Bear Run: A Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (Pine Ridge Bear Shifters Book 1)

BEAR RUN

Pine Ridge

Bear
Shifters #1

Belinda
Meyers

Copyright
2016

All
rights reserved

Cover
image used with permission

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“Hold your gun straight! I hear something!”

Alice cringed and lifted her rifle
higher, its butt pressed against her shoulder just like Pa had taught her. Her heart
beat fast, and she could feel her limbs trembling.

This
is wrong
, she thought.
This is all
wrong.

“There!” said Bradley, eyeing a
device that looked like a compass. It wasn’t, of course, but something far more
sinister—at least in his hands. He indicated a direction, and the three of them
inched toward a rise, then peered over it.

The forest loomed in all
directions, green and lush and beautiful, with massive shaggy conifers arching
toward the blue sky and filling the air with the scent of pine. Alice wished
she were here alone, or at least with someone else. Anyone but her deranged,
homicidal family.

“I see it,” said Pa, using his
angry whisper; Alice was all too familiar with that tone. His craggy face
bunched up in hate, his rheumy dark eyes squinting. The rifle he carried rose,
and he sighted along its barrel.

Alice scanned the forest, holding
her breath, then saw it: a huge grizzly bear, gray-brown and scarred and
massive, lumbering through a glade in the woods. Her heart almost stopped in
her chest.
It’s beautiful
, she
thought.
Can it really be ... one of THEM?
According to Bradley’s “compass”, it was. The device only detected shifters, at
least according to the self-styled witch they’d bought it off of at the flea
market last month.

“Abomination,” Pa whispered as he
squinted one eye completely, peering down the sight of the barrel with the
other. “Demon.”

“Hellspawn,” Bradley agreed. He was
Alice’s older brother, and she was all too used to his and her pa’s hatred of
all things shifter. Ever since the supes had come out of the den a few years
ago, the two men had become manic in their single-minded devotion to the idea
of destroying them. This was their first chance to act on it. “Let’s send it
back to hell,” Bradley added, and Alice could hear the longing in his voice. He
craved violence, she could tell. It made her wonder if he’d ever done this
before. This was her first time, and she knew it was Pa’s, too.

Pa nodded, still taking aim. “I’ve
got ‘im,” he said. “I’ve got ‘im in my sights.” His finger curled around the
trigger, and Alice had to fight the urge to jump on him and wrestle the gun
away.

Maybe
I should
, she thought.
Maybe I—

Pa paused. Lifting his lean,
wrinkled face, his rheumy eyes settled on Alice.

She felt a chill. “What is it, Pa?”

“You,” he said. “
You
should take the shot.”

“Me?” She felt her mouth fall open.

“She’s right,” said Bradley. “If it
ain’t you, Pa, it should be me that does it.”

“No.” Pa shook his head adamantly.
“
You
I’m sure of. Alice here is the
weak link. If we’re gonna start doin’ this regular like we planned, start our
march on the holy crusade, we need to firm her up.”

Reluctantly, Bradley nodded.
“Alright, Pa.” He looked at Alice and spat out a gob of tobacco juice. “Well,
whatcha waitin’ for, Sis? Take the shot!”

They had been speaking in low
tones, but when Alice turned back to the glade she saw that the bear had lifted
its enormous, handsome head in their direction. He was so majestic it made her
heart ache to look at him. He appeared to have heard them. His hearing must be
ridiculously sensitive.

“Well?” Pa demanded. “Git goin’!
Wait too long and he’ll bolt—or come fer us.”

She made herself square her
shoulders and raise her rifle. Took it off safety. Made sure there was a bullet
in the chamber. Aimed, sighting along the barrel, centering her sights on the
shaggy breast of the gorgeous, scarred, tough-looking bear.

“Do it!” Bradley said.

Alice’s fingers trembled. Her
breaths came fast and shallow.

“Now!” said her pa.

She felt her eyes burn.
Don’t cry
, she thought.
Don’t let them see your weakness.

In the glade, the bear lowered its
head and began to turn away.

“It’s leavin’!” Pa said, spittle
spraying from his lips. “Do it or I will, you stupid cow!”

Something dawned on her.
If you could’ve, you old codger, you would’ve
.
It was his eyes, she thought. He hadn’t thought he could see well enough to
take the shot, so he’d come up with the only excuse he could think of.
Gotta firm her up, ha.
Well, she would
show him who was firm.

She lowered the rifle. “No,” she
said. She’d meant her voice to sound bold and dramatic, but she thought it came
out as more of a squeak.

“No?” said Bradley. His square face
turned as red as his hair.
“No?”

“That’s right,” she said. “I won’t
do it.”

“Bah!” Pa snarled. Before she could
stop him, he raised his own rifle and fired. The shot sounded like a bomb going
off in the stillness of the forest, and a flock of birds exploded out of a tree
and fluttered off into the sky, startled by the sound.

The bear had reached the edge of
the clearing, but now it paused. For a wild moment hope flooded Alice’s chest.
He missed!
she thought.
The blind old possum missed!
Then she
saw the blood staining the animal’s fur and running down its shoulder. Her
heart wrenched, and her eyes burned worse than before.

“Ha!” said Bradley, pumping a fist
into the air. He jumped to his feet and tugged Pa up, too. Alice rose more
gingerly.

“Is he still standing?” Pa said,
shading his bad eyes with one frail hand. Alice thought she detected a tremor
in it.

“Yeah, Pa,” Bradley said. “Just one
more shot to finish him.” He tried to wrench Alice’s gun away from her; there
were only two guns. She fought him, holding onto it tight. He yanked harder,
but she pulled back.

“I won’t—let you—kill him!” she
said through gritted teeth.

Bradley swore and let go, and she
flew backward, landing in an ungainly heap on her rump—which, as Bradley and Pa
had both pointed out many times, was generous. She wasn’t tall, but she was
big-boned.
No point in you goin’ ta
college
, Pa had told her often.
You’re
too fat to meet a fella, and what’s the use of a girl goin’ to college if not
to meet a fella?

“Shoot ‘im again!” Bradley urged
Pa.

Grumbling under his breath, Pa
raised his rifle and took aim again. In the clearing, the bear was listing to
one side and shaking his head. Blood gushed freely from his wound. Sudden
concern tore through Alice, and she shoved herself back to her feet, desperate
to stop this. But what could she do?

Inspiration seized her.

Pa, blind as he was, would need a
few moments to aim. That might give her time to do what she needed to do. Feeling
sweat pop out on her forehead and scalp, she pelted down the incline of the
rise, trees flashing past her.

“What’re you doin’?” Bradley called
after her. “Pa, she’s gone mad!”

“Stupid cow!” Pa called. “Get back
here or you’ll git shot!”

She kept going. A root reached for
her feet, but she leapt over it, stumbled, stayed upright and kept running.
Ahead, the bear was sinking to its knees. A shaft of sunlight shone down on it,
illuminating gnats and pollen drifting in the currents of the air, and making
the bear’s blood almost seem to glow. It looked so red it was surreal. Alice
felt like she was in a dream.

“Git down, you fool!” her Pa
shouted behind her. “You’re in the line of fire!”

As if she didn’t know that. For
once in her life, though, she knew she was doing the right thing. Even if it
did get her killed.

He
won’t shoot
, she told herself.
He
won’t!

The horrible thing was that she
wasn’t sure.

Panting, she reached the bear and
dropped to her knees beside it ... just as it Shifted. As soon as she reached
it, it collapsed to the ground and seemed to lose consciousness. When it did,
the air—maybe reality itself—seemed to shimmer around it, and the bear changed,
slipping forms, and in seconds it was no longer a bear at all but a man,
gorgeous and naked, with a mane of flowing dark hair that trailed halfway down
his thick neck and rugged-looking stubble on his square jaw. Blood pumped from
a hole in his upper chest or lower shoulder, down over his right arm to the
grass.

“Dear God,” Alice heard herself
whisper. He was amazing, all gleaming muscles and unbridled power. But now
helpless and defenseless.

Hearing footsteps, she wheeled
about. Pa and Bradley scrambled toward her through the trees. Doubtless they
meant to drag her away and finish the job. The fact that the bear shifter had
changed shapes wouldn’t matter to them. Whether in the guise of a bear or a
man, he would still be an abomination to them.
Anything new or different is bad
, she thought. Ma had been the same
way, she remembered, but she hadn’t been so militant about it. Alice missed her
a great deal, despite her narrow-mindedness. In her own way, she had been sweet
and good and kind, and she had died before the shifters had come out to the
world, so Alice had never heard her thoughts on them.

“Leave him alone!” Alice shouted as
Pa and Bradley drew close.

Pa’s face was as red as Bradley’s
now, sweaty and unhealthy-looking. He drew in long, ragged breaths, and she
couldn’t help but feel a twist of concern for him. He sounded like he might
have a heart attack at any moment.

“You cow!” said Bradley. “Look what
you’ve done to Pa!”

A flash of guilt flickered through
her, but she stood firm. “I won’t let you kill him,” she said, indicating the
naked man behind her. “He needs a doctor.”

“He needs to be put out of his
misery,” Pa said, then grinned. It was a cruel, half-mad expression. “Or at
least mine.”

Bradley laughed, a harsh, manic
sound. “Good one, Pa.”

Alice scowled at them.
How could I have been brow-beaten by these
two idiots for so long?

“I won’t let you do any more harm
than you have already,” she said. “I can’t believe I went along with you this
far. But no more!” With a toe, she very dramatically drew a line in the dirt
before her. “This is the line in the sand.”

Bradley sneered. “What happens if
we cross it?” Experimentally, he took a step forward.

Alice half-raised her rifle. “Wanna
find out?”

He paused, a trace of something
that might be fear in his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

His face went rigid. “Bitch.”

Pa patted him on the shoulder.
“It’s alright, Junior. She’s a stupid cow, that’s all.”

“Don’t call me ‘Junior’,” Bradley
said, and Alice couldn’t help smiling a little at the familiar fight.

Behind her the naked man was
groaning. She glanced over her shoulder to see him moving and blinking his
eyes. Bradley seized her distraction to leap forward, across the line, and
knock the barrel of her rifle aside. She stumbled backward, actually tripping
over the body of the naked man. For the second time in as many minutes, her
rump hit the forest floor, only this time the impact made her finger squeeze
the trigger. The rifle boomed, and Bradley leapt backward, a girlish scream
curdling from his lips.

Looking quizzical, Pa patted
himself down for bullet holes, then checked Bradley, but neither were hit; the
bullet had whizzed harmlessly overhead. At least it had given Alice a moment to
consider her options. Analysis: zilch. Just how was she going to get out of
this?

Suddenly, the naked man, though
still bleeding, lurched up to a sitting position, then rose to his feet. He
stood there swaying, one hand pressed over his wound, while Pa and Bradley
reeled back, eyes wide. Alice wanted to laugh at the comical fright on their
faces, but the laughter died in her throat when she saw Pa start to lift his
rifle.

“Do it and I’ll blast you,” she
said, wincing at the words.
Blast you
sounded like something out of
Star Wars
.
She said it pointing her rifle at her own father’s chest, though, and he didn’t
seem to find it amusing. Her fingers trembled, and she felt like she wanted to
throw up.
What am I DOING? Pointing a gun
at my own pa for the sake of a stranger? Not even a human stranger, but a
monster!
She must be as mad as they were, only hers was a different kind of
madness.

“What you think you’re doin’?” Pa
said. His face had gone pale, but it had also tightened, and his eyes had
become flinty. He was
pissed
. Hard to
blame him, really.

Still on the ground, Alice kept her
gun steady. “Get out of here, Pa. Bradley.”

“Who’re
you
to tell
us
what to
do?” Bradley sneered. He had an ugly sneer, which was a shame, since that was
one of his favorite expressions.

For the first time, the bear-man
spoke. Actually, it wasn’t speech so much as a growl. A tremor coursed through
him, and a deep sound like an earthquake rattled up from his chest. Alice was
behind him, facing his powerful legs and firm, muscular buttocks, so she
couldn’t see his face, but it must have been terrible, since Pa and Bradley
stumbled back another few steps.

“Get.
Out,”
the man said-growled.

Pa and Bradley glanced at each
other, as if asking each other’s permission to run away, and for a moment it
looked like they would both flee with their tails tucked between their legs,
screaming like scaredy-cats. But it seemed like neither could quite make
themselves look like a coward in front of the other. Their backs straightened
and their faces took on more menacing aspects.

“You can’t tell us what to do, you damn
demon,” Pa said, glaring at the shifter.

Still keeping her gun level, Alice
climbed to her feet. She wavered a bit and almost fell on her butt again, but
the naked man reached out and steadied her. He had huge hands, and they were so
warm
. For a breathless instant she
gazed up into his face, and heat rushed all through her. He was the most
handsome man she’d ever seen, with a strong whiskered jaw, broad forehead
piercing blue eyes that seemed to shine and shift with lights of their own. His
chest was deep and his shoulders broad, tapering down to a narrow waist. A
giant shaft dangled between his legs, huge and thick. Feeling her cheeks grow
warm, she wrenched her gaze away.