Free Taken by the Werebear Pack (Steamy Innocent BBW Werebear Menage Romance) by Nikki Wild

TAKEN BY THE WEREBEAR PACK
     
     
    "Bears? Hunting in packs? Are you sure?"
     
    The ranger on the other end of the line gave a sharp exhale. "Never seen anything like it, Annie. I'll tell you, the townsfolk are getting real nervous up here. Could you come check it out?"
     
    "Of course, Harry," I smiled into the phone. The grizzled old ranger had never been one to make things up, but bears hunting in packs was just too far fetched to be true. The old man was nearing retirement, I would just indulge him this once. "I can be up on the next supply plane."
     
    "Thanks Annie, you be careful out there. I ain't lying when I say, I ain't never seen anything like it."
     
    "Mmmhmm, thanks for the information, Harry. See you soon." I set the phone down and chuckled. "A pack of bears, honestly." Bears were solitary creatures; most you'd ever see together would be a mother bear with her cubs. Perhaps that's what Harry had seen, though it was definitely out of breeding season. Perhaps it had been another animal, wolves that he had mistook for bears? An experienced ranger like Harry wasn't likely to make that kind of amateur mistake, but then again, he was getting older.
     
    However, if he was right....I tapped my pen thoughtfully against the pad of paper where I had taken notes. Bears exhibiting pack behavior would be an evolutionary jump, one I couldn't risk missing out on seeing personally. 
     
    I picked up the phone to schedule myself as a passenger on the next supply plane up north.
     
     
     
    *****
     
     
     
    The vast, empty spaces of the frontier never failed to get my heart racing, especially when seen up above. There was just so much...land...so many places that had never seen human intrusion. If there really was a super-evolved species of bear on the loose, this would be where they would come from.
     
    The plane landed on the short runway, bumping unceremoniously down in a few stomach lurching jerks. I grabbed my pack and jumped down from the door, the fierce wind smacking me full in the face and whipping my auburn hair around into a wild, tangled mess.
     
    "Annette Dawkins?" the junior ranger on the tarmac shouted over the whine of the plane's engines. I was the only cargo delivered to Fort Gallum today. The plane took off over our heads as the ranger led me to the waiting Land Rover.
     
    "So have you seen these strange bears too?" I asked the baby-faced ranger as soon as we were in the quiet of the Rover.
     
    He shook his head, his face ashen. "Haven't seen 'em myself, but I've seen what they can do to a herd of caribou. I ain't one to get all starry-eyed about nature, but the way they can take down a full grown male like that? I tell you, it ain't natural."
     
    I shivered. Bears were usually more inclined to scavenge, preferring the easy routes to food like fishing and gorging on berries. Bears stalking and hunting a full grown male caribou and taking it down? The ranger was right, that was unnatural.
     
    We drove in silence to the ranger camp. Dark, forbidding mountains rose all around us, and the wind had scoured the landscape down to nothing more than bare rock and twisted, stunted trees. It amazed me that anything could live up here, much less four huge, hungry bears.
     
    The ranger station was to be my home base for the duration of my study. I was touched to see that the men had walled off a private bunk area just for me, even going so far as to set up a little table topped with a chipped mug holding some scrubby wildflowers. I knew that Harry had orchestrated it somehow, and I smiled at the image of the white-haired ranger painstakingly hunting down the few flowering plants in this inhospitable landscape.
     
    "Thanks for coming up so quickly, Dr.," the baby-faced young ranger was standing at the door, jingling a set of keys. "Your vehicle is gassed up and ready."
     
    "Thank you...er...I didn't get your name." I had been so preoccupied with my impending field research that I had forgotten social