Chapter Two

Bert

My brother crossed a line this time.

“You can’t possibly think this is okay.”

The coward was already at the airport when he let me know what he’d done. Or maybe not a coward because Rudy had no fear. Of anything. Not even me, which, under current circumstances, he probably should be. We hadn’t had a physical fight since we were cubs, but this?

The ultimate betrayal.

“Look, they’re calling my flight. Can we talk about this when I get back?”

“Rudy! Cancel this whole thing while it’s not too late.”

“Oh, bro, it is too late. We’re part of a complicated swap system where one person goes one place and another goes to another then a third goes to the first.”

“Freezing? You use three quarters of the wood we cut to keep that place blazing from the first autumn breeze. And you’re a bear! If you get cold, just shift and cuddle with yourself.” This conversation was going nowhere, but I had a vague idea that if I kept him talking, he’d miss his flight and have to come home.

“I have the right to take a vacation just like everyone else,” he whined. “You just don’t want me to have any fun.”

“Actually, right now? I hope it rains every minute while you’re at the beach. No…that the place you’re staying is right in the middle of an off-season hurricane. Only you because I don’t see why any of the other people should have a bad time.”

“Final call.”

“Rudy! You can’t do this. You don’t have any right.”

Click. Dammit! There wasn’t really a click, just that silence that indicated the person on the other end of the line had disconnected. Leaving me hanging in more ways than one.

He broke the one rule we had for sharing our land: no humans allowed. But he wanted to go away for the holidays and did a house swap through some app where he got to head out to sunny climes and left me here to try to figure out how to protect our home and land from strangers who might be a threat to us.

He cared not even a little bit about that. When would I learn not to expect better from him?

Rudy was always the less responsible of us and if he had full control of the property, he’d probably have traded it for a jar of honey years ago. Fortunately, our fathers knew this and ensured he couldn’t make any big decisions without me also signing on.

But that made for some difficult moments when he went off half-cocked like this and did something to make both our lives difficult. The two cabins and acreage surrounding them were our sanctuary. People in the local town knew us, of course. We did our shopping there and all the normal things, but we had all those trees to shift and run in. Privacy in general, which meant so much. And to my knowledge, not one person outside of our sleuth—located several miles away on the other side of the mountain—were aware of our “special” ability.

We’d grown up hearing horror stories about shifters who got outed and suffered terribly as a result. Our fathers were so concerned after one of our uncles was gunned down in bear form by a hiker who felt threatened that they bought this property for us. They felt the sleuth lands were too exposed. We visited there, but in the end, I at least preferred the quiet peace of our home. And the weather? I enjoyed all four seasons and had never felt the urge to escape winter. I didn’t even know my brother did.

Nice way to find out.

Bastard could have afforded a hotel and not stuck me with a situation though.

What was the point in having a home where we could be safe and live according to our traditions if just anyone could set up housekeeping here? And then I thought, maybe I’d jumped to conclusions. He hadn’t said the visitors were human—I had just assumed, and he had not corrected me. What was the name of that service he said he used? Did he say? I tried a whole bunch of different ones, mostly using the term shifter in hopes…but none of those worked. I’d thought maybe if I could find it, I could ease my worries. After all, there were a ton of shifters of different ilks around and many might enjoy a house swap, but the only ones I could find seemed oriented to humans, and none sounded familiar, as they would if he had mentioned them. Maybe he hadn’t at all.

Frustrated, I stomped out to the workshop and revved up the chainsaw to sculpt something. It would help me get out my feelings. We did custom work, my brother and I, but also some more generic things, all sold via an out-of-state agent, a hyena shifter who made bank on shifter artists.

In this case, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to create, so I just let the wood tell me. These were my favorite types of projects and after a few strokes, peace descended over my soul, peace that lasted until my arms finally tired. My bear strength translated a bit into human form, but the saw was hefty and eventually I’d have to take a break. In this case, I went longer than I should have and I’d pay the price in soreness later on.

The peace I’d achieved faded with the fading brrrr of the saw’s sound. Replaced by all the worries and anger I’d had before I started. And others.

Bear hunting season was open and although we had the property posted, not all hunters respected those signs or any of the rules. We’d spotted them and other hunters on our land more than once and had to direct them away. So far, that had worked…but we’d been in human form each time. If we were bears, and not right next to our clothing, we’d either shock them, or they’d do worse to us.

And if a hunter did attack us, forcing us to defend ourselves, the authorities would be looking for where his phone last pinged. Rudy pointed out that in a situation of that kind, we’d just take the cell phone far away, maybe tape it to the underside of a semi at the local truck stop. Sounded logical…except it wasn’t. They’d trace his path and soon find us and either convict us of murder or, in my mind, worse, lock us up in some lab to figure out how the heck our bodies worked.

As shifters, we were dual natured and able to change back and forth from our two-legged human form to animal. In our case, we were bears. It seemed perfectly logical to us and not something that required study, but humans always wanted to dissect everything.

Dissect…us. Our dads warned us they would do that, given half a chance.

I wanted to go back to work, but my arms would likely not be able to hold up long, and I’d probably ruin the sculpture. Also, a chainsaw was no toy, and tired arms might result in a cut leg. Without my brother here in case I called for help, I could bleed to death before I was able to shift and heal.

Wouldn’t that teach him a lesson.