Wild Rising: A Yellowstone Shifters Novel Read online

  A sunny, yellow hotel sprawled next to some smaller log buildings that looked like shops and a ranger station on the lakefront. Lots of people milled around the complex so I decided to leave the trail and head south a little bit to where, hopefully, no one else would disturb my roam.

  I slipped out of sight through the trees alongside the lawn. The forest around me grew a healthy mixture of fir, pinegrass, and sedge and I tread silently, listening to birds sing and chirp as small rodents rustled in the leaves. The peace of being alone in nature consumed me suddenly and I had to stop and rub my aching chest.

  I knelt to run my knuckles along a soft band of springy moss, before I retied my hiking boot.

  Inside her cage, my puma stretched, flexing her claws. She wanted to see too. I snapped my fingers and called her out. Through my suddenly acute eyesight, the forest took on more vivid hues of green, brown, and gold. Somewhere nearby a nest of baby jackrabbits hid, my nose told me. I ignored the saliva pooling in my mouth. There would be time enough to hunt during the full moon, I reminded her. She flicked her ears at me.

  LATER that afternoon, I supervised the movers unloading the last of my old furniture and dishes. Then I reluctantly climbed back into my Subaru. I needed groceries and knew the stores by the lake would be priced for the tourists. I had a comfortable salary, but no way was I going to pay eight dollars for a gallon of milk.

  Deciding to drive to Gardiner, just outside the northern entrance to the park, I headed up the road. The tourists clustered everywhere in their rental cars, minivans, and motorhomes. The drive passed by slowly as traffic trickled to a stop every time someone spotted an animal from their car. And there were definitely a lot of animals to see.

  Through Hayden Valley I watched the bison stroll in brown and black herds, their bodies massively humped and their grunts blending together in a rumbling song. The adults moved steadily across the prairie, munching the bright green new growth, while the calves pranced and chased each other.

  Elk grazed alongside the bison, the bulls’ tall antlers poking out of the high grasses like ship masts covered in thick, velvety fur.

  The valley stretched extremely wide, with rolling hills, crystal-clear creeks, and shallow, shining lakes. In the late spring air, the landscape gleamed verdantly lush. Rolling my windows down, I inhaled the strong scents of wild animal musk and fresh grass.

  Past the valley, the road climbed. The lodgepole pines stood straight and narrow and I looked through the underbrush for black bear and porcupines. The signs for hikes and waterfalls and mountain peaks tempted me; I couldn’t wait to explore everywhere.

  On my return trip to my apartment after doing my shopping, cherry lollipop in my mouth, the sunset bathed the valley in pink and purple. The wispy cotton candy colors reflected in the glistening lakes as the buffalo grazed by.

  BRIGHT and early Monday morning, I reported to the Lake ranger office bouncing with excitement to start working. I’d spent the weekend hiking around the park and I already had favorite spots.

  I’d avoided exploring Lamar Valley though. I knew the wolf pack roaming there had nothing to do with wolf shifters, but the scents in the air when I passed by drove the puma mad in my chest—I had a thing about wolves. They were too much like wild dogs, and wild dogs triggered my first Beast metamorphosis.

  Even now, if I thought about those scents, my fingernails lengthened to claws in my pockets. I couldn’t let that be a problem in my new job; I needed to get a handle on it. Maybe if I slowly exposed myself to the area over the next few weeks, it wouldn’t hit so hard, sending warning signals to all of my primal instincts that my natural enemy lurked nearby.

  Melanie, my new boss, eyed me from across her desk as I shifted nervously in my chair. She was older, crinkling lines surrounding her eyes, and her countenance was stern. Her ranger uniform looked pressed and clean.

  “Sienna, your employment record is impressive,” she finally said, “And I think you’ll be a good fit in the backcountry with your trail maintenance experience.”

  Exhaling quietly in relief, I relaxed my tense shoulders and smiled confidently at her.

  “You’re not afraid of wild animals, are you?” she asked.

  I sucked in a breath, repressing the urge to burst into laughter. Am I afraid of wild animals?

  I’d been blindsided when I started losing full moon nights to my puma at age twelve. One day in the canyon by my foster home, that summer when I first started to shift, I’d been messing around and avoiding my schoolwork when I heard a menacing growl. I looked up to see a trio of feral dogs approaching me, their hackles high and their lips curled away from sharp teeth.

  I stood quickly, backing away, as sweat suddenly drenched my body. My knees went weak and my heart raced. The lead dog sniffed the air in my direction and then let out a series of angry, aggressive barks, spit spraying from its mouth.

  Trembling, I tried to brace myself. I knew the dogs would kill me and that it would hurt a lot. I wished I could change into my puma and fight them, but I didn’t know how. I was just a kid.

  Abruptly, from deep inside of me, a scream burst forth. Red hazed across my vision as a wave of agony swept through my body. I felt my bones crunch and stretch. When I blinked again, the pain was gone and I felt wonderfully strong and aggressive. My mouth felt strange, like I had extra teeth, and when I peered at my arms, I saw corded, veiny muscles under my skin; my hands were now meaty, sharp claws.

  I wasn’t a puma and I wasn’t a human either. I was a strange, bloodthirsty hybrid of the two, a monster, powered by overwhelming rage.

  My brain checked out. I watched from a distance as the Beast took over my body. When the dogs attacked, the Beast beat them off. She was a wild, savage thing. Her claws disemboweled and her teeth unerringly found throats and spines.

  When it was all over, the dogs lay dead at our feet and the vicious creature inside of me screamed again. She was in control and she wanted more gore.

  I tried to wrest my body back, but I wasn’t strong enough.

  We ran through the canyon, looking for more blood to spill. We moved upright, like a human, but with long, gliding strides. The crevices in the canyon walls were now laughably easy to navigate as we sprang from rock ledge to rock ledge with our clawed hands.

  Looking down, I saw my hybrid body bulging with sinewy muscle. I was monstrous.

  Part of me exhilarated in the power and another part of me felt sickened by the raw violence and the Beast’s taste for it. She wanted more viciousness, more fighting, and more danger.

  We bounded through the canyon for hours before the wildness began to tire and I forced the change back to my human shape.

  Through a haze of pain, I watched my muscles shrink and then disappear into my lanky 12-year-old body once more. Exhausted, I staggered home through the canyon, the sky dusky purple above me.

  That incident was a wakeup call for me. I couldn’t let the hybrid monster out. While I couldn’t seem to resist the full moon shifts to a real puma, I would make sure I never lost control to the Beast like that again. I created her out of my wild fear and my chaotic thoughts, so I had to be sure never to feel that way again.

  I caged my puma and shut down my emotions, avoiding any situation that made me excited or scared. We came to a truce, my wild natures and I. We were three separate creatures, and although it hurt my heart, I knew it was for the best.

  So no, I wasn’t afraid of wild animals. My Beast is the wildest of them all.

  I cleared my throat and shook my head quickly at Melanie. “No, I’ve been hiking and camping all of my life. I’ve never had an encounter that scared me. I prefer to carry bear spray instead of a firearm, but I’ll follow whatever regulations you have in place here.”

  “Our bear and wolf management programs are very hands off,” Melanie said. “If there’s a bear-kill near a trail, we don’t try to move the bear. We close the trail and wait for the bear to move along.”

  She pointed to the map on the wall behind her.
“There are some areas of the park that we close to visitors periodically, to allow mothers and cubs to grow unmolested.

  “And—” she pinned me with a fierce stare, “we’re vigilant about hiking and camping safety. Food must be properly stored, trash must be packed out, and hikers must stay on designated trails.”

  I swallowed, nodding at her.

  “I’m going to assign you a partner for your first few weeks, just to make sure you’re on top of our wildlife safety measures. Jordan has been a backcountry ranger here for three years and she’ll be an excellent guide.”

  Melanie rose regally from behind her desk and I followed her from the paneled office. We walked down the hall to a small kitchen, where a woman sat at a well-used table, sipping coffee and playing with her phone.

  She glanced up as we walked in and I met her measured gaze briefly before she turned to Melanie. She had dark, gray eyes and a heart-shaped face with a pointed chin. She wore the typical ranger uniform, but lounged low in her chair in an indifferent manner. Her boots looked scuffed and well-worn.

  Melanie introduced us, stated the job assignment, then stepped away. I watched Jordan take a long sip of coffee as our boss disappeared from sight, and then dropped beside her at the table.

  “Thanks for taking me on.” I smiled.

  She looked at my chin and then down at the table. Scraping her ponytail away from the back of her neck, she bent and bared her nape, pale between straggles of blond hair.

  I cocked my head, staring at her. A musky aroma filled the air and my claws pricked. I shoved my chair back quickly and stood, my hands creeping to my pockets as I took a slight step away.

  Clearing my throat, I tried again. “I’m ready to head out when you are. Are we overnighting or just daytime hiking right now?”

  Jordan lifted her head and peered at me, her wide eyes tracing my face in confusion. She glanced at the empty hallway beyond and whispered, “Melanie’s back in her office, out of sight. I’m submitting to you, no problem.”

  She bent her head again.

  My heart started beating faster and my armpits grew sweaty. Glancing around the kitchen, I saw nothing to help me. Grimacing, I decided to come clean.

  I dropped to the chair next to Jordan again and cleared my throat. “Please sit up,” I whispered back.

  Jordan lifted her head, this time looking at me with suspicion. “I’m not going to fight you,” she said determinedly. “Just do it already.”

  Shaking my head, I shrugged and opened my hands on the table, palm up. “I’m sorry. I’m not sure what ritual you’re expecting me to perform, but I don’t know it.”

  Jordan’s expression changed from mistrust to confusion.

  She inhaled a deep breath in the quiet kitchen. Her eyelashes quivered and her throat moved nervously. The small space suddenly smelled like fear. I quelled my puma’s curiosity, scraping my chair backward once more.

  Jordan murmured, “What are you?”

  Chapter 3

  What was I? Great question. I wasn’t a human and I wasn’t a shifter, according to the only other shifter I’d ever met. I was something without a name.

  After learning to adapt to my triple natures in middle school, I settled into a peaceful, mostly normal routine. I turned into a puma at the full moon, yes, but as long as I stayed calm, I was a regular teenager in California, and the Beast stayed locked away.

  When I went to college though, everything about my life got infinitely harder.

  Losing the support network of my teachers and my foster mom was tough, and so was jumping feet first into a culture of young adults testing boundaries. Unlike high school, which only tested my Beast’s tolerance for aggression for a few hours a day, college immersed me in too many moments that called to my savage nature.

  My dorm stank of sex and weak beer. My classmates walked around me, exuding raging hormones and nervous energy, and that energy followed me back to the dorm, where it permeated the air as I tried to study and sleep.

  The constant presence of so many others agitated me to the extent that my puma senses surged out of control, never shutting off the intense odors and loud, echoing noises at all hours of the day. The feedback loop drove me nearly insane. The Beast lunged at her chains, sensing my slipping controls.

  I listened without cease to the sounds of people eating, typing at keyboards, watching TV, talking, having sex, flipping pages of books, texting…

  It was too much.

  After just a few weeks I knew I had to quit. My dreams echoed with blood and screams—my wild nature was too close to the surface. I couldn’t handle my daytime moments either, when people demanded my attention, my collaboration, and my responses in class, all while I battled my puma and my Beast.

  If I didn’t get a handle on myself, I would become the wild, savage creature of my nightmares again.

  I walked from class to class, class to dorm, my eyes hollow and bloodshot.

  Then I met Logan.

  As I sat in my biology lecture class, typing notes on my laptop, a new scent roused me. Unlike the overripe, over-perfumed, overwhelming odors of the people sitting near me, this scent enticed. It tickled my nose with hints of dark forests, pine trees, and soft fur. My puma sat up in her cage, intrigued.

  Peering around me, I unobtrusively tried to discover the origin of the delicious aroma, but it eluded me.

  After class ended and I packed up my stuff, I inhaled it again. Looking quickly over my shoulder, I saw a tall man moving through the crowd to the door. I recognized the source and quickly scooped up my bag, following. My heart pounded as I stuffed my hands in my pockets, trying to walk casually but quickly.

  Outside, I trailed behind the stranger, wondering why I found his scent so attractive. He looked like a regular guy, with short, wavy brown hair, wearing jeans and carrying a backpack. I followed him all the way to the library and when he went inside, I sat on a shaded bench nearby, trying to decide what to do.

  My puma paced her cage. She wanted to follow.

  I gasped as I realized someone stood behind me and jumped to my feet. I spun around and saw the strange man staring at me, his dark brown eyes focused.

  “Why are you following me?” he asked suspiciously. “I have Alek’s permission to be in school here. I don’t need a guard.”

  Gazing at him in confusion, I inhaled again. He was definitely the source of the appealing scent, but I had no idea what he was talking about. His expression turned hostile as he waited for me to answer him.

  “Sorry, what?” I asked. “Who’s Alek?” Enticing smell or not, his aggressive question had roused my savagery. My tongue traced my sharpening teeth in my mouth; I was already so close to the edge. I knew I needed to leave his vicinity or my Beast would respond.

  Watching his nostrils flare though, I realized he scented the air as well. His brown eyes warmed slightly and he leaned forward. In the breeze, I caught the barest trace of a low purr. I couldn’t help myself, I took a step closer and sucked in a breath. His scent intoxicated me.

  I knew that my puma paced close to the surface now and that my eyes glowed tawny-brown.

  “What are you?” I whispered.

  “How can you not know?” His own brown eyes turned a whiskey color, lustrous in the late afternoon sunshine.

  He was right. I did know. He was like me. A puma. It was in his scent, his eyes, and his voice. He called to my caged wildness.

  Carefully holding out his hand to me, he said, “Let’s go somewhere quiet and talk.”

  And that was it. I went with him without any hesitation, so desperate to learn about who he was, to find out if he had any answers about who I was.

  As we sat in a grassy space by the library, he quietly told me that his name was Logan Black. He was a puma shifter from a northern California big cat pack and he studied at UC San Diego with the permission of the local pack’s alpha.

  I listened, speechless, as he rattled off information about his family, his status in the pack, and his negotiati
ons with the local alpha. While I heard the words he said, the context meant nothing to me. Was he really talking about a whole shifter society? A society I knew nothing about?

  Logan asked me where I came from and when I told him my story, that I was adopted as a baby and then lost my adoptive parents when I was eleven, right before I shifted for the first time. He appeared astounded.

  “Do you mind?” he asked, lifting my hand from my lap. When I shook my head, he turned over my wrist and sniffed it deeply. His fingertips felt warm on my skin and my veins throbbed, his lips just inches away.

  Frowning, he looked carefully at me. “You smell like a puma, but only occasionally. You only shift at the full moon?”

  At my nod he frowned again, scratching his chin. I started to worry, like there was something wrong with me.

  “Can you—” I licked my lips, “shift at other times?”

  Logan nodded. “Yeah, whenever I want. Though rules apply, of course, about doing it in front of humans. I don’t even have to shift at the full moon, if I don’t want to.”

  I listened open-mouthed. He could control his shifts, and the moon’s phase didn’t matter? What was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I do that? And why didn’t I smell like a real shifter?

  He continued, “What does it feel like when you shift at the full moon? You can’t duplicate that feeling?”

  I shrugged helplessly. I’d never even caught a glimpse of my puma on those nights—my human side was completely unconscious.

  Logan inhaled at my wrist again. “Your puma scent is stronger when you’re stressed. But I’ve never heard of a shifter like you before. When I’m a puma, I’m still me, just in a different shape. It sounds almost like you and your puma are separate beings.”

  I shrugged again, feeling defensive. I was proud of the life I’d led and the adaptations I’d made to survive my triplicate nature. But Logan made me feel defective.