Love to Bear: A Werebear Shifter Romance

by Mitchell, A. T.

  Love to Bear: A Werebear Shifter Romance

  By A.T. Mitchell

  Content copyright © A.T. Mitchell. All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States of America.

  First published in November, 2013.

  Disclaimer: The following is a work of fiction. Any resemblance it may hold to persons living or deceased is entirely coincidental.

  About This Book

  Samantha Aarons left Sioux Falls with a broken heart for a fresh start in the Montana wilds. Outside Kalispell, the native bears are strange and ferocious – especially when a hulking grizzly steps out of the woods and frightens Sam half to death.

  Werebear shifter Don Flood can't believe his incredible luck. The beautiful woman he discovers on patrol just might be his fated mate! The delicate flower faints after seeing him turn into a man, and Don sees his opportunity to charge straight into her heart.

  But love makes men do stupid, dangerous things.

  The Grizzly Bone Clan has a standing policy against allowing humans on their turf. Still, Don refuses to let the Elders' prejudice steal her away, doubling down on love after Sam reveals the key to the Clan's flatlining population.

  Sam soon adores the passionate, wild love of her dominant grizzly man. But Happily Ever Afters never seemed further when a wicked conspiracy threatens to scatter their fate forever.

  Can she survive becoming his mate...or will she feel heartbreak twice?

  I: Just Let Go (Sam)

  “You're hundreds of miles away from him, Sam. He can't hurt you anymore. Not here.”

  I started into Jenn's smiling eyes. My heart swung lower in my chest, a balloon stretched to overflowing with too much grief and too nice a friend.

  Jenn had good intentions. But her words, however wise, wouldn't extract the bitter weeds crowding my heart. I couldn't imagine anything that could.

  “Heartache travels pretty easily. I just wish I could bleach him out. Wipe the memories for good.” I stared at the high rocky peaks looming over our campsite. “It's re-living the breakup over and over again that hurts...”

  “I know,” Jenn whispered. She reached and gingerly patted me on the shoulder.

  She'd been up for several hours longer than me. As usual, I overslept and missed the sunrise over Glacier National Park, a gorgeous spectacle that illuminates autumn's rich palette and sparkles off the frosted mountains.

  “You gotta try, though, Sam.” Her smile softened and she stared at me more seriously. “I'll tell you what: if our trip out here won't help you forget, then we're going bar hopping the instant we get back to Kalispell.”

  I cringed and flushed a little. Jenn saw my reaction instantly and began to laugh.

  “No, I'm not ready for that yet. Not sure if I'll ever be ready for another man again.”

  “Bullshit,” she said, a gruffness in her voice so familiar I managed a weak smile. “You were the one who couldn't stop yammering about boys and marriage in our freshmen year. Remember all those notes Mister Robbins picked up?”

  I blushed harder, but laughed along with her. I'd never live down the shame of having our ninth grade English teacher intercepting my notes scrawled in pink ink. Robbins read them out loud, mortifying me half a dozen times before I finally learned my lesson.

  Funny how I don't remember that crap until Jenn mentions it, I thought. Somehow, I survived all that. Maybe I can heal this too, with time and a lot of nice distractions...

  I turned away from her and stared off toward the mountains near the Canadian border. It was only my second trip to the sprawling, rugged national park since I'd arrived in Montana late last summer.

  A great sadness hummed inside me, even as a soft wind caressed our backs with its potent chill. It was the kind of melancholy that cut deep, all the way to my bones.

  “I think I'll take a long walk,” I said.

  Jenn nodded. She knew how badly I needed to be alone.

  She understood me. Better than anyone had since Ryan.

  Or, at least, the way I thought Ryan understood me. I'd been horribly wrong about that.

  So wrong I had to leave everything behind. Wrong enough to drive hundreds of miles from Sioux Falls to join my best friend out West.

  “Don't be late for snacks and supper, girl,” she said cheerfully. “Oh, and don't forget this!”

  I spun. Jenn forced the oversized steel canister into my hands, and I did a double take.

  Jesus. How could I have been so stupid?

  The canister's front showed a grizzly bear's face, its monstrous jaws stretched wide in a warning growl. Out here, bear spray brokered life and death.

  “Ah. Thanks for reminding me. You're a lifesaver, Jenn. You really are.” I gave her a quick hug, slung the big leather carrying case I used for a purse over my shoulder, and walked on.

  Bear spray clenched tight in my hands, of course. I'd never seen a grizzly bear since arriving in northern Montana. Even Jenn hadn't had many encounters in her four years here – but nobody in these mountains took their chances.

  I walked on through the narrow path cut through tall trees. The land grew increasingly rocky and uneven about half an hour on my walk. It reminded me just how far from civilization each step took me.

  I stopped near a bridge to catch my breath. Even in the chilly September air, sweat beaded on my brow. I wondered how long it would take until I became a proper mountain girl.

  “God, those peaks.” I leaned on the stone wall and eyed the tallest mountains.

  My brain still wrestled with processing the mountains stretching up into the clouds. No doubt about it. I'd left the flat Dakota plains behind a long time ago, and the mountains were towering proof.

  I heard a branch snap in the brush on the other side of the bridge. My heart did a flip and my knees pivoted. I turned to face the sound that made my heart race.

  I didn't see anyone. My fingers tightened on the bear spray a little harder. I braced for its impact if I had to fire – Jenn said punching the nozzle had a small pistol's kick.

  Oh, God...no...

  More sounds echoed in the trees. I was ready – well, could anyone ever be ready? – to come face to face with a thousand pound grizzly when the shadow emerged from the trees.

  A hunter with an overgrown beard tipped his camouflage cap to me. I nodded back, visibly winded, embarrassed and pissed at myself for letting my nerves get the best of me.

  Shit. I'm really out of my element here. But it's not like it was much different back home for obvious reasons...

  I was too shaken to start walking again. I turned back to the mountains, gasping in the cold, nourishing air to replenish my quivering lungs.

  I thought about Ryan. Ryan, Ryan, Ryan Reynolds, the man who'd stolen my heart and smashed it into a thousand pieces.

  His words echoed in my memory, sardonic and absolutely evil.

  “No hard feelings, Samantha. I know you're a believer in true love. If I didn't let you down easy, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. There's someone out there for you. I just know it.”

  Yeah. It's so easy to say when you lead a girl on for a year and a half, isn't it?

  When you laughingly pointed at rings in the jeweler's windows at the mall...when you held me close after sex, whispering I was the only one for you...when you were secretly fucking my roommate behind my back just a few months after we started dating.

  How had I been so stupid? So blind? And so in denial?

  Even when Betty seemed overly familiar with my boyfriend, I brushed if off. And when he came over for dinners and they made eyes across the table, I inwardly stewed, but clung to the dozen unlikely possibilities that would explain it.
<
br />   I had to ignore the only obvious one. And when I couldn't ignore it any longer, my heart became tainted with this halo of sadness, this heavy fog I couldn't shake no matter where I went or in what company.

  Turning smartly, I began to walk forward, away from the bridge. I pushed my way into the mountain forest where the walkway became super narrow.

  The temperature continued to fluctuate as noon drew on. I hiked – no, stomped – higher for more than an hour.

  Reaching the higher elevation meant colder air. My breath shot out in little puffs like dragon smoke, mirroring the rage and hurt churning in my stomach.

  I couldn't think about anything except Ryan. Stupid Ryan and his happy relationship with my roomie-turned-traitor. For all I knew, they were probably engaged by now, happily planning the wedding I should've had.

  I wish they'd never met. Hell, I wish I'd never met either of them.

  If wishes were fishes, a sharp voice said in the back of my brain.

  I fumed. I'd always hated that stupid phrase. Probably because it was too honest.

  They were my mother's only words of advice too, which didn't help me like it any better. She was a hard career woman without any time for twenty-something angst.

  I wished I'd inherited some of her icy stoicism, at least when it came to relationships. Mom never dated, and only joined men in their beds to satisfy her baser desires.

  I never knew a father. Some liaison with an unknown stud earlier in life had created me, probably with the same calculated, business-like approach Mom took to everything.

  It wasn't like the attitude hadn't paid off. It had helped her advance to VP in one of the largest Dakota oil companies.

  Her job gave her money to spend on me, to buy her way into my heart. But beyond the dollar signs and a vague sense of family blood, we spoke a different language. She worked too much to let silly emotions get in the way of anything – especially mine.

  “Thanks, Mom,” I muttered, remembering the way she'd practically ordered me to ditch my dead end job doing data entry at one of her company's local subsidiaries.

  She'd stuffed a check for three grand into my hand and sent me on my way. Now, more than a month later, the funds were half-depleted and I couldn't keep mooching off Jenn forever.

  My friend was right. Much as I didn't want to admit it, so was Mom.

  This is my last chance to get my head together. Last one I've got out here in Nature, where there are no judgments and no expectations. Last chance, before the real world sinks its teeth in.

  My breath hitched and the tears came hot, smoking down my cheeks in a messy, blinding stream. I was halfway up the side of a shallow mountain.

  Common sense would've told anyone to pay attention to where they were stepping – but not me. My toe caught the edge of a smooth rock and slipped.

  The sky, the treetops, the mountains all spun at once.

  Next thing I knew, I was flat on my side, wincing as a hundred pokey stones ground into me. I laid face down in the dirt and cried. I just wanted to dig through the mountain soil and bury myself where no one would find me.

  I hated my life. Twenty two years of wandering and bad luck brought me to this point. And through the sadness, the anger, it was all too appropriate, wasn't it?

  Face down in the dirt. Sharp rocks digging into my arms and thighs. The cold, indifferent wind sweeping down from the heights, billowing against my rattled flesh like another bundle of stone...

  Somehow, I found the courage to sit up and dry my eyes. Three months since the breakout taught me to carry tissues in my bag at all times. I never knew when I'd have a meltdown and need them.

  My ears barely registered the crunch of gravel. It was coming from further up the hill, just over the curve.

  Probably another hiker or a young photographer. Someone who could admire Glacier's striking beauty without having a spaz in the dirt.

  But that would've been too convenient. I hid my face, hoping the traveler would just pass by and ignore the stupid girl drying her eyes on the ground.

  Something about the footsteps registered differently in my ears. For one, there were two legs too many.

  Two, the crunch-crunch-crunch was slow, deliberate, as if the approaching hiker had intentionally gone to a crawl to gawk at my misfortune.

  I clambered to my feet and turned, preparing my dirtiest look.

  When I saw the bear, my brain froze. I blinked twice in quick succession, trying to wipe the hallucination from my eyes – except it wasn't just my imagination.

  The big brown beast stared right at me. This area had black bears and the much more dangerous grizzlies, but given the size, color, and characteristic hump on its back, there was no mistaking this behemoth.

  I was face to face with my first grizzly, king of the mountain, top of the food chain. And probably a hungry male if size said anything.

  A second later, it mimicked me, and stood on its hind legs. On two legs rather than four, the thing towered over me, a hairy, muscular totem reaching to the sky.

  I let out a short, loud scream. It was natural, but I also prayed it would help. One of the first things I'd learned about bear survival was to make noise – and lots of it – even if every instinct wanted to shut down in cold silence.

  No effect. The bear just sniffed at the air and opened its mouth a little, as if it were smiling.

  I nearly fainted. The huge creature fell back on all fours and slowly approached, closing the gap between us.

  My eyes shot to his plate sized paws. The bear's feet padded deep into the ground, razor sharp claws protruding from the sides.

  Run. Run. Run!

  I dug my feet into the ground, breaking another cardinal rule of bear survival in my panic. It didn't take long to realize the bear would easily beat me downhill.

  He ran surprisingly fast for his size. I listened to his heavy breath behind me, but it didn't sound strained. Hell, this was probably a joy run for the beast.

  I jumped to the other side of the path and reached for the bear spray. It had slipped and rolled downhill when I'd taken my spill.

  Now, it was back in my hands, and my trembling fingers struggled to unlatch the safety pin.

  My fingers jerked pointlessly, too weak to free the thing I desperately needed. As if on cue, the bear sped up.

  I whimpered. A few more steps and the grizzly would be on top of me, making my most miserable day my very last on earth. It took everything in my power to stop myself from fleeing again.

  “Come on!” I cried.

  Finally! My fingers popped the pin. Both hands wrapped around the trigger and squeezed.

  The brown jet went off with a loud hisssss! I watched in awed silence as the powerful pepper stream went whizzing straight for the bear's face and – missed?

  What the fuck?

  I couldn't believe my eyes. The bear jumped to its feet and transformed. There was a split second of fur and bone and claws rearranging themselves.

  The creature shrunk three sizes. Its new skinny frame let the brown stream of doom fly right past it, and then it shuffled further away on long legs that looked surprisingly human.

  In less than the blink of an eye, a man stood before me. Beautiful, naked, and absolutely unexpected.

  The bear was gone. And so was my sanity.

  I blinked once. My head began to spin as my whole nervous system shut down. I couldn't squeeze the bear spray anymore.

  Hell no! This can't be real.

  Something is very wrong. I must be sick, or having a stroke.

  I've heard of heat strokes, but what about the cold? Maybe food poisoning, or a nervous breakdown, or...or...or...

  The fiery stream wilted as the man stepped past it, cautiously rounding my side. One of my feet jilted backwards and slid in the gravel. Hiking boots were worthless at hugging the ground if their owner couldn't stand straight.

  “Miss? Hold still! I didn't mean to shock you when I shifted but you need to...” A rich, masculine voice rippled through the
air and trailed off.

  My brain checked out. The naked ghost grabbing my arm couldn't possibly be real.

  Before I knew it, I was falling again. A great black wave deep inside me rose high, sloshing shadows rife with confusion and ready for surrender.

  I started laughing as I tumbled to the ground. By the time I expected the biting rocks to nip at my back again, the blackness swept over me.

  I was out cold.

  II: Bear Attraction (Don)

  In a flash, I was on her. My big hands shot out and just barely caught the beautiful angel who was falling toward the ground.

  Yeah, she'd tried to blast me with pepper spray a couple seconds ago. But so what? I'd been hit by hikers with that crap before and I'd learned to move fast.

  It was easy to forgive and let live – especially when the traveler looked as heavenly as this.

  I held her close, smelling the honey-like fragrance rolling off her hair. Underneath the perfume, I inhaled her scent, the sweet and spicy pheromones rising on her skin.

  I positioned her away from my rapidly swelling erection. Hardly the time or place, I know, but a man can't always help it.

  “My, my, my,” I whispered. “What the hell am I gonna do with you?”

  I had to be careful as I got on the ground and laid her on top of me. Her arms fit snug across my shoulders.

  I slung her backpack over my neck and pulled her arms close. Then I summoned the bear inside me and shifted. I'd never carried a human woman on my back before, but there was a first time for everything.

  I couldn't leave her alone here in the woods with real bears and men like vicious animals who might do something terrible to her. I needed to carry her away, if only to make sure she was alright.

  It would take a couple hours to get her to the cabin. But right now, it was the only place that made sense – no matter how crazy or dangerous it would be.