Chapter Three: Heritage
The next morning, Jake woke up and for a moment did not remember what had happened. He opened his eyes and looked around the unfamiliar room before his brain caught up with him and he remembered it all. He sighed and sat up, still feeling very unsure of himself. Lily and her 'brothers' were great, they had been nothing but nice to him. But letting her in was something that he could not make himself do, not yet. The last time he had let someone in had hardly ended well and he wasn't over it yet.
He made his way down the stairs and walked into the kitchen to see Sawyer and Luke eating pancakes at the table. They gave him a smile and greeted him as he sat down, pushing a stack towards him.
"Boss lady threatened us with a very painful death if we didn't save you some," Sawyer said with a laugh. Jake couldn't help smiling in amusement. Lily was a fair bit shorter than him, though still tall for a girl. He somehow couldn't see her being able to take the larger shifter.
"Don't doubt it," Luke added with a smirk. "She took a chunk out of him last summer for attempting to tell her who she could and couldn't date."
Sawyer groaned at the memory. "Not one of my shinier moments. But come on, she's our sister in every way that counts!"
The smile wiped clean off Jake's face at the thought of Lily dating someone, even if it was in the past. What the hell was that? It was a familiar feeling but not one he should have been feeling for someone he just met, right? Even if she was his imprint. Yet there he was, jealous as hell.
"Where is she anyway?" he asked as casually as he could manage though he saw the looks on the bear shifters' faces and knew he had not been even half as casual as he would have liked. Damn it.
"She caught babysitting duties," Sawyer replied with a shrug. "A newly shifted bear means a giant furball with an attitude problem so one of us has to babysit them to make sure they don't lose their shit too close to a human who can't heal like we can." There had been some close calls in the past so they had put the system in place to put a new shifter with an established one to even them out as much as possible and to keep everyone safe.
It made sense to Jake but he couldn't help frowning at the thought of her being in danger.
"You'll want to quit doing that if you don't want to piss her off," Luke warned him. "She's one of us, she's not fragile."
Jake knew he was right. He never treated Leah like she was fragile, she would not stand for it for even a second. But he hardly spent any time with her so he supposed he was not as used to it as he should have been.
They finished eating their breakfast in companionable silence and once done the dishes were loaded into the dishwasher. Sawyer asked if Jake wanted to go for a run and he definite did, blowing off some steam was always welcome. So the two of them set off on four paws, bear and wolf running side by side.
Unlike with the pack, Jake could not hear Sawyer in his head and he was too far from home to hear the other wolves either. The silence was oddly comforting somehow, just being able to focus on the feeling of his paws hitting the ground as they made their way through the trees. He could hear that they were not alone, there were others out there in the woods. It was a strange thing, not thinking that he had to make sure nobody saw them. There was no hiding here, no secrecy about what they were, and Jake loved it.
Sawyer slowed to a walk and so did he, looking at him curiously. The bear lifted a paw and gestured to their left to show where they were going. Jake walked with him and found himself entering a clearing where they found Lily in her human form, sitting on the grass with a black bear. It was smaller than Sawyer by quite a bit, Jake figured that meant it was a younger shifter.
Lily stopped what she was saying and looked over at them, giving them a smile. "Who said you two could gatecrash story time?" she asked playfully. She had been telling her newest brother the stories of their people to calm him enough to allow him to return to his human form.
Sawyer huffed and nudged her with his nose, making her laugh as he almost pushed her over. "Okay okay, I'll start over, you silly overstuffed teddy bear."
Sawyer sat himself down and Jake joined him, watching Lily curiously. He knew his own tribe's stories backward and inside out, it would be interesting to hear how they had become bears.
"Our people weren't always bears," she began, telling the story that she had heard hundreds of times since she had been a child. It came as easy as breathing to her.
"Once, back when our tribe was young, there was a harsh winter. Our people were starving, there was hardly enough food to go around and certainly none left over. Gathering parties went into the woods every day to try to find food that the snow and ice hadn't managed to kill, but they came back with less and less each time, sometimes nothing at all.
One day they came across a bear cub out alone in the snow. There was no sign of its mother or even a den where it might have been living. They knew it was too small to survive out there on his own. Most of the gathering party wanted to leave it there, it was no concern of theirs and there were already too many mouths to feed. But one would not hear of it.
'It is on our land, that makes it one of us now,' he argued. He took the bear cub into his arms to keep it warm and carried it all the way back to the camp. Though his food rations were small he shared them with the bear cub, preferring to go hungry than to think of the little bear starving to death out there all alone.
After a couple of days, another member of the tribe approached him and gave him some of their rations as well. 'You were right, the bear is one of us now and we do not let our own starve,' they told him. The next day someone else shared their food with the bear. Each day after, the members of the tribe took it in turns to help to feed the bear and it grew stronger.
By the time spring came the bear truly was part of the tribe. Still, the one who had taken it in to begin with knew it had to go back to the woods. Once the snow had thawed he lead the bear back into the woods to the spot where they had found it. There, waiting for him, was a bear spirit.
'Do not be afraid,' she said to him. 'I would never harm the one who kept my cub alive throughout the winter. I saw what you did and how your tribe took care of my cub together without a single thought of getting anything in return. But I will give you something, to thank you for what you did. What would you ask of me?'
He thought for a moment and realise what it was he wanted. 'All we need is to see our friend again,' he replied. 'This bear became part of the tribe and we will be sad to see it go.'
The bear spirit considered this and then spoke once more. 'Your people will always have bears among them. From this day onward those in the tribe who are strong enough and closely connected in spirit to my people will be able to take on the form of the bear. You protected my cub, now use these new forms to protect your people and any others who need you.'
And it was as the spirit said. Members of the tribe began to learn to take on their bear forms, to walk the woods seeing them with new eyes. They protected their people and their land, each winter leaving out food for the spirit and her cub, who always came back to see them until that first person who had helped them passed away. They lead him into the spirit world; three spirit bears side by side."
When the story was over, the young shapeshifter by her side was no longer in his bear form. He had managed to change back and pull on the shorts that had been waiting for him. Jake hadn't even noticed, too wrapped up in the story she was telling. But now he saw him he knew he could only have been thirteen at most.
She gave the young teenager a smile and pulled him into a one-arm hug. "Welcome to the clan, kiddo," she said with an affectionate smile. He rolled his eyes but still hugged her back.
Jake felt his heart swell with pride as he watched. His imprint really was something else.
And that wall around his heart began to crack, just a little.
