A Change To Bear (A BBW Shifter Romance)

by A. E. Grace

  “Stop moving, Marcus.”

  He found the artery, pinched it shut again, stretched it out, and folded the end over, like an envelope flap. He pushed the tooth through the fold, piercing the rubbery artery walls with some difficulty. The blood flow slowed.

  “I don’t know which one this is,” he said. He was looking at the wolf, trying to place where the artery would be if he shifted back into a man. But he couldn’t. “You need to shift into your man! The shift will heal you! Otherwise you’ll die tonight.”

  The wolf responded only with a growl, and this time snapped backward, going for Terry’s feet. “I told you to get back!” Liam bellowed at Terry, exasperated. He couldn’t believe she had followed him here, and that she wasn’t listening to him now. He saw her jolt. “Get back!” She nodded and finally she ran toward the lake. He admired her bravery, but she did not know what this wolf was capable of.

  “You need to shift into your man,” Liam growled. “It’s the only way to heal this wound. Your body isn’t able to close it. You need to shift!” Liam dug is knee in harder. The shift could heal the worst of wounds. The breakdown was a neutralizing state. Liam had heard of legends of those on the edge of death who had been saved by the shift.

  But still the wolf just barked angrily, an ugly burst of sound.

  “Stop doing what you’re doing, Marcus. We’re one of the few left. We’re the last of the shapeshifters!”

  But Marcus only snarled, blood and saliva dripping from his snout and nostrils. He wriggled out of Liam’s grip, and ran off into the tree line around the lake.

  Liam knew he was going in for one final charge. He sprinted down toward the lake, and told Terry to go into it.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “This wolf doesn’t like water.”

  *

  Terry couldn’t remember a time when she had ever been as scared as she was at the moment the wolf went for her. It was odd, watching the huge and ferocious beast turn to her, in its eyes the look of something who had killed before, something that had taken lives. She stopped hearing anything.

  Instinct told her to run, to get out of the lake and to run across to the other side of the bank, but she knew the wolf would catch her. She looked toward the tree line, but she knew she could not get there in time to climb one. She thought about trying to fight, but that would be a futile effort, and would only end with her death.

  The icy fingers of fear were wrapped around her heart, and she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t move, she couldn’t make a decision. She was frozen, rooted to the lakebed, cool water chilling her bones. It was all over. The only hope she had was Liam.

  Across from the wolf, charging up the bank, the large body of a bear closed in. She looked from the bear to the wolf, then to the stretch of water that separated her from the beast. Moonlight glittered on its surface.

  The wolf would probably jump into the water, and so she bent her knees, lowered her center of gravity. The paralysis had ended, and she knew she wasn’t about to go down without a fight. She was going to try and pull the wolf under water, and drown it… if she had to.

  Claws raking the leafy ground, the wolf’s run had a hitch on the side that it was injured, and Terry, her mind racing even though it felt like time had slowed down, decided that was where she was going to target.

  The wolf, meters away from the lake’s edge, lowered its body to jump, but Liam roared, and the wolf’s head snapped to its left. A dull thud preceded a dry crack, and the wolf slammed into the ground. Liam had head-butted it. She saw the whiplash carry the wolf’s head into a stone, and its whole body went limp.

  Immediately the wolf began to shift back into a man. Its body receded, its hair was sucked inward, and a torso revealed itself, muscular, chunky, and pale-skinned.

  Liam shifted quickly, and she clambered toward him out of the water. He took three strides toward her, closing the distance fast, and wrapped her up in his arms, one hand on the side of her head, and he held her tightly.

  “I’m sorry,” he said into her ear.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, her voice trembling. She pushed her head off his sweat-slicked chest, looked up at him, and saw a stream of blood trickling over his shoulders. “Oh, Liam,” she said, and she touched his face and turned his head. The wound on the back of his neck, where the wolf had bitten him, was leaking crimson, and she could see the jutting white of a vertebrae. “Oh, Liam, it’s not good.”

  “I’m fine. I shifted too quick, not enough time to heal it. I’ll shift again later.”

  He let her go, turning toward the pillar-shaped hunter with thighs as thick and hard as tree trunks.

  “Don’t kill him,” Terry said.

  “He’ll just come after us again.”

  “He won’t,” she told him. She felt sure of it. “He’s broken. Look at him. Why didn’t he heal fully?”

  “Same as me. Too quick. The shift was automatic once it was lights-out.”

  “Will he live?”

  “I don’t know,” Liam said, squatting down and examining Marcus’ various wounds. “I would say yes.”

  “Why did he change when he was knocked out?”

  “The shift is like flexing a muscle,” Liam explained, without finishing the thought for Terry. But she got it. When knocked out, all muscles relaxed. He stood up, his hands dark with blood.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  “We’re just going to leave him?”

  “You asked me not to kill, so I will not kill. Marcus will wake up in a while, retreat somewhere to lick his wounds. He’ll come for us again. Maybe not soon, but it will happen again.”

  “I’ll take that risk,” she told him, “If it means we don’t have to take a life.”

  “He’s killed dozens of shifters.”

  Terry shook her head. “I can’t,” she began. “I just can’t.”

  He sighed, pinched the bridge of his nose. “I didn’t want this.”

  “So we’ll leave him, like you said. We’ll get out of Hanoi first thing in the morning.”

  “You sure?”

  “I don’t see it as us having a choice,” she told him, matter-of-factly.

  *

  Together they went back to their guest house. She helped him to wash his wounds, and then watched as he shifted slowly into his bear, and then back into his man. The wounds healed fully; there was not even a scar.

  Marcus wouldn’t fare so well. His injuries were more severe. It would take multiple shifts, over time, Liam had told her.

  Together they packed their belongings, and left their guest house. They rented a proper motorcycle with a side-car, dumped all their bags in there, and drove out of Hanoi into the rising sun, toward the city of Hue.

  “We can get clothes made,” she told him at a rest stop, where they sipped on cool sour-lime drinks, and listened to the birds of the jungle. “Apparently the tailors there are famous for their craft. You could get summery clothes, you know?”

  Liam grimaced. “You don’t mean khakis, do you?”

  “God, no,” she said, laughing. “But something a little lighter than denim.”

  “You could get a dress made,” he said. “Traditional style, you know?”

  “Traditional is not a ‘style’.”

  “You know what I mean. You’d look great in one.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Where after that? I was thinking Nha Trang. For the beaches. You know, white sand, crystal water.”

  “Five-star resorts,” he said, grinning. “I’m not often one for luxury, but right about now I’m feeling I could indulge.”

  “My budget doesn’t allow for that,” she said.

  Liam smirked. “Mine does.”

  *

  She lounged on her sun chair. She had a novel folded open over her stomach, and was sipping from her cool drink, listening to the sound of the sea slurping the shore, when she saw Liam walking toward her. His lean body had tanned considerably, and he looked all the more delicious for it.

  �
�Hey,” she said to him, grinning. She popped her sunglasses on top of her head and squinted at him as he set down the cooler box, and opened it. “What have you brought me?”

  “Dragon fruit,” he said, lifting up two of the purple fruits. “And champagne.”

  “Champers?” she said. “But it’s barely four!”

  “Well, this is what rich people do, right?”

  She laughed. “I honestly wouldn’t know.”

  “Hey, look at this,” he said, sitting on the edge of her sun chair. She sat up and wrapped her arms around his body, and smelled his neck. His scent was sun-bleached.

  He rummaged inside the cool box and brought out a magazine, rolled up with a rubber band. The edges were damp and soggy.

  “What is it?”

  He unfurled it and handed it to her. “I found it on one of the lobby tables. Somebody had left it there.”

  “Monster Magazine?” Terry asked, reading the title. “What’s it about?”

  “It discusses the existence of paranormal phenomenon in our world,” he explained. “Some of it is pretty out there, but flick to page nineteen.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  She found the page, and saw the headline: What the Shift? Laughing, she said, “That’s kind of a crappy title.”

  “Well, in it this editor, um, something Cole.”

  “Circe Cole,” she said, reading the byline.

  “She describes possibilities of how the shift appears to humans, as per reports from ‘anonymous sources’. The third one down, read it.”

  Terry did, and her eyes widened. “This is pretty much exactly how a shapeshifter changes.”

  “Yup,” Liam said.

  “She must know a shapeshifter,” Terry gasped. “She must have seen one shift!”

  “Or she’s a shapeshifter herself.”

  “And she’s printing magazines about it?” Terry flicked back to the first page, and there read the letter from the editor. “She says the magazine is going to expose true paranormal phenomenon to the general public.”

  “The question is, why does she want to expose shapeshifters? Why would another shifter allow that?”

  “I don’t know,” Terry murmured. “What do you think is going to happen?”

  “Well, there’s no proof yet. Everybody who reads it is going to think this anonymous source is batshit. But—”

  “That’s not why it’s in here,” Terry interrupted. “Is it?”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “She’s trying to reach out to other shifters. After all, what shifter wouldn’t pick up a magazine with this title? Or the main headline? Do Shapeshifters Exist? That’s bound to get their attention.”

  “I agree.”

  “She’s trying to get you to contact her,” Terry said, smiling. “Impressive. Subtle, burying it on page nineteen. What is this, the first issue?”

  “Yup.”

  “Should we contact her?”

  He shook his head. “No. Not yet, anyway. Let’s wait for issue two, and see what’s in that.”

  Terry nodded, and dropped the magazine onto the sand. She pulled Liam back so that he was lying with her on the narrow chair, and then offered him the straw of her drink.

  “This was such a good idea. A holiday from traveling! Who would have thought?”

  “It’s nice,” he said. “Lucky we’ve got the beach practically to ourselves.”

  “It’s nearly the end of the season,” Terry said. “We’ll have it to ourselves for however long we choose to stay.”

  “We’ll stay until you want to go back to backpacking.”

  Terry grinned. “I will go back to backpacking. I promise you that. This is just a brief respite.”

  “I believe you,” he said. “I know there’s still a lot you want to see. Thought of your next big move, yet?”

  “Yes,” she said, and she sat up, and turned around to look at Liam. “But you won’t like it.”

  Liam’s smile faded, and he shook his head briefly. “What?”

  “I know it’s only been a few weeks since I even learned that shapeshifters exist.”

  “Is it bothering you now?”

  “No, not at all,” she told him, putting a palm on his hard stomach and patting it. “Nothing like that. But we’ve spent so much time talking about it, we were attacked by one, you’ve told me what it’s like, and… and you’ve talked about a mate. I… I can’t ever know what any of it is.”

  “I don’t know why or how the shift awakens in certain people.”

  “But now there’s another way.”

  The corners of Liam’s mouth pulled down. “Leon?”

  “I want my next big step to be Borneo,” she said. “I’d love to travel the island anyway, see Brunei and Sarawak, cross the border from Malaysia to Indonesia, all of that. But, yes, Leon.”

  “Terry—”

  “Wait,” she said. “I should say something else. These past few weeks with you have been… well, unlike any other in my life, really. Every night you let me run my fingers through your fur. I mean, I’ve ridden on the back of a bear! How insane is that, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I don’t… I don’t know how to put it. Everything’s changed now, you know?” She looked away from him, struggling to figure out how to put it into words. “There’s something bigger on the horizon now. Before, it was traveling, seeing the world, being on my own… finding a man I could love, who could love me back. And I still want all that, but now I find that I want more.”

  “You want to become a shifter?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Liam, I’ve been thinking about it nonstop ever since you told me what Leon could do… what he did to his son. I want to try it.”

  “Terry,” he said, sitting up, concern coloring his expression.

  She stopped him. “I’ve kind of already made up my mind.”

  He frowned. “You don’t know how he does it! It could be dangerous!”

  “Or what if it’s exactly the same as what happened to you when you first ‘awoke’? What if it was as benign as that?”

  “That wasn’t totally benign.”

  “Oh, I know it happened because of terror, because of a strong emotion. I’ve already experienced terror, when I chased you and that wolf to the lake, when that wolf tried to kill me! I can take that. I can take being afraid, if that’s what it takes to awake a shifter in me! I don’t want to be with you and always feel like you’re something more than I am. Do you understand that?”

  He sighed. “Yes. I do.”

  “So you should be able to figure out that I’m going to do this. With or without you. But I’d prefer it if you were there by my side.”

  “I will be.”

  “I really love what we’ve got,” she said. “I believe in my heart there was a pull between us, something bigger, something more than us as humans. You said it yourself, you were drawn to that side of the train carriage where I was standing. You tried to push me away but fate took you to me when I was in trouble at that bar. You took me to your old camp grounds and I could swear that I felt some thread of what you were feeling, as if it was a channel between me and you, and what you were feeling was bleeding through. Liam, I believe this.”

  “I’ll admit,” he said. “That I feel something like that, too. I can’t explain it. It’s… invisible.”

  “So maybe if we were fated to meet, if I was fated to learn about shapeshifters, then maybe I am fated to become one? Maybe Leon was meant to learn how to turn a shifter.”

  “I don’t trust him,” he said through gritted teeth. “I can’t stand to put you in harm’s way again.”

  “Stop blaming yourself,” she chided him. “I’m a big girl. I made up my mind to take the risk. The wolf came, but we beat it. We did it together, remember?”

  He nodded. “I know. If it wasn’t for you—”

  “Then that cut in the back of your neck where he bit you might very well have been a hole, and you might be
dead right now.”

  “I’ll be there for you. I’ll support you. I’ll protect you.”

  A broad smile broke across her face. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. But if I get the impression that you are ever in danger… even just a little bit, then we’re calling it all off.”

  “Okay,” she said, nodding. “I can live with that.” She took his hand. “Thank you.”

  “The first shift is extremely painful,” he said. “Most shifters have it happen to them in a nightmare. It’s hard to control.”

  “But you’ll help me through it, right?”

  “I will.”

  “Then I’m not afraid,” she told him. “I’m not afraid of anything anymore.”

  The End

  # # #

  Afterword

  The second edition of this book, A Change To Bear, is far different from the first. It has been extensively altered to better fit the tone of the rest of my books, as well as the shared universe they all inhabit. I hope I have provided a deeper and more substantive exploration of both Terry and Liam.

  Liam is something of an enigma to me still. I find him hard to understand, hard to get into the cracks of and pry open. As a character, he was difficult for me to write.

  Terry was much easier, however. There is a lot of me in her, and at one stage in my life, I also quit a stable job to go backpacking. It was an amazing experience, and Terry and Liam's path through Southeast Asia mirrors a portion of my own.

  I am glad that Terry was able to leave her old life behind and try something new. She has wanted to for so long, and now she's on her way to possibly becoming a shapeshifter. Talk about a life change!

  Learning about Liam and his kind could turn out to be a curse for Terry, however. Can Leon, deep in the jungles of Borneo, awaken the shift within her? And if he can't, will she be bitter and resentful? When she tells Liam that she doesn't want to be with him and always feel as if she is something less than he is, I thought it was a salient point. If she wants what he has, and she can't get it, then being reminded of it all the time might just place a wedge in between them.