Free Saving Her Bear: A Second Chances Romance by Alana Hart, Michaela Wright Page B

gone, certainly lying hurt somewhere in the dark, and she was alone, her body half broken beneath her. She gathered up all her strength, clenching her jaw as she shifted on the ground. If she was going down, she was going down fighting.
    The brown bear watched her as she rose to her feet, propping herself against a nearby tree.
    “Alright, you son of a bitch. Let’s do this,” she said, straightening, her left ass cheek screaming in protest.
    The bear snorted, shaking his head as though to shoo a fly. Then he hoisted himself up onto his hind legs, towering over everything. She snatched up a large stick from the ground, wielding it like a baseball bat. The bear just watched her, its rumbling breaths coming in calm bursts.
    She took a step back, poking the stick in its direction. “John?” She hissed into the wilderness, praying she might hear him call.
    The bear shifted on its hind legs, and slumped down, then as Catherine watched, it seemed to shrink into itself, as though cowering from something. Yet, it wasn’t cowering, it was growing smaller, the dark fur giving way to the pale smoothness of skin. Catherine backed away several steps, mumbling to herself. This wasn’t real. What she was seeing was impossible.
    “No, no. No!” She yelled at the sight, as though she could argue it out of being. Yet there on the forest floor where the massive brown bear had been was a brown haired man, his face as familiar as her own name.
    She tripped over a tangle of branches, catching herself against a tree trunk. John moved toward her, arms out to catch her, his body naked now, bleeding from a long scrape across his shoulder.
    “Don’t come fucking near me!” She screamed, swinging the stick in his direction.
    “I’m sorry, Catie. I’m so sorry you had to see that. I meant to tell – I wanted to tell you years ago.”
    “Back off! Back the fuck off!”
    She threw the stick at him, stumbling away, unwilling to take her eyes off him, as though doing so would invite the bear back.
    “I’m not going to hurt you, sweetheart. I didn’t have a choi -”
    “You were a fucking bear!”
    He displayed his hands out before him, moving toward her cautiously. “But I’m not now.”
    The impossible screamed in her mind as logic and reason fought desperately to deny what she’d just seen. Yet, there was no means of denial. She’d just watched the impossible happen.
    “You were a bear,” she said, and dropped.
     

 
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER FOUR
     
    John’s voice was gentle, shifting in distance from as close as a whisper in her ear, to the sound of someone calling from across the harbor. She tried to call back to the sound, but no sound would come.
    “Catie, can you hear me, sweetheart?”
    Catherine opened her eyes and found herself lying beneath the open beams of a lodge ceiling. She swallowed, her throat painfully dry and hoarse. She reached for her throat, and quickly remembered why she’d been screaming. Catherine jerked across the bed, nearly toppling off the far end as John reached for her, frowning.
    “You’re safe, honey. You’re safe.”
    Catherine sat up in the queen sized bed, glancing around the room. This place was foreign; wooden plank walls and high windows facing the harbor, misty in the early morning.
    “Where am I?”
    John turned to the bedside table, lifting up a steaming mug of something to hand to her. “You’re in my bedroom.”
    Catherine glanced around again. This wasn’t the bedroom she remembered from John’s childhood home.
    He seemed to read her expression. “This is my house.”
    “You have a house?”
    Catherine leaned toward him, cautiously, glancing into the mug to decipher its contents. It looked like tea. It smelled like tea. She trusted it about as much as she trusted a snake oil salesman.
    He chuckled softly. “I do. It was Great Uncle Greg’s, but when he passed without any kids, it went to me.”
    Catherine swallowed, taking the mug from him, but still wary to drink from