Bear Outlaw (She-Shifters of Hell's Corner Book 4)

by Candace Ayers

  When he vows to reach out to her through any means necessary… even calling her into his office at inconvenient hours and detaining her after class, what he isn’t planning on are his wolf’s strong insistence on his young protégé being his mate.

  As the full moon draws nearer, and student and professor find themselves reluctantly drawn to one another, can Sawyer fight his growing attraction to the one woman he knows he can't have? Can Kira, convince Sawyer to give in to forbidden passion, if only just this once?

  What will happen when Sawyer reveals the secret he has been guarding - that the date Kira was mysteriously bitten aligns a little too perfectly with his last blackout?

  1

  There were certain students who attracted notice.

  As a young male professor at Rider University, he had expected, even prepared, for this. It was something advisors went over discreetly, and something that was brought up again and again in staff meetings, though never expressly named. There will be students, went the school of thought, who you will want to look at more than the others. Don't look at them more than the others.

  Sawyer Donovan was looking at the girl strategically stationed in the back of his classroom toward the window. He had seen her around campus before now, in snatched moments when he shouldn't have been looking, but a man would have to be dead not to notice her: she was a natural blonde of average height, with long, loping legs and a devastatingly athletic body. She was a freshman, he knew, otherwise she wouldn't be in his class. He had noticed the way the male students perked up when she entered, late, and took a seat alone in the back. He had noticed the way they deflated, too, upon being passed over.

  There was no denying that the girl—she had responded to the name Bentley, Kira when he had read it off his chart—was beautiful. Donovan was certain he was the only (relatively) young male in the classroom glad to have her sequestered in the back. It meant he wouldn't have to look at her as often. It meant he wouldn't have to notice.

  Because there was something else about Kira Bentley that drew his attention to her, something that he wanted to ignore, desperately. Feelings of sexual attraction he could deal with, had dealt with, before—but what attracted Professor Donovan to his student was something very different. Something horrible.

  He recognized the bags beneath her eyes. He recognized the weight loss; the unwashed hair; the woodland scratches she tried to conceal beneath her sweatshirt, but made themselves apparent every time she shifted and her sleeves rode up her wrists or her hood fell back from her neck. If he hadn't noticed the little details already, he would have sensed her in an instant: her pheromones were, to him, nearly overpowering in the small room.

  He didn't remember this about her before the break. When he had passed her then in the cafeteria, or on the footbridge as strangers, he had not smelled a fellow wolf.

  She had been bitten. Likely in the past month. The physical signs seemed to indicate that she had already undergone her first change.

  The timing was too perfect, and dread pooled like cold standing water in the pit of his stomach. But Donovan had a class to teach, the subject of which was decidedly not werewolves. He turned from the rows of expectant eyes to write his name on the board.

  "I'm Professor Donovan," he introduced himself to the class. "And this semester I'll be your guide through English 101."

  "Aren't you a bit young to be a professor?" a female student more toward the front asked without putting her hand up. It was usually the first question to be voiced.

  "If you'll turn to page two of the syllabus," Donovan continued. "You'll find that I have already addressed this concern. I turned twenty-eight in December, for those interested. Belated birthday presents are welcome, though they will have no effect on your final grade."

  A few of his students groaned, at least half of them in response to his deliberately lame attempt at humor. Donovan had a great sense of humor, he just enjoyed hearing their vocalizations of pain more.

  Kira Bentley said nothing.

  "You'll notice on that same page that I outline my philosophy on tardiness," Donovan continued, raising his eyes from beneath his brows as he continued to track the girl's nonresponse. "Lateness by my students will not be excused. Starting today."

  Bentley raised her brown-gold eyes from a continued spot of interest on her desk to meet his stare; when she saw the direction he was gazing, a muscle in her face tightened almost imperceptibly. Her look of veiled distress her cheekbones more pronounced. Leave it to the young and beautiful to make the effects of the curse look good.

  Donovan spent the remainder of the hour going over the rest of the syllabus. It was an easy first week for his students; it should have been an easy first week for him. But nothing about English 101 was going to be easy now that there was another wolf in the room. He would have preferred the proverbial elephant at this point.

  The analog clock wound down the hour, and his students rose, grappling with their books and backpacks and putting out hands to introduce themselves to one another. Kira Bentley didn't take part in the overtures, and instead moved along the back wall in an attempt to slip quietly out the door.

  He was half-tempted to ignore her. He should just let her go, and figure things out on her own the way he had. He could be lenient with her attendance, even her grades, to help make navigating her newfound shifterhood easier; he could remain a removed presence all the while. He should just stay out of it.

  But he couldn't. He had pursued a career as an educator because he believed in taking a positive, active role in the development of his students' lives. He couldn't let the one who might need him most slip out of reach because confronting her would be uncomfortable.

  He put up a hand to her, and Bentley froze in the doorway as if she had been expecting it. He feigned interest with his seating chart as she approached his desk.

  "Miss Bentley, I believe I mentioned my policy on tardiness?"

  "It won't happen again, professor." She cast her eyes from him and looked longingly toward the exit. Donovan sat back and removed his glasses, retiring them to the far corner of his desk.

  "Rough night?" he asked her.

  The girl bristled, before shooting a quick glance around her to see if anyone had heard him. With the exception of a few stragglers, the classroom had nearly completely emptied by this point. "Excuse me?"

  "I'm intimating that you were out all night," he said patiently. Kira Bentley's eyes narrowed, flashing at him like twin burnished coins, and he thought he could see some of the wolf rearing up inside her.

  "I don't smoke. I don't drink. And I would appreciate it if you kept your baseless accusations to yourself," she said. She was more articulate than he had expected for a freshman, and completely justified in making her preferences known; her confidence was on par with that of other, older gorgeous women he had met, but he knew what she was feeling on the inside. She was terrified. English 101 was a core requirement, and she needed to do well in his estimation for him to open the door for her to more advances courses.

  "Let's not start this semester off on the wrong foot," Donovan suggested. He rose from behind his desk to collect his things; Kira Bentley didn't budge from where she stood, evidently waiting for him to show her where to put the right foot. "Come by my office tomorrow with lunch and I'll forget all about it."

  "Excuse me?" Bentley demanded again.

  He could almost find it in him to feel sorry for the additional toll this interview was taking on an already sick and stressed-out young woman, but he alone knew how necessary it was. He needed to establish a connection with her immediately, and the only way he was going to manage it was outside of a classroom. His office was the perfect place: it wasn't as off-putting as suggesting some place outside of campus, and he was almost always in there, anyway. They needed a scene change to get familiar, and fast, if he stood a chance of helping her at all before her next full moon phase. They had less than a month.

  "See you at noon. Don't be late," he added as he
brushed past her. While his hearing was preternatural, Donovan couldn't claim to have heard the internal scream that Kira Bentley was surely emitting. He contented himself with imagining it all the same.

  If his occupation prevented him from flirting with the pretty girl, making her life miserable would have to be second best.

  2

  This isn't quaint or quirky. This is blackmail."

  Kira Bentley was standing in the doorway of her least favorite professor's office. While she wanted to make her opinion clear, she was also holding a takeaway bag from one of the sandwich vendors in the quad.

  Professor Donovan—as if she knew, or cared to know, his first name—glanced up from grading a stack of papers, although she couldn't shake the distinct impression that he had known she was there all along. She supposed it was possible he had heard her coming down the hallway. He was wearing his glasses, although he never seemed to wear them when he was addressing the glass, leading her to believe that he was farsighted. Kira hadn't been farsighted herself until very recently, but she was afraid to go to the optometrist to get a prescription. She didn't know what an eye doctor might do if he suspected she could now see half a mile in every direction.

  With or without glasses, Professor Donovan was incredibly good-looking. His hair was that silver-brown color that his cherished literature would have described as "mouse-brown", although that wasn't quite right to Kira's mind. It matured him without giving him any indication of the early onset of gray hair. He might have stood a better chance at fitting in with his older colleagues if he wore it shorter, but it reached to his strong jawline, and he kept it swept back behind slightly-pronounced ears. The aforementioned jawline, the one that drove Kira's fellow freshman females crazy upon sight, was overshadowed by a deliberately-maintained stubble that accentuated his disaffected image.

  The pale eyes that regarded her from behind the glasses were deep-set, and probably a breathtaking gray, but Kira had only ever seen them look at her with an infuriating twinkle reflected in their depths. As if they shared some great secret or joke, when the reality was that she was the punchline. No wonder girls of every age made themselves crazy about him; the amused, carefully-guarded look on his face gave him the distinct appearance of flirting, when in reality that impression couldn't have been further from the truth.

  "You're not helping your case, Bentley. Well, maybe you are," he amended when she moved to his desk and deposited his sack lunch. "How did you know roast beef was my favorite?"

  "Who said anything about bringing you roast beef?" That had been her selection, of course, but it seemed weird to her that he would know that. Professor Donovan ignored her in favor of opening his spoils. The crinkling of the paper was almost painfully loud to Kira; it was strange, and borderline debilitating, the sounds that could invade her mind and break her concentration now. She couldn't deal with the enhanced hearing in the same way she couldn't deal with her new eyesight. Satisfied that she had delivered on the terms of their agreement, she turned to go.

  "Take a seat, Bentley," Professor Donovan invited her in a manner that clearly wasn't an invitation. She turned in the doorway, her mouth set grimly, and crossed once more into the room to deposit herself on the edge of the only other available chair.

  "It's Kira," she said in annoyance.

  "I've spoken to a few of your other professors about you." The sandwich was unwrapped, but Professor Donovan's were laced, and he was leaning on his desk as if he had already completely forgotten about it. "Several of them haven't even seen you in class. They barely knew who I was talking about."

  Kira felt her pale face flush furiously, but she kept a steady grip on the edge of her chair. "You're not my advisor. I don't need to explain myself to you."

  "I just find it curious," Donovan continued as he finally sat back and tucked into his sandwich. "From what I'd heard semesters previous, you were a stellar student."

  "You heard about me?" It was strange to think that the instructors spoke amongst themselves, especially on the topic of students, but she supposed it was to be expected. Half of them lived out of their offices, if Professor Donovan was any indication, and there was probably little to gossip about amongst themselves. "Look, I… please don't think I don't appreciate what you're trying to do," she said finally. "I get it, and I'm grateful. There aren't a lot of professors at this school who would take notice or really care about how their students are doing. But your concern is completely misplaced. I'm off to a bad start, like you said, but that's all."

  Professor Donovan appeared to be considering the contents of his sandwich, and Kira thought he was probably only half-listening to her excuse. She gripped her chair again, before retreating suddenly from doing so; she could feel her nails digging indents into the underside of the metal foldout seat.

  "I have to go," she said suddenly as she rose from the chair. Professor Donovan surprised her by rising with her. Her eyes darted quickly to the door, even though she knew she wasn't trapped, not really—it was only animal instinct, she thought, rearing up to cloud her judgement of the situation. She shouldered her bag and took a tentative step toward the exit, and her heart sped up when the older man mirrored her.

  "You don't have to, you know," Professor Donovan said quietly. "You can stay and talk to me for a while. Look, I'll even share half my sandwich." He indicated his extorted lunch, breaking the momentary spell the unexpected sincerity of his words had worked on her. Kira gazed up at him, sure that all of her dormant fear and barely-checked hysteria was brimming in her eyes, before shaking her head.

  "Thanks. I'll keep that in mind."

  She could smell him beneath the cable knit sweater he wore. It was the heady spearmint of generic male body wash, and something else, lingering just beneath it…

  She didn't want to know, she told herself. Of course Professor Donovan would smell sexy, when everything else about him radiated the same. She took another step to broadcast her intended path to the door, and he moved aside, hands retired amicably into the front pockets of his trousers.

  "Don't be late," he advised her as she made her successful escape from his office.

  She was late. She was over fifteen minutes tardy to his lecture the next day. The moment she tried to sneak in through the door to his classroom, she knew she had made a mistake. She should have skipped class entirely and just suffered the consequences, but the last forty-eight hours had been absolute hell for her—and despite what Professor Donovan probably thought, Kira loved English. She had even been thinking about pursuing her degree in it until two weeks ago.

  Until the bite.

  Now it was appearing less and less likely that she would be able to complete school. She couldn't keep most of her food down; the headaches were almost constant; and now she was experiencing spasms and split-second changes that threatened to bring her entire world grinding to a complete halt. She was late today because her friend Marissa had commented that she thought Kira's contacts were "edgy".

  "What contacts?" had been her confused reply. When Marissa gave an incredulous laugh and told her to not be such a freak, Kira had nodded and smiled broadly as if the gig was up. Then, as soon as her friend was out of sight, she had run like a hound out of hell to the nearest bathroom.

  Her irises were bright gold, the pupils contracted to inhuman slits. Kira pulled her lids down and pawed at them and splashed lukewarm water into her eyes until they were bloodshot; she stared at her own unchanging reflection, crying soundlessly, until she remembered her sunglasses. She fumbled them out of her backpack and slipped them on. She looked utterly ridiculous wearing them indoors, but she had often observed that it was something hungover college students did to disguise their symptoms.

  Now, she made her way quietly to her seat at the back of Professor Donovan's classroom, feeling every eye on her. She knew what she must look like: a partier, a careless student. She was watching her pristine reputation on campus spiral down the drain, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. There was noth
ing she could do to stop any of it.

  Professor Donovan had paused in his speech, but he resumed it now. Kira sat, bracing herself for the moment he would call her out, but the moment never came. Eventually, she began to relax back into her chair.

  "Your thoughts, Bentley?"

  She should have known better.

  After a moment, Kira stirred slowly and raised herself up. "I'm sorry, Professor Donovan, but I missed what was said."

  Several of the students closest to her shifted and snickered. They thought she was being purposefully defiant, even funny. Kira stared straight ahead resolutely. Her face beneath the sunglasses felt hot, and there was a hideous lump forming in her throat. She was thankful for the way her sunglasses screened her against the other occupants of the room, because she felt like crying. She was running on empty.

  The only other person in the room who didn't look amused was Professor Donovan, but he didn't look angry, either. He looked like he was trying to puzzle something out. Kira would have thought he almost looked sympathetic, if the very idea of it wasn't so absurd. Clearly the glasses were impairing her vision more than she thought. He was expecting her to crash and burn and they both knew it.

  "I asked you if you thought 'Jane Eyre' was a romantic story?"

  "No," she said frankly. She sighed mentally with relief at the subject.

  "You seem very sure. May I ask why?" Professor Donovan leaned back against the front of his desk and crossed his arms.

  "Because there was a complete power imbalance going on between them the whole time. He was the master, and she was his employee. Not to mention he lied to her about the relevant details of his past, and tried to hook up with her without revealing his darkest secret of all, which was…"