So Much To Bear (A Werebear Erotic Romance) (8 page)

Jennifer moved around the oblivious
crowd, peering at the people of all ages who had assembled, trying
to figure out just what was going on. As her confusion and
apprehension mounted, she spotted Robert—and he spotted her at
almost the same moment, his eyes widening with alarm and surprise.
Robert slipped out of the crowd and grabbed her arm, pulling her
back and towards an alley nearby. “Jen!” Robert said, shaking his
head and staring at her wide-eyed. “I can’t believe it.” Jennifer
stared at Robert in confusion.

“What do you mean you can’t believe
it?” Robert shook his head again, looking at her as if she were a
ghost.

“Liam said you were dead—I—I had to
believe him, when no one could find you in the woods where we’d
been.” Jennifer staggered back from Robert, shocked by the slightly
accusing tone in Robert’s voice.

“Dead? Of course I’m not dead! I was
just…” she hesitated; she couldn’t tell anyone, even Robert, where
she had really been. “I was just lost in the woods. I was fine all
along.” Robert shrugged.

“Liam said he’d seen you killed
himself. He said there was a beast in the woods, and he’d tried to
fight it with his knife to keep you from being hurt by it, but it
injured him and then killed you. He’s been telling everyone who
will listen that the beast killed you.” Jennifer shook her head in
bewilderment, trying to think of how Liam could have even concocted
such a ridiculous story—or how he could have been believed. But
then, she thought, she’d been missing for a day and two nights; she
knew that she was fine, but how could anyone in the town have known
that?

“It’s not true at all—there was no
beast, I was never in any real danger—Robert—” The crowd shifted as
Jennifer struggled to explain what had happened without revealing
Damon’s existence, without putting the man who had gone to such
pains to protect her from Liam in danger. The mob of angry town
citizens swept past them, pulling Robert into their midst and
dragging Jennifer in their wake; Jennifer’s heart began to pound
even harder as she saw guns, knives, torches in the hands of people
she knew as the most mild-mannered of folk, their faces set in
angry lines.

The humming, muttering murmur of
discontent had risen into shouts and chants, and Jennifer wheeled
around, trying to figure out where the crowd was going; they were
heading out of town, clearly, headed for the woods. As she looked
around in panic, she caught sight of Liam and his father at the
back of the crowd, shouting encouragement for the rest of the
members of the mob; as the shouts filtered through her brain,
Jennifer realized with a shock that the mob was going after the
“beast” that Liam had claimed had killed her and injured him, that
they were whipped into a killing frenzy by the entitled brat and
his father. Jennifer’s throat was dry, but she called out, trying
to stop just a few of the people around her, trying to catch
anyone’s attention at all. “I’m not dead! I’m right here! I’m fine!
Please—please stop and let me explain what happened!” She shouted,
she screamed, but no one heard her; the mob marched relentlessly
forward, towards the forest that shielded Damon.

Jennifer’s eyes stung with tears and
her throat was tight from her shouts, from the panic that gripped
her. They were going after Damon. Her heart pounded in her chest.
The mob was in such a frenzy of rage that they wouldn’t stop until
they were all exhausted or until they found the “beast” that Liam
had identified as the cause of her death. “Liam is lying to you
all!” Jennifer screamed, even though she knew it was pointless,
that no one was willing to stop, or willing to even listen. They
were wrapped up, consumed with the business of being an angry
mob.

Jennifer stopped in her tracks, letting
her neighbors, people she had known for her entire life, push past
her, flowing around her without seeing her as they made their way
into the woods. Jennifer wondered just how good of a description
Liam had given the people of the town that he’d managed to convince
to go on this crazy hunt for Damon—if he had been too scared to
really take in the man’s features, if he had been able to credit
the fact that he had seen a man turn into a bear. Her thoughts
swirled around in her head, and Jennifer felt torn between the
desire to cry and the need to do something—anything she could—to
protect Damon from the mob that was headed for him.

Before she could consciously make up
her mind, Jennifer found herself walking into the woods, picking a
different path from the one the members of the town had taken. She
consulted her memory and tried to figure out how she could skirt
around the mob that was out to avenge her—not knowing or even
caring anymore that there was nothing to avenge. They just knew
that a “beast” had supposedly killed one of their own, and had
injured Liam—nothing more than that. Jennifer thought about the
trek she had made from Damon’s cave and consulted her memories of
the woods as best as she could—trying to remember anything that
might give her a quicker path through the forest. She knew
instinctively that Liam would have them take the course that the
group had taken the night before last; that would be the only path
he knew—and from there they would scour the woods to find Damon.
But Jennifer at least knew where Damon’s cave actually was; she
didn’t have to hunt for it. She recognized one of the trails she
and Damon had taken the day before while they were completing his
daily chores and followed it, still able to hear the distant shouts
of the mob as she skirted around them, walking as quickly as she
could.

One benefit she had, Jennifer thought
as she jogged along the path that her feet found, was that being by
herself she could move faster than the big group. They would have
to shift numbers around, forming a line to get through some of the
denser tree stands and pausing to consult with Liam or
Robert.

Gradually the sounds of the mob
retreated behind her as Jennifer pulled ahead, panting with
exertion but determined to warn Damon of the danger coming straight
for him. It was only a matter of time before the angry mob found
his cliffs; while she had been lost in the forest, it wasn’t that
big, and they would eventually figure out where the werebear was
hidden deep in the green gloom. If she could just get to him in
time, she might be able to find a way to convince Damon to leave
the woods, to take shelter in the next town, leaving the members of
her own community baffled at their failure to find the “beast” Liam
had told them about.

Jennifer was out of breath, her head
spinning as she came to the cliff that housed Damon’s cave. She
inhaled as deeply as she could, trying to slow her panting and the
rapid clamor of her heart enough to keep her hands and feet steady
for the climb. She could hear the mob in the distance behind her
and knew that time was absolutely of the essence. Jennifer took
another deep breath and began to climb, biting her lip as her eyes
stung with angry tears at the thought of what Liam had done. If she
had ever had any remotely friendly feelings towards the young man
due to his friendship with Robert, those feelings were gone for
good. It was clear to her as she made her way up the cliff that
Liam had taken his humiliation at Damon’s hands as an insult, and
he was determined to see the werebear dead rather than deal with
the fact that he’d been beaten down for his rude, entitled, and
aggressive behavior. Jennifer had known that Liam had a bullying
streak, but the fact that he was willing to whip up a mob to kill
one man for embarrassing him showed the depths of his real
cruelty.

Jennifer came to the entrance of the
cave, still breathless, and wrenched the curtain aside. “Damon!”
she called out, coughing as the shout made her dry throat tighten.
Jennifer peered into the dimly-lit cave and realized in an instant
that Damon was gone—that he was completely absent from its cozy
confines. Jennifer’s heart began to pound again and panicked tears
welled up in her eyes. Where could the stupid bear-man be? Jennifer
bit her bottom lip to forestall the sobs that welled up in her
chest, inhaling and exhaling slowly through her nose. She had to
think. Where would Damon be, if not in his cave?

Their tasks of the day before came into
Jennifer’s mind with a sudden burst of clarity. Of course. Damon
was not the type of person to spend the day moping at home just
because Jennifer had left; he was a good woodsman—he would be out
checking his snares, going about his daily routine, taking care of
his affairs the same way that he would any other day. He would be
out in the woods, along the meandering track and trail that they
had followed the day before. Jennifer felt a low, deep dread; they
had wandered through the woods in such a circuitous route that she
could have sworn she could never have retraced their steps even if
she hadn’t been in a state of panic at the fact of an angry mob out
to kill the man.

Calm down, Jennifer,
she told herself firmly.
Panic isn’t going to get you where you need to go. You need
to find Damon and you need to warn him. You’ve lived near these
woods your entire life. Surely you can figure out where his spots
are.
She took struggling deep breaths to
calm herself and began to climb down from the cave, looking around
her and up at the sky. It had been about this time of the morning
when she and Damon had set out the day before. It couldn’t possibly
be that hard to find his trails in the woods. She had walked them,
she had followed him, and deep down some part of her brain had to
have recorded landmarks, little differences that would lead her
straight to him in time to warn him of the mob headed his
way.

Jennifer let her feet lead her away
from the cliffs, into the woods away from the mob. She acted on
instinct, not stopping to question how she knew where to go. She
spotted a cluster of the berry bushes that Damon had stripped for
her breakfast and peered into the foliage, finding the particular
ones that he had stripped. She followed the trail by muscle memory,
breathing in the air deeply as if to track him by scent, as if she
had the same preternatural abilities that the werebear might have.
She knew she didn’t, but by the same token, Jennifer felt as if
their liaison of the night before had somehow honed her knowledge
of him, as if she could somehow feel his presence in the deep,
quiet calm of the forest. She would find him. She had
to.

Jennifer came to the first of the
snares and stopped; it was empty when she carefully pulled back the
foliage that concealed it—but she couldn’t know if that was because
Damon had already taken whatever animal he had trapped, or if he
had simply—as he had mentioned sometimes happened—not been
successful. She followed the trace to the next of the snares
quickly, thinking that she would either find him or find some
evidence that would indicate whether or not he had been there. The
next snare, several yards from the first, was just as empty, and
Jennifer groaned with frustrated dread, closing her eyes for a
moment as if to sense the man she was searching for. She went to
the next snare, further away than the first two, and once more
found no sign of the man she had come to feel so strongly connected
to.

In desperation, Jennifer went to the
river, thinking that perhaps Damon was still washing his clothes,
or that he was retrieving the ones he had washed the day before.
Did Damon wash his clothes every day, in small loads, or did he
only do it when he had enough clothes to merit the chore? Jennifer
ground her teeth in frustration and rising panic as she came out of
a stand of trees near where she had harvested the greens and
berries for their repast the day before, only to find the area just
as vacant as the snares had been. “Damon!” she called, in as quiet
a voice as she could manage, desperation creeping up along her
spine. She couldn’t hear the mob; they might have simply gotten
lost or stalled in the woods, but something about the deep silence
of the forest around her told her that simply wasn’t the
case.

Jennifer scoured the area, finding the
empty clothes line and swallowing against the growing lump that
formed in her throat. Any minute now, she thought, she would find
him. She would run into Damon, and have the time to tell him that
the mob was after him, and they would run away together. Jennifer
checked the area where the bee hive was and still failed to find
him; she shook her head. He probably didn’t visit the hive very
often—he was a responsible denizen of the forest and wouldn’t raid
the bees more often than he needed to for something sweet. Jennifer
found herself climbing through parts of the woods she had never
been in, even in her circuitous route with Damon the day before,
climbing over felled trees, tripping over unseen stones as the
ground began to rise in a gradual slope.

As the loamy soil, fallen leaves, and
underbrush began to give way to more and more rock, Jennifer
realized that she was climbing up into a new set of cliffs. She was
so deep in the forest that she wasn’t even certain how far the town
was from where she found herself; she could hear the river, but the
disorientation of looking only for Damon, of not paying attention
to where she was, meant that she had no idea of where along the
river she had arrived. There was an angry rumble, a low grumbling
mutter, and Jennifer felt her heart pounding faster. The mob was
obviously close.