by Maia Starr
“I…” she paused, trying to think. She was reasonably certain she would die if she had to sleep with him tonight. She had also spent the last hour trying to think of an escape plan, and her plan was almost perfected. “I could come to bed later if you like? Will you wait for me? I want everything to be perfect in here when you wake up in the morning.”
“Which will be so, so soon,” he said. “Don’t be too long.”
“I won’t,” she said, her heart in her throat. He headed back to the bedroom, whistling, and she heard the door shut. She knew that he would be waiting for her, and while he pretended to be understanding, he would be screaming for her within half an hour.
She counted to ten, gathering all her courage, and then moved as quickly and as fast as she could. Jenna Mae had always been a minimalist and she didn’t throw much into the bag that she had waiting by the door. Most of her clothes were in the bedroom, but she did have a load of laundry that had just finished, so she grabbed as many things as she could from the side room. She shoved her tiny laptop into the backpack and then took Cameron’s diaper bag over to their back pantry, trying to put in as many diapers and packs of formula as she could. The bag already had a few changes of clothes, but Jenna Mae grabbed a few more from the laundry room, cramming the bag full.
Cameron’s crib was just off the living room, and Jenna Mae made sure that she had the car keys, their coats, and shoes before she slipped into the small room. Cameron was sleeping soundly, and Jenna Mae put on his coat and shoes as carefully as possible. Cameron didn’t stir, much to Jenna Mae’s relief. Jenna Mae cocked her head, making sure James wasn’t moving around in the bedroom. The young mother took a deep breath and looked into her son’s eyes. Jenna Mae knew she had to do this for the safety of her child. However, it was the most frightening moment of her life.
Jenna Mae took one last stabilizing breath and then moved swiftly towards the front door. She opened it and stepped into the hallway, shutting it quietly behind her. And then, she ran.
Their car was in the lot behind the apartment building, and Jenna Mae settled Cameron quickly into his car seat, looking over her shoulder in a panic. She fumbled with Cameron’s buckle twice before finally getting it and then threw herself into the front seat.
She started the car and closed the door all at the same time, bucking her belt quickly. She pushed the gas and glanced in the rearview mirror, her breath coming in gasps.
She saw the front door of the apartment complex open and a flash of James’s eyes. Jenna Mae floored the gas, tearing out of the parking lot before he had a chance to move. James was fast, even in human form. However, he wasn’t fast enough to catch a car.
She tore down the street and onto the highway, merging dangerously into the fast lane so that she could move as quickly as possible. She was trying to be cautious, but her hands were shaking, and her mouth was dry.
Jenna Mae didn’t know where she was going, but she figured she’d take the main highway to a smaller one, and eventually onto the backroads where she planned to find the smallest town she could that had a motel and check in. She figured that James would go looking for her in all her usual places first: checking with the few friends that she did have and at places that she used to go to in town. If she picked somewhere at random—a nowhere town and a small motel where no one asked questions—she’d be safe enough to figure out her next move.
She vaguely remembered seeing a town called Bear Lake that had a small population. She thought she might try to make it there.
She was done with shifters, and as far as she was concerned at the moment, she was done with men. She would build a new life with Cameron, and she would never look back.
It started to rain as soon as she made it onto the backroads. It came down in sheets, and her windshield wipers were going full force. She was hunched over the wheel, trying to see and still going as fast as she dared, when something darted out in front of her.
Jenna Mae couldn’t help herself; she screamed and tried to swerve. Her scream woke up Cameron, and Jenna Mae jumped at the baby’s shriek. Before she knew it, the car was sliding out of control and heading straight into the woods. She felt the wheel lock, and she tried to reach back to protect Cameron with her hand before the car slid into the forest and headed straight for the massive trees. All Jenna Mae remembered before the impact was praying that Cameron would be alright.
Chapter Two
The airbags deployed, hitting Jenna Mae in the face. She heard a sickening crunch as the front of the car collapsed under the impact, and she was sure that she had cracked the tree that she had crashed into. The car came to a sudden stop, quieting the squealing wheels. Soon, the only sound was Cameron’s screaming and the heavy rain pouring down.
“Cameron!” Jenna Mae immediately unbuckled her seat belt and spun around to reach her child. Cameron, as far as Jenna Mae could see, seemed completely fine. He was screaming, her face red and wet with tears, but she seemed otherwise unharmed. Jenna Mae unbuckled her, getting up on her knees to lift her out of her seat. “Are you ok? Are you ok, baby? Mommy is sorry! Mommy is so sorry!”
She brought her child close, kissing his head and cuddling his tiny warm body. Jenna Mae felt like her heart was about to explode as she tried to assess the situation. As far as she could tell, both of them were shaken, but unharmed. The car, however, was a completely different story. The front end was completely smashed, and it seemed to be smoking. Jenna Mae had no knowledge of cars, but she knew that staying in a smoking car was probably a terrible idea.
The rain was still coming down, and she had no idea where they were going to go, but she grabbed both their bags carefully. Hanging the straps of both bags off one arm, and then holding Cameron tight with the other, she somehow got the door open.
The rain was incredibly cold, and she tried to shield Cameron with her body as much as she could when she stepped out.
Jenna Mae’s legs were shaking, and she tried to keep her pace slow and steady, despite her instinct to run through the rain.
There was no one around; the small road she had been on was deserted. From her brief glance at the map a few minutes beforehand, there wasn’t another town around for miles.
Her muddled brain thought that it was safer to walk into the woods rather than down the dark road. Jenna Mae briefly remembered that the woods on the map were not as big as they seemed to be, and she hoped that would be something on the other side of them. In addition, the trees provided more shelter from the rain than the open road would have.
Cameron was still screaming, and Jenna Mae’s heart broke for him. Although they both had jackets on, their faces were soaked with the cold rain, and the trees only provided minimal shelter.
Jenna Mae’s phone was in her backpack and she didn’t dare take it out, because she knew it would be soaked and useless in half a second. She focused on putting one foot in front of the other, looking for any source of help, or even a source of light.
Anger crept into her thoughts as she stumbled through the forest. At first, she was angry at James for treating her the way he did. How could he be such a terrible person? She knew that being with a shifter was a risk, and she knew that he wasn’t completely human. She knew when entering the relationship that they would have to relate to each other in a different way than two humans would. She was willing to make allowances for so many things, but he was just so cruel to her. In the last few weeks, she had started to feel like a prisoner, and the last week had made her wonder if she was going to escape the relationship alive.
Jenna Mae wondered if she would have if it wasn’t for Cameron. Her whole life, she had always been timid, and willing to go along with most things. She also had trouble speaking up and defending herself, trying to avoid confrontation whenever possible.
Her mother always said that she was too forgiving, too easy going, and too willing to see the best side of people. The more Jenna Mae thought about, the more that she was sure that if she weren’t a mother, she’d be dead, by Jame
s’s hand.
The anger soon turned to herself. Why hadn’t she been braver sooner? Why hasn't she spoken up, and told him to stop, rather than staying silent? All the signs had been there for so long. She knew he was prone to violence, and she knew that his last girlfriend had a restraining order against him. She should have looked past his eyes and his sweet words to the side of him that was an animal.
There was a reason that humans weren’t with shifters, and she was sure that this was it. As far as she was concerned, she was done with shifters. She didn’t want to see another one. At that moment, she didn’t want to see another man either. Jenna Mae was determined that she could make the best life for Cameron, alone.
It was during these thoughts that she felt like her legs were getting weaker. She hadn’t thought that she was injured in the crash, but each step started to feel like agony. Her head began to pound, and she started to feel sick.
She told herself that it was just the shock of the crash, and the cold of the rain. She told herself to just ignore what she was feeling and keep walking.
However, it soon became apparent that she wasn’t going to be able to ignore her swirling head and fading vision. Jenna Mae stumbled twice before she spotted what looked like a soft mound of leaves. She knew she was running out of time and tried to aim her body to fall onto her back, so her baby would be safe. She didn’t care what happened to her as long as the baby was safe.
The last thing she remembered was hitting the mound of leaves, and Cameron giggling. Then, the world went black around her.
Chapter Three
Jean-Paul felt like he hadn’t been outside in years. He hadn’t exactly intended to spend three days inside, locked in meetings. The whole point of living in a secluded cabin in the woods was that he could choose when he was out and about in the world and when he could spend some time in silence. However, as Alpha Bear, there was always work to be done, and there were always people who wanted to meet with him, despite him insisting that he needed a schedule and anyone other than his top nobles had to make an appointment. The past three days of meetings about the Kingdom had ended in a stalemate, and he felt like the nobles would be back before too long to start another round of discussions. The cabin was supposed to be his sanctuary, but it didn’t seem like anyone else respected that.
The rain felt good on his face as he walked through the woods. As a bear shifter, he didn’t feel the cold as humans did. He felt refreshed, his head clearing as he walked on the soggy ground. He thought that he might try to catch his dinner today, spending some time in bear form and forgetting the crown that weighed heavily on his head.
It wasn’t that he hated being Alpha; he didn’t. It was that being Alpha wasn’t what he expected in his adult years.
He was the second prince in the Alpha Bear family, and his older brother, Michael, was supposed to inherit the title. However, Michael’s untimely death a year into his reign meant that Jean-Paul had to pull away from the life he had started to build and take over the throne.
Jean-Paul had paid attention to the things that his parents had taught his brother, and he felt like he did the best he could with the title. He didn’t resent Michael, even when he missed him more than anything. There were just times when Jean-Paul felt like he was doing a duty rather than properly living his life.
He was about to start his transformation when he heard a noise off to his right. He spun around, on defense. An Alpha’s life was always in danger from those who opposed his rule, and Jean-Paul was well aware that he was never safe, even though he could defend himself from nearly any threat. The bear shifters were the biggest shifters to inhabit the earth, and the threat of wolves or lions didn’t bother him. He was larger than most of the other bears because he had been born into the royal family. The only family that could produce a bear large enough to make him feel unsafe was the Hassad family: the Beta bears who had once held the throne. They had been vying for the Alpha position as long as Jean-Paul could remember, and he knew their threat was growing as of late. The oldest Hassad Beta, Remy, seemed to be constantly looking for reasons why Jean-Paul was unfit to rule. Jean-Paul would not put it past Remy to jump him in a rainstorm.
However, it wasn’t Remy that had startled him. Curled up by a tree, soaking wet and looking half dead, were two humans. The one that had made the noise was no more than a tiny infant, wrapped in a blanket and lying half in a woman’s arms and half on the wet leaves. The woman looked young, although he supposed it was the child’s mother. The woman was pale, with her long hair falling all over her arms, and she was not dressed for the rain. Even though she was unconscious, it seemed she was trying to protect her child, half curled around him.
Jean-Paul knew at that moment that he had to make a choice. He could leave them both in the rain and forget what he saw, moving on about his day. Or, he could take them to safety.
Realistically, he knew from the second he saw them that he had to help. He may be an all-powerful Alpha who could make decisions that could alter lives in seconds, but he couldn’t just ignore them. He always sworn to protect the innocent, even if it put him in a difficult spot. The only place where he could take them that would be out of the rain would be his house. There wasn’t another shelter around for miles, which was part of the reason why he chose that location. He didn’t ever bring humans to his home, or even interact with them very much. If humans found out about bear shifters, he knew that it would be the end of those who had knowledge.
He couldn’t just leave them there, despite all the reasons why he should. He approached them carefully, picking up the baby first to keep it out of the rain. He sheltered it with his body and then turned to the mother, checking her pulse. She was alive and she didn’t have visible injuries. She was, however, completely unresponsive. Clearly, something terrible had happened.
He shifted the baby to one arm and then picked up the woman with the other, balancing carefully. She was light, and it was no issue to carry both of them. He looked longingly at the river where he was going to catch dinner and then turned back to his cabin.
The rain was getting heavier, and he increased his pace as he headed back to the cabin. He glanced at the woman a few times as they walked. She was beautiful, he admitted to himself. She had delicate features, and soft looking skin, flopping against his arm. She had small curves, and delicate hands lying over his arm. He hoped that she was going to be alright.
The cabin wasn’t far, and he used his leg to kick in the door, silently noting that he’d have to get a new lock since he had broken this one.
He didn’t have a lot in the room because the cabin was supposed to be his space to unwind. However, there were several chairs pulled up in the living room from the last meeting, and a luxurious bed in the corner, by the window.
Carefully, he laid the woman on the bed, and then placed the baby beside her. He pulled a throw blanket from the bottom of the bed and pulled it over them so that they’d have a little bit of warmth. He turned to the fire that had died and stoked it, trying to bring back the roaring flames that had kept him warm.
The woman didn’t stir, but the baby continued to cry. He had no idea what to do with a baby or how to get it to stop crying. After a moment, he picked it up again, walking to and fro on the floor. It baffled him that he could run an entire kingdom, but he couldn’t make a baby stop crying.
He paced the floor several times, and eventually, the baby stopped crying. The baby looked up at him and smiled, and Jean-Paul felt his heart melt. The moment was peaceful and beautiful. He felt all the stress of the past few days go out of his shoulders as the baby gurgled.
“Who are you? What are you doing?”
He looked up to find the woman sitting, bleary-eyed and staring at him.
“You’re safe,” he said to her, trying to speak in a calming voice. She shook her wet hair out of her face, trying to make sense of her surroundings.
“Put down my baby,” she cried, and he took a step forward, trying to calm her.
> “Everything is ok,” he said. “You are safe. I found you in the rain and I brought you here.”
“Give him to me,” the woman said, frantically. She looked remarkably pale, and he was worried that she was going to fall over. He took another step and held the baby out. She snatched him away, bringing him close. “It’s ok, baby, it’s ok. Mommy’s here.”
“You are in no danger,” he repeated to her. “Please calm down.”
The woman settled back now that the baby was in her arms, but she still glared at him.
“Who are you?” she asked. “How did I get here?”
“My name is Jean-Paul,” he replied. “And I found you in the rain. So I guess the real question is, how did you get there?”
“I…” she paused and squinted. “I don’t...I...there was a car accident.”
“You were in a car accident?” he asked, and she managed to nod. “Was anyone else involved?”
“No,” she said, shakily. “The trees...the rain…”
“You must have hit your head,” he surmised.
“I don’t think so,” she answered, looking down at her baby. “At least, not in the car accident.”
The answer made him raise an eyebrow, and he waited to see if she was going to elaborate. When she didn’t, he tried to force the conversation.
Jean-Paul didn’t want to admit that he was feeling something very odd while looking into her eyes. It was as if there was an electric shock going up and down his spine. He had never felt such a feeling before, and he was afraid of what it meant.
His heart felt full, and he felt like he had to keep looking at her.
He had heard people describe this before and he didn’t think it was real. The truth was, Jean-Paul was so focused on his work and on his duties that he assumed he would be alone the rest of his life. He had seen so many people around him find their mates, but he didn’t think there was one out there for him. Fate had clearly screwed up when it made him Alpha, so he assumed that there was no fated mate for him.