Free The Hawk and Her LumBEARjack: BBW Paranormal Bear Shifter Romance by Zoe Chant Page A

padlocked gate across the road and a forbidding NO TRESPASSING sign. Felicity hunted through the keys on her key chain until she found the one that undid the padlock, pulled the gate back, and drove through. She locked it again behind her.
    It was evident that no one had passed this way since the snow had melted. The road was muddy and difficult at this time of year, but her Jeep could handle it. She drove through the trees, came around a corner, and entered the overgrown yard of a small, boarded-up cabin.
    This was a vacation property that belonged to friends of hers in Minneapolis. Felicity had obtained permission from her friends to park on their land while she went "hiking". She knew they only came up here once or twice a year, and with the gate to deter vandals, she felt reasonably comfortable leaving her car unattended for a couple of days.
    She slammed the car door and stepped out into fresh, cool air and a welcome silence. The cabin was surrounded by dense forest, hiding the road and the neighbors; she might as well be in the deepest heart of the wilderness. Felicity tipped her head back and looked up at the gorgeous sunset sky above her. She took a long, deep breath of the pine-scented air. Oh, she'd missed this. She loved her job in the city, but there were a lot of things a person couldn't do among neighbors, tall buildings, and ubiquitous cell phone cameras.
    Such as having a good, proper flight.
    Unselfconsciously, Felicity stripped out of her clothes, folding each item neatly and putting it in the backseat. She tucked her purse underneath the seat to keep it out of sight—while she didn't think the car would be disturbed in her absence, there was no sense tempting fate. Then she locked the car and hid the keys in her usual place, underneath the cabin's porch in an overturned coffee can.
    Finally , she thought. She spread her arms to the setting sun, and let the hawk rise inside her.
    The change rippled through her, a rush of heat and energy under her skin. Feathers prickled her arms, and her vision was suddenly sharp and keen. She leaped into the air, and the transformation was complete before she could come back down. Felicity beat her wings, the downdraft carrying her upward on the brisk spring wind.
    The world tilted and spread out below her. The sun was setting below the rim of the world, and all the trees cast long dark shadows. The maples and birches were just beginning to leaf out for the spring, a flush of lacy green spreading across the land. Her sharp hawk's eyes found the cabin in its clearing, the blocky little shape of her Jeep, the road like a dressmaker's ribbon unspooling across the landscape. Felicity circled above it, reading the currents in the wind. It was blowing from the south, so she went with it, flying away north, leaving roads and houses behind.
    Hawks were not good night flyers, so she would need to find a place to sleep before it got dark. This was no problem. She'd flown from her friends' cabin many times; she knew all the best hollow trees, caves, and abandoned barns in the area. She did not need to hunt, since she'd eaten on the way up, but she still found her predator's instincts stirring as she glimpsed the zipping movements of bats coming out in the dusk, the lazy lolloping of rabbits in the open fields she soared across.
    Life, Felicity thought, was excellent.
    Morning found her far away from the cabin where she'd started out, with Minneapolis nothing but a memory. She'd slept in one of her hollow tree hideouts and emerged at first light. Now she was flying along an old logging road, dipping and rising, sometimes doing a little side-roll just for fun. She kept an eye out for bigger predators, not that she was worried. If she encountered anything in the air big enough to threaten her, like an eagle, all she had to do was land and change back into a human. And predators on the ground, such as bears, couldn't bother her as long as she was flying.
    And there were bears up here, she