Free Her Bear Protector (BBW Shifter Romance) by Bonnie Burrows Page A

chance that you're not fine? Even if that chance is only one in a trillion?"
                Aaron kissed my forehead again. "No. Your responsibility is to help me keep you safe. And I'm asking you as the man who loves you to help me in that responsibility by getting in your car and getting yourself to Traverse City. So will you agree to do it? Will you agree to get it your car right now?"
                He searched my eyes, and I sighed.
                "Okay. I'll do it for you. But, Aaron, I swear to you. If anything happens to you --"
                "It won't. You have to trust me."
                I sighed again. "Okay. But you better call me the second the wolves are gone."
                "I will. And I'll try to have them all dealt with as soon as possible."
                "Okay." I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my face in his shoulder. "I love you so much. Be safe."
                He ran through the woods alongside my car as I made my way down the four-mile dirt road-trail to Houghton. I caught glimpses of him running through the forest  bordering  the road when I left Houghton. But a few hours later, while I prepared to board the ferry that would take me across the Straits of Mackinac to the lower  peninsula,  I knew he'd long since returned to his family, and I was completely and totally alone. An almost-tangible sense of sadness and loss seemed to surround me like a fog. A ferry employee had to ask me twice for my keys so he could load my car into the cargo hold. And even then, it took me a second to comprehend his question. All I could think about was Aaron and his safety.
                After disembarking the ferry, getting my car, and stopping for an early lunch at a small-town cafe right at the northernmost shores of the  lower peninsula, I began the long drive down to Traverse City, which was a popular tourist destination known for its food and wine festivals.
                Several hours later, I checked into a large hotel near the center of town, and the young man at the counter asked if I was in town for some wine festival.
                I shook my head. "No. I'm actually just here for...well, I'm living in the U.P right now, near Houghton, but I just had to get away for a while."
                "You left the beauty of the U.P to come down here? Are you serious? I mean, not that we don't have our own nature and beauty down here, too, but...that area of the U.P, it's just gorgeous. Sounds like you must be running from something up there."
                He smiled, but I didn't smile in return, and he quickly apologized.
                "Just a lame joke. None of my business if you are."
                A few minutes later, I sat on the bed in my room, flipping through TV channels, thinking about what the young man had said. I wondered if I was running. I wondered if I'd been running my whole life. As a teenager, I'd switched high schools when a girl in one of my classes started bullying me. In college, I'd dropped one particular art class when the professor had declared my work mediocre. And I knew that more recently, I'd ran my way up to the U.P, running from the pain of my parents' deaths. And now, I was running away from the man I loved when he might need me. Just because I'd let myself get freaked out by thinking about what a wolf could do to me. Just because I hadn't stood my ground when I'd told Aaron I wasn't leaving.
                And both Aaron and I had forgotten something. I had a gun; I knew how to use it; and I wasn't a bad shot. And actually, when my dad had taken me to the shooting range at least a dozen times after he'd bought me my gun, I'd proved to be a very good shot. I figured that the shifter wolves might be unnaturally strong, but even the strongest animal in the world could still be fired upon. And I knew a shifter wolf couldn't