you caught the movement of his mouth all the same.

When you careened into the end of that last dance, chest heaving and heart thundering wildly, even Celann looked like he was enjoying himself. Euphoria buzzed along your veins like a wild storm, and when you looked up into his face, his eyes were flashing silver. You could see the beast underneath that wanted to get out — the beast that was as much a part of him as his hair or his silver eyes or his long, strong bones.

Lust spiked through the wild joy and your gaze fell to his mouth. He tracked the movement, and a heartbeat later, his hands had seized your jaw and he was crushing a kiss to your lips. His dark stubble rasped against your skin as he kissed you fervently, and his eyes rolled and fluttered shut with a moan that you felt right through your body. You gasped between kisses and clung to his hips just to keep yourself upright, and finally he drew back.

Black eclipsed those silver irises as he regarded you, and for a long moment, he just stood there with your face in his hands. Eventually though, someone jostled into you and the spell was broken. He released you and raised his lip in a warning snarl at your careless fellow dancer.

“Easy,” you laughed, reaching for his forearm and squeezing the solid muscle. “Come, let’s find some food.”

You sat and talked on a bench late into the night while the celebrations grew steadily more and more raucous around you, and when you started to doze, he let you rest your head on his shoulder. When you shivered, he shrugged off his cloak and wrapped it around you, and when you threatened to fall asleep completely, he stepped out from the table and slid his arms around your shoulders and under your knees.

Before you could realise what was happening, Celann was carrying you up the snow-slushed meadow towards the open gates of the fort, with your body cradled against his chest.

You were so comfortable, and so tired, that you didn’t dare move. “You know, the last time this happened, we ended up naked in bed together?” you said, and he smirked but said nothing, only shaking his head.

He passed without comment through the open gates to the fort and entered the surgery, shutting the door firmly behind him. The motion of him stamping the snow off his boots jostled you a little and you groaned, but he shushed you quietly and you let him take you the rest of the way up to your large, low bed above the surgery. All your supplies and tools had been locked away that day, and you never bothered to lock the door when you were around the fort, so you weren’t surprised that he’d been able to get you inside, but you were a little surprised that he remembered where you slept.

He, in turn, was looking at your bed. It wasn’t the narrow and relatively high structure of the standard-issue Republic Army beds, but rather a wide, low construction that had been hewn for you by the local craftsfolk from an ash tree that had fallen earlier in the year. It had cost you a pretty sum, but the space was glorious, and no longer feeling like you were going to topple out of it when you shifted around in the night was an added bonus.

“What?” you mumbled, still held in his arms as easily as if you weighed no more than a gleaner’s bag of mushrooms. “What’sswrong?”

“I’m surprised to see one of our beds in your Republic room, is all,” he said in his thickly-accented voice. The act of speaking about it prompted him to draw back the blankets piled atop it, and he laid you down on it. “Rest.”

“Stay?” you mumbled, looking up at him with doleful eyes. “Please?”

“You’re sure?”

“Why? Am I going to wake up holding the little bear I always dreamed of having as a child?” you grinned.

“Watch who you call little, human,” he growled, eyes flashing, but he was already levering off his boots and easing his cloak out from around your shoulders. “And no. I don’t shift in my sleep, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He shucked off his shirt, but left his braccae on again, and climbed in beside you.

You snuggled sleepily against his shoulder, resting your arm across his soft chest and letting his arm draw you even closer to his side. From somewhere near your hair, you felt rather than heard him inhale deeply through his nose, and then he rasped, “You won’t have to see me like that again. I promise.”

Sleep almost took you, but you managed to mutter, “Don’t say that. I wouldn’t mind at all.”

When you woke, long after the dawn, you found to your surprise that Celann had stayed. Part of you had expected to wake to an empty bed and wonder if it had all been a dream, but there he was, lying on his back with his eyes gently closed.

His iron grey and brown hair spread out across the pillow beneath his head, and his lips were softly parted. From that angle, you could see that he had a little bump in the profile of his nose, and a scar that  flecked a little paler across his temple. His eyes tracked slowly back and forth behind their lids, and his breathing was even and gentle.

It was another hour at least before he stirred and when he did, his hold on you tightened before it relaxed and he turned his head to regard you.

“You stayed,” you breathed.

“You asked me to.”

“I asked you to before, but you didn’t.”

“Well,” he grunted. “This is now.”

You chuckled and said, as you traced a finger across the thick, grey-flecked hair on his chest, “I would have thought you were a morning person. You know, up with the lark and out doing productive things in the woods…”

He growled softly and the sound was anything but human, and he closed his eyes again. There was a sleepy slur to his consonants as he mumbled, “Bears sleep in the winter.”

“Shifters too?”

He sighed and shook his head. “No, but we don’t seem to spend as much time running about as you lot do. Besides, it’s… nice.”

“What is?”

Celann twitched the arm that was still around your shoulders and you half-sprawled across his beautiful, bare chest. “This.”

Your thigh had fallen gently between his own, and you found he was as fully hard that morning as he had been in the woods, and you ground your hips experimentally against his. His silver eyes flashed and then rolled and he jutted his chin slowly upwards with a deep, decadent groan.

“Yes?” you asked. Celann wasn’t the only one worked up, though yours had happened while you were awake and studying every inch of his profile and face.

An inarticulate grunt and a nod was all the answer you got for a moment, but then he opened his eyes again and looked down at you. “Yes,” he gasped, surprisingly breathy and ragged for a man who seemed so composed. How fitting it was for him to appear to be one thing on the surface and be quite another beneath.

You’d not seen him naked when you’d shared a bedroll before, but now as he lifted his hips up with powerful thighs to allow you to take off his braccae and underthings, you swallowed and felt your own arousal deepen still further. He was proportionate all over, and his thighs looked like your every wet dream since you’d known where your preferences lay. You ran your palms up his huge quads and felt the muscle shift beneath the softer layer on top, and you raked your nails over the dark hair there too, drawing another guttural grunt from him.

His cock was thick and hard and dripping onto the trail of dark hair that led down over his paunch to the base of his cock, and you wrapped your hand around him and teased him with both your hand and your tongue until he was physically shaking beneath you and growling openly with each exhale. He sounded like a male bear in the spring, full of lust and desire, and it was all directed at you.

“Fuck, please,” he finally snarled through gritted teeth. “I need you.”

“How?”

“Any…” he said vaguely.

‘Any’ turned out to be him thoroughly prepping you to take him, and then Celann losing his ragged patience altogether and manhandling you over onto your front, arse in the air and resting your bodyweight on your forearms.

“Fuck,” he said appreciatively as he lined himself up with your entrance and nudged the slick tip of his cock against you. You moaned and pushed back invitingly, and he slid all the way home in a single, careful stroke.

You gasped at the sensation of being so completely full for the first time in a very long time, and he waited until you had adjusted. You could feel his huge thighs shaking with the effort of not giving in to his instincts, and his hands on your hips were all raw strength. You might carry tender bruises there later, but you didn’t care.

“You can move now,” you managed to wheeze.

He started off slow, succeeding in a few decadent slides in and out of your tight body, but before too long he was getting faster and faster with each stroke. His growling filled the small room and, combined with the slap of skin each time he bottomed out inside you, it was a heady sensation.

You’d never felt so full or so perfectly in tune with another as he started to pound into you, hunching over your back and hitting you just right on each stroke. You bleated out your own cries from time to time, but mostly you were so consumed by how darned good it felt, you just tried not to come.

Then he reached around you and focused his attention on your pleasure, and you gasped. Your orgasm built and built until you came at the feel of his hand and the fullness inside you, and a few desperate thrusts later, he bit your shoulder and emptied himself inside you with a muffled roar. His hips rocked against yours as he spilled, giving himself completely to his own orgasm as it tore through him, and it was a while before he stopped coming and rolled sideways, pulling you down with him so that you lay slotted against the bulwark of his body.

Sparks of pleasure still skittered across your skin and you felt him press tender kisses to the spot where his teeth had latched onto you. When you hissed, he apologised. “I didn’t break the skin,” he said, his voice even rougher than usual. “I’m sorry though.”

“Don’t be,” you smiled. “That was amazing. All of it.”

He chuckled, low and warm, and you felt his cock twitch where it was still buried inside you.

For a long while you lay together like that, letting your heartbeats return gradually to normal, and a sleepy torpor descended over your muscles, dragging you back down to sleep. When you woke, it was to the gentle strokes of a warm wash cloth across your sensitive body, and the huge form of Celann — still naked — kneeling on the bed beside you.

Neither of you spoke while he finished tenderly taking care of you, but when he was done, he sat and regarded you carefully.

“What now?” you asked, since he didn’t seem to want to break the silence.

“Depends on you,” he shrugged.

With a clearer head, you sat up and drew the covers over you as goosebumps rippled across your body. “Aren’t you cold?” you blurted and he snorted.

“No.”

“Get in here then and warm me up again,” you scowled.

Laughing, he obliged, and tucked you against his side while the pair of you lay back to talk.

You couldn’t quite bring yourself to say the words you were dreading hearing out loud, but eventually you managed it. “I can’t leave the outpost, or the Service, until next Autumn…”

Slowly, Celann nodded. “Why don’t we take it slow? Is there any rule that says you can’t have a relationship with me while you’re here?”

You shook your head. “I don’t think so. It’s different for the soldiers, like Hadvar — oh! I hope they got away alright…” In falling asleep practically into Celann’s lap the previous night, you’d forgotten all about Hadvar and Ettia’s escape.

“They did,” he said quietly. “They slipped away during the dancing.”

“Oh. And no one noticed?”

“No. I’m sure someone will notice his absence tomorrow, but she’ll have got him far away from here by then, and there’s been fresh snowfall this morning to cover their tracks. It’s as if the gods have smiled upon their flight.”

You relaxed and slid your arm tighter around his solid middle, inhaling the scent of his skin.

Over the next hour you talked out your plan, and over the winter and the coming spring, you spent all your free time in the woods with Celann. He showed you where the biggest and best mushrooms grew, where to find the fattest trout in the stream in the summer, but when the longest day came and you lay out late together in the meadow, side by side under the stars, he took your hand in his and turned even more serious than usual.

“What is it?” you asked, turning your head to regard him sidelong.

His profile was barely visible in the dark, but you could make out his strong brow and the delicious bump in his nose that you’d planted more kisses on in those few months than he’d had anywhere on his body in his entire life, and his eyes reflected the starlight with their usual, supernatural beauty.

“I… I need to tell you something,” he began falteringly. “Something… I haven’t told you about our kind.”

Your heart skipped a beat. “Oh?”

“When… When you talked to Ettia, did she mention anything about the nature of her relationship with Hadvar?”

You shook your head, and he puffed out a nervous breath.

“In many ways, we… we differ a lot from the animals whose forms we take,” he said, “Namely that we… we mate for life. And you… I know that you’re… my… you’re my mate. You’re my One.”

For a long moment, you just lay there in the grass with his right hand nervously holding your left in the gentlest of grips.

Then, when you felt him draw in a long, shaky inhale, you rolled onto your left hip and let your body rest against his, one thigh hooked over his and your right palm flat in the centre of his chest.

His gaze turned to meet yours then, and you smiled, though his eyes were uncertain and apprehensive. “I’m not sure I can ever truly know what that means for you, but… I’m sure there’s no one else for me, Celann. You’re mine. You’re my One… as much as a human can commit to someone, anyway.”

Celann’s naturally harsh, gruff face split into a wide, watery smile and his eyes turned shiny and glassy with tears. “I never thought there would be anyone for me,” he said in a voice that quavered and cracked. “I thought… I thought I was too much… too wild… too… strange.”

“You’re mine, Celann,” you said again, and fiercely, putting a subtle stress on his name. “And I’m yours.”

He pulled you down to sprawl across his chest and buried his nose against your neck, hugging you until you wheezed. That hug was far more articulate than he was with his words, and you loved him for it too.

There was something you wanted though: in all the long months you’d been together, he’d never shifted again around you.

Feeling brave and riding the wave of euphoria that had crested only a few moments earlier, you drew in a breath and said, “Celann… will… would you shift for me?”

He blinked and went eerily still beneath you, then he slowly released his hold on you and blinked up at you. “You’re sure you want that?”

“I’m sure.”

He didn’t question you again, and you let him guide you gently back down to lie on the grass.

Without a word, he sat up slowly and unbuttoned his shirt, leaving it beside him while he took off his shorter, summer boots. He stood then, and said, “I… I’m not ready for you to watch it happen,” he said. “Before, when… when you were in danger, I shifted so quickly I nearly ruptured my lungs. I need to be careful. I’ll…”

“Take your time,” you said, glad that he’d accepted this much at least. “I’ll be here when you’re ready.”

Celann walked slowly away from you towards the oak trees, and when the woods were completely silent once more, save for the plaintive music of a far-off owl, you lay back down and watched the slow progress of the stars above.

Finally, what might have been minutes or hours later, the steady four-beat footfalls of a bear drew your attention and you sat up slowly to watch Celann’s dark figure emerge from the trees.

He paced over to you and came to a halt a few paces away, breathing quietly. His entire focus was on you, with his rather adorable ears pricked completely forwards, and his now-golden eyes glowing like candle flames.

“Celann,” you said, and he shifted the great weight of his head a fraction, listening. You held out your hand, palm up, and added, “Come here, Celann.”

The bear approached and sank down onto his belly, and laid his muzzle in your hand, groaning happily.

The rest of the night passed in a blur of quiet starlight and summer breezes, with the body of your soulmate behind you and the thick fur to nuzzle against, and when you woke in the morning, you were lying in the protective arms of a creature who could have torn you limb from limb if he’d had half a mind. Instead, he wrapped you in his embrace and rubbed his cheek against your head, and moaned happily.

“Celann?” you whispered and watched his ear flick in answer. “Celann, shift back? I want you.”

The bear let you roll off him, but he nosed insistently at your crotch and you laughed, swatting the six hundred pound creature away with a light reprimand on his nose. “Shift, Celann.”

With a grunt that sounded a little put-out, he took himself off and it wasn’t half so long this time before Celann walked naked and barefoot from the woods, his braccae in his hand, and his silver eyes flashing in the dawn light.

“I love you, Celann,” you laughed as you stood to kiss him. “I love you.”

His answer was to bowl you backwards into the grass, his hand on your head to cushion the fall, and he kissed you senseless without ever uttering another word. You weren’t sure how much of the bear lingered in his mind, but he felt wild and raw in a way he hadn’t before when you’d fucked like this beneath the stars or in the privacy of his house in the woods.

“Celann,” you gasped between kisses as he worked his way down your body. “Celann, Celann, Celann…”

“Love the way you say my name,” he growled, right before the heat of his mouth drove all other thoughts from your head.

Celann’s name was the last thing you yelled before you came.

_

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