Free Lair of the Alphas (Steamy Werebear Shifter BBW Menage Romance) by Willow Wilde Page A

just lost in the woods, I was lost in the woods with zero call reception, a storm already starting to kick in around me, and my own respite being a camp that had been set up with a friend who had tried to rape me.
     
    No, this wasn’t going well at all.
     
    The sky was darkening quickly, and it looked like it was going to get bad fast. This meant that I needed to find shelter now , before I was trapped overnight and suffering from the triple whammy of thirst, hunger, and hypothermia by the end of the night. If I didn’t figure shit out now, being at death’s door by morning was a very likely scenario…and that overlooked whatever predatory wildlife there was in this place.
     
    As the rain started to quicken, I stumbled around through the underbrush. Moving quickly but carefully, my priorities were to find somewhere safe from the rain as fast as I could without the death sentence of a hard fall. If I sprained or broke something now , I was probably a goner.
     
    Lady Luck was on my side, as I burst into a clearing. Without having to navigate my way haphazardly between a bunch of trees and bushes, I could find my bearings a little easier. But it turned out that I didn’t really have to — after hiding under the partial safety of a tree and gazing through the increasing rain, a flicker of lightning flashed the sight of a nearby cave, just up a slope. As fortune had it, I had been looking right at the opening — if I had been focused anywhere else, I would probably have never seen the shelter.
     
    It was way quicker for me to dash across the clearing than try to follow the safety of the tree-line, so I threw caution to the increasing wind and madly raced towards the slope. I summoned every prayer I had to beg the lightning to strike elsewhere, instead of zapping me into a thick, curvy crisp on the spot. It took me several minutes of running to find my way to the rising ramp of the slope, curving up towards and beyond the cave entrance. The sky was black and the rain was rushing sideways now, and I had to wipe at my eyes or try to shield myself more frequently now.
     
    As I made it onto the slope, the lightning clashed in the distance again. For a brief moment, I wondered how Paul was fairing in this mess, but immediately banished the thought. He’s the whole reason I’m even DEALING with this shit, I reminded myself as I clamored up along the side of the rock face.
     
    “Oh god!” I screeched as I slipped, tumbling down onto the slope and sliding back down towards the ground. I threw everything I had into stopping my descent, and managed to catch a handhold in some soft earth while my other hand grasped onto a small boulder. Pulling myself up, I quickly took stock — nothing broken or sprained, apparently — and immediately clamored to regain my lost ground. The cave mouth was so close that I could see it, even without the lightning, and I was determined finally pull myself free of the storm.
     
    Finally, I stumbled into the welcoming shelter of the cave. Tired and soaked to the bone, I wasn’t thinking clearly when I saw the smoldering fire in the back — all I knew was that I had the resources to dry off. In the debris scattered around the small cave, I found an ample amount of dry twigs and dead brush, and began to stack them back on top of the dying fire. As the flickering flames began to slowly creep back up, I grabbed the few chunks of wood that I could find and packed up a tall stack in the center.
     
    If I had been thinking clearly, I would have known that the residents of this cave were inevitably going to return. In my daze, all that I knew was that there was a nearly-dead fire in an abandoned cave, and it was my only chance of drying off and taking shelter from the storm. But without my better judgment, found a spot on the cave floor behind the fire, free from any uncomfortable debris, and began to strip off my soaked clothes and lay them out close to the rising flames. Shivering, I pressed my