16. Lauren POV

LAUREN POV

I t wasn’t like she knew what happened in any detail after the first gun pointed at her. Her brain shorted out and she lost control over what she said or where she looked. All she saw was the barrel of the rifle and then the pistol, and all she heard was her breathing and the voice of the man who threatened to kill her if she didn’t tell him something she didn’t know. Which just made it harder to think and breathe and not pee all over herself.

She definitely thought things couldn’t get worse. How could they, with two men threatening to kill her and guns right in her face?

And then Finn started talking from somewhere in the trees, and her heart sank the rest of the way through her feet and into the dirt. Just wonderful. Of course. Her luck struck again. And he sounded pissed . Even worse than when he talked to the guy on the phone and demanded his money.

She’d resigned herself to a really, really awful day when things took yet another turn and the pistol pressed cold and awful against the back of her neck. Lauren barely took a shaky breath before something exploded out of the trees and then the pressure disappeared. She scrambled out of the way as a gun went off, and searched for a place to hide or run or climb.

Her legs gave out when she saw the rich brown fur and massive claws of…a grizzly bear. A real, breathing, furious grizzly bear with blood on his paws and flashing fangs. It killed the guy who’d been threatening her, then tossed around the taller guy like a ragdoll. And it looked at her, a growl slowly dying in its chest.

Lauren’s thoughts froze. She stared at it and heard every heartbeat in her ears like a clanging bell. Its eyes were a warm honey and far too intelligent for a ravening beast, and the small ears on its head reminded her of a teddy bear. But that didn’t make breathing any easier.

Especially when one of the awful men groaned and moved, and the bear lashed out and threw him into a tree. The dull thunk and snap of breaking bones turned her stomach the rest of the way, and Lauren lost what remained of her control. Bile rose up and she leaned out of the way to empty her already empty stomach. At least not eating a real dinner or breakfast gave her nothing much to yak up.

She expected to die any second when the grizzly decided to eat her, too. Even the pistol she’d managed to pick up from where the short guy dropped it didn’t make her feel any more confident. The bear grumbled, sitting back like a giant but friendly dog, and watched her. Waiting.

But waiting for what? For her to make a run for it so the bear could chase her down? For its bear friends to show up and join the picnic?

She squeezed her eyes shut. Oh hell. She was definitely losing her mind. Or at least her composure. She didn’t want to face down a grizzly and she sure as hell didn’t want to die in one’s jaws. She didn’t trust her legs to hold her if she tried to stand, and there was no way she could outrun or out-climb a grizzly. Lauren thought you were supposed to play dead around grizzlies, to avoid being attacked, so maybe just sitting there was the right decision. Of course the only good decision she made that day was a complete, freak accident because she was too scared to do anything else except barf.

Maybe she was a coward but she didn’t want to see the bear’s claws swinging at her head or its teeth getting closer to her throat. The air moved and the earthy smell of a giant wild animal swamped her. Lauren whimpered but it didn’t matter: the mouth got closer, heated breath making her flinch, and the teeth slowly closed around her arm to tug her out of her cowering crouch.

“Please please please,” Lauren whispered. She really didn’t want to be mauled by a grizzly. Was it too much to hope that the darn thing would just eat the two men and be too full to bother with her? “Oh my God, please don’t kill me. Or at least make it quick. I don’t think I can handle the pain for very long, and I’ll just scream a lot and you don’t need that.”

The grizzly made a soft bear sound, adjusted its toothy grip, and tossed her over its shoulder and onto its back. Lauren cracked one eye open. What the what? She sprawled across the broad, warm back as the grizzly lumbered a few steps. She slid down, ready to run, but froze as the bear made another annoyed sound and swung his head around to look back at her. Lauren couldn’t breathe. Okay. Message received.

She held tight to the bear’s fur as it moved into a rolling lope, though his stride hitched occasionally. Lauren didn’t know what the hell was going on. Bears didn’t usually carry live prey around with them, certainly not by having the prey ride on their back, while leaving two reasonably-sized meals behind in the dirt. Every time she started to slide off, whether on purpose or by accident, the grizzly would stop, adjust his stance, and shrug his shoulders around until she was more safely situated.

Lauren had to be hallucinating. She hadn’t eaten any weird mushrooms in the forest but who the hell knew. Maybe there were spores in the air or some kind of ley line or other magic in the trees. She wasn’t really riding a bear. She definitely wasn’t riding a bear and holding on to its fur as it lumbered along a trail.

Or she could have fallen as she ran and whacked her head on a rock, and imagined all of it happening while she lay in the grass and suffered a concussion. She couldn’t decide what was worse.

Or it was reality and she really had been kidnapped by a bear—bearnapped?—and was being taken to some cave to be eaten. Maybe that was the worst.

She tried to look on the bright side, though. She hadn’t been raped and murdered by those two dudes with guns, and the bear radiated heat like a furnace. Its fur was coarse on the surface but really soft underneath, and she worked her frozen hands closer to the beast’s skin to try and leech heat away.

Lauren even leaned onto his back as exhaustion crushed her down. She buried her face in the bear’s rich brown fur and tried not to cry. She didn’t look up until the bear’s stride slowed to an amble. Her heart thumped oddly. The bear brought her back to the cabin. Right to the front door. He made more of those bear noises and leaned to the side so she slid to her feet.

When her legs, already sore and cramped from trying to hold on to the wide grizzly, wobbled and gave out, the bear caught her before she hit the ground. Lauren clutched the bear’s arm and found herself staring into his honey-gold eyes once more. Those familiar, mournful gold eyes, almost like…

Her heart thumped harder against her ribs, almost like she faced that rifle again. Or when she’d found a bear with his leg in a trap and he turned into a man. Into Finn. Lauren shook her head and jumped back, holding up her hands to fend him off even though the bear hadn’t moved. “No. No, I think this is too weird for me. I don’t think I can handle this. It’s just not possible that you might…that you could be… No. Nope. Definitely not. I mean, I believe in Bigfoot because cryptids are totally possible from an evolutionary standpoint. It’s perfectly reasonable that early apes diverged from homo sapiens and created a Bigfoot-like creature. Completely plausible. But this…this isn’t like…”

Her words trailed off as her mouth dried up and her thoughts derailed. Crazy. She was out of her mind, talking to a bear like it understood. And even worse, she thought it was Finn in there, behind the fangs and claws. Maybe if she explained it all to the police or the judge or her defense lawyer, they would put her in a psychiatric hospital instead of jail. She needed oodles of therapy, apparently, if she actually believed a bear turned into a man. Or a man turned into a bear. Did it make a difference which way ’round she thought about it? A man in a bear’s body seemed infinitely better than a bear in a man’s body, but how the heck was she going to tell the difference?

Lauren shook from head to toe so badly she had to lean back against the cabin to keep from falling, and started to slide down to the frozen ground. The sky had darkened overhead as the bear carried her down the trail, and snow fell silently in big, fat flakes. They clung to the bear’s fur like frosting. She covered her face. “I can’t do this. I really can’t do this.”

Sure. Snow. Maybe it would be a blizzard and she’d be stuck in the cabin with a real bear—and no food—for a week or so. Why not. If she was dead or frozen, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about firewood.

A tearing sound and the sharp scent of blood overwhelmed her, but Lauren kept her eyes covered and closed. Didn’t want to see. Didn’t want to know. Knowing things just led to trouble.

The bear exhaled in a gust, then a warm hand settled on her forearm. “Come on, now. Let’s go inside.”

Nope. Definitely wasn’t Finn. Definitely wasn’t Finn instead of the bear. She cracked an eye open, just to be sure, and confirmed there was no more bear and a very naked Finn kneeling in front of her once again. Which he shouldn’t have been able to do on his injured leg, or because it was freakin’ freezing out and no one in their right mind would go out without clothes.

“Lauren,” he said, voice rusty. Possibly bearlike, if bears could talk. Or would it have been a snarl with syllables? Maybe bears had accents when they talked, depending on what kind they were. Maybe grizzlies sounded Canadian. ‘Oh hey, Imma eat some salmon now, eh?’ Or something.

Finn squeezed her elbow very gently. “Come back, Lauren.”

“I don’t want to,” she whispered. “This can’t be happening.”

“It is, babe.” He chafed her upper arm, still moving slow and easy. “But those guys weren’t alone and they fired off a shot before they…were dealt with, so the other folks might be looking for us. I need to clean some things up, and I need to know you’re safe before I can do that.”

She shook her head. “I’ll stay here. Right here. Can’t move.”

Her teeth started to chatter, but she didn’t know if it was fear or cold. Did it really matter, in the end? She hugged her knees to her chest, staring past him at the snow falling more heavily to conceal the trail. What did he think he would clean up? The bodies? She shivered again. Bodies. Dead bodies.

Finn caught her other elbow and tried to make her stand up. “You’re freezing, Lauren. You’ve got to get inside.”

That didn’t seem like a great idea, not when he turned into a bear. What if he did that while they were in the cabin? There wasn’t enough room in there for a person and a grizzly, and there wasn’t anywhere for her to hide in the ramshackle structure, not if an angry bear wanted to eat her. Maybe she could hide in the rafters away from the hole in the roof.

When Lauren refused to stand on her own and Finn’s efforts to jostle her to life didn’t work, he sighed. Finn squeezed her shoulder and bent until he met her gaze. His eyes still glowed like warm honey. Just like the bear. “I’m going to pick you up and carry you inside so you can get warm. Okay? Don’t flip out on me.”

She managed a watery laugh as tears dripped onto her cheeks. “What am I going to do to you? You’re a b-b-b…”

She gulped for air and refused to say the word. Since it wasn’t possible, since it wasn’t real, there wasn’t any reason to say it out loud. No reason to sound completely unhinged in front of the bounty hunter. She tensed as those broad, strong hands caught her under the armpits to haul upright, then he picked her up like a baby.

Finn shouldered aside the door and grunted as he limped over toward the fireplace and the cold ashes. “Yes, I’m a bear, but I’m a bear who likes you a lot, so there’s no reason to worry.”

Lauren stared at him, flabbergasted. He just…said it. Just said he was a bear. She hiccupped in fear and then she couldn’t seem to draw a good breath or exhale at all. Finn put her down on the mattress and dragged the blankets and sleeping bags over her. “Breathe, Lauren. Just breathe, and I’ll be back. I can explain.”

She stared at him. What was there to explain? They were both certifiably nuts. People didn’t turn into bears. Did. Not. Turn. Into. Bears.

He waited as she struggled, but Lauren couldn’t keep it together. She backed into the corner and braced for the worst, waiting for his golden eyes to turn molten and his fingers to claws. Her heart pounded until she thought her chest would explode. What the hell would he do next?

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