Kick Off of my first Story on Wattpad!!! Thank you for reading. To be forewarned this is ManxMan. Please be nice and no hateful comments. Please be kind with your words. I would love comments otherwise to let me know if this is worth continuing. Enjoy :)

Intro

There's a lot to be said about being the largest land carnivore on the face of the plane

For instance, nothing's bigger than you.

 There are some times it's nice being the biggest thing on four paws, and then other times it's a pain in the ass. For in the animal kingdom it's all about dominance, and being bigger than everyone else means you get into fights a lot.

And I mean Lots of fights.

            I have had more than enough wolves and cats come up to me looking for a fight because they feel threatened by my size. But comparing the sizes between a bear to canines and cats, there really isn't much competition to worry about. But they still attempt it anyway. So we growl a bit, I cuff them a few times in the head, and they nip at me. It normally ends with me holding them down on the ground and them trying desperately not to cry 'Uncle'.

Now I don't want to make the wrong impression and sound like I go off looking for fights wherever I go. In truth I'm more of a 'solve it with words' type of guy. I don't like fighting in the least unless there's a just cause and even then I normally don't fight to hurt others, just get the message across.

Truthfully it's a high misconception that bears are violent creatures that go looking for trouble. When in fact most bears go out of their way to avoid conflict with others. Of course unless its mating season, then it's all-out war with anything that moves.

But, personally I haven't met that many other bears to know how the others act compared to myself, but I have read quite a bit about my kind so I feel fairly confident in my understanding of how we work.

The reason for my lack of interaction with my own kind is for the fact that I was not raised around them. I was found as a stow away on a train when I was only a cub. I was hiding in the luggage when one of the conductors found me. Thankfully they knew about shifters and one of them actually had a friend in a pack close by. So from out in the wilderness the train brought me to a small town deep in the north of Canada where they left me with a small wolf pack in the hopes of someone there being able to locate my family.

Sadly, the search for a family came up fruitless and the question of where I was to go came up.

The Alpha of the pack who was looking after me in the mean-time was an older wolf who had a family of his own. To this day I'm not quite sure why he elected to keep me, a rather large polar bear cub without a family, but he did.

I was raised sort of as a communal child in the pack. I lived in the general pack house where they held meetings and gatherings. I was giving my own room and free rein of the house's amenities. Everyone in the pack treated me as if I were one of them. Minus the fact that we were different species.

            There is nothing I could say against the pack. They were kind and gentle throughout my life growing up with them. I was raised with love and compassion, or as much as a pack of wolves could manage raising a bear cub that didn't belong to them.

Although there were quite a few trials in my childhood because of my being a different species, I cannot blame them for that. I was naturally stronger than the other pups and more often than not wasn't aloud to play with them because of this fact. I tried not to take it to heart, they just wanted everyone to be safe, even if that meant keeping me at a safe distance from the pups.

Also while they were social creatures, I was a beast of solitude, these two very different attitudes butted heads on more than one occasion in my childhood and seemed to cause a rift between me and the pack as I grew older. It just wasn't in my nature to be as social as wolves so I spent most of my time reading or listening to music, alone.

The differences proceeded through my childhood and caused quite a few problems, especially in my teens.

            Adolescent male shifters instinctually want to fight for girls' affections and will do so regularly and aggressively. I was more than once caught up in these fights.

They were threatened by my size and air of indifference, or so they called it. Though in my defense, this indifference did not stem from a sense of superiority but from a genuine lack of concern for such endeavors. They believed I thought of them as weak and not worth my time, when, in fact, those thoughts never crossed my mind. Each fight I either was forced or stumbled into through my teen years ended with more and more bruises from each side of the fight as the people I fought as well as myself grew stronger and stronger.

It all came to a head my junior year in high school when a heavily dominant wolf by the name of Logan picked a fight with me out in the woods. He caught me off guard and attacked with the reasoning being I had eyed his girl earlier that day. From the combination of my surprise and fear all mixed together I had shifted and he had no time to react.

I walked away with a sprained wrist and multiple lacerations. He didn't walk away at all. Three broken ribs, a broken leg, black eye, and two missing teeth were written down on the doctor's report.

            His parents were furious. He was the first son to one of the pack's Enforcers, high ranking wolves in the pack hierarchy that carry a lot of influence. They demanded I be punished for what they called, "A heinous act of villainy against a kind and gentle boy." They turned quite a few against me in the pack since I had no familial relations with any of them. But not enough to actually do anything about it. Although in the end the Alpha thought it best to separate me from the problem.

            For the entire summer of my senior year the Alpha, a few older friends from the pack, and I erected a humble cottage out in the depths of the woods. Far away from any claimed territories so as to avoid conflict. It was a quiet place of solitude where I could be myself without intruders and do as I wished and not be judged for it. It was my own personal safe haven and ever since that fateful summer it has been my home.

            Now, three years later, I have a job, friends, and a peaceful life. I am a school nurse actually, I know it may sound odd but in actuality I really enjoy it. You see the school I work at is actually a school for shifters. The majority of students and faculty are wolves although there is a mixture of large cats such as bobcats, lynxes, and a few lions and tigers mixed in.

The school is sort of a safe haven for our kind. They can learn and grow in a safe environment with others of their kind. It is also an important place out of the family home or pack to learn to socialize with other species.

            But along with all the pros there are a few cons. Some of the cons are the constant fighting for dominance. Adolescent shifters have a much harder time controlling their emotions and more often than not let out their emotions in the form of fights. These fights especially escalate close to mating season. Because of the sky rocketing in hormones during this time and the soon to be high absent rate the school schedules around it. We cut out of school at the beginning of January and then we come back in August.

            Being a nurse at a school filled with raging hormones and very animalistic teenagers means you sort of have to throw your weight around. In my case often literally.

Being a large carnivore I am often called to help break up fights along with fixing up injuries afterwards. This is actually one of the reasons I was hired. Young shifters will do anything to attack and belittle authority as they grow and learn their own standing in the social order. Being bigger and stronger than them helps to control them when things get out of hand. Most shifters respect authority and power above all else and if you immediately lay down the rules off the bat they will respect you.

            But, of course, the main reason I was hired was because I had an in depth knowledge of herbal medicine. Human medicine doesn't always affect shifters, much like human medicine can't be administered to animals, so we must use plants and herbs to treat ourselves.

I don't have a degree in medicine from going to a University but to shifters that's not necessary. Life skills and hands on learning is what is more valued in the eyes of shifters. So I had spent most of my life learning about herbal medicine and am able to use it fluently in making medication and patching up wounds.

Truthfully it was the Alpha from my old pack who recommended me to the school and with my natural skills they were happy to hire me.

            All in all I am very happy with my job. Of course there are some low sides to my job, like being attacked often by both males and females close to mating season. Being an unmated male in a school of horny shifters is like putting a bullseye on my ass.  There are a lot of up sides as well though.

I enjoy what I do, helping to heal those injured or sick is very rewarding, and I also have the freedom to do what I wish most of the time. When I am not needed during the school day I normally go out back to the forest the school was built next to. I either bask in the sun for an afternoon nap or go for a swim in the lake. I have my beeper with me at all times in case I am needed, but otherwise I am free to do as I please.

            To conclude, my name is Avery Nanuk, a polar bear shifter. I have lived a happy and peaceful life since the day I was found on that train. I enjoy the simple things in life such as afternoon naps, movie marathons, and a good book. I ask for very little and am content with what I have.

Of course that is until the day life decided to throw a wrecking ball into it all and mess everything up. This wrecking ball was going to ruin everything, for better or worse and my peaceful life was about to be kicked onto its ass. This bastard of a wrecking ball had a name too. His name is,

Rick Kodiak.