Free Bearly Mated (BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) by Juliette Lucas

her, palm up. She laid tentative fingers over his.
    “Yes, come with me, and I’ll make you feel better.”
    “Can you do that, Patrick? I’m scared.” She said it out loud before she knew she would. He tugged her gently to his chest and tipped her chin up to kiss her. His mouth tasted so good, and she clung to his tongue, almost nursing on it.
    Patrick straightened and brushed her hair from her eyes. He nabbed the glasses from her face, and her vision cleared. “I’ll always make you feel better. All you have to do is trust me.”
    They walked together to the exit, and Kate called after, “Don’t bother to come back, Lizzie. You’re fired!”
    Patrick rounded on her and snarled. All of the humans yelped in fear, but Lizzie whispered his name, and he was at her side in an instant. Her lover escorted her out to a car she didn’t recognize, but Lizzie didn’t care so long as she was with Patrick. From the second she saw him she knew what was eating at her all that time. Well, aside from the fire burning a hole in her gut.
    Instead of taking the highway south, which led to their home town, Patrick stopped in a nearby motel. Outside the office, Lizzie peered up at the building and clutched her stomach tighter. “This place?”
    “We won’t be inside long, baby, just enough time.”
    “Enough time for what?”
    “For you to shed the last of your humanity and join me.” He took her trembling hand, and she tried not to pass out. “You’re already my mate, Lizzie, but you must make the change.
    “You keep saying I’m your mate, but nothing ever happened.” The tears started up again, but she was sick of crying and feeling weak. She scrubbed her face, but the waterworks kept it up.
    “Lizzie.”
    His voice in her head helped to calm her.
    “Do you remember the scratches on the table?” he asked.
    “You did that.”
    “No, it was you, baby. And have you noticed you’re more aware of what the people around you are doing—when they come and when they go?”
    She gasped.
    “Your aggression and your authority have both increased. Did you see evidence of it before you left town?”
    What he said seemed impossible, but she thought back to how she had spoken to Annie. Not that she and Annie had been friends before. Lizzie had always spoken her mind, but she knew how far to push the woman. Before Lizzie left town, she had actually challenged Annie when she was feeling bitchy. Jeez, was she going to stay this pent up and angry? Then she froze. Did that mean she accepted what he was telling her? The changes had started before she ran away. Maybe no one had recognized it, including her. No one except Patrick.
    Another rush of pain overtook her. This was like she was giving birth, she thought, just all over. Even her hair hurt, it seemed. She squeezed Patrick’s hand and nodded. “Okay, let’s do this.”
    The brave words wobbled when she spoke them, but Patrick kissed her fingers and led her into the motel. They got a room, and soon Lizzie lay on the bed shaking from head to toe. She kept grasping for Patrick as if he moved, but he stayed right by her side.
    “Relax, baby, I’m here,” he soothed her. “And don’t worry about the bed. I’ll pay for it.”
    She gaped at him. “What do you mean you’ll pay?”
    The question had hardly left her lips before the beast that had been stretching and testing its space inside her, pushed more earnestly at her containment. Lizzie heard Patrick say something in her head, and she didn’t know what it was. Yet, she and the bear responded together with “yes.”
    A mental switch clicked, and she was no longer Lizzie, the klutzy, slightly nerdy, curvy human, but Lizzie, the several hundred pound bear. She had shed the trappings of soft, pink for furry brown, and in her mind, she took up half the room. When a loud crack rent the air, she opened her mouth to tell Patrick she thought she’d just broken the bed, but instead of her usual high-pitched human tones, a growl