Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) (4 page)

Of course, that could only happen if I had given it a second chance. Which I absolutely, positively had not.

“Well, either way,” Rex said, interrupting my little trip down shitty-memory lane, “you’re braver than I am. Eight of ‘em? I mean, sure, they’re all cute as they could possibly be, but... damn. Yeah, just... damn, I can hardly keep up with Leena most of the time.”

I chuckled. “You could always come along, you know. Maybe do you some good to get out in the woods and let your bear-self go wild?”

“I think I’ll pass,” Rex said with half a smile. “I think we’ve got other plans this weekend. But seriously, thanks. You’re great at what you do.”

One completely platonic side-hug later, I was just about on edge. And it wasn’t from the cubs running around either. I looked around the room, letting my eyes fall on all of them for just a second. There was Leena, of course, but also Jett and Jack, the two raccoon twins and beside them, sat Millie the bear girl with shockingly red hair. Rolf Hollister, one of the two fox kits I took care of – the other threw up in the car and had to go home – was balancing on the end of a bench. Ishi, Kishi and Tishi, panda triplets, rounded out my strange and wonderful pack.

“Clea, we got a problem.” Dean Cranning, my best friend and first employee, was fretting, as usual. He couldn’t really help it, as fretting is kind of a coyote thing.

Absent mindedly, I tugged on the diamond stud that always goes in the top of my ear. I never take it out, ever. When I shift it stays right where it is the rest of the time – the pointy tip-top of my ear. My mom was my hero for a whole lot of my life, and it’s all I really have left of her. It’s one of a pair – my dad kept the other when she died – so it’s sort of my worry stone.

“What’s going on?” I asked. “And is it actually a problem, or is it a problem only you would think is a problem?”

Dean wrinkled his forehead in thought. “It’s... yeah, no it’s actually a problem. Millie decided she’s deathly afraid of the woods, and has to go home. I told her I’d call her dad to come get her, but then she started crying because she doesn’t want to be left out.”

“Crisis averted,” Malia Maddisen announced proudly as she walked up, stuck her fists into the small of her back and puffed out her chest. She had a very happy looking red-haired bear perched on her shoulders. She’s Dean’s girlfriend – another coyote – and my second helper. “We got it all worked out, right, Millie?”

“Yup!” she said, before blowing a raspberry. “I’m not scared of the woods no more!”

“What’d you do?” I asked Malia.

She shrugged. “I just told her that I met Dean in the woods, and so magic happens out there.”

“Magic!” Millie shrieked. “I hope I see a unicorn!”

“Around here?” I asked her, poking her in the stomach until she giggled. “You just never know. Okay! Everyone, quiet down! The van just pulled up and I’m ready to get going! The sooner we get there, the sooner we can swim and play! Does that sound fun?”

An eruption of sheer joy burst out of every tiny mouth in the room.

As far as us adults went, our expressions ranged between excitement, terror, and cautious optimism.

“Everybody out!” I shouted. “Make sure you have your stuff! You don’t want to have to ride home in the same clothes you rode out in, you’d smell...”

“Like Mister Dean!” Leena squealed, finishing my standard joke before the whole room burst out again.

And this? This is my life. It might be crazy, it might be wild, but it’s what I love.

There’s just one tiny thing missing – a piece of my heart that I think... honestly? I’ll never have again.

*

S
etting up the tents went from a simple procedure to taking up a pretty good chunk of the morning. Leena and Millie kept rolling theirs over, the panda cubs somehow kept putting the tent poles on the
inside
instead of the outside. The raccoon twins managed to get theirs up so fast that they got bored, took it apart, and then couldn’t manage to get it back together again.

Things get
weird
when you’re trying to keep the peace with a bunch of different species, and also get something done at the same time. Keeping them all happy and semi-productive at The Cubby Hole isn’t much of an issue because there’s always stuff to do, and we’re always watching. But out here? When Dean, Malia, and I had our own tents to put up?

We wondered if there were going to be any problems with getting set up when we were driving out here. Dean even had the nerve to say he thought we’d be done with setup less than an hour after showing up at the campground and we could get right into the water.

So, did a bunch of cubs and three semi-competent adults have problems getting a bunch of two-person tents set up?

Does a bear shit in the woods?

But once we were done, a feeling of incredible peace came over me. I was able to take a few minutes and sit on the bank of the fairly big, but fairly pokey, Jamesburg River and wiggle my toes in the rocky sand that made up the riverbed.

Dean and Malia were playing with Leena, Millie and the raccoon babies in the water, the three pandas were taking a nap and everything was just kinda... well, it felt
right
. I let my thoughts drift some, and stared out at the dense greenery that surrounded us on all sides. Pulling a deep breath into my nose, the scent of grass, of earth, and just the slightest hint of decaying leaves all mixed with pine and oak and jasmine.

The breath I let out was slow and trickling, just like the river I was rooting around in with my toes.

I watched them wiggle for a second. Each of them was painted a different color, like I always do. There wasn’t any reason I started, no profound meaning to the hues I chose, but it just felt like my little rebellion that no one cared about except me. I didn’t need to get all huffy or tell anyone off when they made me mad because I could just paint my toes, instead.

I used to like dying my hair all kinds of crazy colors, but something about going from twenty-nine to thirty and opening a business removed that particular outlet from my coping-with-stress playbook.

Did I miss having someone? Yeah, almost all the time. It was still weird, after the years alone, to go home to an empty house out in the middle of the woods and listen longingly to every animal call, every roar and howl and cracking stick, wondering if maybe the wolf howling in the distance, or the bear who broke
that
stick was the one for me.

Then again, waiting for fate is about the dumbest thing I can imagine. I’d waited years for Liam to stop being an asshole, and the only thing that got me was a mortgage I could barely pay and a dog that I loved more than I loved my husband.

God, he’d made me hate myself. Not in an overtly cruel kind of way, he just... I’d dress up for him, put on a little maid outfit, or try some cute panties, and he wouldn’t look at me. He’d just sail past on his way to the TV, or out to the Tavern with a handful of his friends.

I got the dog to love me, and he had his friends. But underneath it all? I didn’t have much of anything except a hole in my heart that he used to fill. People told me all the time that I needed to figure out my own path, my own happiness. I’d listen to them and agree, because I really
did
understand that the only real happiness comes from in your own heart, but holy shit if it wasn’t hard to believe.

A dragonfly landed on my nose. He rubbed his little mouth parts together, and when I puffed a breath at him, he hovered in front of my eyes for a second, gave me a really good staring-at, and then went on his way. Whenever something like that happens in Jamesburg, I get to wondering if it’s actually a dragonfly or if it’s someone I know in disguise.

Anyway, the years came and went, Liam got nastier and less receptive, and then finally I just shut down. I felt like I was dying, alone, in a hole in the ground without anyone to bother helping me up.

One day he didn’t come home. He had a band that he played with on the weekends, and I was used to him staying out late and drinking, but we had a rule that no matter how late he stayed out, he had to come home before the sun came up. I didn’t care if he was too drunk to stand up, he could call a cab or have a friend drop him off. Well, this one day he just didn’t show up.

I let myself have a few seconds of reprieve from reliving my own nightmarish twenties with another look around the forest. In the distance, maybe a half mile down the river, a huge, strikingly beautiful bear emerged from the woods. He stared straight at me with the knowing, intelligent eyes that told me he wasn’t wild.

Well, he might have been wild, but what I mean is that sometimes he was also human. My lynx eyes let me make out the vaguest hint of tattoos encircling his pale, cool, brown eyes. At first, I just stared back. The bear and I, we seemed to have some kind of common ground, some kind of understanding.

Either that, or I was going completely ape-shit from being alone too much. I chuckled softly, since really, what else could I do?

The longer I let my gaze rest on the huge shifter hanging out in the river, and the longer he stared back, the more I started to feel
other
things. Tightness in the pit of my stomach preceded a wash of goosebumps that made my entire back prickle. Gentleness behind those half-wild eyes that I couldn’t explain warmed me from the top of my head down to my painted toenails that I dug in the sand.

Are you the one for me?
I wondered.
After all this time, to find my mate in the river? Talk about too good to be true.

I laughed softly under my breath again. It beat the alternative – crying about being a whack-job.

Slowly, the beautiful creature walked to the side of the river, slapped at something, and made his way to the riverbank opposite mine. The sun glittered off the water the way it only can in the middle of a late spring afternoon, when it looks like a sidewalk made of light stretching into infinity.

He shook his head, flinging droplets of water in every direction. I wished he’d talk to me, roar, something. I wished he’d come over and nuzzle me, then let himself turn into a man and run his hands up and down my back.

I longed for him to kiss me, to caress my skin, to whisper bullshit nothings in my ear and suck my neck and hold me and—

“Miss Clea, Miss Clea!” Millie ran up to me with some kind of floppy animal in her hand. “Look!”

“That’s... wonderful, Millie, what
is
it?” I wrinkled my nose as the little amphibian looked up at me and opened its mouth for a second, then closed it with a snap. “Is that a salamander?”

“Yup! That’s what Mister Dean says it is!” Her wiggly little friend managed to twist some, and was hanging by a leg just opening his mouth over and over again. The little dude looked panicked.

“Well why don’t you let your friend go? You know, he likes to be in the water and in the mud just like you like to sleep in your bed at home. We all have places we feel comfortable.”

“Uh-huh,” Millie said, with a disappointed pout. “But I like him.”

As I watched the golden bear disappear into the woods, he took one last look in my direction. “If you like him, Millie,” I said, conscious of how hollow my voice sounded, how distracted I was, “then that’s even more reason to let him go. Get Dean to take a picture and then let him go back to playing where
he
likes to play.”

That brought a smile to the precious little girl’s face. “That makes sense!” she said. “I wouldn’t like it if somebody kept me from
my
friends, or if they held me by the leg.”

“Exactly,” I said smiling despite the nagging pain in my guts. “Look, he’s already looking happier.”

“Yeee!” Millie squealed, running off with her hapless, slimy, little friend and before long a picture was snapped, and that undoubtedly traumatized salamander was back, slithering around in whatever gross stuff salamanders called home.

Contentment
.

It’s a word that I’ve wrestled with my whole life. It’s why I decided to start The Cubby Hole in the first place. I figured that if I couldn’t have a family of my own – and I did, oh God did I ever, want one – I may as well make a try and help other people’s families.

Jamesburg has a few other day cares, but none of them quite like mine. Actually, I was surprised as all hell when I opened the doors the first day and already had three little cubs waiting with their proud parents out front.

At first I thought I’d be content with just taking care of kids. But then that turned into hiring Dean and buying a bigger place. Then it turned into growing into a pre-school, then it turned into two employees and almost thirty kids on any given day.

But you know what? I was still missing something. Successful business, good friends, and a whole lot of love flying around the ethers all around me... but something was still missing.

I knew what it was, of course, but I’d never admit it to anyone else. After all, wasn’t everything going right for me? Wasn’t everything good?

It was, I had to admit. Like, on the surface, everything was fine. I kept cool. I drank some wine with my friends on Fridays and took some nice vacations to the mountains. But under the water?

What’s that saying about ducks? How you never see how hard they’re working until you’re one of them?

I wasn’t ever very good at idioms.

Kinda like love
, I thought with a shrug.

Crrrrrrrack!

It was like a thunder peal ripped through the sky, but it was much thicker, much heavier and more... wooden. I darted off my little sitting place, trying to find the source of the sound, but when you’re inside a
forest
, finding a tree isn’t the easiest thing in the world. It’s also pretty damn hard to figure out which direction you need to pull a bunch of kids in to keep anyone from getting hurt.

By the time I saw which one was falling – a massive, and I mean
massive
, fir on the riverbank – it was almost too late.

“Run!” I shouted. “Dean! Malia! Get them out of the river! That tree’s coming down!”