Bunny and the Bear
A Shifter Romance Novella, Volume 1
Cassandra Johnson
Published by Cassandra Johnson, 2019
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.
Bunny and the Bear
A Shifter Romance Novella, Volume 1
First edition. September 5, 2019
Copyright © 2019 Cassandra Johnson
Written by Cassandra Johnson
Table of Contents
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Two Weeks Later
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About the Author
1.
Nineteen-year-old Tiffany Bradwell looked at the clock on the register for the fifteenth time in the last minute. It was ten forty-five and her shift ended at eleven o’clock.
Tiffany suffered from varying degrees of depression and anxiety, perhaps it came from the sense of having no one. No family to turn to, no pack to lean on during those hard times when every sense in your body began to ache and tingle, craving the release of the full moon. Of course, were’s of her species were often ostracized. Rabbits weren’t exactly vicious, but they suffered from the same symptoms as those of wolves, bears, coyotes and every other were in the world. Nevertheless, Tiffany was never taken seriously by other packs, and given that rabbits were so rare in the shifter community –she felt alone and unwanted. Were-rabbits were usually seen as the lowest shifter in the food chain, totem pole –whatever you wanted to call it. Her family had been killed by a group of hunters two years ago leaving her an orphan. The men didn’t know that they were shifters of course, when they found the bodies of a man and a woman naked in the woods, they reported them to police and told them that they had been hunting rabbits. Their deaths were chalked up as an accident, her parents were buried, and Tiffany had to find a way to move on.
Sometimes, the emptiness of their loss was so great, she sought some way to release the pain. Shifting was absolutely one of them, but without anyone to run freely with, Tiffany pushed the shift as far as she could until she could barely stand it anymore. Sometimes, she hurt herself on purpose just to push the aching need back. The result was a myriad of scars on her thighs and legs. It wasn’t until she was in unbearable physical pain, that she couldn’t ignore her needs anymore. As lonely as she felt, why would it truly matter what she did to herself? Was it healthy? Of course not. But it worked –at least until she reached the dangerous stages.
Tiffany would be forced into a shift after a period, where she had no control over it –it could happen at any time, at any place.
She was putting herself in danger as well as the entire species of shifters. If humans ever knew about them? They could barely accept one another who were of different skin color, how would they react to a human who can turn into an animal?
Tonight, was the night. She would have to turn and shed her skin for a furry pelt, to run freely for the first time in nearly three moons. Tiffany had never stretched it out this long before and now, she was afraid of what might happen if she waited any longer. Even this morning she felt the pounding of her pulse in her ears, begging her. The tension in her muscles, the pain in her abdomen. Her co-workers chalked it up to her monthly. Oh, they had no freaking idea just what kind of monthly it was.
Tiffany looked at the clock again. Just a few more minutes until she could clock out and the store was dead at this hour, but there was no way that Ryland would let her clock out early, it didn’t matter if there was no one in the store.
Cleaning her register, she went around, wiping down the remaining five that were left in a mess by their cashiers for the day. Only Tiffany ever cleaned up her workstation when it was getting close to the end of her shift. Sometimes she worked the closing shift and came in for the opening shift, so she liked to come to work and find a nice clean area to work in that she didn’t have to struggle to clean up around checking customers.
Spotting a lady with a full cart coming towards the registers, she popped out, seemingly from nowhere, her reflexes showing off the urgency of her need. “Right this way, ma’am. I’m on register three.” Tiffany smiled and hurried to beat her there, unlocking her register as the system was on a timer and if left inactive for three minutes then it automatically logged you out. Signed in, she pulled the cart a little closer and smiled again.
“I bet you’re about to get off work for the night, aren’t you?” The blonde asked her. By Tiffany’s guestimate, the woman was probably in her early fifties, her hair was bleached blonde, but she could still make out fine gray hairs that she was trying to beat back with the aid of a top salon stylist. She was pretty, and she would always be a good-looking woman. Tiffany could already sense she was one of the good ones.
“Yes, ma’am at eleven actually. The time has just been dragging on and on. I was happy to see you come up. It helps the time go by a lot faster.” Tiffany replied with a little chuckle as she took her shoppers discount card and scanned it before she began to scan each of the items in her cart.
“I remember those days, I worked at this chain a long time ago for about ten years. I was a cashier as well as bookkeeper. I can remember those days and nights when the store was slow, and it felt like the clock would just get stuck.” The woman supplied with a genuine laugh as she moved down to the end of the conveyer belt and began to sack her groceries while Tiffany scanned them.
“Yes, that is exactly me right now. I was so relieved to see you. What do you do for a living now, if you don’t mind me asking?” Tiffany didn’t think she looked old enough to have retired, but hopefully, if she had left the store, she left for something much better.
“My husband is a bail bondsman, so after we got married, I left to help him. I even took some classes to become a private detective –it makes being a bondsman very helpful when people decide to disappear.” She told Tiffany.
“Wow, that must be very exciting work,” Tiffany said, taken aback, she imagined that it was a very demanding line of work, but at least she got to work with her husband, and she’d gotten to expand her knowledge of the field and even further into detective work. “Do you ever do work for the police?” Tiffany asked, grabbing the scan-gun to get the two cases of water loaded onto the bottom of the cart before she rolled it down to meet the woman and began to sack up items as well.
“I do from time to time, but what I primarily deal with are spouses who want to know if their wife or husband is cheating on them. I truly enjoy it when I get to sink my teeth into a real case, something with a little more depth than just finding out which no-tell motel someone’s spouse is taking another warm body to. My name is Margaret by the way.” Extending her hand, Tiffany stopped what she was doing to grasp it, she had a nice firm grip but not so firm that it hurt. This wasn’t a pissing contest.
“I’m Tiffany, it’s really nice to meet you. Your job sounds incredible.” Hitting the total button, Margaret slipped her chip card into the card reader and pressed all the necessary buttons.
“It’s been a pleasure talking to you, Tiffany. Say… you wouldn’t happen to be interested in getting out of this line of work? I mean, I’m not knocking it. It paid the bills for many years, but eventually, you ki
nd of want to try something new.” Margaret was putting away her debit card, taking something from inside of her wallet. It was a card.
“I don’t know, I probably wouldn’t be awfully good at it,” Tiffany replied, though her honeyed eyes watched what Margret was doing, eagerly, her fingers twitched.
“Hey, how do you know if you never give it a try? Here’s my card. If you ever want to ride along or know more about the bondsmen business, come by the office and we can hang out for the day and I’ll show you around. It’s hard as hell finding good people sometimes and I get a good vibe from you.” Handing Tiffany the card, she took it quickly, looking at it a second as the receipt paper printed and smiled, quickly pushed it into the pocket of her apron.
“I’d really like that. Thank you.” The drawer popped open, and she took a quick look at the monitor. “Are two tens okay?” Margaret needed cashback.
“That’s perfect.”
Taking out two tens, she ripped the receipt off the printer and handed it over to the woman. “Have a good night. It was nice to meet you again.”
“You too. You come to see me some time.” Margaret said before she put everything in her purse and pushed her cart away.
Glancing at the clock, it was two minutes after eleven and Ryland was at the front, unlocking the doors to let Margaret out of the store. Smiling, she logged out of her register and quickly went back to the break room to clock out and take her purse out of her locker.
Even if she never saw Margaret again, she’d helped get her through the most agonizing fifteen minutes at this job she had ever experienced, and Tiffany would always cherish the woman’s optimism for that.
2.
The mountains of rural Virginia were one of the best places to be when you were shifting, at least that was always what she believed until her family was killed. Tiffany never understood why they shifted during the day, but it had always been safe –now that Tiffany was all on her own, she strictly stuck to nocturnal practices. Hunters weren’t out in these woods at night, plus the forty-five-minute drive it had taken her to get to her favorite spot had helped a little more time pass. No one would be out at this time of the night. No humans, no hunters, no problems.
Maybe it was part of being a shifter rabbit, but Tiffany always had strong thighs, and the moonlight gleamed off her porcelain skin as she stepped out of her battered ’94 Accord. Tiffany looked around, though she could already tell there was no one around in this isolated area.
With the door of her car still open, she lifted her blue polo shirt over her head and tossed it into the seat of the car, removing her bra and black shorts soon after, during the summer months, Tom’s, the store she worked at allowed people to wear shorts and the mandatory store polo shirt. The light gently bouncing off her skin, self-inflicted scars shinning somewhat. She was only five feet tall, and her head bobbed over the top of her car as she took her shoes off and sat them down in the floorboard of the car along with her socks. Her dark tresses swaying over her back as she slipped off into the trees.
Undressing in the darkness was one thing, if someone did happen to see her, perhaps they might think that she was a nudist and she came out here to commune with nature in privacy –in the buff. That was always the story to give. No harm, no foul. But if someone were to see her shift, that was a whole new can of carrots to deal with.
Beneath the cover of the forest, she gave in. Dropping down onto all fours, energy tingle up and down the base of her spine as her digits dug into the warm earth beneath her. Her bones cracked, though the shift was painful, she welcomed it now after so long denying herself the change until her bones and muscles reformed. Her nose twitching softly as a thick coating of black fur covered her naked body. Tiffany saw more acutely in the darkness as she hopped through the low brush, letting all her excess energy be released into the atmosphere. Running at a full sprint until her lungs felt like they would burst.
Coming to a stop, she moved along at a more leisurely pace after a while, listening to the world around her, the sounds of the night in the summer. It was a beautiful thing, Tiffany missed it, far more than she ever wanted to admit to herself.
How much longer would she be able to pull this off until she truly hurt herself or someone caught on and somehow saw her shift when she didn’t have control of it?
Tiffany knew how ridiculous she was being, punishing herself, her body –for things that she couldn’t ever change, for a fate that may have always been in the cards. What would her mom and dad think of what she was doing to herself? It was useless to deny herself the freedoms of what she was.
Inhaling the sweet scent of the air, there was water nearby, Tiffany could smell it and she was led by her nose to a small stream. Her forepaws touching the cool stream as she bent forward, her tongue eagerly lapping for a refreshing drink when her ears twitched, picking up the sound of many footfalls hitting the ground. At first, she thought that they were humans running through the woods, but the closer they got, she picked up their scent she realized that it was a pack of animals, large animals.
Hurrying into the bushes where she was out of sight, Tiffany watched as four large bears came thundering by, their fur rippling over muscle as they moved on through the woods. These weren’t normal bears. Bears like this didn’t just roam around together like that, not that she knew of anyway. They were shifters. Were-bears.
Tiffany was glad that she hadn’t been on the path when they came roaring through, she wasn’t sure that they would have stopped for her, either she’d have been snatched up and eaten or trampled to death.
Her heart was pounding as she watched the last two leave her sight and she hopped back out onto the path, sitting up on her legs, slightly rubbing her paws, one over the other until the ground under her feet thumped once, twice, and then stopped. The shadow of the moon blocked by something large as she turned her head somewhat, looking behind her. Her eyes widening as she gave a sudden shriek, every muscle in her body felt like it had been ripped apart, stretched and placed on a bed of coals as a hand and a paw tried to run, half shifted as she tried to sprint away.
She was going to die, she was going to be eaten, the only thing she could think to do, in her half coherent mind was to shift. These were shifters too –if they knew that she was like them, well –sort of like them, this one wouldn’t eat her or kill her, hopefully. It would just be one of those close calls, a chance encounter with another pack of were’s in the area and perhaps she might somehow manage to make some allies or dare she even think it, friends?
But for the time being, Tiffany had other more pressing matters. If she was going to make friends, she needed to avoid meeting the bears' fangs or claws.
Scurrying, she found her footing, racing through the trees as the bear lumbered behind her, grunting heavily before her foot met the uprooted root of a massive tree and she went sprawling on her hands and knees as something growled and came down heavily on her back. Tiffany immediately knew that it couldn’t have been a full-sized bear, those could weight thousands of pounds, but what landed on her wasn’t light either. The air was knocked out of her lungs, and she went into her fight or flight mode. Before she could force oxygen into her lungs again, Tiffany was scrambling to her knees, fighting, kicking, clawing as a pair of large hands came and gripped her wrists stopping her from moving any further.
It was a man obviously, he must have shifted back when she fell or perhaps before then, Tiffany didn’t know. Thick black hair fell over eyes that she couldn’t really distinguish what they were feeling, was he going to kill her? Did he have a bad experience with rabbits as a boy?
“Stop, stop fighting, I’m not going to hurt you! Stop!” The voice was like a ripple of thunder it was so deep, it hit the pit of her stomach and rode straight up her spine to the receptors in her brain. Tiffany instantly stilled, looking wide-eyed like she’d just been caught in a pair of headlights and she was paralyzed.
Her face was captured between those large hands then, her arms coming up to her ches
t, lying as still as possible while he looked at her, his face coming closer and closer to her until she felt and heard him sniffing her, his nose brushing through her hair, inhaling deeply.
Tiffany swallowed somewhat as the pain of the shift began to come back to her muscles, then the trauma of the fall. Her ankle felt sore and bruised though she couldn’t see it, she was too afraid to even move as this bear-beast continued to sniff out her scent, he’d paused at her breasts, the tip of his nose, faintly circled one of her pale pink nipples before a faint snort took him lower, down her abdomen, his nose dipped into the small valley between her legs for a moment, hands tracing over her legs before they enveloped her ankle, the foot that hurt from tripping over that damned tree root.
His hands were so impossibly hot that she felt herself sigh out in relief as they just held her foot, the heat washing over her as she relaxed into the cool dirt after a few minutes, her eyelids feeling heavy.
Maybe it was the adrenaline, or because she had already worked a complete eight hour shift on top of everything, but Tiffany looked up at the tops of the trees and felt her eyelids try to close until she felt his body heat shift, her foot being laid down in the sparse grass in this secluded little spot.
Tiffany’s muscles felt like liquid as she felt his arms sweep beneath her before his head was resting on her abdomen, he wasn’t exactly purring, but it was a continuous rumbling of contentment that caused her to lazily lift her hands from her sides and run her fingers through his thick dark locks, they were surprisingly soft and she felt her eyes close again as she breathed in deeply as his lips met her belly, just below her navel. His arms squeezing her just a little tighter before a hand moved beneath her thigh behind her knee, lifting her leg to part them somewhat as his face moved lower, nuzzling between her legs as she felt his warm tongue take one long, slow sip over her nether lips.
Bunny and the Bear: A Shifter Romance Novella Page 1