Manon pulled her discarded clothing under the sleeping bag to warm them up. He laughed out loud when she hissed and then let loose a grumble of “cold zipper.” He laughed again as she tried to get dressed without exposing herself to the cold air, bucking as she pulled her panties and jeans on while attempting not to dislodge her cover. Bear couldn’t help making her task more difficult by grabbing at her and tickling whatever he could reach.
“Bear, cut it out,” she giggled.
He stopped immediately. Manon huffed beside him as she sat up, letting the sleeping bag fall to her lap, and pulled her sweatshirt over her head. “Bear—”
He clapped his hand over her mouth. “The poachers,” he whispered. “I can smell the meth.”
Manon nodded under his hand. He released her quickly. She dove to the foot of the pallet and yanked on her boots. Just as quickly, strapped on her gun belt and unsnapped the holster. Next came the shotgun; she quietly racked the shells into the chamber. “Stay here,” she ordered quietly.
“What?”
“Which one of us is trained for this?” she asked. “Me. Now stay put.” She unzipped the tent flap just enough to take a peek. She must not have seen anything since she slinked out before he could grab her.
Bear flopped to his stomach and peeked through the flap. Manon was on her feet and racing in a crouch towards the pines at the edge of their clearing. The thick snow drifts slowed her as they caught her boots and pant legs. She wasn’t as fast as he knew she could be but she was still out of sight in seconds.
Manon was only half-right. She had training he didn’t. But the grizzly had advantages she didn’t. His brain caught up with his beast’s decision when he realized he had fully opened the tent flap. Unlike Manon, he didn’t bother to dress. He reached deep inside, found the new part of himself, and willed it to come out.
A shotgun blast boomed through the clearing. The effect was immediate. A man’s scream followed from outside the tent. Bear roared at the thought of a threat so close to Manon.
He didn’t lose his mind when the change came—just as the bear’s senses were with him when he was human. Even in this form, he still thought, still understood. He was capable of planning. Bear did none of those. He didn’t even bother to follow Manon’s tracks. After yesterday her scent was imprinted in his brain.
The drifts didn’t slow him as they had her. He lumbered through them. The tracks led to the snowmobile path Manon had made the day before. The well-packed snow allowed him to move faster.
He did not like what he saw when he got to the clearing by the river. Neither did the bear. There were three figures: one, a male, lying in on the ground, bleeding from his right shoulder. Manon grappled with a second on the ice. Her shotgun was yards away, still sliding towards the open water of the fast moving river. It went over the edge with a small splash.
The man on the ground grunted and pulled himself forward. Bear snarled. The man screamed and then doubled his efforts. He’d pulled a handgun out of a drift before Bear got to him. One swipe of his paw knocked the gun yards away. Another swipe bounced the poacher’s head off the frozen ground. The wounded man stopped moving.
Manon took a vicious blow to the ribs and staggered back a step. Bear moved toward her.
“Stop! The ice is too thin. Stay there.”
Bear roared but held his ground. Manon whirled and took the second poacher down with an impressive tackle. She sat on his back as she pulled a set of zip-cuffs out of one of the many pockets in her cargo pants. Then she grabbed a handful of his hair with one hand, hooked the other under his arm, and hefted him to his feet. They stumbled back to the shore.
Manon threw him face down into the snow beside his partner. Bear padded up to her and growled as she wiped a trickle of blood from her eyebrow. “I’m okay,” she said.
Bear walked over to the handgun now buried in another snow drift. He huffed and pawed at it with his foot. Manon pulled it out and frowned. “That would have been bad.”
She bent at the waist and put her hands on her knees. He nuzzled her neck as she caught her breath.
“Can you watch these two for a couple minutes while I go back to camp?”
He nodded.
Manon patted both men down and left with two hunting knives. Bear sat between the two, put a paw on each back and roared in their ears.
“Yeah, you’ll be fine,” she said with a laugh.
She came back with his coveralls and boots. “They have a truck. It runs.” She set his clothes behind a stand of spruce trees. “If you can get changed, we’re out of here.”
Bear reappeared in a flash. Manon had both men on their feet and was ushering them towards the snowmobile path.
He held the gun as Manon rolled the pair into the bed of their pick-up. She’d unloaded all of their gear into the back of her truck to make sure she had room. It would be an uncomfortable ride back to civilization for them, but it would beat being stranded in the wilderness. “This complicates things. I was hoping I’d be able to say I found you alive. One quick report. No fuss, no muss. Now I have to bring them in and charge them,” she said.
“You can’t. They saw me change.”
“If two meth-head poachers report that a grizzly who turned into a man was working with a ranger to bring them down, nobody would believe them. The story is they kidnapped you and stole your gear. You’d just escaped when I found you. It’ll work. Especially if we find one shred of your gear in their cabin.”
“You called me ‘Bear’ in front of them.”
“I thought everyone called you ‘Bear,’ Bear,” Manon teased.
“It would only take one person to believe them and then I’ll be completely screwed. What if the samples those fringe websites were talking about were people like me? I’m not going to spend the rest of my short life being a lab experiment.”
“You won’t. When I said that NASA was going nuts because this was happening world-wide I meant world-wide. Everybody is studying this phenomenon. If this happened to you, it must have happened in other places to other people.”
“Great, so the government will have lots of guinea pigs."
“I don’t know. All I know right now is that they won’t have you.”
He trusted her. God knew, he trusted her. “But…”
“We won’t say anything when we get back but we can ask questions. You have friends in the field. Chances are pretty good they’ll have been called in to investigate the other sites, right?”
“Yeah.” They would have. In fact, they would likely be some of the first people on the scene.
“So they would have the highest chances of being exposed like you. You can sniff them out and see if any of them have a brand new wild side. If they are, maybe we’ll be able to help each other.” Manon laid her hand on his cheek. “I promise you that I’ve got your back. Don’t forget about Plan B either.”
“We have a Plan B?”
“There is a whole lot of nothing in Northern Manitoba and I know every square mile of it. If things go south, you disappear up here and we’ll figure it out together.”
Bear’s fingers tightened on the dashboard as the odometer clicked away. Manon flashed a look in the rearview mirror but spent more time watching him than the two in the back.
As they drove farther and farther away from the site, she slowed until she eventually stopped when they hit the main road. “How are you feeling? Are you doing okay? Any problems?”
“None. I feel fine,” Bear said.
She let go of the steering wheel and took his hand. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter if we go Plan A or Plan B, I’m with you.”
He squeezed back. “I know.”
The End
Publisher’s Note
Please help this author's career by posting an honest review wherever you purchased this book.
About Elle Rush
Elle Rush constantly plans warm escapes to palm tree filled destinations but she always returns home to Winnipeg, Manitoba. She and her
passport have conquered most English-speaking parts of Canada, the United States and the Caribbean and she is plotting trips to Europe and Asia. Elle loves romance novels, sci-fi TV shows and big band music. She also has a minor obsession with loose tea.
Table of Contents
Beneath a Spring Moon
Tessa’s Wolf
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Epilogue
About Becca Jameson
Spring Mates
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
About Lynn Tyler
Still the One
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
About Nulli Para Ora
Bear with Me
Blurb
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
About Elle Rush
Beneath a Spring Moon (Those Sexy Shifters, Book 1) Page 13
