Page 34 of The Dragon's Mate Proposal

“Are you okay?” I asked, hoisting her to her feet, tightening my wings around us again.

“Y-yes,” she stammered, face white as a sheet.

“Good. Stay here,” I said, pulling my wings back—

Only to see the enraged bear mere feet away, coming right at us.

Samantha screamed again.

Chapter Eighteen

Samantha

Cade spun us around, holding me tight as the bear slammed into him again from behind. The impact tossed us forward, but that time, Cade kept us upright.

“Stay here,” he said. Then he was gone.

Toward the bear.

“Cade!” I shrieked in full-blown panic as he went to meet the bear with nothing but his bare hands.

Even as they grappled, I started to giggle at my own mental word play.

Bear with his bare hands! The bear’s hands were bare bear hands, too! The laughter threatened to consume me into a hysterical fit.

“Samantha!” Cade bellowed as he met the bear’s charge, stopping it cold that time. “Get a grip!”

I kept laughing.

“Listen here, stinky!” he shouted, voice taut, his hands gripping the bear’s forelegs while he tried to stop it from falling forward and crushing him or ripping his face to shreds with its mouth.

“Did you just call me stinky?” I yelped through the hammering of my heart and the fog of panic.

“That’s better,” Cade growled. “Hold yourself together. You’re going to be fine.”

I watched as he started to push the mother bear backward. With his hands. Up and out of the water. As soon as the beast had better purchase on dry ground, however, it drove forward, bellowing anew and flinging its weight at Cade.

His wings shot wide for stability, but the continued honking of the bear cub meant the mother wasn’t disengaging anytime soon. If anything, she was descending further into full-blown madness, desperate to do anything to defend her offspring.

Cade roared back, the two at a standstill, neither able to gain the advantage over the other. The bear continued to try to bite his face, while Cade dodged the blows.

“Just kill it already!” I screamed, unable to comprehend why he was holding back. “Be done with it!”

“No!” Cade bellowed through the cacophony bouncing off the trees and amplifying the noises.

The bear twisted, and Cade couldn’t get out of the way in time because one of his feet was stuck in the muck of the water’s edge. He went down, and the bear leaped on him. Before I could scream, though, Cade had somehow wriggled onto his back and brought his legs to his chest.

As the huge bear landed on him, he grabbed its front paws, rolled himself backward, his head going underwater, and kicked the bear off him. The huge beast flew awkwardly through the air—

And landed almost right at my feet.

Yelping in panic, I scrambled back up the slick stone I’d stayed perched upon, trying desperately to get away as the angry animal turned its attention on me.

The bear came, and I leaped off the rock sideways, backpedaling through the water, out from the heated pool and into the current, gasping in shock as the water rapidly changed from warm to frigid.

Then Cade was there, soaring across the water and landing between me and the bear. He advanced on it, and I watched, teeth chattering, as he punched the bear in the jaw, sending it reeling backward with a painful bleat.

“You did not just do that,” I moaned, shaking my head. “This isn’t happening. It’s not happening. This only happens in really bad Russian movies. Real people don’t wrestle bears!”

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