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

somehow honed her knowledge
of him, as if she could somehow feel his presence in the deep,
quiet calm of the forest. She would find him. She had
to.
     
    Jennifer came to the first of the
snares and stopped; it was empty when she carefully pulled back the
foliage that concealed it—but she couldn’t know if that was because
Damon had already taken whatever animal he had trapped, or if he
had simply—as he had mentioned sometimes happened—not been
successful. She followed the trace to the next of the snares
quickly, thinking that she would either find him or find some
evidence that would indicate whether or not he had been there. The
next snare, several yards from the first, was just as empty, and
Jennifer groaned with frustrated dread, closing her eyes for a
moment as if to sense the man she was searching for. She went to
the next snare, further away than the first two, and once more
found no sign of the man she had come to feel so strongly connected
to.
     
    In desperation, Jennifer went to the
river, thinking that perhaps Damon was still washing his clothes,
or that he was retrieving the ones he had washed the day before.
Did Damon wash his clothes every day, in small loads, or did he
only do it when he had enough clothes to merit the chore? Jennifer
ground her teeth in frustration and rising panic as she came out of
a stand of trees near where she had harvested the greens and
berries for their repast the day before, only to find the area just
as vacant as the snares had been. “Damon!” she called, in as quiet
a voice as she could manage, desperation creeping up along her
spine. She couldn’t hear the mob; they might have simply gotten
lost or stalled in the woods, but something about the deep silence
of the forest around her told her that simply wasn’t the
case.
     
    Jennifer scoured the area, finding the
empty clothes line and swallowing against the growing lump that
formed in her throat. Any minute now, she thought, she would find
him. She would run into Damon, and have the time to tell him that
the mob was after him, and they would run away together. Jennifer
checked the area where the bee hive was and still failed to find
him; she shook her head. He probably didn’t visit the hive very
often—he was a responsible denizen of the forest and wouldn’t raid
the bees more often than he needed to for something sweet. Jennifer
found herself climbing through parts of the woods she had never
been in, even in her circuitous route with Damon the day before,
climbing over felled trees, tripping over unseen stones as the
ground began to rise in a gradual slope.
     
    As the loamy soil, fallen leaves, and
underbrush began to give way to more and more rock, Jennifer
realized that she was climbing up into a new set of cliffs. She was
so deep in the forest that she wasn’t even certain how far the town
was from where she found herself; she could hear the river, but the
disorientation of looking only for Damon, of not paying attention
to where she was, meant that she had no idea of where along the
river she had arrived. There was an angry rumble, a low grumbling
mutter, and Jennifer felt her heart pounding faster. The mob was
obviously close.
     
    Jennifer spotted Damon, but in the very
next instant she realized that she was too late; the mob had come
onto the cliffs from another direction, and they were milling
around, talking angrily amongst themselves about the discovery they
had made. “That’s him! That’s the creature!” Liam’s voice rang out
from the back of the mob, and Jennifer cried out, rushing forward
in instinct.
     
    “Who are you calling a creature?” Damon
asked, confused and obviously angry. He scowled at the mob, and
Jennifer stopped, compelled by some quality in the way the man
stood, the sound of his voice. “Why do you feel the need to disturb
my peace? I haven’t done anything to harm any of you. I live alone
in the woods, taking nothing from anyone. I am the very last of my
people and all I