Bearing It All (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (7 page)

“Why won’t you guys ever use the feeder I have? Why does it always have to be beetles? The black ones stink.” I let out a puff of air and was pretty happy that I didn’t smell any beer on my breath.

That was a good sign I was going to be hangover free. The last thing in the world I need when I’m getting two hours of sleep instead of my normal eight-to-ten is a dull throb in the back of my skull.

I waited for a second to see if either of the birds was going to answer me, but neither did. It’s hard to tell when something on your windowsill is a neighbor, and when it’s actually just a bird.

One of them looked at me, cocked her head to the side and chirped. When I asked if I knew her, she hopped past the larger starling. When he dropped the beetle, presumably to go in for another peck, she grabbed it and flew off.

That’s when it hit me – I hadn’t gone running in way, way too long. Not like jogging. I do that three times a week. I mean skin running.

Hopping out of bed, I twisted back and forth a couple times, then bent over backward almost double. My back gave out a series of delightfully relieving pops.

I pushed open my apartment’s bedroom window. This side of my apartment faced east into the mountain woods that surrounded Jamesburg. I’ve always loved skin-running, even though lately I hadn’t done it very much.

Something about stripping off all my clothes – and as much as I love my pajamas, feeling the wind all over me is twice as good. Running around free with someone else? Three or four times as good. Easily.

Just thinking about it got me to grinning and then of course it made me blush because I’m me. I can wrap my legs around a big, strong bear’s waist, but when I’m alone in my apartment taking my clothes off, I’m easy to embarrass. Makes sense, right?

As soon as that first breeze hit my nose, the first cool whiff of early spring, I immediately forgot all about being embarrassed. Three seconds later, give or take, I was on the ground outside of my window, crouched down.

I closed my eyes. The fur squeezing out of my pores tickled like hell, like it always does. I had a quick roll in the dewy grass, shook out my long, red coat and stretched my back.

Downward dog
, I thought, stretching my paws out in front of me and relishing the grass against the pads of my feet.
More like downward fox, I guess
.

Through the forest I went, off like a shot. As I circled a tree, some cool dirt pushed between my toes. I grabbed a root with my teeth, yanked on it some and took off again.

The deeper I went into the woods, the deeper my thoughts went into my own head.

Why don’t I do this every day? I’d be the calmest fox in the whole state
, I thought. And it was true – whenever I ran, things just rolled off my back. I figured things out, it all started making sense.

And then, of course, my thoughts turned to Crag.

How was he the way he was? In those precious few moments we were together I didn’t feel anything but warmth from him. Even in those blissful seconds before I pulled away when he had a handful of my hair and he was ordering me around and...

Just thinking about it started getting me all worked up, which is a really, really bad idea when hopping between rocks over a roaring creek.

I wheeled to a stop, putting on the brakes just as I came to my favorite place in the forest – maybe in the whole world. It isn’t much to look at, but there’s this part of the forest where the trees break away overlooking a creek. On this creek, which kind of meanders, but also has some quicker-moving places where the water swirls around rocks that have been there for who-knows how long.

But, hanging above the creek is this little outcropping of rocks that I like to sit on. Have since I was a little cub. Whenever something bad happened, even the really silly bad stuff that little girls think is super serious but no one else on earth thinks twice about.

I remember one time that I was out here, running around. It’s funny, but there isn’t a shred of my being that doesn’t remember. It was Tuesday, the eighteenth of March. Two days after my birthday, which I had at the bouncy-house place in the nearest town big enough to have one. I was in third grade, and my heart broke right down the middle.

Chad Pensworth. His parents and my parents were good friends – the sort of friends that adults invite over when they need to spend time with other adults. Anyway, we’d always been around each other. He had the deepest, weirdest looking blue eyes that went just perfectly with his sharp, lupine features.

That boy was the only wolf I ever loved. Anyway, I passed him a note just after lunch. All it said was ‘do you want to be my boyfriend?’ and had a checkbox for yes and one for no.

Just thinking back about it makes me feel a little stupid, but the next time I saw Chad, I was sorta blushing and excited but he walked straight past me.

Turns out, he thought the note came from a
different
girl who he actually liked.

I was crushed. Like, absolutely, horribly, curl-up-in-a-ball crushed.

First thing I did was run out here and sit on this exact rock.

I scratched the back of my head. Staring down into the meandering creek, I couldn’t help but notice how tired I looked. Even all foxed-out, my eyes didn’t have their normal glitter. Could’ve been how I’d been thinking about Reid the night before... or it could’ve been – and more likely was – that “the night before” had lasted until like four hours before my hindquarters hit the rock.

Some starlings flitted past and chortled at each other. I giggled, thinking about the beetle-stealing starling from my windowsill, and I just jumped.

The second I hit the cool water, I came alive.

Rolling over and over, I dove to the bottom, and wrapped my paws around the rocky bed before pushing back up.

My head broke through the surface of the water and I threw my hair back and forth. Off in the distance, a stick broke and starlings sang. As I sat there, treading water, I noticed a squirrel under a pine picking at the nuts inside a fallen pine cone and watched him for a moment.

I wondered if that was Eustace, about to ask me for another date, and I giggled to myself.

Down I went again, so free, so wonderfully free. I had to work soon, yeah, but right then it didn’t matter. That time on the way back up, I opened my mouth and let the chilly water fill my mouth. I spat it in a fountain when I came back up for air.

That was the second time I heard a crack.

“Is someone there?” I asked the mostly empty woods. It was so early that I doubted any other half-animals were running around. “Hello?”

No answer came, but there was another crackle and some ruffling, like leaves were disturbed. “Come on,” I said. “Who’s there? This is getting old. What’s the point of scaring me?” I gulped.

I wish Crag were here
, I thought. Then I promptly chastised myself for thinking that. And
then
I thought it again.

Stupidest thing in the world. I shook my head, and then looked in the direction of the noise as I scratched a sudden itch on my side with one of my back paws.

Dragging myself out of the water, I shook dry and lay down on my rock outcropping. I sniffed the air, hoping for a hint of whatever was out there, but got nothing – not even a whiff. Overhead, there were no birds and even the little squirrel fighting the pinecone had vanished.

Slowly, I scanned the tree line. There was just nothing to see. Nothing to smell. I spun in place, search the woods on that side, too.

Another crack came, this one louder though. And right after, there came a grunt, and a groan.

The head that poked out of the forest was really,
really
not what I expected.

Round, wild-eyed and ferocious, the bear I saw was a golden color, like leather that was half tanned.

Patterns ran around his eyes, and down both sides of his neck, then around his shoulders. He shambled out of the woods, into the clearing. The way he looked at me felt familiar. I cocked my head to the side.

Before he noticed me, I stared for a long second at the huge monster, drinking him in. Every inch of him was covered in the same shaggy, gold fur, and every bit of him trembled with strength. He took a step, then another, and the whole world seemed to tremble with his power.

My mouth just hung open, my eyes glued onto him.

And then he turned to me.

For a second – a short, terrible, horrifying second – our eyes locked. He tilted his head to one side, and let out a short grunt. It was like he was talking to me, but didn’t quite get it right.

Something about this bear was thrilling and exciting, but something
else
about him screamed danger.

I backed up one step and then another, until my hind leg was hanging off my rock. I wanted to turn and run, but at the same time, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. It was incredibly stupid not to find the nearest hill and run down it, but I just couldn’t stop watching him.

Out here, there’s no telling if the bear you’re looking at is a wild, savage, half-crazy
actual
bear, or your neighbor out for a morning jog.

With tattoos around his eyes, of course, this was no garden variety zoo-escapee, but I knew for sure I’d never seen this guy around these parts before. And in Jamesburg, new faces were usually, if not bad news, at least not what you wanted to encounter in the middle of the woods.

By the way this guy was looking around I could tell he wasn’t exactly familiar with the area.

He let out another short, half-roar. He wasn’t making any moves toward me, but still, I felt threatened.

Something inside me burned hard and hot and deep. The stupidest thing in the world wasn’t that I was sitting there, perched on a rock above a creek staring at a bear.

Nope.

It was that the whole time, all I was thinking was how much I wished it were Crag.

My heart skipped a beat. Was it? Was it him? No way. How could it be? How could he possibly have found me? There was just no way. But those lines around his eyes made my core clench and relax in a way that I hadn’t felt before last night.

The bear took a step forward and turned his half-roar into a full one. His eyes were locked right in the middle of my forehead.

I looked back and forth for a place to go.

The instant the giant beast ran for me, stomping from rock to rock across the creek, I was off like a shot. I looked back to see him lumbering forward. With a shake of his huge, mighty head, the bear started trotting after me, and then broke into a full-on run.

As he charged, I swear he was saying something – calling out – but my mind was just a terrified jumble.

Getting away from a bear? Easy enough, I guess, as long as there’s somewhere to hide, or a tree to scamper up, or a trashcan to knock over and tempt them with. But getting away from a charging bear when there
isn’t
any of that stuff?

My lungs started to burn with exertion, which takes
quite
a bit of doing. He just wouldn’t stop though. The bear wasn’t close, but I also wasn’t losing him. It was just like a scene in one of those slasher movies where the mask-wearing villain just kinda walked after the shrieking, running heroine and somehow still caught her.

I shook my head and tried to push forward, but the edge of the forest was almost in front of me. Inside the woods I sort of had a chance, but out in the open? No way.

But then I had an idea.

Trash can.

In one last, stupid burst of energy, I made a break for the community garbage can behind my apartment.
Please someone have thrown grilling trash in here. Some dirty foil, some old hotdogs, something, just... please...

I had no idea what the hell I was doing, but it was my only chance.

For the first time in our little chase, I was losing ground. My lungs were just on fire. The muscles in my legs and my arms and my back all ached like absolute hell. I chanced a look back. That bear was
hungry
. He had those tendrils of saliva hanging from his jaws. If I didn’t find something for this thing to eat, I had a feeling he wasn’t looking for a girlfriend, he was looking for dinner.

He seemed to hesitate slightly at the edge of the forest, but he couldn’t resist chasing me. I barked a couple of times, just little
yip-yip
sounds to irritate him. He wasn’t giving up.

The hundred yards to the picnic area seemed like the longest run of my life, and by the time I made it, I knew I couldn’t go much further.

I rolled up in a ball and threw myself straight into the side of the garbage can. My paws hit the ground and I strained like hell, but I got it over.

Two watermelon rinds. That’s it. That’s all the luck I had.

Sniffing the air, the huge, tattooed bear stopped.

I was breathing so hard I had started to wheeze. An asthmatic fox. Yeah, that’s me in a nutshell.

Backing away, I watched him approach the trashcan and sit down in front of it, then start batting the rinds back and forth between his huge hands. He looked so pleased that I just sat and watched him.

He let out a contended roar and picked one up. One big bite removed whatever shred of fruit was left. The bear flipped back onto his feet and shook his coat, then – faster than anything I’ve ever seen – dove straight at me.

I tried to run again, but it was no good. Wide open? Already tired? Nope, not happening.

A fence right in front of me just made me give up. Normally I’d just skip over it, just run right up. But there wasn’t any point. He’d just barrel right through.

“Told you I’d see you tomorrow,” a voice said, behind me.

No fuckin’ way
, I thought.

I was shivering, twitching, shaking with fear. My lips were pulled back over my teeth in a silent panic, but when I looked back, I could
not
believe my eyes.

Standing there, with just his hand to hide himself from me and everyone else – and not doing an incredibly good job at it, honestly – was Crag.

“If you’re embarrassed, you don’t need to bother changing back,” he said. “You’re beautiful just like that, too.” His voice was like nectar dripping down the inside of my lips.