Free Claimed By My Bear Stepbrother: A BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance Standalone by Ashley Hunter

Chapter 1
     
    “Bye, girls,” Anna shrieked from outside the front door of her house to her friends who were waving her goodbye, half sticking out from the window of their car.
    “Bye, Anna,” they shouted back, voices tired and slurred with a mixture of exhaust and sleepiness. “Go back to your fairy tale,” said Nicole, one of her friends.
    She was talking about her home, which was no less than a palace. Anna just rolled her eyes, took out her set of keys and after fumbling on the first attempt, opened the door.
    It was just like a Disney cartoon. The princess entering her majestic palace to a grand staircase leading to worlds unknown; never-ending tapestries and glass windows lined with expensive portraits and stuffed heads of animals, most probably alive at some point in the not so distant past. Anna didn’t have to tiptoe across the cavernous hall, despite the silence and stillness of the night. Half-Moon, first quarter.
    The hall would have been plunged in utter and complete darkness except for slabs of moonlight entering through the large glass windows. Anna felt a sense of spookiness walking in the half black hall, everything so calm and silent, like it always is before a storm.
    Her ears were extra sensitive, picking up sounds from far off: the chirping of a cricket, wind whistling through the tree tops, owls hooting.
    The big clock on top of the staircase chimed midnight. Anna never knew why Jack, her stepfather, had kept this old piece of machinery when newer models were loitering the market and new ones were practically being produced every day.
    It can’t be for aesthetic reasons, she thought, as it was not a particularly fine looking clock. She thought to ask Jack about this, or Emma, her mother. Emma had married Jack just about five months ago, more than two years after Anna’s biological father had passed away in a car accident.
    Emma had been grieving for a year or so when Anna finally convinced her to go outside and just find somebody to talk to or something. Luckily she found Jack and they married soon after.
    Jack had a son from a previous marriage, Nathan, who had graduated from college a couple of years ago and was now helping Jack with his business; a business that kept growing at exponential speeds. Anna, herself busy with her freshman year of college had seen little of Nathan since she moved in.
    She had seen him on the wedding and then on odd nights here at home. He seemed to be working a lot, even more than Jack who had a reputation for being a workaholic. Some days Nathan looked a lot worse for wear than other days.
    Anna never understood why he pushed himself to work to such a point that his health started getting effected.
    Presently as she was climbing the stairs, there was a strange creaking noise. She froze in her place. First she thought that it was probably nothing, a trick played by her brain with the dark.
    Then there was a thud and a small cry. Now she was positively terrified. She was torn between curiosity to see what the source of the noise was and fear at the outcome.
    The sound was coming from just a little far away, probably just outside the walls of the house. She plucked up the courage and decided to follow the sound. Now she was tiptoeing, without consciously deciding to; fear does strange things to your body, without you even noticing.
    She reached the back door of the house which was ajar, but only slightly. She could look outside by placing only one eye through the sliver of space that was present.
    Her first instinct was to throw open the door and see who (or what) was making the noise.  But she almost immediately changed her mind when there were sudden movements outside. She pressed her eye against the small gap.
    Anyone standing on the opposite side of the door and looking at her eye would see that it dilated in what could only be construed as shock, fear and possibly disgust. Her hand was pressed against her mouth to stop her from screaming; right in front of her