Bears of Burden: THORN

by Candace Ayers

  "Professor?"

  Donovan glanced up sharply over the rims of his glasses. There was a female student standing in the doorway, one who looked vaguely familiar to him. He sat back and removed his eyewear to have a better look at her.

  "Yes? You're…"

  "I'm Shannon Drieling. You had me last semester," the girl explained. "I'm Kira Bentley's roommate."

  "Yes? What can I do for you, Miss Drieling?" Instinct already told him what this was about. "Is everything all right with Kira? She missed my class again today. Not unusual," he added out of a bit of playful spite. If she insisted on keeping up their old pretense, even in the face of everything that had come to pass between them, then he was certainly game to continue giving her a hard time.

  The expression on Shannon Drieling's face instantly took the fun out of it for him, though, and his wan smile curled into a thoughtful frown. "Is she ill? If she is, tell her she can makeup her assignments when she gets back. Either that, or I can send them with you now." Donovan pulled open a drawer to hunt for a spare copy of the reading assessment. "Classic literature will always be here. It's more important that she remains healthy."

  "She talks about you all the time, like you're her advisor or mentor or something," Shannon blurted out as if she hadn't heard him at all. Donovan froze. Now he could definitely see that something was wrong. Her eyes were nearly brimming over with tears, and he could smell her heightened anxiety suspended like a cloud above them both. He eased the drawer shut.

  "What is it, Drieling?" he asked quietly. "I assure you that you have my complete confidence." It was a promise he might have to break, depending on what she told him now. If he was her first point of contact… if there was an emergency…

  "I came home last night and our room was completely trashed!" Shannon sobbed. "All the furniture was overturned, and there were clothes everywhere. It was all Kira's stuff—none of my stuff was touched. Even her bed was flipped over. It looked like… it looked like… oh God." Shannon sank to her knees, and Donovan came instantly out of his chair to join her on the floor. He could still hear her voice muffled behind her hands. "It was like someone tore through it with a knife. There were these long jagged marks in it…"

  "And Kira?" he demanded. "Where's Kira?"

  Her sudden silence unnerved him, and Donovan grasped her shoulders to force her to look up at him once more. Her eyes were streaming, and her face was deathly pale.

  "I think someone broke into our dorm room," she said. "I think something has happened to Kira."

  Kira woke in the woods.

  She blinked blearily up at the sky as she tried to remember how she had gotten outside in the first place. She could see a patch of blue through a fringe of autumnal leaves, but nothing about the canopy above her recalled any memories. She overturned herself to look for any familiar landmarks, and was greeted by a terrible discovery.

  She wasn't naked—that, at least, was a relief. But her clothes were torn to ribbons, and the skin beneath her tattered clothing was scratched as if she had been in a scuffle with some wild animal. Even her jeans were ripped beyond recognition.

  Panic flooded her system, and Kira sat up quickly. She was hit by an immediate dizzy spell, but it didn't succeed in knocking her back down again; if anything, her lightheadedness forced her to take quick stock of her surroundings in case she happened to pass out again. Aside from her clothes and the superficial wounds, she appeared otherwise unharmed. Judging by the noonday sky overhead, she was able to guess that she had been out for a while, which would account for some of her dizziness—her stomach felt empty, and she was likely dehydrated. The surge of energy she had felt upon waking was only due to adrenaline, and that would probably deplete itself shortly. She needed to figure a way out of here before then?

  But where was she? She wanted to say Gosling Park, but she couldn't be sure how she knew. Relying on her largely-untested wolf instincts to tell her where she was seemed risky, but it was all she had to go off of at this point. She thought she could tell from the position of the sun that time had passed, but what was the last thing that she could remember?

  She had been up late studying well into the early morning. Her roommate was out—likely sleeping over with a new guy she didn't want Kira to know about yet. So Kira had been in her dorm room alone, and then… chaos.

  Someone had splintered the door in. She remembered that much. No knock, no trying of the handle first—the door had caved upon first impact. Her body had reacted out of instinct, and shifted her partway before she even had time to draw a startled breath. She remembered a whirlwind of claws, teeth, and fur… but whose? Surely it wasn't Donovan who had attacked her.

  Was it possible she had done this to herself?

  The prospect was starting to seem more and more likely. She knew that werewolves occasionally blacked out, depending on the circumstances—Professor Donovan was a testament to that. Could it have been lack of sleep that allowed the wolf to take her over with a vengeance? Oh God, what if she had hurt someone?

  Kira staggered to her feet, pressing a palm to her forehead in shame. The only blood on her was blood that she could readily identify as her own, and there wasn't much of it. Her mouth was dry, and as she swept her tongue between her teeth for a telltale taste of copper, she came up short. All signs were pointing toward a positive conclusion, but that still didn't explain what had happened, or why she was here.

  A rustling in the undergrowth drew her attention, and Kira froze. Her sensitive ears picked up on something close, something large, moving steadily toward her location. She turned and planted herself in a defensive position, legs wide and fists raised. Whoever, or whatever, it was, they were approaching at a speed that couldn't be mistaken for anything other than intentional. They knew her location, and were banking on her still being there.

  She wasn't out of the woods yet.

  CHAPTER 14

  "And this is how you found it?"

  Kira Bentley's roommate, Shannon Drieling, nodded.

  Donovan stood in the doorway to the girls' dorm room for a long, terrible moment; then, taking Shannon's silence for permission, he stepped over the threshold.

  The room was a disaster—exactly as she had described it to him and then some. The bed was overturned, assignments and clothes were scattered everywhere, a desk lamp was shattered and pillows were torn to ribbons. There were goose down feathers littered everywhere, covering half of the room like a fresh powder of snow.

  Donovan's stomach lurched at the sight. He knew what this was all too well: this was the handiwork of a werewolf out of control. Was it possible that after all of their time spent together—after all of his advice and teachings—Kira's wolf side had still got the better of her? He could see now how lucky it had been that Shannon had been out for the evening.

  "Your side of the room is basically untouched?" he inquired. He moved through the wreckage, but couldn't bring himself to touch anything that had been overturned or destroyed. It was probably for the better—they would need to notify campus police if Kira couldn't be located, and having his fingerprints at the scene of the crime would open an entirely new can of worms.

  In response to his question, Shannon shook her head. "No. I… I think whoever broke into our dorm room was after Kira and Kira only. Everything she owned was trashed," she said.

  "I can see that." Now that he was deeper in the room, Donovan caught a whiff of something he didn't understand. While the damage had clearly been done by a wolf, Shannon's theory that someone had broken in and attacked Kira seemed suddenly and starkly more likely than Kira being the sole party responsible for the damage.

  His nostrils curled as they were assaulted by a third scent. The left side of the room, Shannon's side, smelled like it had been drenched in hairspray and perfume; the right side, Kira's side, smelled like the generic brand of soap she used combined with the more recent aroma of pine trees. Beneath it all, he could smell her wolf's pheromones, indistinguishable to any non-shifter, but his o
wn awareness of them packed a wallop. It was enough to make his pulse quicken and his blood race, even with the girl herself absent.

  But that third scent. So alien, and yet… so like his own. Donovan put out a hand to grab the back of Shannon's desk chair, breaking his promise to himself not to touch anything, and sat down hard. He had never smelled it before in his life, but there seemed to be no mistaking it.

  It was the smell of another male wolf. It was the smell of the brute who had come after Kira.

  "Professor, I think there's something you should know," Shannon mentioned hesitantly from the doorway.

  Donovan turned his head slowly to look at her, eyes still distant as he took in every detail of this new, horrifying reality. "Yes?" he asked finally.

  "I think Kira was… well, I think she might have been seeing someone. In secret." Shannon's voice was hushed. "You could say I know the signs. I've had a boyfriend I've been keeping from her for weeks; I was just waiting for the right time to introduce them… anyway, that's neither here nor there. But she's been really private recently, and there are a few times I've come home early over the weekends to just find her… gone. Without explanation. I mean, obviously she has another place to stay."

  "Is it obvious?" Donovan echoed her without thinking. "I had no idea."

  "And I guess I've just been wondering… well, I guess I wondered if there was a reason she was keeping whoever she's been seeing a secret. Like, maybe he isn't the nicest guy, and she knows that she needs to break up with him. Maybe she tried to break up with him, and…" Shannon cut herself off, as if the very idea of what had become of Kira strangled her like two sets of fingers. "I wish I had been here!" she finished brokenly.

  "There was nothing you could have done," Donovan said firmly as he rose. "And I'm not one to say you were right to find me before you called campus police, but I'm glad you told me. I've advised Kira on more than just her schoolwork this semester, and her location and well-being are incredibly important to me."

  "Where do you think she could have gone?" Shannon moaned. Donovan surveyed the room once more, his eyes taking in the drifts of goose feathers.

  "I have an idea," he said. "But it's only a hunch."

  He turned on his heel and was about to exit the room, but he ultimately paused to lay a comforting hand on Shannon's shoulder. Her eyes were misted over, and she looked as if she had been through a hell equal to Kira's these past few hours.

  "Give me an hour. One hour. That's all I ask. If you don't hear from me or Kira by then…" Donovan sucked in a quick breath before continuing. "Call campus security. Tell them everything you've told me."

  He gave her shoulder a squeeze, and Shannon nodded her understanding. Then he moved off into the hallway and hurried down the stairs, leaving the destruction of the room behind him.

  The goose feathers from Kira's burst pillow had sparked an idea. There was only one wooded area near here that a wolf shifter could hope to escape to, and that was Gosling Park. He thought he knew where Kira's supernatural assailant was likely to have taken her.

  He just hoped he wasn't already too late.

  CHAPTER 15

  When her kidnapper came out of the woods, Kira was ready for him.

  She sidestepped to the perimeter of the clearing and lunged. There was no time to take in his identity, or anything other than the fact that he was male—she threw all of her weight into him and hoped that surprise would give her the upper hand. Her hands fisted in his jacket as she wrenched them both off their feet and spun them down, down toward the ground.

  "Kira!"

  Her eyes widened at the rough, familiar voice, but it was too late to take back the attack. The man landed on his back beneath her, and her knee drove into the ground just beneath his groin with only a calculated last-minute inch to spare.

  "Sawyer!" she exclaimed. Past the tangled blond hair tumbling into her frantic eyes, she saw the handsome, grizzled face of her English professor blinking up at her. Her surprise assault had knocked his glasses askew, and they hung off his nose and one ear at an almost ninety degree angle.

  To her surprise, his hands came up to seize her shoulders, but it wasn't to push her off him; it was to hold her there, as if he feared the young woman sitting astride him was only a vision.

  "Jesus, Kira, what happened to you?"

  His hands trailed down her arms, skimming over scratches and bruises and catching on the tatters of her clothes. Kira tried to examine herself more carefully, but it was no use without her phone or a mirror. She assumed by the tone of Donovan's voice that she looked even worse than she felt.

  "I don't know… I'm not sure," she stuttered. "I don't really remember what happened, so I think I must have changed, at least partially—but then, why do I still have my clothes on?" She started shaking uncontrollably as tears welled in her eyes. "What's happening to me? For a moment, I thought you were someone else—someone who wanted to hurt me—"

  "Shannon came and found me in my classroom." Donovan pushed himself up slowly from the ground, and Kira fell back on her haunches to give him more room. He followed her up and caught the back of her neck, as if he was afraid any break in contact between them would cause her to disappear again without warning. "She showed me your dorm room."

  "Is it bad?" Kira's eyes tracked his, and what she saw wasn't good. "Oh God, did she call the police?" Thoughts of campus security combing her room for evidence, and finding that the damage could have only been caused by a large animal—

  "Not yet. She came to me first." Donovan's fingers tightened possessively at the nape of her neck. "I told her to call them in an hour if she didn't hear from either of us. I think it would be best if you called her on your cell to let her know yourself that you're all right. Do you have your phone with you?"

  "Not with me." Kira hunted through every pocket, and found nothing—no cell phone, no wallet, and no ID. "Sawyer, this is weird… I could have sworn I had it on me. I know I at least had my wallet on me. I know for a fact." She could feel the dread she had experienced earlier at her situation slowly starting to creep back in, despite the comfort of her professor's presence. "You didn't see it in my room, did you? On my desk? Because if it isn't there, then it means someone must have taken it—"

  "No," he said quietly. "I didn't see it. And believe me, I memorized every detail."

  They were both quiet for a long moment.

  "I think I know why you don't remember what happened to you," Donovan began slowly. "You shifted, Kira, it's true. At least a little. The wolf knew you were in danger, and she took over for you—think of it like swapping out drivers when the person usually behind the wheel is too afraid or too exhausted to continue. I think it's likely that you blacked-out, and let instinct take over."

  "You said it happened because I was in danger." Kira's voice quavered. "I remember that there was someone in the hallway. Someone trying to get in."

  "Whoever it was did get in," Donovan said. "He got in. I smelled another werewolf in that room with you, Kira."

  It made sense. It aligned with everything she had already been subconsciously beginning to suspect, and yet the conclusion seemed impossible. Wouldn't have Donovan known if there was another wolf shifter on campus? Wouldn't she have known? But then, she hadn't realized before that Donovan was a werewolf—not until he had told her himself. And he had only suspected her because she was displaying symptoms left and right.

  "The two of you must have," Donovan continued. "Either you ran, or he dragged you out here and took off the second you started to regain awareness."

  "But what for what purpose?" Kira demanded hysterically. "To mug me? I'm a student—I don't own anything valuable! Why would he go to all that effort just to take my stuff?"

  "He might have a fixation with you." Donovan's eyes flashed like silver coins. "You're in heat, Kira. It's possible he just wanted to get you alone to see how things would play out between the two of you."

  "Oh God." Kira dropped her head into her hands. "I think I'm g
oing to be sick."

  She felt the pressure of Donovan's hand once more on the back of her neck; gentle, coaxing. After a few moments, she raised her head, and allowed herself to be drawn out of her silent anguish into a warm and loving kiss. Donovan pressed his lips firmly against hers, and Kira slotted her own mouth against his. Every kiss they exchanged now felt perfect and right, even if they did still qualify as stolen. A wave of calm washed over her, and for the first time since she had woken delirious in the clearing, she felt safe and secure. Donovan would never let anything happen to her—and she would never let anything happen to Sawyer Donovan.

  God help the mysterious male wolf who tried to get between them.

  Donovan pulled away first. The hand that rested on the back of her neck slid down her shoulder to grip her arm and help her stand. Though her thoughts were steely, Kira felt grateful for the support—she couldn't be sure that her body had fully caught up with the day's staggering revelation. As soon as she was upright, she slipped her hand into his.

  "We should go back to my apartment," he murmured. "I've already cancelled my remaining classes for today. I don't think it's wise for you to go back to your room until we figure out who did this to you."

  Kira nodded. At the very least Shannon would be safer without her there. If it really was a wolf that had attacked her, then surely he could smell when she wasn't around? All the same, Kira didn't think it was worth the risk. She would ask Shannon to stay with a friend, or stay with the boyfriend she didn't think Kira knew about. She would just have to think of an excuse to feed her that had nothing to do with the truth.

  Donovan pulled his jacket off, and Kira accepted it gratefully. It was a short walk back to his place from Gosling Park, but her own shirt was torn to ribbons. She pulled the coat on and zipped it securely closed as Donovan guided her out of the clearing, darting infrequent looks over his shoulder. She didn't blame him for being paranoid. Even though she couldn't sense another presence there with them in the woods, she still couldn't shake the feeling of being watched.