Loved by The Alpha Bear (Primal Bear Protectors Book 1)

by K. T. Stryker

  Alice takes the bill as usual, despite Clara’s protests. Clara can’t really blame her—Alice’s romance work is renowned, and her paychecks aren’t small. It’s a good thing Alice is successful as an author because she is so anxious that Clara can’t imagine her working any job that would require her to speak to people.

  Frankly, Cara is surprised that Alice even agreed to go out with her. Her friend is so constantly anxious that she only ever really leaves her house to send mail, buy groceries, and visit Clara, but even that isn’t as often as Clara would like.

  They sit at the table and talk for a while. Clara listens to Alice talk about her book and her ex-fiancé and the things Alice usually talks about. She’s not very good at articulating what she means, but Clara loves her anyway. They became fast friends a year ago when Clara first moved to Port Murmure before her aunt died. Alice is a little weird and sometimes standoffish, which is likely why she and Alice click. Weird people are like magnets for each other. Clara knows the fact that Alice likes her feels is a big compliment. Ever since Alice’s fiancé booked it out of town a few years after telling her he found her boring and hard to handle, the blond woman’s self-confidence has been totally shot.

  Eventually, Alice drives her home. Clara takes the time to water the plants at the front of her house and wheels herself up the ramp to her front door and then inside.

  Once alone, the wooden floors and sparse furniture feel lonely. Is it a problem? After all, Clara likes being alone. She’s never had luck with men, even before her muscular sclerosis. She knows she’s quiet and not all that friendly, although it isn’t intentional. Aw, hell, it’s not just men, it’s everyone. Even friends are a little hard to come by, even when she wants them. She’s visually pretty, sure. Pretty isn’t everything.

  She’s not like Alice, who would rather gut herself than have many friends or date again. Clara wants that. It’s just that there’s no one who meets her standards. Even if there was, what would she say? How would she trust them? Would they understand the complexities of her experience without infantilizing her or treating her like a chore or some piece of fine china?

  Rolling through the living room, she stares out the wide windows of her house toward the sea. Clara’s breath gets stuck in her throat, and she swallows. Slumping a little, she pulls herself out of the wheelchair and transfers to the recliner.

  Curling into herself as much as she can without pain, she stares at the ocean, lit by midday sun. The water looks true blue like this, fading to reflective white near the horizon. Clara pretends for a moment that she can see creatures under the surface. She pretends that the darker spots of blue in the water are stingrays or shoals of fish, as if either of those would be common here.

  Eventually, she falls asleep, head falling against the side of the recliner and hair fluffing out around her.

  Clara dreams of music. She dreams of the smooth wood of the concert hall under foot and the way the orchestra chairs felt. Under her hand, paper rustles. She runs her fingers over the pages, pointer finger following a crescendo. The feeling of her instrument, the weight of it, calms her. In the dream space, she drops below the surface of melody and falls somewhere safe, where she’s hidden within the string section.

  When she wakes from her nap, the evening sun is burning her eyes orange. Raising a hand, she covers her face. It stings her skin, making her uncomfortable. She feels drool on the side of her mouth.

  Transferring painfully to her wheelchair, she turns from the window. Clara starts to wheel to the kitchen, but her brain stays behind in the dream. Why am I going back to this again? It’s probably because her mother brought it up.

  Drawn to the other room, she wheels to her study. Going to the closet, she struggles and opens the huge cello case. A shiver runs through her body. Biting her lip, she reaches out and drifts her fingers over the polished wood and strings. She picks up the bow, giving it an experimental slide.

  It’s so out of tune, Clara flinches. The sound winds into her, and she immediately replaces the bow and closes the case. She struggles and puts it back where it belongs, closing the closet. Once it’s away, she feels safer. With the instrument out of sight, Clara tries to put it out of mind.

  It doesn’t work. She fixates—she misses playing—she misses the music—she misses composing. Sure, music criticism keeps her brain occupied and still within the realm of her art but not the realm of her heart.

  It’s not her fault she stopped playing. OK, it is her fault, but it’s more complicated than she would describe to anyone.

  What needs to be changed for her to get back to music? What would need to happen to allow her to play again, to face the thing she loves most?

  It isn’t that she physically can’t play. It’s a mental can’t. Clara knows she can play, but every day makes her more afraid to deal with how rusty she’ll be when she eventually tries. If she messes up playing now, everyone will pity her. They’ll all think, Oh, we predicted it. It’s OK, Clara. No one expects you to play as well.

  The thought makes her want to break down. If she really can’t play right, it’ll be her fault—not the fault of her disability. To know that people expect her to fail even when she knows she’s capable keeps her away—keeps her bow from the instrument.

  Hell, even if she plays well, people will pin it on her illness. They’ll congratulate her for being brave and for being an inspiration to disabled people everywhere, not understanding that there’s nothing about Clara’s specific disability that should really make playing dramatically harder. Clara’s worked for her whole life to play this instrument the way she can. The idea of that accomplishment being minimized by her disability hurts.

  Rolling back and sitting in the middle of her empty, sunset-lit study, Clara presses a hand to her face, covering her eyes and slowly breathing in and out. She won’t cry. That’s not her style. This isn’t worth crying over. The past overwhelms her, taking her emotions down with it in a big wave. Clara pulls closer to herself.

  Backing out of the study, she goes to the kitchen and grabs a wine bottle from the fridge. Pouring it into a glass, she takes a big gulp. Ignoring as much of her experience of emotion as she can, she pulls out the cheese and bread, cutting them up and eating them with the wine.

  Cara only drinks enough to take the bite of her feelings off at first. The more the sting starts to fade, the less of the bottle she finds there is. She’s not an alcoholic. She’s just…occasionally avoidant, that’s all. It’s not a problem yet. Thinking about the issue just makes her feel bad, so it’s better not to think at all.

  Once the sun sets, leaving her house dark and shadowed in blue, Clara calls it a night. In her bedroom, she pulls off her clothing and puts on pajamas before crawling into bed. When sleep and exhaustion and a half-drunk headache pull her back into dreams, they aren’t of music.

  Hours later, she wakes to the quiet beeping of the remote on her dresser. Shifting in bed, Clara reaches for the plastic item and stares at it. The tiny light next to button C, the one corresponding to the patio door, is flashing red. Her stomach lurches. That means the door is open.

  Clara stops breathing. Staying completely quiet, she listens for noise outside of her open bedroom door. Somewhere in the living room, there’s someone stepping on floorboards. Immediately, her heart hammers in her chest even harder. There’s someone inside the house.

  Call the police? She left her phone is in the kitchen after making dinner. Clara tries not to panic. She needs to think rationally. What can she do?

  Her wheelchair will be too loud on the tiled kitchen floor. If she can stand at all, it wouldn’t be for long. It would be a miracle if she could get to the kitchen undetected.

  Slipping out of bed and into her waiting wheelchair, she sticks the remote in the pocket of her pajama pants. As careful with the wheels as she can be, she slowly rolls into the hallway. It’s wood floor all the way into the main area of the living room. To the left, near the kitchen and the front door, it becomes tile. She’ll h
ave to walk from the edge of the hallway to the kitchen and hope not to be caught. She wished she could send for help from her computer, but the study can only be accessed from the other side of the living room.

  Biting her lip, Clara summons strength and rolls her wheelchair down the hallway.

  When she reaches the beginning of the living room, she sees him—a man, too dark to identify properly, lying on her couch. He’s breathing in soft, snoring wheezes. Oh, thank God. The patio door is closed now, too, but the lock looks broken.

  There’s not supposed to be crime here. This is a small town. Why is an unfamiliar man in her house?

  Wheeling as far as she can, right to the edge of the tile, Clara struggles to stand. Moving to the counter, she moves with wobbly, pained steps toward her phone. Once she gets there, she leans her elbows against the counter and opens the lock screen. Clara shakes, body too weak for this even on a good day. She types in a number.

  A hand grabs her wrist before she can push call, yanking it away. “Don’t. Let me explain—”

  His voice is deep and quiet, vibrating through Clara’s whole body. Her heart thumps out of her chest, screaming for fight or flight. There’s no flight—she can barely stand, and she can’t run with him holding one of her arms. Fight takes over and her hand latches onto the kettle on the stove nearby.

  The next moment feels like an out-of-body experience. Throwing her arm forward, Clara hits the strange man in the head with the metal teakettle. He yells, dropping her wrist, and she struggles back with shaking legs.

  Her body’s too weak. Legs falling from underneath her, she drops onto her ass with a yelp. The man doesn’t seem to notice or care. Gurgling, he buries his face in his hands and groans. He stumbles back into the island in the middle of the kitchen, bending over himself and screaming in pain.

  Horrified, Clara watches fur burst from his skin. His limbs get bigger, seeming to melt into each other as he becomes a larger form. Hyperventilating, Clara tries to get away, pulling herself back. She tries to struggle to her feet to no avail. The man becomes a monster in front of her eyes, and a wild growl comes out of his mouth.

  Shifter. Her brain feeds her an explanation, but it’s not an answer or an escape. Bear shifter.

  Looking up, she watches the creature’s head bump against the high ceiling of her kitchen, making two of the hanging lamps spark and shatter as they fall. Sleek white fur and huge paws fall back onto the ground, shaking her plates and freezing her in her bones.

  The polar bear lurches toward her. Before she knows it, it swipes her to the left with one huge paw, and her body goes flying, hitting the sliding glass door. The glass cracks, some of it shattering down on top of her. Her vision lurches, and it takes a moment for her head to start hurting. A warm sensation stings her shoulder and arm.

  When Clara groans, twisting a little, something snaps. The sound of the bear growling seems far away but not far enough. Even as she drops out of consciousness and into painful dreams, the speed at which her heart thumps in her chest doesn’t slow.

  Chapter 2

  A bitter, insistent ray of light forces Clara back to the waking world. It tugs at her, breaking her dreams like shattered glass, until she has no choice but to open her eyes.

  When she wakes, Clara does so abruptly. Her eyes fly open, her entire body throwing itself into action at once. Gasping, she blinks to get the blinding sting of sunlight out of her eyes.

  Once the initial shock fades and her heart rate goes down somewhat, she attempts to breathe normally. Her lungs ache from the effort, but eventually she gets used to it. When she’s calm enough to evaluate her situation, she looks around.

  Soft midday sun breaks through the blinds of her bedroom. She’s in the bedroom, and Clara wonders if everything that happened was a dream. One glance at her hand proves otherwise. Her arm is wrapped in bandages and splint. Underneath the covers, Clara can feel more bandaging.

  Under the bandaging, burning pain crosses from near her shoulder to near her abdomen, striped. Claw marks?

  Panic threatens to overtake her, but she forces herself to breathe. She’s in her house and not in the hospital. Why? Did doctors or police come? If they did, why would she be treated at her home instead of a hospital or at least a clinic?

  Alice? No, Alice doesn’t know medical care. Clara doesn’t know of anyone else who would visit and take care of her.

  That is, unless…unless the man stayed. Mouth opening slightly, Clara tilts her head toward the doorway. She immediately regrets doing so, however, as an intense pain seems to wrap around the tendons in her neck.

  Quieting her breathing, she listens to the rest of the house. The only sound that registers is the whistling wind.

  Clara’s wheelchair has been replaced near the bed. Furrowing her brow, she considers trying to get into it. The knowledge that at least one bone in her arm is likely broken and she’s injured in at least two other ways doesn’t make that seem any easier.

  Curiosity and anxiety about what’s happened, however, drive her to try. As she sits in bed, pain spirals up her spine and tries to choke her. She swallows, looking to the bedside table. A glass of water and bottle of Ibuprofen have been left for her. Clara gnaws on her lip before reaching for the water and swallowing two tablets.

  It won’t be enough, but hopefully it’ll help take some of the edge off.

  Using her one free hand, Clara reaches for the wheelchair and somehow manages to pull it closer. Once it’s close, she drags herself off the bed and into the chair with a pained whine. She breathes in sharply, leaning her head back.

  The hard part over, Clara considers how to steer with limited mobility. Pushing her broken arm back so she can reach the back part of the wheel without bending her arm at the elbow, she starts to turn the wheelchair. It takes fiddling, but eventually she manages to get out her bedroom door and down the hallway to the living room.

  She was wrong about the midday lighting. It’s evening, the light slowly fading. How long was I out? Most noticeable, however, is the damage from the other night is still there.

  Near the edge of the kitchen, the pieces of broken lamp have been swept into a dustpan. Clear plastic is secured over the opening of the broken sliding glass door, taped firmly on all sides. Rolling awkwardly forward, she looks around as much as she can without straining her neck.

  There’s a jacket folded over the couch, a jacket she doesn’t recognize. It’s dark gray with a hood. Clara’s heart slows in her chest, and she shivers. He’s still here, isn’t he?

  There are wide scratches on the wooden floor near the sliding glass door, ones that rake in deep. It’ll be expensive to fix, which is the first thing Clara thinks when she sees it. The second thing she thinks of is the sensation of claws raking through her skin.

  She drifts her unused hand to her stomach. The wounds could be much deeper. She knows she got off lucky. Before last night, she’d never seen a shifter that big. In college, she had a friend who was a bird shifter. That’s a completely different ballgame than a huge polar bear in her kitchen.

  Clara’s brain flashes back to the news channel in the coffee shop. Steeling her jaw, she tries not to jump to conclusions. Still, she’s not as far as she would like to be from Charlottetown, and…well, he did break into her house and attack her.

  “You know, if you went to all the effort to get in the wheelchair and risk injuring yourself further, you would think a smart person would get to her phone and call the cops.”

  The voice scares the bejeezus out of her. It’s the same deep, soul-vibrating, quiet one from last night. Grabbing the right wheel with her uninjured hand, she yanks it backward and awkwardly turns around after a moment of struggle. Heart jumping in her chest, she looks at the man.

  He’s tall. Obviously, his height now is nothing compared to the polar bear form she saw last night, but this man is definitely at least six feet tall.

  His hair is dark. It’s messy, falling over his eyes. It’s wet, too—he looks like he just showe
red. That hypothesis is further backed by the fact that he’s shirtless, and the light glints off dampness on his tanned skin in a few places.

  Clara’s mouth parts slightly. What really draws her eyes, more than the height, more than his deep, dark, uncomfortably alluring green eyes, are the bruises covering his torso. They’re everywhere, blotching every part of him. It’s not just bruises, either. He’s got a few lacerations, some covered with fresh bandages and some Band-Aids she recognizes as the purple-colored ones from her first aid cupboard.

  Breathing slowly, she looks to his face. “You’re a shifter.”

  The dark-haired man looks amused, his blank expression cutting apart to something a little lighter. “Astute observation. How much do you remember?”

  He’s right—you should have called the cops, her brain reminds her. Hell, you should be calling them right now, Clara. She doesn’t listen. Instead, she just stares at the man and formulates her answer. “I hit you over the head. You turned into a bear. You threw me into the sliding door.” Clara nods at the clear plastic.

  The man nods, looking tired. Clara realizes she probably didn’t hear noise in the house because he had just turned off the shower. Something about that rubs her the wrong way—probably the fact that it was her shower. She turns her head to the side a bit, looking at him through narrowed eyes.

  “Who are you, and why are you in my house?”