Free So Much To Bear (A Werebear Erotic Romance) by Bethany Rousseau

convince Damon to leave
the woods, to take shelter in the next town, leaving the members of
her own community baffled at their failure to find the “beast” Liam
had told them about.
     
    Jennifer was out of breath, her head
spinning as she came to the cliff that housed Damon’s cave. She
inhaled as deeply as she could, trying to slow her panting and the
rapid clamor of her heart enough to keep her hands and feet steady
for the climb. She could hear the mob in the distance behind her
and knew that time was absolutely of the essence. Jennifer took
another deep breath and began to climb, biting her lip as her eyes
stung with angry tears at the thought of what Liam had done. If she
had ever had any remotely friendly feelings towards the young man
due to his friendship with Robert, those feelings were gone for
good. It was clear to her as she made her way up the cliff that
Liam had taken his humiliation at Damon’s hands as an insult, and
he was determined to see the werebear dead rather than deal with
the fact that he’d been beaten down for his rude, entitled, and
aggressive behavior. Jennifer had known that Liam had a bullying
streak, but the fact that he was willing to whip up a mob to kill
one man for embarrassing him showed the depths of his real
cruelty.
     
    Jennifer came to the entrance of the
cave, still breathless, and wrenched the curtain aside. “Damon!”
she called out, coughing as the shout made her dry throat tighten.
Jennifer peered into the dimly-lit cave and realized in an instant
that Damon was gone—that he was completely absent from its cozy
confines. Jennifer’s heart began to pound again and panicked tears
welled up in her eyes. Where could the stupid bear-man be? Jennifer
bit her bottom lip to forestall the sobs that welled up in her
chest, inhaling and exhaling slowly through her nose. She had to
think. Where would Damon be, if not in his cave?
     
    Their tasks of the day before came into
Jennifer’s mind with a sudden burst of clarity. Of course. Damon
was not the type of person to spend the day moping at home just
because Jennifer had left; he was a good woodsman—he would be out
checking his snares, going about his daily routine, taking care of
his affairs the same way that he would any other day. He would be
out in the woods, along the meandering track and trail that they
had followed the day before. Jennifer felt a low, deep dread; they
had wandered through the woods in such a circuitous route that she
could have sworn she could never have retraced their steps even if
she hadn’t been in a state of panic at the fact of an angry mob out
to kill the man.
     
    Calm down, Jennifer, she told herself firmly. Panic isn’t going to get you where you need to go. You need
to find Damon and you need to warn him. You’ve lived near these
woods your entire life. Surely you can figure out where his spots
are. She took struggling deep breaths to
calm herself and began to climb down from the cave, looking around
her and up at the sky. It had been about this time of the morning
when she and Damon had set out the day before. It couldn’t possibly
be that hard to find his trails in the woods. She had walked them,
she had followed him, and deep down some part of her brain had to
have recorded landmarks, little differences that would lead her
straight to him in time to warn him of the mob headed his
way.
     
    Jennifer let her feet lead her away
from the cliffs, into the woods away from the mob. She acted on
instinct, not stopping to question how she knew where to go. She
spotted a cluster of the berry bushes that Damon had stripped for
her breakfast and peered into the foliage, finding the particular
ones that he had stripped. She followed the trail by muscle memory,
breathing in the air deeply as if to track him by scent, as if she
had the same preternatural abilities that the werebear might have.
She knew she didn’t, but by the same token, Jennifer felt as if
their liaison of the night before had