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inner wolf

Ayla

Life moves on at a glacial pace. Fall settles in on the Front Range and the crisp nights require a fire outside. The brisk mornings and the crystalline skies are my favorites. They practically beg me to come out and play.

Aside from my time with Joanie, I find myself retreating more and more. Fewer texts with Halley. Less frequent calls with Mom. The visits from Dad have been replaced with messages that I leave unanswered. If it weren’t for Cian and Eleanor, I’d be even less social than I am.

But I need her, and she’s good for me, so while he’s at work, I “borrow” her and take her with me to shoot.

She’s some measure of protection, I’m sure of it.

She certainly won’t let a stranger surprise me.

She’s a great work partner. And since I haven’t been to the shop, and I don’t really know what’s happening with much of anything, our time together has become special.

“Come on, girl.” I slap my leg as I head deeper into the brush. This isn’t one of my known spots or a scenic overlook. There is no planned vista. This is me in nature, finding the scene. I expect little and will be satisfied finding anything worth shooting.

Eleanor moves around me, nose down, as if she’s a hunting dog. Twenty minutes in, she stops dead in her tracks, her body alerting in some innate way dogs have. Her hair stands on end, her body hunches, and her lips peel back from her typical smiling face.

“What is—?” I don’t get the whole sentence out because I see it. The reason the sweet, silly girl has let her inner wolf come to the fore is a black bear cub. It’s the wrong time of year for a cub this size. Either he’s alone or…

I freeze on the spot. A mature black bear, probably its mom, lumbers behind. She’s massive. She’s prepped for winter hibernation by the look of her, but like most moms, appears to have had fitful sleep due to the baby playing ahead of her.

I slide the camera around my arm as quietly and with as little motion as I can muster and click off a few frames before I miss the moment.

It’s not the right aperture, but sometimes the wrong settings and getting the shot is better than no shot at all.

I pull back the camera and fiddle with the f-stop to get what I want and return to the viewfinder to seek my target.

A sniper analogy comes back to my mind. That’s because I need the other shooter’s tool. Mine is woefully underpowered. When I find the subjects again, the little guy is bounding straight at us.

No. No. No. No. No.

Eleanor!

I reach for her collar to pull her behind me.

As if that’s going to do anything with a black bear barreling straight for us.

But, if I survive, I need to tell Cian that I didn’t sacrifice his baby without at least a fight.

Not that I’ll die trying to save her. Black bears aren’t that way.

She’ll die, and I’ll die, and they’ll find our bodies in the late spring after the snow thaws.

Cian will be heartbroken, and Christian will be pissed. Both will blame the other.

The problem is Eleanor, affable and bouncy, has also been trained by my brother to near military precision.

She slips from my hold and plants herself in front of me, and as if waiting for the wolf in her to rise to the surface, she hunkers down, exposes her canines and growls in a way that would chill my blood if I wasn’t already half frozen from fear and half burning with adrenaline.

I lift the lens and shoot. The clicking won’t draw them further, and if these are Eleanor’s last moments, I want Cian to have evidence of the warrior princess she apparently is.

The cub stops his trajectory, a bit gangly and uncoordinated, and lets loose a similar growl. Eleanor charges, and I scream. I know better, but I can’t not. My sweet Eleanor.

The cub startles at my scream and plops to his butt, not charging or fighting, just watching.

“Ellie.” My voice is a choked whisper. “Heel.”

I’ve not once given her a command. Never. But if we can get out of this alive, I vow to never do it again. And to never come out here with just bear spray and a bottle of water.

Amazingly, she does what I demand and comes to my flank to sit.

Her gaze pivots between me, apparently waiting for me to release her, and the bear that she knows could kill me with a swipe.

He’s a cub and so cute, but lethal nonetheless.

I don’t want to take him on, and I don’t want Eleanor to either.

But it’s his mom that worries me.

She’s huge. She’s postpartum and she should be napping. I know next to nothing about bears other than I won’t win a fight with one and that it’ll suck as I die. But I know that tired, cranky, and chasing a little one when you want to be asleep makes any and every mama irritable.

I lift the camera and take a shot of the cub, fully focused, with the shadow of his mom behind before reversing fields to get her in her majesty.

Eleanor bounces on her butt, honoring the command, but not happy about it. I reach a hand down and stroke her fur, attempting in vain to settle it from where it stands on end.

The closer the mom gets, the antsier Eleanor gets.

If I knew her commands and I knew I could order her to the car and she’d obey, I’d release her heel and send her away.

But she’s Cian’s and she’s smart and loyal, just like him.

She’ll fight on the side of right, even if it’s the last thing she does… Just like Cian.

So I keep her heel and wait as the mama bear lumbers forward, wary of me and of Eleanor with her baby so close. He doesn’t seem to be worried a bit if rolling on his back with his feet in the air is anything to go by.

Must be nice to be that secure. Play, eat, and wander all the while protected by the looming presence that ensures your safety.

I take one last shot as she approaches. It’s too perfect. Barren trees and a forest floor covered in brown decaying leaves. White trunks and brown trunks and a beam of sunlight slashed across her face. The blackness of her face, fierce and curious.

She’s like my moose. There’s a message. Now, I just need to live long enough to decipher it.

I wrap my fingers around Eleanor’s collar as I release the camera under my arm. I dip my head enough that my eye contact doesn’t seem aggressive, though I don’t know bear etiquette. This could be submission, or this could be acceptance of a death sentence.

Several long moments have passed when she opens her mouth and bellows the most excruciating sound, steam flowing from her mouth in the brisk morning. I hold Eleanor firm as she lifts from her heel to scoot behind me.

The cub looks up at his mom and squawks a bark of sorts and bounds away. I can’t decide if she gave us the lecture or if it was for him. With a long last look, she turns and scurries after her kid.

Get some rest I think as I watch her go.

It’s that moment when Eleanor releases everything in her bowels onto the cold earth below.

“Me too, girl. Me too. Come on. Let’s go home.” We start to walk toward the car. “We’re not telling your dad about this, right? Mums the word.”

It’s the sound of a boot crunching ice that spikes my adrenaline again. The question is from where… and from whom. Eleanor alerts again and moves to stand in front of me. Until, like a traitorous bitch, she turns on her tail and bounds away.

“Now you go,” I grumble. “Couldn’t have let me save your life earlier. Noooo. Too stubborn, but now you move out.”

Shit. I’m talking to myself and there’s a very real threat out there. It’s a real-life bear or man debate. After my encounter, I’ll choose the man.

At least until I realize who it is.

Fitz.

“What are you doing here?”

“My job.”

“Your job is to walk in the woods and scare me? Odd.” It’s not odd. It’s worse. “No, that’s fucked up is what it is.”

“Protect you, Mrs. Barone. My job is to protect you. And that—” He nods toward where Eleanor and I were just up close and way too personal with a bear and her cub. “That’s why I’m out here.”

“To watch a bear encounter and do nothing to prevent it. And later to scare me worse than the mama with her cub?”

His stoic face shows no emotion.

“You’re fired.”

“All due respect, Mrs. Barone, I can’t accept that termination.”

“So you take orders from my husband and only he can fire you?”

He dips a chin a single time and crosses his arms over his chest, his impressive forearms bunching and rippling.

“How long have you been following me?”

“I’ve been with you every time Mr. Barone hasn’t been.”

Fuck my life. “Nothing says creepy stalker vibe like you not even telling me.”

He shrugs.

“How have I not known?” I wave a hand dismissively.

“You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know.

I trusted you. Past tense. Run back to your boss and tell him everything.

But don’t bother ever feigning respect for me again.

I’m no one’s ward. I’m not a child and don’t need you silently creeping me when I leave the house. ”

He looks over my head as I slide past him. “That wasn’t nothing out there. You could’ve been killed.”

“And you would’ve watched silently from your safe little perch.”

He taps his hip before lifting his coat to show a very large pistol. Like Clint Eastwood make-my-day kind of large .

“Glad you didn’t need it.” I mutter and click my tongue for Eleanor.

“Me too.” His muttered reply is joined by his boots clunking along behind me.

“Have you always been this loud?” I throw over my shoulder. If he had been, I’d have known immediately.

“Obviously not.”

“Then why now?”

“Why indeed.” His cryptic reply has me turning on the spot.

“What’s your background, Fitz?”

“Army Rangers, ma’am.”

I don’t know shit about special forces or anything. But I hedge my bets. “So you know how to be stealth but chose not to be.” It’s a statement not a question. I hold his gaze until some kind of understanding passes between us. He wanted to be discovered. Hmmm.

I nod, giving nothing more away. “You have my camera equipment from the day this happened.” I point at my head as if the weight on my shoulders is an event in our lives.

“I do.”

“Good.” I turn on my heel, click my tongue for Eleanor again, and smile as she bounds up to me.

Without another word, I walk to my car, open my passenger door, and allow the frosty pup and her muddy paws onto the white leather of my car. “Who’s a good girl?”

I don’t look back as I drive the winding roads toward Cian’s house. A black SUV, and a nice one at that, follows at a consistent distance the whole way. When I park, I look at the dog who would’ve laid down her life for me today. “Not a word to your dad. He’d have my head.”