Free So Much To Bear: Shifting Devotions (Werebear Erotic Romance) by Bethany Rousseau

It had been a few days since Jennifer had taken Damon out of the forest, taking charge of him and bringing him out of his existence as a hermit and into regular human society. The first night they had been in the hotel together, Jennifer had been positively giddy, excited to introduce him to the pleasures and conveniences of the modern world. He had, after all, been living in a cave when she had met him; and before that the level of technology his clan had was comparable to the middle of the 20 th century—not exactly up to date, though he knew somewhat about the existence of more advanced tech.
     
    But after her initial excitement at the thought of ushering Damon into the twenty first century had started to wear off, Jennifer’s responsibilities crept back into her mind. She would have to eventually go back to school; she wasn’t about to give up on her degree, even though she was in love with Damon. “I want you to go back to the city your university is in,” Damon had insisted when she had broached the topic tentatively, lying in his arms the third night after they had fled the town—and the woods that bordered it, Damon’s home—together. “I want to go with you. You shouldn’t have to give anything up for me, Jenn. We can do this together.” She was impressed with how quickly he had begun picking up the complexities of modern life; Damon had been thrilled with the idea of room service, and understood immediately why a gratuity was considered necessary, not just a courtesy. When they had left the hotel, careful not to attract attention to themselves, Jennifer had taken him to a clothing store to get him a few things that didn’t mark him as a long-time hermit, Damon had managed to go with the flow.
     
    He had followed her lead, but so imperceptibly that anyone watching them—at least, Jennifer thought—would have just considered them a normal couple, going about their business in the town. But it was a whole different situation to how it would be once they were in the city where her university was located. The town they had fled to was almost a mirror of where Jennifer had grown up; it was small, not heavily populated, and from the hotel, everything they could need was within a reasonable walking distance. The city that held her university was much larger—and there would be no way for her to keep Damon at her side while she was in school. She lived on campus and there were strict rules about outside guests. Damon would have to be able to fend for himself in a much larger city, to navigate and deal with public transportation, handle money, and not get himself into trouble. Thus far, she had handled the money for everything they needed to pay for; if Damon was going to live in the city, he would have to have money to spend—he would need to buy things while she wasn’t there.
     
    Jennifer had taught him about money the first night; Damon had vague knowledge of it from the limited socialization his clan had had with the town she’d lived in. He knew the idea of money, the basic concept and how it worked, but he’d never had much use for it personally. Amongst the clan everything was done by trade and barter, and when his kith and kin had all died out, Damon had chosen to make whatever he could—and if he couldn’t make something, he lived without it. The result of that lack of education was that he had no idea of what reasonable prices were for anything. He simply didn’t have the life experience to be able to know if something was overpriced—and when Jennifer had taken him on a brief shopping expedition, not only to get him newer, more current clothes, but also to expose him little by little to the world, he had been shocked at the cost of a pair of jeans, but not at all startled at the expensive prices on a menu posted outside of a restaurant.
     
    “The city my school is in is… it’s a lot bigger, busier… it’s a different kind of place to here,” Jennifer told Damon. “I can’t just