Fairly Bear

Seven – A New Person

Tessa

She frowned in confusion as the two men left the room. What was that all about? Why would they mess up the hospital? She hadn’t even got a chance to see Ulrich shift into a bear, yet. She had hoped she could see what that looked like, since the wolf looked pretty cool and she sort of wanted to see what it looked like for her future.

“Don’t mind them, just males being males…” Miranda grinned at her, while she continued to remove her bandages. “It looks like the rest of your body is pretty well healed; now let’s have a look at your feet.”

Tessa leaned back and perched her feet on the bed to give her better access. She was relieved to be rid of all the itchy plasters. “So you’re a wolf too? What is it like to shift like that? And why aren’t you constantly in your wolf form?”

Miranda smiled. “It’s pretty awesome, I have a wolf spirit inside my head, we can communicate and I can shift between each consciousness according to what I need. For instance, if it’s to protect myself, I’d likely give her full control, since she goes with instinct and would be much faster at reactions. We cannot stay constantly in our animal form because we start losing ourselves to the animal instincts. They’re much simpler, driven by desires and instincts. If we lose connection with our human side, we could become a rogue.”

“What’s that?” Tessa asked with curiosity.

“Well, rogues are dangerous shifters or vampires, driven by instincts and the need to destroy once they turn feral. They’ve lost their kind side, which means they don’t really care about anything except the drive to kill. We live in this village and in groups to protect ourselves from them. My brother is the alpha, which means that he is in charge of protecting everyone that lives here.”

“So he protects everyone?” Tessa asked in confusion. That seems like a lot of work.

“Well, indirectly. See, he’s like the manager that makes sure everything runs smoothly. His Beta is like his assistant manager, who helps to organize everything after he's given his orders. Then there’s the gamma, which is like the head of security, and the delta is like…logistics. Then there are the Warriors and the Omegas. They have their own ranking, but that is decided by them and not by their birth into the families. They can work themselves up in their ranks to become the head Warrior or the managing Omega in their chosen department.”

“So the higher ranking wolves are decided by their birth?”

“Yes, pretty much. I am an alpha wolf, but I’m not the alpha. I am in charge of the hospital, because I chose it, but I could have become my brother’s Beta, if he had not had one lined up. Mostly, the high-ranking wolves tend to be males, since the females would mostly choose to move to their mate’s pack, especially if her mate is a ranked wolf.”

“So your mate is here? What is a mate?”

“Well, no. I don’t have a mate yet. Well, I haven’t found him, yet. But I will want to stay in this pack because of my work here; no other pack has our caliber of hospital and labs. This is my baby.” She smiled proudly at her. “See, a mate is like your soulmate, I think that’s what humans call it. But it’s the person made to be ours. They round us off, our weaknesses tend to be their strengths and vice versa. Once we’ve marked and mated, our world revolves around them. Their death would most likely be ours, too. It’s really difficult to explain it actually…” Miranda seemed thoughtful.

She removed the bandages from her feet and looked at them critically. “I’m going to leave the bandages off in the meantime, but don’t go running through the woods just yet, okay?”

Tessa nodded agreement. “So what happens now?”

“Well, we have to find your place in all this. Probably with Ulrich, since he’s the only other bear here, so you’d be under his protection in his sleuth.”

“He’s not part of the pack?” Tessa asked with confusion.

“Well, no. He’s got his sleuth territory bordering our territory, though he spends most of his time here at the moment, since it’s just him. Bears tend to be nomadic, but occasionally form family sleuths. It’s the first in history; usually bears and wolves don’t get along well, but Ulrich and Rupert just have this strong friendship and have created the task team together.”

“So I’m not staying here?” She asked with a twinge of worry. She couldn’t be alone with Ulrich now, not after he saw her naked! That would be uncomfortable…

“It would not! He’s yummy and we could try some of those moves I saw you do…and you could lick him; I bet he’s yummy!”

“You already met your bear, didn’t you?” Miranda asked with a faint smile.

“How did you know?” Tessa asked with interest.

“Well, look at my eyes when I talk to my wolf.” She kept her gaze steady on hers and it looked like she had got this far off stare in her eyes for a moment and then met her gaze squarely again.

“Wow, so you can tell if someone is a shifter from that?”

“We can smell it too, except for you, though…your smell only changed when the tests came back, but there’s also something else in your blood that proves that you’re not just a bear. We just haven’t seen anything like it, so we don’t know what else you are.”

“That makes sense….there was a mistake with the last batch they injected me with before my escape. They usually injected me with F156 but, in the last one, someone had spilled liquid and it appeared to be B156.”

“Wait, you heard what they injected you with?” Miranda asked with a sense of excitement.

“Well, I know the codes…I figured out that they drugged our gruel. So before my escape, I poured mine down the toilet drain and pretended to be drugged like the others. Apparently, they injected me according to an order and something about me being the closest one to success…”

“Well, that makes sense… You do seem to be the only one that has that component in your blood and is still alive.”

“What do you mean?” Tessa asked with confusion.

“Well, we found some with that component in their blood, but they’d died and were held in freezers in the basement…I assume they were studied, according to the notes. This specific syndicate of vampires seems to be particularly heartless.”

“Vampires?”

“Yeah, the guy that had fallen out of the window with you was a vampire, but he was a lowly servant, turned to his intellect in his field. He was still young.”

“Well, that explains the way he looked at me like I was food…do shifters eat humans too?”

Miranda laughed. “No! We eat normal food and the occasional wild animal we hunt in our shifted forms, but we have to get clearance to hunt otherwise we’d kill everything around us. We want to live in harmony with nature. You know those bath products and the bamboo toothbrush you were using in the shower? We make those; it’s one of the businesses that brings us money to support the task team and everyone in the pack.”

“Wow! Do those products really bring in enough to support you all?”

“Well, no. We make those products as well as biodegradable paint brushes. We have orchards that help feed the pack, as well as a couple of farms. Then we have camping grounds that are highly sought after, our labs also do contract work. We also hire out the task team for security and training of packs for defense. And our hospital is also a training hospital for other packs. Some omegas have also started their own successful businesses, like a clothing company, all with natural earth-friendly textiles, a photographer and …well, most of our little town are businesses started by our own omegas. We don’t force our omegas into anything; they are free to choose.”

“This makes me want to explore…”

“Well, once the boys are done beating each other up, I’m sure Ulrich wouldn’t mind showing you around. I’m going to go through the records we collected and see if your information gives us anything we can use to find out what they were doing and who they were working with.”

“So what am I supposed to do?”

“Well, I’m sure you can continue what you were doing, but from here? I’m sure Rupert would also be interested in your designs for invitations and other things in the pack. You can make your own little living here and enjoy it.” Miranda grinned at her, while she took up the tray of unused supplies and the plasters and bandages she’d removed.

Tessa lay back against the raised bed when she was alone in the room again, trying to consider her new future. Obviously, with her being something other than human, it now changed things. Of course, they wouldn’t allow her to return to her normal life. Absently, she wondered if she could finally settle down here without having to move around so much.

Maybe this was a blessing in disguise for her? Maybe she could finally put down roots and settle down. Surely, her father and brother would not be able to find her here if this community was hidden from humans.

It felt weird thinking of herself as something other than a human. She was a bear now…and something else; whatever that was. She would have to learn how this life would be different. Finding her own place here wouldn’t be too different; she’d done it countless times before. But she would have to get used to settling into a community.

That was new.

She’d never been in a place where people were actually interested in her as a person and what her interests were. Her brother and father treated her like a hostage most times; the guards around the house all but ignored her. She was a hermit from school and had no real friends. Looking back, she realized that people actually avoided her and that was probably because everyone feared her family.

Now, these people…shifters; they seemed interested in her and seemed willing to make friends with her. Was this her chance to experience a community like she’d only ever seen on TV or read about in books?