by C. D. Gorri
She was gone. His mind registered that fact as he took in the empty room. She’d left.
“No,” he growled, and aimed his fist at the tiled counter top, cracking a few of the old ceramic squares in the process. Mrs. Goldstein, the landlady, would be pissed when she saw that.
Oliver’s Bear roared inside of him and his heart contracted painfully in his chest. It was worse than being sucker punched by Thor his idiot cousin, who was as big and strong as his namesake. Why would Teresa say such cruel things? He couldn’t believe it, couldn’t fathom his sweet Resa saying such foul callous words about their relationship. He read the hated missive one more time.
Oliver,
It was fun while it lasted, but even you can’t be so naïve as to think I could find true love with a nobody. I just wanted to get back at my father. Don’t bother looking for me or calling, I will have already changed my number.
Teresa
Yes, it was her handwriting. He closed his eyes on the wave of anguish that washed over him. Gasping, he sunk to his knees while the beast inside of him roared and stomped his massive claws in fury.
Mate, his Bear cried out, but Oliver refused to answer his other half.
How could she just leave him like this? He’d been so sure of her, of them. He was positive that she loved him too. Being with her was everything to him. She was his fated mate. It was the first time he had ever tasted happiness. A taste that was bitter now that he knew it was all one-sided.
The first time he’d seen the golden-haired beauty, Oliver’s Grizzly Bear had stood up and taken notice. The second he’d breathed in her peaches and cream scent, his animal had roared one single word in his mind’s eye that would change Oliver’s life forever.
Mate.
Following his heart, he’d approached the soft spoken, elegantly dressed Teresa Witherspoon after spying her at the park day after day. She’d sit on one of the cleaner benches and read from a book of seventeenth century cavalier poets.
“You like Lovelace? Looking at you I pictured a Donne fan,” Oliver said when he’d finally found the nerve to approach her.
“Spiritualist poetry doesn’t appeal as much to me I guess. I like Lovelace and Suckling. They’re fun and witty.”
“But they’re just trying to get in a girl’s pants with their poetry. You approve?” he grinned.
“It’s not so much the seduction that appeals to me, it’s the living in the moment. Carpe diem and all that,” she shrugged.
There was something so tragically sad about her that his heart had squeezed in his chest with longing. He’d wanted to make her smile. Heck, he even pretended to stumble in the grass, laid himself flat just to get her to walk over and touch him. And she had, put her soft, long hands right on him to see if he was alright. He’d stolen a kiss and had never looked back. Until now. The dream was over. She’d left him.
Oliver’s Bear roared in his grief. That last night they were together, he’d told her the truth about what he was. The fact that there were more things in the world than she had ever imagined.
Oliver Pax had committed a most grievous sin against his Clan. He’d confessed to a normal, a human woman, that he was a Grizzly Bear Shifter.
It was allowed under certain circumstances, like when the woman in question was your fated mate. He’d thought she’d taken it well, after all, they’d made wild, passionate love immediately after. Hell, he’d been so caught up in the moment, he’d marked her with his bite, tying himself to her irrevocably, but now she was gone.
What would become of him? Would he go mad like so many other Shifters who’d lost their mates? He had heard the stories. The tales of broken matings and rogue Shifters who needed to be put down.
Oliver tipped the bottle of whiskey back emptying its fiery contents down his throat. Then he threw the hated thing across the room. Something about the muted violence of the act satisfied his animal’s need for savagery. The Bear inside of him wanted to tear the whole world down, but maybe work would be a better outlet, he thought.
Oliver sat down at his banged up keyboard and began to play. He poured out his bruised heart. Wrote lyrics and tied them together with a fairy tale as old as they come. The Beast of Brooklyn Heights was born that day. And the rest, as they say, was history.