Bear Run: A Bear Shifter Paranormal Romance (Pine Ridge Bear Shifters Book 1) (2 page)

“G-get out!” she told her brother
and Pa, but they stayed put.

“You’ve only got one bullet left,”
Pa said. “You can’t get us both.”

“You wouldn’t die just to kill
someone that’s different from you, would you?” she said, but as soon as the
words left her mouth she wondered if they might. They really had let themselves
go awfully far down that dark road, hadn’t they?

“We’ll do what we must, Sis,” Bradley
said, his piggy eyes blazing contempt. “And if you help this hellspawn, you
might suffer his same fate.”

The bear-man growled again and took
a step forward. Pa raised his gun to point at the man’s head. The giant
stopped, but Alice could feel the tension in him. He was ready to lunge,
something that might spark a round of violence that could kill them all.

Keeping her gun trained on her pa
with one hand, she grabbed one of the bear-man’s giant hands and tugged him
away. He fought her for a moment, then came, swearing under his breath.

She backed away from Bradley and
Pa, pulling the shifter with her. Bradley and Pa stayed where they were—her gun
was still on them—but she knew they’d be after her soon. And if they caught her
and the bear-man, there would be blood.

“What are you doing?” the man asked
her, even as they slipped through the forest. “Where are you going?”

“You mean, where are
we
going?” she said, then rocked on her heels
as the truth flooded her: “I have no home to go back to.”

She looked so devastated that Taggart had to fight the urge
to reach out and cup her face in his hands to comfort her. Losing your family
was no easy thing; he knew that twice over. But such a move might alarm her,
and anyway she was one of Them. He couldn’t let himself get too close.

Still clutching his wound with his
right hand, he knocked leaves and branches out of his way with the other. The
girl trailed along at his side, constantly glancing backwards to see if her
insane family, if that’s what they were, was tracking them.

“They’re back there,” Taggart
assured her, sniffing the air. “I can smell them.”

He didn’t miss the shock—but also
the wariness—in her eyes. “You can
smell
them?” she said. “But they must be half a mile back or more!”

He rolled his huge shoulders, then
grimaced at the pain that caused as the flesh bunched around his bullet hole.
“My bear can smell good even when he’s locked inside me.”

“‘Smell good’”, she repeated, as if
tasting the phrase. “Did you, um, go to school? I mean, if that’s not offensive
to ask.”

“I’ve got some learning," he
said. Abruptly he felt defensive. That was one thing about Them, he knew; They
had better schools than the Clan did. That was something he wanted for his
little ones, if he ever had any. One reason he’d done what he had, may the
fates forgive him. “Enough, anyway,” he added.

She swallowed, and he could scent
her nervousness. Her fear. Here she was in the middle of nowhere with a naked
and bloody bear shifter. Anyone else in her situation would panic. Not her,
though. She looked pale and sweat had popped out on her cheeks, but she plowed
on. Taggart was impressed. This little human had some guts, that was for sure.
He had been moving fast through the woods, partly hoping to lose her, to shake
her off like an annoying pest, but now he slowed down a bit, letting her keep
pace with him. Maybe she wouldn’t be such a hindrance, after all.

“We should get you to a hospital,”
she said, panting slightly. When he only raised his eyebrows, she said, “Your
shoulder. The wound.” As if he might have forgotten.

“I heal quick,” he said. “Slug
didn’t break any bones. Just went out the other side. I’ll be fine in awhile.”

“Oh.” Her eyes roved up and down
his body, and he frowned at the scrutiny. Not that he was bashful, but she
was
one of Them. He didn’t like the
feeling of being judged. They looked down on his kind, hated and feared them.
That’s why she and her asshole family had come out here, to hunt and maim his
people. She might have stopped that, but she was still one of Them and would
turn on him in a moment.
They
had no
honor, no pride, no morals. He couldn’t trust her—that’s what it came down to.

And she had that gun.

Maybe he could try to take it from
her. But he was still injured, and that made him slow. If he was
too
slow, she’d shoot him, and another
shot might end him—if she hit him in the right place. He resolved to wait. When
he was healed, which wouldn’t be long, he could take that gun and separate himself
from her. Leave her behind. She was tough. She could make it back to her people.
Probably. Anyway, that was her problem.
She
had come into
his
domain, not the
other way around.

He started to walk faster again.
Why had he ever slowed down? He certainly didn’t want her with him. Despite
himself, he glanced beside (and now slightly behind) him. There she was,
breathless and covered with a sheen of sweat that plastered her dirty blond
hair to her head and made her hunter clothes stick to her curvy body in all the
right places. She was delightfully curvy, just the way he liked, and he loved
the way her cheeks were flushed with exertion ... and maybe something more?

“Um,” she said, visibly swallowing.
“You’re getting hard.”

He stopped and turned to her, and
she jumped back with a delighted but also scandalized squeal as the head of his
cock just nearly brushed her middle. His nostrils flared, scenting the air.

“You’re getting wet,” he said.

Her cheeks reddened even more. As
if unable to help it, her eyes darted once more to his shaft, then hastily up
to the canopy of trees.

“You’re naked,” she said, as if
this explained it. “I mean, I’m trying not to look, but
jeez
. You’re hung like a
horse
.”

He fumbled for a return compliment.
His experience with women was limited, though, and all he could think of was, “You
have nice breasts.”

“What?” She stared at him like he
was from the moon.

He scratched his head. “Isn’t that
what you’re supposed to do? You compliment me, so I compliment you.”

“I ... er ... Where are you from?”

“Black Valley.”

“I don’t know where that is. Is
that a town out here? I’m from Mullistown, down the mountain—where the Vern
Falls are?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know
it. I’ve ...”

“Yes?”

He sighed. “I’ve never left the
mountain.”

“Really?” She was watching him with
great interest.

“The truth is I’ve never been very
far from Black Valley. A couple times my clansmen and I have come into Pine
Ridge, to the bar there, for pussy, but that’s—”

“Hey! Don’t talk like that.”

What had he said? He replayed his
words in his mind but couldn’t come up with anything. “Do the people of
Mullistown not like Pine Ridge?” It was all he could think of.

The redness was leaving her cheeks,
but her eyes were still rooted on him, this time with confusion. “Who are you?”
she said.

“My name is Taggart.”

“Last name?”

“My people don’t have last names.”

“Who are your people?”

“The Black Valley Clan.” Couldn’t
she have guessed that?

“Are they all bear shifters?” When
he nodded, she added, “Well, I’m Alice Cooper. Don’t laugh. I get that all the
time.”

“Laugh?”

“You know. Because ... Alice ...
Cooper.”

He frowned. “You feel poorly
because you have two names, is that it? It is not as simple and pure as we of
the Black Valley.”

“No, you moron. Alice Cooper, you
know, like, rock’n’roll.”

“Ah.” He knew of rock’n’roll. A few
of his people had radios. “Elvis Pressley. The King of Rock’n’Roll.”

“Well, yeah ...” Her gaze strayed
once more to his cock, which was fading somewhat. “Can you, you know, like put
that away? Don’t you have some clothes? Don’t you shifters usually stash them
somewhere before you turn?”

“You know a lot about my kind. I
guess you study us to hunt us better.”

“Well, that, and you’re on Youtube
all the time. And the news. Not just bear shifters, but all of you. Lion
shifters, dragon shifters. Ever since you came out a few years ago.” She
paused. “But then you wouldn’t know that, would you?”

“I know we announced our presence
to the world.”

“Do you know what Youtube is?”

“T.V. is called the Tube. One of my
people had a T.V. hooked up to the generator last year. He broke it when he Shifted,
though, and we haven’t had one since.”

“So no clothes?”

How much should he tell her? “I ...
left them in Black Valley.”

“So you’re going back there now?
Maybe you could give me a lift back into town when we get there. Assuming you
have a car or something.”

Did she know nothing? “We don’t
have cars. My people, I mean. We live pure, mostly. We have generators now, and
some radios, and some old trailer homes that we use when we don’t live in the
woods. Some space heaters in the winter, but we sleep through a lot of that.
Mainly we live in the wild. From nature, to nature.
Part
of nature. The way bear shifters should.”

A sudden look of understanding
flooded her face, and she involuntarily took a step back. “You’re one of
them
, aren’t you?” She nodded to
herself, one of her hands going to cover her mouth. “You’re that extremist
group of bear shifters that disagreed with coming out to the world. You live
wild and free in the woods, and you want to remain that way. You think now that
people know what you are that they’ll be your enemies.”

He gestured at her rifle. “Isn’t
that true?”

She looked back in the direction
where her insane family would be. In a smaller voice, she said, “Not all of,
ah, my people are like that. Most aren’t. Just stupid idiots like my brother
and pa.”

“And you.”

Anger made her face red again. “I
saved you, asshole!”

Her chest was heaving, and he could
see her nipples poke against the fabric.

He smiled ruefully. “I
am
grateful to you, Alice. I … what you
did, going against your family, I know that wasn’t easy.”

“Well … good. It wasn’t.”

“Maybe I can thank you.”

“Yeah?”

His eyes went to her breasts again,
and he started to feel himself harden again. Nodding, he said, “I can give you
a great orgasm.”

Her mouth dropped open in an O. She
stared from his face to his manhood, then his face again. “You accuse me of
hating you one moment, then you want to
bonk
me? Make up your mind, crazy naked shifter man!”

He swung an arm to the soft leaves
and grass of the forest floor. “Let’s rut. I know you want to. I can smell it.”
Still smiling, he said, “I wouldn’t mind, either.”

“‘Rut’. Eww.” She took a step back.
She was always stepping forward and back, this little human. “Maybe I did
before you said ‘rut’. Take it back.”

He ran a hand through his hair,
scratching his scalp as he did. He had said the wrong thing to the women in the
Pine Ridge bar, too, he remembered. All the Black Valley shifters had.

“I’m sorry,” he said, meaning it.
“It’s all men in Black Valley, or mostly. I don’t get much occasion to talk to
women-folk.”

“Really? You astound me.” Again she
glanced back in the direction of her father and brother. “We’d better get
going. I want to put as much distance between them and us as possible.”

They resumed their trek through the
woods. Again he whacked the leaves and branches from the path, holding some for
her to duck under. His other hand remained pressed over his wound for a time,
but the blood slowed, then stopped, and he could feel the flesh knit together,
so he dropped it.

“If we’re going to Black Valley,
will I be safe there?” she said after awhile. “I mean, if they’re all men and
they hate humans?”

Stunned, he turned toward her. “You
think I would take you there? They would kill you!”

Her mouth opened and closed.
Recovering, she said, “But then where are we going? We need to find you some
clothes!”

“I’m free, Alice Cooper. I’ll never
see Black Valley again.”

What the
hell
? One
minute she’d been with her half-mad shifter-hating pa and brother, now she was
stuck in the forest with some half-mad human-hating bear shifter who didn’t
have any clothes or, it seemed, even a place to call home.
Just what have I gotten myself into?

“Why?” she pressed. “Why aren’t you
going to see Black Valley again?”

The (admittedly charming) smile
left his face, replaced by a troubled shadow. His eyes remained focused on the
path ahead, though, scanning it for enemies, ready to clear away obstacles. She
scrambled to keep up with him, unable to help herself from luxuriating in the
heat that emanated from him, along with his spicy, slightly musky odor. She
constantly had to fight the urge to reach out and squeeze his muscular buttocks.

“That’s my own affair,” he said.

“Come
on
,” she said. “I’ve just sacrificed my relationship with my family
for you, I think you can tell me why you’re leaving home. If that’s what you’re
doing.”

He slowed down slightly and turned
to glance at her. Before he could answer, however, a dark shape loomed in the
glade ahead. Alice gasped and recoiled to see a huge scarred grizzly bear
emerge from the undergrowth into the clearing and then rear up on its hind
legs, looming what had to be ten feet overhead. Taggart put an arm out
protectively, as if to prevent Alice from going any further, but she had no
intention of doing anything of the sort. She half-raised the rifle, jamming its
butt against her shoulder, but she didn’t take aim. She wasn’t sure one bullet
could kill the beast. Hell, shooting it might just piss it off.

“Don’t,” Taggart said, suddenly sounding
angry, but not at her. “I’ll take care of this.”

“Is it another shifter?” Her heart
slammed fast and hard inside her chest, and she could feel sweat sting her
eyes.

Taggart didn’t need to answer,
because just then the newcomer seemed to shimmer, and Shift, and a
second
muscular naked man stood where a
huge grizzly had been just moments ago. Alice could only stare. This one wasn’t
as handsome, though. He was a grim-looking, snarling fellow, with huge muscles
cut with all manner of curling scars, and his eyes were narrowed into
mean-looking slits.

“Traitor!” he called. “Betrayer!”

Taggart’s chest swelled out. “Get
out of here, Deke, or I’ll tear you apart.”

Deke, if that’s who the newcomer
was, spat on the ground, as if to show his contempt. “You can try,” he snarled.
As if against his will, he seemed to force the words out: “Kane says if you
come back willingly he’ll only bleed you. If you make us drag you back, he’ll
break your back legs so they’ll heal crooked and you’ll have to crawl for the
rest of your days.”

Taggart bunched his hands into
fists. “I’m never going back.”

Deke grinned, but it was a hard,
nasty grin. “I hoped you’d say that. See, I’d rather just kill you now. That
way I won’t have to listen to you whine with your legs broken for the next
however-many years.” His spiteful gaze raked over Taggart’s shoulder to settle
on Alice. “Is this the whore you’ve left us for? Where’d you meet her? Never
mind, it doesn’t matter. Just know that once I’m done with you I’ll make her
mine.”

Angrily, Taggart stepped forward,
and the air shimmered around him. Alice cried out as a giant bear seemed to
explode from inside him, all claws and fangs and bristling brown fur. She was
so startled she almost squeezed the trigger of her rifle—not that she would
have hit anything. It was pointing idly at a tree, so the worst she could have
done was kill a squirrel. And waste her last shot.

Taggart, now a terrible grizzly
bear, lumbered out into the glade, and Deke, changing shapes, met him. The two
titanic bears slammed into each other, hard, and Alice swore she could feel the
ground shake beneath her when they hit. She could only cringe as Deke’s fangs
sank into Taggart’s shoulder right where the bullet had gone earlier. New
streams of blood cascaded down his shaggy hide. Taggart slammed Deke back,
raking him with long, terrible talons, biting and savaging him. It was an
awesome fight, the two wrathful bears ripping at each other, blood and fur
flying. Alice realized there would be no quarter given, no mercy granted. These
were two animals, two beasts, a primal fight with only death to end it.

At last Taggart, having seized Deke
by the back of the neck with his fangs, hurled the other bear against a tree
with such force that the tree cracked. Even as it fell over, Deke slumped at
its side, bloody and dazed. Taggart approached him, surely to tear out his
throat and end it.

Alice scrambled forward. “No!” she
said. “Wait!”

Taggart turned to her. He was a
terrible sight, slashed by claws and covered in blood, some of it his own, some
of it Deke’s. His eyes seemed to ask her what she was doing.

“Don’t kill him!” she said,
approaching. She didn’t know why, but for some reason she didn’t want Taggart
to kill the other shifter like this, with Deke helpless and defenseless. She
didn’t want to see Taggart like that.

Hardly believing what she was
doing, she put herself between Taggart and the bloody, wheezing form of Deke.
Taggart growled at her in frustration and took a step to the side, meaning to
go around her, but she moved, interposing herself again between the two
combatants. Taggart could have simply knocked her aside, of course, and killed Deke
anyway, but he didn’t. She knew right then she felt something for the strange
bear shifter.

Behind her she heard a noise and
turned to see Deke become human again. Naked and ravaged, he was a pitiful
sight. She didn’t feel sorry for him, though.
I’ll make her mine
, he’d said. Fuck that. She just didn’t want
Taggart to be a cold-blooded murderer.

When she faced Taggart again, he
was Shifting, becoming human again, and then he was. Even more bloody and
ragged than before, he stood there staring at her, his deep chest working like
a bellows, and she couldn’t help but admire the way his eight-pack quivered
with his exertions. He doubled over, bracing his hands on his muscular thighs,
and took deep breaths.

“You shoulda let me kill him,” he
said. “He’ll just tell Kane where I am. They’ll come after me.” After a pause,
he added,
“Us.”

She felt a thrill at the word, but
she couldn’t have said why. “Let them,” she said, with more bravery than she
felt. “We’ll take them all on if we have to.”

“Bitch,” sputtered Deke behind her,
and she spun to see him spitting out a gob of bloody saliva. “You won’t take on
shit. The wrath of Black Valley is upon the two of ya. And after I’ve ripped
out your guts, Tag, what I’ll do to your mate will—”

He didn’t finish the sentence
because Taggart had loped over to him and smashed him across the face with a
giant fist. With a snarl, Deke slumped to the grass, unconscious.

Alice breathed out a sigh of
relief. “He’s really an asshole, isn’t he?” When Taggart just stood there
staring down at his enemy, she approached him, gently, and, hardly daring to
believe her own gall, reached out and squeezed his arm. It was so thick and
firm she couldn’t believe it. “Are they all that bad?” she asked.

He nodded his head, just once.
“That’s why I’m leaving,” he said. Slowly, he craned his head to look at her,
and she saw deep emotions pool in his eyes. Longing, not for her, but for
something more elusive, maybe. Freedom, she thought, but she could be wrong.
But something. That feeling hit her like a fist in the gut, but somehow it was
a welcome feeling, a warm one. It drew her to him.

“I’ve lived my life in shadow,” he
said. “For once I want to feel the sun.”

She knew he didn’t mean that
literally. He only meant he wanted out of a life of ignorance and hate. At
least, she thought that’s what he meant.

She took his hand in hers. His was
huge and warm and calloused, and it dwarfed hers, but she let him lift it to
her lips and kiss it, then squeeze it firmly, but gently.

“Me, too,” she said. As she said
it, she felt tears sting her eyes and a lump form in her throat. “Me, too.”