Loved by the bear 5, p.6
Loved by the Bear 5,
p.6
He has better sense than I do and keeps it light. He breaks away to roll me over and wrap himself around me so we’re spooning. “Sleep, my darling. Once you’re stronger I’ll show you sex werebear style.”
“I can’t—” A yawn escapes from me. I’m so tired I can’t even pretend to protest. “Wait,” I say as my eyelids fall, and I’m asleep in seconds.
I’m at a gun range deep in a forest and it’s eerily silent, as if all creatures are hiding from danger. Suddenly gunshots fire in a slow succession, and I turn around to see the back of a girl with dark hair pulled up in a short, high ponytail. She only hit the human-shaped target once out of her five shots.
A man barks at her, “Pathetic.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve never—”
Her voice makes me think it’s Josie, even though I’ve never heard my roommate whimper like that. I want to tell her it’s okay, that she’ll do better next time. But I realize I’m not actually in this dream. I’m watching it.
“Fix your grip,” the man says, and he lifts his hands up, holding a pistol firmly. Josie copies him. “Focus on what you want to hit. Think of nothing else.”
“Okay,” she says, and she tries again. She hits the target twice this time but only on the outer edges of the paper. She turns to the man and offers him a smile. I notice her face is full and her arms are soft and round like mine. She even has boobs. This Josie has forty pounds on the one I know. She says, “I’m—”
I jump when the man’s hand whips across her face so hard she stumbles to the ground. He towers over her, and she flinches back as her eyes fill with tears. I’m in shock, and for a second I wonder where my badass friend is before I realize this is who she used to be.
The man growls out, “Do not leave this range until you can hit your man with every shot. You’ll only get one chance with the vermin.”
Josie nods and scrambles to her feet as he steps away. He leans against a fence where another man is standing. While Josie fumbles with trying to reload the gun, he says to the other guy, “Stupid half-animal bitch. Only good for one thing.” He makes a rude gesture with his hips.
The other guy laughs. “Might be an animal in bed, Link. I call sloppy seconds.”
Fear for Josie makes my heart stop, and my skin prickles as pure rage takes over. I have a strong desire to hurt the men. A growl fills my ears and—
“Madison!”
I jerk awake to Trent’s face over mine. He’s holding my arms, and he says, “I need you to look at me and think of yourself as a human. Picture yourself blow-drying your hair. You’ve got that brush wand thing in your hand.”
I shake my head, wondering why he’s asking me to pretend, but then I feel it. Something inside of me is trying to take over. It hits me when I look down at my hand that Trent has tucked underneath his knee. I see a paw and claws where my hand should be. I shifted! And it’s scary as hell to think there’s a bear trying to control me. I’m not ready for this. I close my eyes and picture myself in the mirror putting on mascara. The presence in me begins to fade, and when I imagine grabbing an eyelash curler, it disappears.
Trent releases his grip and climbs off of me with a big sigh. “Jeez, that was freaky.”
I sit up to talk to him. “I shifted, right?”
“Yeah. It scared the hell out of me to hear you growl.” He blows out a breath of air. “It was sexy too.” I shake my head at him, and he says, “At least we know it’s not going to be a problem for you to shift. Do you know what you were dreaming about?”
I take a moment to recall my dream and inhale sharply when Josie on the shooting range comes back to me. But I don’t think that it was a dream. It was more like a vision. “Oh my god, Trent.” I grab his arm. “Remember when you told me that sometimes werebear have a touch of magic too?”
“Yeah, the alpha’s daughter, Carly, has a lot and quite a few of us have powers. Although, I don’t.”
“This is going to sound a little crazy, but I think changing gave me clairvoyance or whatever it’s called when you see things that happened.”
“You mean like your dream about Josie during your change? Are you sure it wasn’t just a dream, darling? Because you’ve just experienced a pretty insane transformation.”
“True, but Trent, these things I saw aren’t like most dreams. I was watching. It wasn’t happening to me, and I couldn’t participate.”
He frowns. “That is weird. Tell me what you saw this time.”
“I saw Josie again.” I grimace when I recall the man slapping her so hard that she fell. “She was learning how to use a gun, and the guy training her was really mean. He hit her and called her a half-animal bitch. And then when he and his friend were talking about what they wanted to do to her, I got mad. Really mad. That must have been when I shifted.”
“Okay, so we already figured Josie came from a rough past. Maybe she belonged to a gang or something.”
“No.” I think about how Josie has a Kershaw Cryo, a knife meant to kill. And how she works out like it’s her job. Because maybe it is. I recall how she tried to talk me out of becoming a werebear, making it sound like a dangerous thing to do, even though she planned to become one herself. I was suspicious then, and now I think I might understand why. “Trent. The Eradicators are like a gang, right?”
He nods. “Yeah, a human group that act like they’re above the laws of their kind while trying to wipe out werebear. What are you saying, Madison?”
A chill runs through me, and I wrap my arms around myself as if I can keep evil from seeping in. But it’s no use. I haven’t seen Josie in a couple of days, and it might be because she found Max and is now doing what she came here to do. I say, “I think Josie is an Eradicator who is hell-bent on becoming a werebear and destroying us all.”
More from V. Vaughn
Check out V.’s world of shifters:
Called by the Bear
Tempted by the Bear
Desired by the Bear
Rocked by the Bear
Bewitched by the Bear
Winter Valley Wolves
Smokey Falls Wolves
More Paranormal Romance:
Witches of Night Meadow
Called by the Vampire
Greenville Alien Mail Order Brides
You can see all her published books at www.violetvaughn.com
About the Author
V. Vaughn lives on an island in Maine and spends as much time outdoors with her two Portuguese Water dogs as she can. She may have seen a bear or two….
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V Vaughn, Loved by the Bear 5
