So Much To Bear (A Werebear Erotic Romance) (3 page)

“Come on, Robert, I wasn’t going to
hurt her…” Liam started. But the figure moved into the light of the
torch and they could both see it wasn’t their friend; the man was
taller, more muscular than Robert, with shaggy hair cut harshly
around his face. His features were further obscured by a rough
beard, slightly grizzled with blond hairs twisted amongst the
darker threads. Through the faded, dirty clothes, Jennifer spotted
a flicker of dark, twining tribal tattoos on his arm and chest;
corded muscles that she had to admit to herself were more than a
little attractive.

Liam recovered quickly, letting out an
angry roar of his own. “Who the hell are you?” he shouted,
struggling as he leaped to his feet. He cocked a fist and threw his
weight behind a blow aimed at the man’s jaw; the mysterious man
evaded it easily, moving with a speed that startled Jennifer even
as she watched. He ducked and evaded all of the blows that Liam
aimed at him, glancing at her occasionally to make sure she was
okay—or so it seemed. Frustrated, Liam shouted again in wordless
rage, and Jennifer’s heart began to pound even faster as she
watched him pull a hunting knife out of a hidden holster attached
to his jeans.

Liam and the mystery man grabbed onto
each other, grappling; the man seemed to almost have Liam disarmed
in a few moments, twisting his wrist and beginning to push him down
and away. “Guys! Guys! Stop this! Slow down for a second—this is
insane!” Jennifer lunged to try and separate the two and found
herself knocked aside without knowing which of the two combatants
had pushed her away. There was a movement between the two men that
Jennifer couldn’t track, and the sound of a muted grunt of pain.
The next moment, the mysterious man let out a low growl, and
Jennifer gasped as she watched him throw Liam away from him,
tossing the other man across the clearing with a kind of strength
that seemed impossible.

The mysterious man staggered backward
slightly, letting out an ear-splitting roar, and Jennifer fell to
her behind in the dirt and scrub, her hands coming down on the
ground with a jarring impact. She watched in shock as the man
hunched over, letting out a rumbling noise that sounded almost like
a dog, or something larger. Before her stunned eyes, a sort of mist
began to coalesce around the man, and Jennifer saw his body
contort, muscles twisting and twitching, hair beginning to push
through his skin. A gloppy, thick sound mixed with clunking and
clattering, like stones in a cement mixer, filled her ears and
turned her stomach even as the man began to transform. His face
elongated, his hair and beard thickening, covering his features
completely. His hands became covered in dense fur, his fingers
twisting and shifting into pads with long claws. His mouth opened
in a snarl that revealed elongating teeth. In a matter of a few
moments, where a muscled man had stood, instead there was a bear,
with glimmering golden eyes.

Liam had staggered to his feet, and his
eyes widened at the sight of the bear. “Wh-what—what is that
thing?” he shrieked, grabbing blindly at the trees behind
him.

“I think it’s a bear,” Jennifer said
dully, staring at the transformed creature in front of her. The
bear turned its attention onto Liam and let out another
ear-splitting roar, lunging towards him with menace clear in every
inch of its tense body. Liam let out a wordless shriek of fear, and
then ran backwards a few steps before turning on his heel and
darting into the darkness of the woods. Jennifer froze, torn
between curiosity and fear, unsure what she should do and not even
sure if she should believe her eyes. There had been a man, she had
watched him transform into a bear. That wasn’t the sort of thing
that should be even remotely possible. The bear turned around and
Jennifer found herself briefly face-to-face with the beast. There
was something in the glimmering, shimmering golden eyes—a kind of
kindness, an understanding that flickered through them though
Jennifer couldn’t say how. It snuffed at her, sniffing and
snorting, its breath hot against her skin. It grunted
softly.

Suddenly coming back to herself,
Jennifer scrambled to her feet, shivering and stuttering in fear.
This was a bear—some kind of magical bear-man. Even if it wasn’t
real, even if she had somehow hallucinated it, she had to get away.
Jennifer backed away as slowly as she could, making a wide berth
around the huge bear before she darted into the woods, away from
the bear and in a different direction from the one that Liam had
taken.

Chapter Two

Jennifer ran until her lungs started to
burn with every rapid intake of cold air, her heart pounding in her
chest, her mind reeling with what she had seen. She tripped over
her own feet, grabbing frantically at the trunk of a nearby tree to
stay upright as the woods swooped and dove around her face. For a
moment, gasping and panting for breath, she thought for sure that
she would pass out in an instant; but her vision began to clear in
the next few heartbeats and Jennifer, still panting, leaned heavily
against the tree, pressing her forehead against the rough bark. The
burn in her chest began to slack off, and Jennifer’s panting slowed
down, along with her racing heart.

It occurred to her that a bear that big
could probably move pretty fast and she wouldn’t have more than a
few moments of safety if it were coming after her. Struggling to
quiet her breaths, she strained her ears in the darkness, trying to
catch the telltale sound of a lumbering, galloping bear hot on her
trail. Instead of the crashing of foliage and dry brush, she heard
nothing, and Jennifer’s heart began to slow even more. Maybe the
bear had gone after Liam instead. Jennifer took a few deep breaths
to recover from her pell-mell rush and looked around. Even in the
darkness of the woods, there was a faint glow of moonlight—the
clouds had cleared out of the sky. She wasn’t that far from the
clearing she and Liam had been in; in the distance, she could still
see the flicker of the torch, though it was dying out
gradually.

Safe for the moment, Jennifer’s fear
dissolved into a kind of curiosity; she couldn’t believe what she
had seen, but the memory of watching the mysterious man transform
into a bear hung in her mind nonetheless and she knew she had to at
least look around. The bear—or whatever he had really been—clearly
hadn’t followed her. Maybe it had followed Liam. While she didn’t
like the guy, and while she couldn’t help but feel a twinge of
gratitude toward the bear-man who had fought him off and scared him
away, she didn’t think she could endure the thought of leaving Liam
to the bear’s mercy, if he had decided to finish him
off.

She retraced her steps, stumbling
awkwardly among the roots and underbrush that she had somehow
avoided in her panicked flight from the scene. Following the
dimming light of the torch, Jennifer made her way to the clearing.
She took a deep breath, looking around at the ground illuminated by
the torch and the moonlight. She saw the tracks of her own deep
footprints in the soft soil, and picking up the torch, looked
around until she saw Liam’s tracks away from the scene of the
altercation. There were no prints following his—either bear or man.
The bear had obviously not gone after him. Jennifer frowned at the
ground, walking around the clearing, confused and alarmed. There
was a bear loose. She brought the torch lower, pacing a circuit
around the edges of the clearing until she found a splash of blood.
Jennifer swallowed. It wasn’t Liam’s blood—it wasn’t one of the
places he had been during the fight or after he had started to run
away. It had to belong to the bear-man. Jennifer stepped into the
depths of the trees, and found another drip of blood, and then
another splatter along some low-lying leaves of one of the bushes.
She realized that the trail was leading in the opposite direction
that Liam had taken; Liam, at least, was safe from the bear for the
moment.

Jennifer’s curiosity overtook her
again, and she followed the trail, moving as quietly as she could.
She heard her father’s words about spooking a wounded bear—about
how it was the worst possible idea. But what kind of bear was she
following? He had been a man at first; Jennifer was almost certain
that the figure she had seen had been a man, though her mind reeled
at the idea of a human being turning into a bear, transforming from
something remotely known to something utterly foreign. She shook
her head; she had to know what had surprised her and Liam in the
clearing. She had to thank the man, bear, whoever or whatever he
was, for coming to her aid.

As she walked through the gloomy
darkness, Jennifer remembered the gaze that the bear had turned on
her before she had run away; it had been kind, patient—almost
sweet, in a way she couldn’t quite define. It was a curiously human
look from a bear, strange and intriguing. The path through the
woods was difficult to follow, and Jennifer found herself straining
at every drip and drop of blood she could find, wondering how
severely the bear might have been injured; the knife that Liam had
had was long. Could he need help? And if he was both bear and
man—should she take him to a vet, or a doctor? Jennifer almost
snorted to herself at the conundrum. Find the bear/man first, she
told herself, manage not to get killed in the process, and then
figure out what to do about his injuries if you have to.

As the trail wound through the woods,
Jennifer saw a series of cliffs in the distance, and wondered
briefly just how far into the dark gloom she had gone and if she
would be able to find her way back. Jennifer shivered at the cold,
feeling it once more as the sweat began to dry on her skin. The
torch was almost dead, but up ahead, embedded in one of the cliffs,
she saw light coming from the mouth of a cave. It was a bit of a
climb, but Jennifer decided she was up for it—she wasn’t about to
let her curiosity go unsatisfied.

When she approached the cliff, Jennifer
saw that there were rough steps built into the stone—a hand-hold
here, a depression there, almost a cross between a set of stairs
and a ladder. It would certainly make it easier to climb up.
Jennifer threw the dead torch down and began the climb, trying to
be as quiet as possible. The last thing she wanted to do was to
spook whoever—or whatever—was in the cave. She didn’t know with any
certainty that it was the man-bear that she had been rescued by; it
could be a drifter, drunk or a hermit. With the light it was
unlikely to be any kind of wild animal at least. Jennifer shook her
head at her own whimsy as she took a break at one of the stopping
points on the way up, picturing a panther curled up in a wingback
chair reading an ancient tome by candlelight. Clearly that was not
going to be what she would encounter.

Finally, she came to the landing, and
peered into the cave. There was a ragged covering pulled partially
across the entrance, but Jennifer was able to see into the hollow
just fine, and what she saw startled her; apart from the fact that
the walls were stone, the cave almost looked like a regular home—if
a little quaint and old-fashioned. The floor of the cave was
covered in wooden planks, shining in the candlelight with some kind
of varnish and covered in one or two places with thick, dark rugs.
There was a small, rough bed against one of the walls, and a carved
fireplace along the back of the cave. While there was no antique
wingback, there was clearly hand-made furniture scattered around
the space: a table, a workbench, stools. In one
comfortable-looking, high-backed wooden chair, the mysterious man
sat, head tilted back as he panted. Jennifer’s eyes widened as she
saw he had torn away the dirty, faded shirt he had been wearing;
briefly, irrelevantly she wondered what had happened to his clothes
when he had transformed. He was still wearing dusty, worn jeans,
but his chest glistened with sweat, streaked with blood that had
smeared and dripped from two wounds: one to his arm, and the other
close to his ribs. Jennifer saw the man wince as he started to sit
up, clearly intending to do something about them, but dazed and
confused by the pain.

“Let me help!” she called out, stepping
through the rough curtain and into the light of the rough home. The
man’s eyes flew open wide and he stared at her in unabashed shock
as she came into his cave-house, looking around for something that
she could use to bandage his wounds—wounds he had received in the
process of helping her get away from Liam.

“You ran away,” the man said, almost
accusingly. “You shouldn’t be here—you should be on your way back
into town.” Jennifer shook her head, watching with only a little
wariness as she approached the man. He had cleaned out the wounds
themselves, though not the smears of blood that had transferred to
other parts of his arm and chest. Jennifer pressed her lips
together, examining the wounds from a distance.

“I realized you weren’t chasing me, and
then I thought… I thought you might be injured, and you are.” She
looked around once more, trying to think of what she could use as a
bandage. There was nothing at hand; she frowned and looked down at
her clothes. Her leggings would have to do. They were clean enough,
apart from her sweat. Jennifer slipped them off of her hips
underneath her skirt, kicking them down from her knees and away
from her ankles.