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

want to do is live in peace.” Damon shook his
head. “Why are you here to attack me? Answer that!” The mob milled
about, uncertain for a moment. “I have never ventured into your
town, never even done anything to any of you. And you call me a
creature—you don’t even know me!” Damon spat off to the side in
disgust. “Get back to your own lives.”
     
    From the back of the crowd—Jennifer
thought it was Liam’s father who shouted, but she couldn’t be sure,
her heart was pounding in her ears so loudly, “That creature killed
one of our own! He’s an evil, violent animal!” Jennifer opened her
mouth to protest, but several members of the mob surged forward,
galvanized by the shout, weapons raised and aimed at Damon.
Jennifer lurched forward but found herself pulled back by a pair of
strong arms, a startled shout leaving her throat only to be muffled
as a firm hand clamped over her mouth. She turned her head and saw
that Liam had grabbed her from behind—somehow he had seen her in
the crowd and knew that she could ruin his plans. She struggled in
his arms, trying to break free of the grip he had on her, but he
evaded her stomping feet and clawing nails alike, dragging her
backward.
     
    Jennifer watched in shock as Damon
grabbed at a gun, wrenching it from a would-be killer’s hands with
a savage jerk and tossing it aside. Another member of the town
darted in to attempt to stab him and Damon wheeled around, grabbing
the man and throwing him to the side with preternatural strength.
For a moment, as Damon threw aside the attackers who had surged
forward, knocking the wind out of them and making the rest of the
mob shift backward in instinctive fear, Jennifer felt a surge of
hope; maybe, just maybe it would filter through the peoples’ minds
that they were on a fool’s errand of the most ridiculous and
criminal character.
     
    As more attackers came forward,
Jennifer’s eyes widened at the sight of a mist gathering around
Damon. She watched—transfixed just as the rest of the crowd was—as
the man transformed into a bear, his body shrinking down and then
arching up out of the mist, the sound of hard chunks swirling in a
thick liquid, a sound like rocks in a cement mixer filling the air
as his limbs covered in fur, his face elongated, and he bared his
teeth in snarl. In a matter of seconds, the man was utterly gone,
replaced by the towering, enormous bear that Damon became in his
other form; in the bright light of day, his form somehow seemed
even more powerful than it had at night, his size concealed by
shadow. Damon threw the new attackers aside seemingly without
effort, and Jennifer almost let out a cheer—although deep down, she
knew that after seeing a man transform into an animal, the mob
would be gripped by a fear even deeper than they’d felt when he’d
just been an unknown “creature,” whose abilities they had to have
surely doubted.
     
    For a split-second, it seemed as though
Damon might be able to extricate himself from the situation—at
least beat back the members of the mob long enough to get away, to
hide deeper in the woods until they all straggled away. But as
Jennifer’s heart pounded and she struggled distractedly to break
Liam’s grip on her, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Robert.
Her friend—the man she had thought, before meeting Damon, that she
might have wanted to have a relationship with—grabbed something
from Liam’s belt as he slipped past them, muttering something to
Liam about taking care of the situation. He darted around the
crowd, avoiding Damon’s line of sight and getting around the bear.
Jennifer struggled with new vigor, realizing in an instant what
Robert’s plan was.
     
    Even having a prescient notion of what
Robert planned to do, Jennifer was—for an instant—paralyzed by
shock when she saw him creep up behind the bear; Damon was
distracted by fending off his attackers, though fewer and fewer of
them were interested in risking their limbs