She was just about to say as much to David when she heard a noise, something large moving toward them through the bush. He apparently heard it, too, because both of them stopped abruptly, heads cocked so much like their wolf selves.
In her mind, she pictured the black bear they’d seen on the island, hungry and focused. “Do you think it’s the bear?” she asked loudly, hoping to scare it off. It was important to not startle an unaware bear, but to make noise and hope it would go away.
David started talking loudly too. “It could be a bear! Keep making noise!” He was shouting it out in warning to the others.
Candice yelled back, “I’m coming!”
Owen yelled, “Me too! Kids and dogs are being taken home! Hang on!”
Elizabeth was glad the kids and dogs were going home. Dogs could really rile a bear and they wanted to keep the kids safe. “We’re heading your way!” Elizabeth shouted.
That’s when they saw the bear. A dark and hulking shape peered out at them through a break in the trees. It was very still, curious. David took Elizabeth’s hand, clutching hard. They didn’t run, both of them standing tall as they yelled in its direction.
“Go home! This is wolf territory!” Elizabeth said.
“Well, it’s their territory too—” David started, but Elizabeth cut him off.
“Work with me here,” she said.
He smiled. A moment later, they smelled Candice and Owen, and a moment after that, they ran up behind them.
“Is it the same one that you saw on the island?” Owen asked.
Candice took her phone out and tried to snap some pictures of it. Within seconds, though, the bear gave them one last look, sniffing the air, then turned and ambled off.
“Yeah, it’s the same one,” David said. “I can smell it.”
“We’re going to have to scare it off for good. It’s too close to the cabins,” Owen said.
They waited a little longer, and when they felt reasonably assured the bear wasn’t going to follow them anywhere, they all headed back home.
“How are you going to scare him off?” Elizabeth asked.
“We might have to get the wildlife service to relocate him. We’re not feeding him, but if he’s attracted to our homes, our kids and dogs, we could all be at risk. If he would just stay on the other side of the lake, we would be fine. But once they think they can get free food, even if we’re not offering, he could return,” David said. “Though it’s possible we could chase him off as a pack of wolves and he would stay away.”
“We try not to run as wolves too much during the day, but it might be worth it to get rid of him,” Owen said.
“Why not now?” Elizabeth asked. “Do you think four wolves would be enough of a deterrent?”
“How about eight of us?” Slade hollered out.
Elizabeth turned to see Sheri, Gavin, and Cameron racing past Slade as wolves.
In unspoken agreement, the rest of them stripped and shifted, and as a wolf pack, they headed out after the bear. She could see how well the pack worked. Not to kill the bear, but to corral him like a ranch dog would do in herding cows or sheep.
They chased him for miles, toward the other side of the lake. At times, they let him pause and growl at them. Even charge them. But they were too fast, sometimes running in bursts of forty miles an hour. Finally, once he was about ten miles from their homes, they eased up, watching him continue to lumber away until he was out of sight.
They still waited, making sure he didn’t come back, Elizabeth nuzzling David’s face, Owen and Candice rubbing against each other, the others just panting and watching for the bear. Then they made a detour to the lake, drank some of the water, and loped all the way back to where they’d left their clothes.
Elizabeth hoped the bear wouldn’t ever return, but if they couldn’t keep him away as wolves, they could always reach out to the rangers. But even then she knew bears could still return.
She loved how unified the pack had been. How they all worked together, first taking care of the little ones and the dogs, then coming to David and Elizabeth’s aid should they have still needed it.
She was both tired and amped up, ready to return home to make love to her wolf and take a nap. Their nice little walk with the pack members and the dogs had turned into a wild adventure, and she couldn’t be prouder of the pack or of belonging to it.
When they finally reached their clothes, they hurried to dress and headed back to the houses. Elizabeth and David led the pack, hand in hand.
“That was one big bear,” Slade said.
“Yeah, if I’d still been hunting,” Owen said, “it would have made a great prize. But I’m glad we let them live in peace with us now. Or relative peace, as long as they’re not hassling us on our side of the lake.”
David wholeheartedly agreed. “If it hadn’t been for me having a heart attack and being turned into a wolf, Owen and I would still be searching for bears to hunt in season. Not that we ever had much luck.”
Owen laughed. “Yeah, we were the worst bear hunters in the world. Now we’re no longer hunting them, and instead we have to deal with them as wolves—karma, I swear.”
“You know, you were talking about the one that treed you. The grizzly?” Elizabeth said. “Well, I was looking up about tree-climbing black bears, and they can climb a hundred feet in thirty seconds. So I’m glad we didn’t try to climb a tree to avoid this bear. They look like huge teddy bears and you would never think they were that agile.”
“And you never run away from them as a human because they can run over two miles at twenty-five miles per hour,” David said. “If they’d been chasing us? Bad news for us.”
Candice laughed. “I’m definitely going to write a bear encounter into my new book.” She gave David and Owen a laughing glance. “And don’t be surprised if you recognize a few details.”
***
A caravan of cars headed to the drive-in theater after dinner. They arrived early enough for the pack members’ vehicles to take up several parking spaces in a row. If they hadn’t been a bunch of newly mated or nearly mated wolves, they would have doubled up in some of the vehicles. But this was like date night for all of them.
The stars were out, the moon waning, and it was just beautiful, especially because Elizabeth was cuddled next to David on the bench seat in back.
“This is amazing,” Elizabeth said.
“Yeah,” David said, casually rubbing her shoulder. They weren’t teens groping in a vehicle, but he did love being able to snuggle with Elizabeth at the drive-in, something he had done as a teen with a girl in Seattle. But as a wolf, and with a woman he truly cared about, this was so much better.