Don't Judge a Bear by His Cover: (BBW Paranormal Shape Shifter Romance) (Honeycomb Falls Book 6)

by Cassie Wright

  I close my eyes and slow my breathing. Center myself. Running around like a chicken with its head cut off won't help anybody. Think. Split Rock. A shifter marker. A shifter place. Who could tell me?

  The solution slips into my mind, easy as you could please. I grab my phone and search for Anita's Bakery in Honeycomb Falls. Thank god it's a bakery. They'll be open at this early hour.

  "Hello?" The woman on the other end sounds cheerful, and I can hear music playing in the background.

  "Hi, is this Anita's Bakery?"

  "Yep, and this is Anita speaking. Can I help you?"

  "Hi, my name's Saira Froud, I'm a friend of Torben Halderson. The owner of the Bear's Book Cave?"

  "Sure, I know Torben." Anita's voice shades toward confusion. "Do you need his number...?"

  "No, he's in trouble. I need to speak to Soren. His friend?"

  "Oh. Well, sure. One moment." My heart soars as I hear Anita call out Soren's name, and a moment later his deep voice is on the line. "Hello?"

  "Hi, Soren? This is Saira Froud. I'm a friend of Torben's. He's headed to Split Rock without telling me where it is. Please, you have to help me. Do you know how I can get there?"

  Silence. "Saira Froud?"

  "Yes. I came into the bookstore when you and Torben were facing down Hrald?"

  "I remember. And Torben's left you behind? He must have had a good reason."

  I want to scream. "He's a pig-headed man, is his reason. He's going into the most dangerous situation possible, and he needs all the help he can get. Please, tell me how I can find him."

  "Split Rock is no place for a human," says Soren. "I'm not sure -"

  "Soren. Please. Torben and I - we're - I have to be there for him. Even if I can't help him, I need to be close. So if things go wrong, he can know I was there. That I came. He can't - he can't die alone."

  Another silence. Then a deep sigh. "All right. You're a grown woman. You know what you're getting into, and I respect your need. You're right. It does matter. He should never have - but it's too late for that. Where are you now?"

  I give him the address of the motel.

  "Drive north another hour on the highway. You'll pass a bluff of white rock on the right just beyond the town of Orleans. It looks like half a mountain, the other half cut away. There's a dirt road that leads to it. They'll be at the base of the cliff. Be careful. The Claw clan won't tolerate strangers dropping into their gathering."

  "Thank you, Soren." I feel tears gathering in the corners of my eyes. "Thank you, thank you."

  "Don't make me regret telling you. Now find Torben, and help him come home."

  I feel a chill run through me. "I will. Goodbye." I hang up and grab the pickup keys. An hour's drive north. If I go fast, I can make it in less time. I run outside, and see that the sun is just shy of breaking over the horizon. My heart sinks. Torben said they'd be meeting at dawn. Dawn is here, now, and I'm still almost sixty miles south of him. I'll never make it in time.

  I grit my teeth and get in the pickup anyway. Better late than never. I gun the engine, reverse, and drive back out onto the highway. Traffic is light. I push down the accelerator and ease into the fast lane. The land looks haunted this early in the morning, the small towns that rush by on either side of the highway looking still and abandoned. I drive faster. Time seems to creep by. Seventy miles an hour. Eighty. The pickup rattles and trembles as I push it to ninety. I don't care if I get a ticket.

  The miles roll by. Is he fighting right now? Facing an outraged pack of shifters? Hrald sneering at the back of the gang? Is he even still alive? I can't breathe for fear. I can't think for panic. I push the pickup harder. A hundred miles an hour. I'm roaring past the cars, occasionally swerving into different lanes to overtake people going a meager seventy or so.

  Forty-five minutes later I see the sign for Orleans and I let out a little cry of joy. Just then there's a beep from the dashboard, and I see that the tank's about to hit empty.

  "No! No no no!" Can I push it? Can I get there on what's left? I stare at the thin red line of the empty mark. Is there a reserve in the tank? I don't know. I could have five miles left, or thirty. What if I run out of gas just shy of Torben? Or worse yet, arrive and not have enough gas to get us away?

  Pounding the steering wheel in frustration, I pull off the highway with almost savage brutality, slamming on the brakes as I drive into a gas station. It's a nondescript place, four pumps, and as I slow down I realize half the lot is taken up with motorbikes. I stop beside a pump and eye the men standing around their bikes with a growing sense of fear. They're dressed in leathers and look lean and rangy and harder than sheetrock. Bearded and rough, with some wearing shades even in this early light, each one seems meaner and bigger than the last. There have to be - what - forty of them? Milling around drinking beer and looking strangely tense, almost hyped up.

  Could they be the Claws? Could they have killed Torben already and be making their way south? No, that doesn't make any sense. I slip out of the pickup truck, keeping my eyes on the ground, and quickly swipe my credit card and begin pumping gas. Just enough to get out of here. Stay small. Don't let anybody notice you. Stay quiet. I watch the numbers roll on the gas pump and think, Please hurry. Please hurry!

  "Mornin'," drawls a voice from the other side of my pickup. I tense but don't turn around.

  "Morning," I say, my voice tight.

  I can almost feel the man standing there, his gaze on the spot between my shoulder blades. "You from around here?"

  I grimace and finally turn around, grabbing the gas handle and stopping the flow. The man is a massive blur on the edge of my vision, looking to be as large as Torben. "No," I say, putting the nozzle back in place at the pump. Half a tank. It'll have to do.

  "Didn't think so," says the man. "You smell good, though. Beneath the stink."

  That last is said in such an ugly, cruel tone that I can't help but look up. The man is indeed massive, a wall of black leather and iron strength, handsome in a cruel way, his hair graying at the temples but looking none the weaker for his age. His hair is thick and falls to his shoulders, and thick stubble covers his jaw.

  It's his eye that holds me, though. His one eye. It glimmers and burns like a live coal thumbed into his skull. Burns with a vicious intelligence and savage cunning. One eye. The other milky white, a vertical scar running from brow to cheek.

  I know who he is. Cassius Black. The leader of the werewolves who oppose the Claw.

  "Stink?" I ask weakly, frozen into place by that terrible eye.

  "Yes, stink." He begins to round the pickup, coming toward me. I'm trapped. I can't move. "The stink of werebear. The stink of his sweat and cum."

  My knees are literally shaking, and I swear I can feel ice running through my veins. Run! screams a voice in my mind, and with a jolt I yank open the door and jump inside. Cassius is on me in a flash, smashing his elbow into the window and shattering it.

  I slam the key into the ignition and turn it, causing Torben's pickup to roar to life. Without hesitating, even as Cassius reaches in through the window to grab at my hair I slam on the gas pedal, and the pickup leaps forward like a startled bronco. Cassius snarls as he holds on, and with a scream I plow into the motorbikes, sending yelling men spilling to the sides as the pickup bulldozes a path through a half dozen bikes, shattering glass and wrenching the bumper. I press the accelerator to the floor, pleading that I don't come to a stop, and wrestle the wheel away from the bikes. With a grinding roar the pickup's engine forces it on, and then I'm free, tearing across the gas station lot, Cassius holding on until with a cry of thwarted fury he lets go and falls away.

  The pickup bounces over the curb and onto the wide shoulder of grass, down the sharp slope into the drainage ditch where I jounce and rattle violently and then begin to climb up the far slope to the highway. Looking behind me in panic I see the werewolves swearing and leaping onto their bikes, gunning their motors and starting after me like a swarm of killer bees.

 
"Oh god, oh god!" I roar out onto the highway, nearly colliding with a bus, and then swerve into an empty lane and slam on the gas. The pickup begins to build speed, its mighty engine giving me everything it's got. I keep an eye on the rearview mirror. The bikes come swarming out onto the highway right behind me, five, ten, fifteen, twenty of them. I want to scream, I want to call the cops, but I know that nobody can help me now. I hunch over the wheel, pedal to the floor, and that's when I see the white cliff come sliding into view on my right.

  Chapter 13

  I saw the steering wheel to the right and the pickup leaps over the highway's shoulder, nearly spinning out, and I scream and almost grab the oh-shit handle. Instead, I guide the car over the rough dirt road, which slopes down and then straight toward the white cliff. The bikers follow, almost disappearing in my plume of dust, so I slam the gas pedal down again and charge out over the rutted road, bouncing so high in my seat that my head nearly touches the cab's roof.

  I come roaring around a stand of trees, and there they are. Some forty men and bears forming a loose circle, all of them turning to stare at me with wide eyes. I send a number of them diving as I drive right into their circle, figuring it's the safest place, and when I finally slam on the brakes, I see Torben standing in the center, bloodied and hurt, and facing a massive mountain of a man who bears an equal number of wounds.

  I throw open the pickup door and spill out. "They're coming!" I point back toward the way I came. "Torben!"

  "Saira?" Torben lowers his arms, wicked claws gleaming with blood, and looks beyond me at where the motorbikes suddenly emerge from my drifting cloud of dust. Five, fifteen, thirty, forty of them, a wall of bikes and feral faces. "Oh. Crap."

  The man he was fighting - Krassok? - snarls in white rage. "What is this? Betrayal?"

  "No," I gasp, hurrying to Torben's side. There's a wicked cut down his arm, several deep gouges across his chest, and one of his eyes has swollen shut. Despite these wounds he stands tall, as if he's feeling no pain. "They followed me. I ran into them at a gas station. Torben, let's get the hell out of here."

  There are so many shifters snarling now it sounds like a swarm of angry hornets. One man after another turns into a bear or a wolf, not the animal forms I learned in first grade, but rather towering man-animal forms, rearing up on two legs, humanoid and covered in fur. They're huge, but the bears are definitely larger. Which is good, because there are perhaps ten or fifteen more werewolves.

  "Stay back," whispers Torben, sounding unafraid. "Cassius!" This last is a roar that silences the battlefield. Heads turn as Torben strides forward, remaining in his human form.

  I see the one-eyed werewolf. He too has remained in his human form. Stepping forward, the two men stop perhaps a half dozen paces from each other. "Who the hell are you?"

  "Torben Halderson, alpha of the Claws."

  "Halderson?" The name is said with obvious pleasure. "I thought I'd killed all of you. Looks like today's going to be better than I hoped."

  "No one is going to die here today." Torben's voice is calm, pitched almost too low to hear. Everybody cranes in to make him out. "This is private Claw business. Leave."

  "And if I say no?" A number of sniggers and snarls greet Cassius' words.

  "Then I'll tear out your throat." There's no aggression in Torben's voice. He states it like fact.

  Cassius narrows his eyes. "I'll tell you what. Give me the woman we followed here. The one with your scent on her. I'll take her as my prize and we'll go."

  What? A bolt of fear runs through me. Cassius wants me? But no. I see the crafty gleam in his eye. He's provoking Torben.

  "Don't be a fool," says Torben, sounding almost weary. "I have no interest in fighting you. Take your men and leave. No one needs to die."

  "You think I followed you all the way down here to turn around and leave?" Cassius shakes his head. "Not likely."

  Torben looks to where Krassok has stepped up next to him. "Do you want this?"

  Krassok is a mountain of a man, built like lean leather and jerky wrapped around the skeleton of a giant. I don't think I've ever seen or imagined a tougher man. "Yes," he growls, eyes locked on Cassius.

  "With all your heart? You want this fight?"

  Krassok nods, hands flexing.

  "Then it's yours," says Torben. "I step down." He looks at the other bears. "Krassok is your alpha, now and forevermore. I'm gone." He looks at me and extends his hand.

  A thrill runs through me, and I jog over to his side, and feel his warm, callused hand close over mine. Not speaking, the urgency in the moment only building, we hurry to the pickup and get in. The engine is still idling. We slam the doors, Torben puts the car in gear, and we drive around the knot of shifters and make a beeline for the highway.

  I'm stunned. I honestly thought I might die there. Thought Torben might die. I can't believe we're actually driving away. When we reach the highway, Torben stops the car and turns to me.

  "You are the craziest, most -"

  But I don't give him a chance to speak. I grab his face in both hands and kiss him, hard, passionately, letting all the anguish and fear melt away as I sink into his arms. I feel him grin, and when I pull back I swat him on the shoulder. "Don't you ever pull a trick like that again." Torben winces, and I realize I've just hit him on his open gash. "Oh god! I'm sorry!"

  He laughs, wincing, and shakes his head. "How did you find me?"

  So I tell him. About Soren. About the gas station. The werewolves. "But what were they doing down here?"

  "They must have followed the clan, like Cassius said. Hoping we were quitting, or intent on making sure we never came back."

  "I'm sorry I interrupted," I say, and then change my mind. "Actually, I'm not. I wouldn't have you here with me if I hadn't."

  Torben slides the car onto the highway and points us south. "I'm the one who's glad. I'd already fought three others by the time Krassok finally stepped up to face me." His weariness comes through. "He was aiming to kill me. If you hadn't shown up, I'd be still there, trying to kill him instead."

  His sober voice sends a chill through me. "Won't they come after you again? To finish what they started?"

  Torben considers, then shakes his head. "No, I don't think so. They wouldn't accept my stepping down during a time of peace, but after what I did in the face of the enemy? Krassok has the alpha position. And he's welcome to it." Torben frowns and reaches up to wipe some blood from his cheek. "I owe you my life, Saira. If you hadn't brought those wolves, I'd still be fighting. I miscalculated. They were going to keep challenging me until one of them killed me. There was no way out. Even if I beat Krassok, and the one after him, and the one after that."

  I feel a chill pass through me, and study Torben's face, reading each line of pain and weariness. "But you're done now, right? That world? It's behind you?"

  "Yes," says Torben. Then, as if he's surprised by the fact, he says it again, voice lighter, happier. "Yes, I am. My past is behind me." His eyebrows go up, as if he's only now realizing it. "I'm free." He grins. "Free to be with you." A moment of hesitation, and then he looks at me in a way that's half shy, half nervous, and totally adorable and gorgeous. "If you want to be with me?"

  I laugh and lean my head on his shoulder. "Let me think about it."

  Chapter 14

  I want to stop at a nicer hotel, but Torben insists on another parking-lot style motel due to his condition. No Sheraton would allow him to walk bleeding through the lobby. I go into the little ground floor office to rent a room, and a moment later I unlock our door and step inside, Torben limping behind me. Already his wounds are healing, scabbing over as they close. It's amazing to behold. His shifter metabolism is causing him to radiate heat like a furnace as his body heals.

  The room is small, dominated by the queen-sized bed and mustard-colored walls. The comforter on the bed gleams like plastic, and the carpet is an indistinct chocolate mousse color, scarred and burned. I pull the yellow curtains closed, and then turn to Torben, who
's locking the door.

  "What can I do?" I step close, hesitant.

  He doesn't answer. Instead, he splays his fingers and claws emerge from their tips, powerful talons that he uses to cut away his already torn shirt. I peel the bloodied garment from his body and toss it in the small trash can. Up close, his wounds are awful. Any one of them would have sent me to the ER. I don't know how he's standing there as if they're nothing. I feel powerless to do anything meaningful.

  "Do you need hydrogen peroxide?"

  Torben laughs and then winces again. "No. Just a little time. I've had much worse, believe me."

  I look at him with mock-wide eyes. "Is Honeycomb Falls that dangerous?"

  Torben laughs again, and winces again. "Stop. No. Don't make me laugh."

  I grin and step in close. "I had no idea running a bookstore was so rough."

  "Ah," he gasps again as he laughs. "No, mercy."

  I place both hands on his chest. His muscles are as hot as sunbaked stones. "Only if you promise me one thing."

  Hands on the buckle of his belt, about to shuck his pants, he pauses. His golden eyes gleam as he looks down at me. "Anything."

  My breath catches in my throat. He means it. We stand there, and I lower my hands down over rippled abs to his hands. "Promise me there will be no more violence. No more fighting."

  He turns his hands around so that our fingers interlace. "You know I can't promise that," he says, almost sorrowful. "But I can promise you this: I won't seek it out."

  I feel a knot in my throat. "But if it comes after you?"

  "After us?" His smile is sad. "Then I'll do whatever I have to keep you safe."

  "Us safe," I correct, and his smile just about melts my heart. "We're 'us' now, right?"

  Torben lifts his hands to my face, cupping my chin gently. "Yes." His voice is almost a whisper. "We have been since last night."