Free A Taste of Honeybear Wine (BBW Bear Shifter Standalone Romance Novel) (Bearfield Book 2) by Jacqueline Sweet, Eva Wilder Page B

should have sent someone else to negotiate. He was going to screw it up.
    As they walked deeper into the Rookswood, the path enveloped them. Overhead, the tree branches merged, forming at first a light canopy filtering the noonday sun into a dappling of golden green, and then forming a roof above them. So slowly they barely noticed it, the path between trees had transformed into a tunnel of wood and sticks and roots, the ground raw dirt underfoot and the sun nowhere to be seen. The trail threatened to become too dark for Alison to see, but then they encountered the first of the ravens’ lights.
    A dollar store lantern, battery powered, with bits of colored glass and feathers and red string dangling from it hung before them. It looked like a preschool class project. Like someone gave twelve toddlers a bucket of broken glass, a bucket of glue and the cheapest plastic lantern they could find.
    “Amazing,” Alison said. She was clearly fighting the urge to reach out and touch it, to see what it was made of. “I suppose taking a picture of this with my phone would be cause for offense, yeah?”
    “Definitely,” Michael agreed.  
    Nearby, a raven laughed.
    The path wound deeper, moving underground into the earth itself. The lanterns grew more frequent, until the tunnel was lined with their gaudy splendor. Between the lanterns, in the dirt walls of the tunnel cave, chunks of shattered mirror were embedded next to shattered TV screens and smashed cell phones and bits of tinsel or aluminum foil. If it was silver and shiny, the ravens had stolen it and jammed it into their walls.
    And then they were through the tunnel, in a clearing, blinking in the sunlight. Before them stood the prominence of Rook’s Roost, citadel of the ravens. At the base of the mountain two large doors covered in shattered glass and mirrors stood wide open. Farther out, a village of small houses clustered. Fifteen or twenty homes that looked like turn of the century workman cottages, the one-room affairs with kitchenettes and bathrooms stuffed inside that dotted coastal California. They were cozy and—like everything else the ravens touched—bedazzled to hell and back.  
    Michael couldn’t sense anyone in the homes. The air was ripe with the ravens’ scent, but it was old. Stale.
    “Please enter, travelers,” the woman’s voice beckoned from inside the mountain.  
    Alison reached out and took Michael’s hand. Hers was trembling. Fear had hold of her. Her pupils were pinpricks, her breath came in short shallow gasps, her heart raced like a hummingbird’s.  
    He was such a dope. He’d been so busy focusing on himself, on the ravens, that he hadn’t stopped to consider any of this from her perspective. Just yesterday she was a nearly broke academic city girl who had just inherited a dilapidated house in the country, and literally the next day she was walking through a magical forest with a strange man—a strange ridiculously hot man, let’s be honest—who said he loved her and who had already came on way too strong, and now here she was facing some evil trickster queen. No wonder she was panicking.
    Michael stepped in front of Alison, facing her. He cupped the back of her head in his large hand and planted a tender kiss on her lips. “Hey,” he said. “It’s going to be okay. I’m here.” She blinked at him. He could smell the arousal and the fear fighting each other. She’d sweated off most of the musk sage, but his bear was calmer now. It’d gotten used to her scent slowly.  
    “What’s going to happen? I literally have no idea what I’m doing or why I agreed to this.”
    “Just focus on the house. On your plans. What are you going to call this brewery?”
    “It’s a bed and brew, but I thought I’d give them each different names.” She smiled at him and his heart exploded into a thousand ragged pieces. It was a simple smile, guileless, without fear or agenda. And the warmth of it was almost too much to bear. Could he