There.
A dark silhouette of a bear beginning to shake. He recognized the signs of a shifter at the edge of his strength. And as he watched, the body started shrinking into itself, becoming an adolescent human. The grizzly hump slid down, the head grew more round, and the thick arms and legs became slender. A boy shifter exhausted as he headed toward home.
It was good that the child diminished himself. He would not tolerate another male bear near Becca. Not now. Not before he impregnated her. But this boy was no threat.
He turned back to his woman, using his hands to strip open her blouse. He would lick her breasts and belly. He would bury his tongue between her thighs. He would taste every part of her, letting her know that he was the only one to own her scent. And in so doing, he would mark her as his.
He smelled her arousal and knew she was fertile.
Now.
Boy.
Something about the boy niggled his brain, but he swatted the thought away. Becca was moving against him, her hips pulsing against his superior power, her breath coming in panting gasps as he tasted her neck.
But there was something else in the air. Something dark and rancid that was not Becca and not the boy. It was faint in the still air, but he knew it as wrong and that was enough to still his movements. He would not mate in a place that was unsafe.
He turned his head, sniffing the air. Becca stilled as well, and he pressed a finger to her lips. The night was quiet, the breeze negligible. Where was it?
A dark shadow moved in the distant tree. Was that it? He couldn’t tell. It was too far away to scent or to see properly. Which is when he focused on the boy.
The boy who was down on the ground. Unmoving.
Alarm pierced through him. Procreating was a primal task for his bear, but so was protecting the young. The Wrong was out there. The young was vulnerable.
Therefore, he attacked.
CHAPTER 6
Becca blinked away the lust in time to see unbelievable things flash across her retinas. They were dark shadows, indistinct to her confused mind. So she did what she always did in a crisis. She made a list.
First was the sudden chill of being half dressed in Michigan at midnight. It didn’t matter that it was spring. It was still damned cold on her bare belly and heavy breasts. Next was irritation that the man who’d been keeping her flushed and happy was suddenly gone. Her body was pulsing, her mind overridden by desire.
She was not a woman to be distracted by such things. Not usually. But occasionally a man pushed all her buttons and she lost sight of reason. And her clothes. She wasn’t proud of the fact, but there it was. She kept herself so locked down that when a man breeched her defenses, she went nuclear meltdown into passion. Clearly that’s what had happened.
Which is when her vision finally cleared.
Holy shit, he was a bear.
Item number two. Carl was a freaking huge bear. Seeing Marty shift had been mind blowing enough, but now, in the moonlight, she saw what had to be Carl running full-bear grizzly at something. She pulled her coat together, buttoning it quickly as she tried to make out form from shadow. Carl stopped at a dark lump on the ground, nosing it gently.
A boy!
“Theo!” she screamed and ran forward.
Carl was straddling the child, but at her cry, he turned toward her and roared. Not just a quiet grumble, but a full-out bellow that knocked her back on her heels.
Oh shitshitshitshitshit. He was going to eat Theo!
“Get away from him!” she screamed.
She had no illusions that she could frighten a five-hundred-pound grizzly, but maybe she could get through to the man inside the bear. She didn’t think Carl would ever hurt a child, least of all Theo, but who knew what a bear would do?
“Get away!” she screamed again as she ran forward. Straight at a grizzly. What the hell was she doing? She didn’t even have a weapon, and her damned coat had popped open again. But she couldn’t stop. Theo needed her.
So she ran while Carl roared at her again.
“Get away!” Damn it, she needed a gun. Or a big rock. Something to…
