Free Heart Of The Bear (Appalachian Shifters #1) by Alanis Knight

Chapter One

     
    I guess I was so wrapped up in the passion that was heating up in the book on my Kindle that I didn’t notice the turbulence, or the announcements that inevitably came afterward. I was nibbling on a fingernail when a sudden jolt caused me to tear my nail down to the quick. I cursed under my breath and turned my eyes away from my Kindle long enough to noticed worried looks on the faces of the other passengers around me.
    “Mommy, are we gonna die?” I heard a delicate little voice ask somewhere nearby.
    “No, baby, of course not,” returned a reassuring voice. But I could detect the faint jitter of anxiety in her voice. She added, “Planes go through turbulence all the time. Here, you want your juice?”
    My stomach knotted into a solid lump and crawled up into my throat. I swallowed hard. This was exactly why I’d told my mother I’d rather take a bus or a train than fly out to see her, but she insisted that planes were perfectly safe and I’d be in South Carolina in no time.
    Another jolt knocked me forward in my seat, and my forehead slapped against the seat in front of me. My Kindle jumped out of my hands and disappeared under the seats. I started to reach for it, but I heard static come over the airwaves, and I paused to listen.
    “Attention, passengers, the Captain has asked that everyone please take their seats and put on their seatbelts at this time,” said a crackly voice. “This storm is a little stronger than we anticipated, and we’re just taking precautions to…”
    The voice disappeared in a haze of static, and another jolt sent me spilling into the floor just as I was struggling to fasten my seatbelt. I heard a few screams, and a bright light flashed outside the windows, followed immediately by a deafening crack of thunder. Another explosive sound came right after, and my eyes widened in horror at the sight of the engine flaming outside the window across the aisle.
    This is it, I thought. I’m going to die.
    I hardly had time to think of anything else. In moments, I was pushed against my seat with such force that I couldn’t pull myself back up into it. I was crouched in the floor with tears streaming down my face. I could hear a high-pitched whine, and I knew the plane was going down fast.
    I tried to fumble in my pocket to find my phone. I wanted to text my mother to let her know I loved her and I didn’t blame her for talking me into flying. But I was pinned so hard against the seats that I couldn’t move a muscle. All around me I could hear screaming, and crying, and praying.
    Suddenly, there was nothing but darkness.

     
    I can’t say how long I was taken by the darkness, but I awoke to the feel of raindrops spattering across my face. I blinked in confusion, and my eyes adjusted to the sight of a canopy of tree limbs waving above me in the breeze, highlighted by a full moon that shone brightly through a blanket of clouds.
    I tried to lift my head to look around me, but a searing pain shot down my spine from the name of my neck and I groaned. I couldn’t move.
    “Help me,” I tried to call weakly, but my voice was swallowed up by the spattering rain. I swallowed and tried again, this time a little louder. “Please, help me!”
    I heard movement nearby, and my heart began to race.
    “Help! Over here!” I called out.
    The movement got closer, and suddenly, standing over me, I noticed a pair of glowing hazel eyes peering down at me through a dark mass of fur. I gasped, and I struggled to back away, but the pain was too intense.
    “Help!” I shrieked at the top of my lungs! “Help me!”
    Lips curled upward over a set of impossibly long, sharp teeth, and I was certain this bear was about to rip me to shreds. I don’t know if it was terror, or blood loss, or shock, but I was quickly pulled back into the darkness I’d just come out of.

     
    “You shouldn’t have brought her here, Caleb!”
    The grating female voice snapped me back to reality. My eyes popped open,