Hard To Bear

Curvy wolf shifter Coral Colby
is stuck interning at a tiny newspaper in Blue Moon Junction, where an escaped cow is big news.   Her first assignment: cover a bachelor’s charity auction. Unfortunately, she accidentally bids for a date with a handsome bear shifter, and worse, finds out her date is with the jerk who’s been rudely refusing her interview requests.  But soon she’ll have bigger things to worry about –like why people are vanishing from Blue Moon Junction without a trace, who’s really buying up all the swampland around Blue Moon Junction, and what’s behind the bear shifter’s sudden change of heart.  The deeper she digs, the closer she comes to a terrifying truth – and to losing the love of a bear who may just be her fated mate.

This book is intended for readers 18 and older only
, as it contains adult content and several smokin’ hot sex scenes.  It is a work of fiction.  All characters and locations in this book are products of the feverish imagination of the author, a tarnished Southern belle with a very dirty mind.

License Statement
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Blue Moon Junction, 1813

“Elizabeth! Elizabeth!” Her brother
Jedidiah’s impatient cry drifted across the field. Fifteen year old Elizabeth Holmer crouched down in the tall grass, grinning.  He was terrible at playing hide and seek.  He’d been looking for her for twenty minutes.

“Elizabeth! Where are you?” he bellowed.

She crouched lower, hiking up the hem of her skirt and her apron over her knees.  Her mama would tar her behind if she dragged her clothes through the dirt.  Her sun-bonnet tilted forward and she pushed it back in place.

“Fine, then! I’m going back to the house!”
he shouted petulantly.

What a cry-baby, she thought scornfully. And he was two years older than her.

She glanced at their big cypress log house up on the hill.  She’d been careful to keep it in sight, because of the odd sightings that had been reported around the town recently.  Wolves that walked like men had been spotted out in the deep woods, it was rumored.   Some people even claimed that they’d seen Old Man Hoskins loping back to his house in the form of a wolf, and turning into a man in the clearing right outside of his house.  And he was naked.  She giggled at the thought. 

She wasn’t anywhere near the deep woods; she was in the open grassy field near her house, so she should be safe, she figured.

Still, she was getting bored, and she needed to pee.  And there was cream that needed to be churned to butter.  She stood up slowly, brushing grass from her apron.  Best she head over to the outhouse, and then go back to the house where she could tease her brother about –

A growl sounded in the grass off to
her left.  She froze where she stood, and then very slowly turned towards the sound.

The grass was rustling.  Her heart leaped into her throat, choking her.  Should she make a run for it? Was there something in the grass that would chase her if she ran?

A large gray wolf burst through the grass, fur bristling, amber eyes glowing.  Elizabeth choked back a sob of terror.  The wolf’s eyes seemed to be fixed right on her throat.

She was about to scream for help, when a seco
nd wolf burst through the tall grass, and her scream died in her throat.  If she cried out, her brother would grab the rifle and run out to help her. There was one bullet in the rifle.   He’d have to be lucky to hit the first wolf, and even if he did, the second wolf would tear him to pieces. Her parents were too far away to help.  They were at their neighbor’s new homestead, helping to raise a barn, leaving her brother in charge of her and their younger brothers and sisters.

Tears filled her blue eyes and ran down her cheeks as the wolves crouched down low.  She wouldn’t make a peep, no matter how much it hurt when they were killing her, she
vowed.  Then maybe the wolves would run off into the woods and leave her brothers and sisters alone.   Her heart broke at the thought of her family finding her body in the grass.  Who would help their mother rock the baby to sleep at night?

An enraged growl tore through the air, and to her shock, the first wolf lunged through the air at the second wolf. The two wolves rolled on the ground, growling and snapping.  She backed away slowly, glancing at the house, praying her brother wouldn’t hear.

The fight was over almost as soon as it began, and the victorious wolf stood over the body of the other wolf, jaws dripping with blood.

The dead wolf, oddly, had shreds of clothing hanging off it
s body.  Plaid cloth, like a man’s shirt.  

There was something dangling from the
surviving wolf’s neck.  Elizabeth’s heart nearly stopped with the shock when she realized what it was.  It was a braided leather necklace with a cross made from two twigs dangling from it.  It was the necklace she’d made for…

“
Cyrus? Is that you?” she demanded. The wolf turned to look at her, its muzzle stained red and dripping.  Its eyes glowed strangely, but it remained silent, panting heavily. 

“Cyrus Kirby! I know it’s you!” she cried out.

There was a pause, and then the wolf seemed to ripple all over, and its fur sank back into its flesh, and its snout shrank.  The pointy ears shrank too, and went round and hairless.  The tail vanished, the legs straightened.   In less than a minute, Cyrus Kirby crouched down behind the dead wolf, naked except for the necklace.

Cyrus, her brother’s best friend and the boy she was going to marry.

Her mouth hung open.

“Cyrus,” she managed finally.  She looked away, staring at the grass, since he was buck naked.

“Don’t tell anyone,” he pleaded.

“Who is that?” With a shaking hand, she pointed at the dead wolf sprawled out on the ground.

“That was Roger.  He can’t control himself when he turns.  That’s why I always run with him.” He was breathing hard, and wiped at the blood on his mouth with the back of his hand. His cousin. He’d killed his own cousin.

“I didn’t want to do it, but I knew I’d have to someday,” he said mournfully.

“How can you be both a man and a wolf?  Are you cursed?” Her eyes filled with tears again. No, it couldn’t be.  Her Cyrus was a good person, a man of God. He went to church. He was wearing the cross she’d given him. How could this happen?

“We’re not cursed, Elizabeth! It’s happening all over. 
Men and women who can turn into wolves, into bears, into mountain lions. We’re the same people that we once were.  We can’t help what happened to us.”  He took a deep breath. “It makes us stronger, Elizabeth.  We can protect our family from Indian attack, from wild animals, we can hunt down game to feed our families…”

He looked at her fearfully.  “I’m still me. I promise.  Will you still marry me, Elizabeth?”

She turned and looked back, meeting his eyes.  It was her Cyrus. It was still her Cyrus. He was the boy she loved. He’d grow up to be a fine man and a loving father, she knew it.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, her head spinning with amazement. 

“Yes, Cyrus, I will still marry you.” And she realized he’d been holding his breath too, until she gave her answer.

* * *

Blue Moon Junction, 2014

The police scanner crackled to life, and Coral Colby, who’d been sitting at
a scarred wooden desk typing up obituaries, paused and looked up hopefully.

“Calling all units, there is a cow at the intersection of Main and
11
th
.  Repeat, there is a cow at the intersection of Main and 11
th
,” a female voice with a Southern twang announced, with no sense of urgency whatsoever. “Also, could someone please stop by the Donut Hole and pick us up half a dozen crullers and two lattes? We’re dyin’ here, folks.”

Coral slumped back in her chair.
  It was all she could do not to shift into wolf form and howl with disappointment. 

It
was her third day interning at the tiny newspaper, and she was struggling not to sink into despair.  The only way she’d ever catch the attention of a big city newspaper would be if she stumbled upon a huge front-page worthy news story.  Unfortunately, she was in Blue Moon Junction, Florida, a town of several thousand humans and shifters, where the sidewalks rolled up at 5 p.m. and the escaped cow might very well make the front page of tomorrow’s paper.

Odds were not in her favor.

“Ha,” news photographer Frederick Eberhardt smirked at her.    Like Coral, he was at the Tattler for a summer internship after graduating from college.  He’d come from Los Angeles with a photojournalism degree, she from New York with a degree in mass media.  With the journalism industry reeling from the bad economy, competition was fierce for the more plum jobs at the larger newspapers, so they were both working at the Tattler in hopes of beefing up their resumes. 

“Ha, yourself,” she grumbled.
“The day is still young.” She hadn’t completely given up hope of stumbling on a real story way out here in booney-ville. It could happen. 

Frederick, a skinny, sarcastic
coyote shifter with a big mop of brown hair, snorted with contempt.  He held no such illusions.

Then he looked over at
Coral with a leer.

“So, you’re bored,” he said. “
I know a way to pass the time. I’m renting an apartment right around the corner.”

“No,” she said firmly, deliberately swiveling
her chair so her back was to him. Blech. Frederick hit on everything female with a pulse.

“You have no idea what you’re missing.
  Hey, you know that meteor shower that’s coming up next week? You, me, a blanket under the stars, us under the blanket-”

William Brewster, owner of the newspaper, stuck his head out
of his office door and yelled “Frederick, did you hear that? Get a move on!”

“
Yeah, did you hear that?” Coral smirked back at him.  “News is happening! Get a move on before they catch that cow.” Frederick shot her a martyred look, rolled his eyes, and grabbed his camera from the desk.  He picked up a wadded ball of paper and threw it at her head as he loped past her, headed towards the street.

The paper stuck in Coral’s hair, and she plucked it out and tossed it into the garbage bin next to her desk.  On
top of everything else, the swampy Florida heat turned her naturally curly red hair into a giant frizz bomb. In New York, with copious applications of hair gloss, she was able to tame the red curls into flowing waves.   Here, she sported a big scarlet ‘fro on her head.  Oh, she was loving Blue Moon Junction, just loving it.

Her
older sister Ginger had come here two years ago on a mini vacation, and she’d promptly caught the eye of the incredibly hot wolf-shifter sheriff, and now the two of them were away on their babymoon.  What did Coral have to show for her stay here? So far, nothing but a pasty faced photographer following her around making sleazy sexual innuendos, and the world’s most boring newspaper job.

Depressed, s
he clicked on the website that she’d minimized, and it opened again, filling the computer screen.  On the website was a picture of a ridiculously handsome man with close cropped brown hair, caramel brown eyes, and sensual lips that looked soft and perfect for nibbling on.   She’d pulled it up from an internet search.