Bears of Burden: STERLING

by Candace Ayers

  Walking past her desk when everyone else's head was bent to their reading was sheer agony, but he had to do it. He slid her graded assignment back to her, purposefully disrupting her line of sight, before moving on. When she overturned it to read his 'additional notes', she would find his true message:

  Gosling Park. Sundown. Full moon tonight.

  She wouldn't be able to ignore or mistake his meaning. He knew she felt it as strongly as he did: the tidal pull in her blood, the heightened senses, the raw and itching skin that yearned to be split wide open so that the pure and feral form beneath it could emerge. She would meet him there, he had no doubt.

  And then… what? They would resume their unlikely relationship? Kira had been right to call him out. Her instincts about Donovan's own feelings did her credit, and his dismissal had caused her to doubt herself at a time when he should have been helping her build confidence. It was a necessary evil, he knew, but that didn't make him feel any less the villain. He had already damned himself with a kiss.

  He had determined that Gosling Park was a halfway point between his apartment and the campus dormitories, and within easy walking distance of both. He had changed here a time or two, and knew it to be forested and fairly secluded—a lack of play structures or paved paths meant that it was rarely frequented, and even the park rangers charged with maintenance didn't appear to see the point. There was a duck pond on the property that a migrating flock of geese had taken to calling a temporary home; their enduring presence, year after year, gave the park its namesake.

  He stood on the park lawn now, a breeze ruffling his windbreaker, and watched the figure slowly making her way toward him. She carried a duffle bag—good. It appeared she had been listening to him that night at his apartment despite the enormous elephant in the room.

  "We'll go into the woods here. About five minutes," he said as he turned and started walking. A few more strides and Kira fell into step beside him. "There's a glade that the moon hits just right."

  "What happens when the moon hits just right?" she asked as they passed the outer trees and lost themselves in the woods.

  "Everything gets a lot easier," Donovan responded.

  They found the glade right where he had left it, although he would spare her his cringe-worthy joke. The night around them was silent, as if every living thing was holding its breath. The sun was down now completely, and the moon was rising over the canopy of the trees.

  Donovan stripped his jacket off as Kira dropped her duffle bag. "Stash it," he said without looking. "Anywhere that's easily accessible, but that someone out walking around won't readily find. A bush will work."

  "Do we…?" The girl trailed off as Donovan pulled his shirt over his head without a second thought. "Are we just… getting naked, then?"

  "Unless you want your clothes ruined." He turned back around, and her eyes cut away from him quickly as she grabbed up her duffle bag. "Feeling shy?" he called after her as she disappeared behind a tree. "That's not the Bentley I know!"

  "I hate you!" she shouted over her shoulder.

  "We both know that's not true," Donovan murmured below his breath. The thirsting question of whether or not Kira still had feelings for him had been satisfied. There was no light out save for the moon, and she could still barely bring herself to look at him. Then again, maybe that had something to do with the fact that he was half-naked.

  Donovan pushed his jeans off his hips until he stood fully naked in the middle of the clearing save for his boxers. He let the gentle moonlight filter down from the night sky and spill like milk across his bare skin. He could feel its pull on him much more strongly now. Something else pulled at his awareness, though, and he returned his attention to the tree that Kira had disappeared behind. She moved out slowly from behind it, and his breath caught at what he saw.

  Kira had successfully concealed herself behind one of the taller bushes, but there was no disguising the fact that her shoulders were bare. His eyes traveled downward helplessly, but the rest of her remained hidden. He saw her clutch her shoulders against the cold and knew her arms were crossed.

  "What now?" she called from across the clearing. "Do I go first?"

  "Do you feel it?" Donovan asked her. He saw her nod of confirmation. "Then we go together on my count. Ready?"

  "No," she moaned woefully.

  "Three… two…"

  The one was swallowed back down into his throat as his vocal cords stretched and shrank. His skin shivered beneath the moon, and dark fur erupted down his arms and sprang up along his chest. He eased out of his boxers as he fell to all fours, shaking himself to dispense what remained of his clothing. The change, abetted by exposure to the moon, was seamless; it was over in less than a minute. Donovan turned his lupine head and gazed down his snout in the direction that Kira had disappeared. Maybe he should have let her go first. If anything went wrong with her own change, he wouldn't be able to shift back to help…

  But his innumerable worries were put to rest when the bush rustled, and a tentative foreleg stepped out into the moonlight, eventually carrying the rest of a she-wolf into view with it. He could tell by her all-too-human hesitancy that Kira was completely in her right mind, if a little disoriented by finding herself inhabiting a new body. Like her human counterpart, the wolf was sleek and beautiful; had Donovan a canine's predilections, he was certain he would have pursued her to the ends of the earth and carved his teeth into every rival he met along the way.

  He waved his tail like a playful flag in greeting, and the she-wolf raised her head from where she held it sunk between her shoulders. Her body language was all wrong for a wolf, but he could see that she was coming around. He feinted left, then right, then shot off across the glade. He heard clumsy feet beginning to pick up the pace as she followed him, and soon they were running, side-by-side, through the midnight trees.

  They ran for what felt like miles, doubling back frequently when the forested terrain of the park threatened to run out. Donovan took them along all of his favorite routes, and even branched out to find a new one—they skirted the pond, deliberately loping past the slumbering geese until they had all of the birds flapping in a whirlwind of feathers and honks as they rushed for the safety of the water. Donovan wanted to throw his head back and howl—something he had never dared do before—and he knew Kira would join in with him if he did. But he couldn't give over to his joy, no matter how much fun they were having. It had to come to an end.

  They made their way back to the clearing hours later after having run the better part of the night into the ground beneath their paws. Donovan was already shifting himself upright out of habit; he grabbed hold of a tree before propelling himself into the glade proper, his exhausted wolf's pants giving over to peels of deep human laughter.

  "That was—"

  He turned back around to find Kira standing upright behind him, her long, bare legs twined together mid-step. She froze when she saw him looking, but Donovan wasn't faring much better. He was absolutely riveted by the sight of her. Though the shadows from the shifting trees above climbed her bare body like clutching, modest fingers, there was no hiding her womanly nakedness from him. He could see every curve, every dip and swell—everything he had felt beneath him for that fleeting moment in his office, now laid bare.

  As she stepped into the glade, the moon hit her.

  Just right.

  CHAPTER 10

  For a moment, Kira thought she had done something wrong. The way that Donovan was looking at her made her nervous that she had. Were her bones set right? Was a part of her still hairy? Oh God, had she forgotten to shave her legs?

  Her professor advanced toward her, and her pulse kicked into overdrive. The way he moved… there was still so much of the wolf in him it nearly left her breathless. All that coiled power, that predatory stalk, that unleashed heat in his gaze…

  He kept walking as if he perceived no obstacle in his path, and Kira retreated out of necessity. She wanted to protest how overassertive he was being,
but she couldn't find the words. She fell back another step, and then another, until a final stride from Sawyer Donovan carried her back up against the trunk of a tree and plunged them both in shadows. There was no light to illuminate their transgression as his mouth collided with hers.

  Her body reacted to him instantly without her mind's consent. She was confused, flustered, and maybe even a little angry that he was doing this to her now after his rejection of her feelings, but her body… her body cast itself toward the burning heat of his. She came unmoored from the tree, and Sawyer's hand gripped her flank possessively and shoved her back into it. His hard, naked body pinned her between her legs, and Kira scarcely felt the abrasive bark of the tree digging into her back then; her thoughts were completely wiped out, and she felt numb to everything save the intensity of his kiss and the thrill of their joining.

  After the build-up of all that tension this past week, the release felt extraordinary. His hands burned imprints into her wherever he touched; his tongue pushed its way into her mouth and swept against hers until he had her panting and moaning against him with mounting need. He must have imagined this moment playing out between them at least as often as she had, and now there was nothing to keep them apart them—no desk, no classroom, no student-teacher restrictions, no clothing…

  "Kira," Sawyer panted her name as he drew back. She moved her head to pursue him, wanting his lips on hers again, but he kept her pinned firmly against the tree. "Kira. There's something I have to tell you."

  "Please, Sawyer," she begged. She didn't even know what she was pleading with him for. She watched his eyes fall to her exposed neck, to the bite mark that had scarred but never completely healed. The expression that passed across his face then was enough to silence her. She had never seen a man in so much pain.

  "I did this to you," he said tersely. "It was me, Kira. I'm the one that bit you."

  The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself.

  Granted, Donovan should have stopped himself moments before, the minute he saw Kira Bentley's glistening naked figure and the notion came into his head to do something about it. Now, hindsight couldn't help him: he had the young woman, his student, wedged beneath his own naked body, and his desire for her was in rigid evidence. She gazed back at him with eyes that he would have likened to a doe's had he not known her to be otherwise. Her own arousal was apparent in her expanded pupils; her ragged breathing; her plump lips reddened from the fervor of their kissing.

  But her breathless expression was rapidly changing. Confusion, as he watched her brow knit, then horrified understanding passed across her beautiful face, and as Donovan watched her, he felt as if his heart could break. His own pain in that moment was nothing compared to hers, he knew—after all they had been through together, and all the help he had offered… he was the shadow that chased her in her nightmares, the phantom whose slip in self-control had doomed her to at least half an animal's existence. He gripped her bare shoulders, eyes desperately searching hers. He should never have let his feelings for her escalate; now that they had, he had to tell her.

  "Kira, I'm the wolf that—"

  Even his heightened hearing and reflexes couldn't alert him to the threat of her hand whistling through the night air toward him. The flat of her palm struck him, and fingernails flintier than the average human's raked across the side of his face like talons. Donovan jerked his head away in the aftermath of the attack and doubled over. She hadn't raised blood, but god damn, it hurt.

  "No." Her voice quavered. "You… I… oh God, what am I doing?"

  He glanced up and watched the backs of her bare legs retreat as she moved away from him. His eyes climbed her figure upward, and… well, this was no time to enjoy the view. Kira was sprinting back behind the trees and out of sight to gather her clothes. He had minutes, maybe only seconds, to find the words to get her to stay.

  But maybe he had already said enough.

  "Kira." He lumbered after her. His predatory grace was gone, replaced by clumsy human strides. The girl glanced up as he joined her around the backside of the bushes and clutched her clothes tightly to her chest.

  "Don't come near me!" she exclaimed. "Turn around!"

  Donovan froze; then, like an animal more domestic than he actually was, he followed orders and turned away. He didn't want to attempt a conversation with her this way, but he could see he had no choice. He heard the rustle of clothing as she hastened to get dressed.

  "Kira, I'm sorry." His voice caught on the words. "I let things get too far. I knew I was responsible, and I wanted to help you. I knew you wouldn't let me near you if I told you the truth."

  "Was that near enough for you?" Kira spat back at him furiously. Donovan cringed at the implication of her words. "You led me on! God, why would you even…"

  He glanced helplessly over his shoulder, and saw that she was clothed. More than that, he saw that she was shaking—either with fury, or with some other powerful emotion he couldn't think to put a name to. He made to move to her side, but Kira turned away from him.

  "Don't come near me," she repeated. "Just… don't."

  Donovan complied with her request. He stayed in place, even though his every instinct screamed at him not to give her up so easily. She was pulling away from him, and the distance that grew between them with each passing second already felt larger than what he had been forced to surmount at the start of their doomed relationship.

  "I should have left you alone." The words were his, barely audible despite the perfect silence of the woods. Kira darted a glance at him, but Donovan stayed where he was.

  "I have to go," she mumbled. She shouldered her duffle bag and turned to make her way swiftly across the field, back toward the light of civilization and the tamer trees of campus. Once he was certain she was out of earshot, Donovan turned and drove his fist into a nearby tree. There was an explosion of wood chips and a shower of bark, but he pulled back before he did irreversible damage to the landscape; still, his knuckles were bloody, and he left a dent where no human fist should have been able to.

  He didn't expect to see her in class tomorrow.

  #

  After Professor Donovan's moonlit confession, she didn't go to class. She couldn't bring herself to go anywhere near the English building all week and risk seeing him. Maybe that made her a coward.

  Or maybe it just made her royally pissed.

  There was too much to think about, and it made Kira's head spin every time she attempted to mentally scratch the surface of their fucked up situation. Thankfully, with the introduction of her new carnivorous diet, the headaches that had always plagued her before had subsided—in their place, she now had Sawyer Donovan to contend.

  He had bitten her. Him. She probably should have realized it sooner. What were the odds of there being another werewolf running rampant around campus? To think that after all his lessons, all his talk of controlling the change, that he was the one…

  His interest in her made all too much sense now that she knew the truth. He was only trying to help her because he had caused her problem to begin with. There was no deeper connection between them outside of the one he had forced on her by transferring his affliction. She was completely deluded in her feelings for him: not only was Sawyer Donovan and asshole and a liar and a hypocrite, he was a complete life-ruiner.

  So why couldn't she stop thinking about that moment in the woods.

  "Ugh." Kira overturned herself and wrapped her quilted comforter more tightly around her until she risked cutting off circulation completely. She was alone in her dorm room for the evening, thankfully—she had unexpectedly grown claws earlier while she was working on statistics homework, and she had consigned herself to bed to weather through the unexpected change. It was the first time since her full moon out with Professor Donovan that she had lost control like this, and she had a feeling thoughts about said professor were to blame for her lapse in concentration.

  That, or it was the early September rain pouring down outs
ide her window. If Donovan had done one thing for her, he had changed her way of thinking, at least when it came to matters of biology. An unexpected cold turn in the weather likely meant that the wolf inside her was trying to force its way out now to ensure she stayed warm. It was strange, but she was starting to think of her lycanthropy as less of a curse, and as more of an… unexpected development. She had managed to survive puberty back in high school, and she was feeling more and more confident that she would find a way to survive this.

  Her confidence plummeted the moment she heard a key turn in the lock. Kira shot out of bed, yanking the comforter with her as she dove for the cover of her closet just in time. The dormitory door swung open, and her roommate, Shannon—who was supposed to be home for the weekend—came trudging in with two fast food bags clutched in her fists and her keychain hanging between her teeth.

  "Surprise! I decided not to go home this weekend after all. I knew you'd be in bed already," Shannon mock-chastised as she yanked the door closed behind her. "Here, I brought you a veggie burger. I'm going to unpack if you want to cue up Netflix—"

  "Can't!" Kira shouted from behind her closet door. She was manically pulling clothes off their hangers and jamming them into her duffle bag; she barely even noticed what she was packing. She pulled her winter gloves on the second she located them; her elongated, claw-like fingers were uncomfortably cramped inside, but it was better than the alternative, which was Shannon actually seeing her hands. "Going out! Thanks for the burger!" Kira pulled one arm of her jacket on as she lugged herself and her bag toward the door. Shannon stepped aside quickly to avoid being barreled into.