Page 31 of Bear's Rejected Love

He stopped mid-step. His heart boxed his ribs as he looked around, his human eyes nothing like the potency of any of his animals. He couldn’t see anything, but he could sense it.

Her.

He broke off the path he was plowing and sidestepped behind a tree, pressing his arm into the bark. It wasn’t rough or sticky. Not a spruce, then. He couldn’t tell what it was in the dark. His chest went on barely containing his rapid heart. He could feel his pulse slamming in his throat. He’d probably imagined the whole thing. The smoke clung to him. It would always cling to him, just like the guilt.

“Roan?”

That voice wasn’t a product of his imagination. He was right. She was real. Why the hell had she followed him out into the forest?

“Roan, stop!”

“I can’t, Tabitha. I can’t stop and I can’t go back.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I have one of those lamps in my cabin too. The oil thing, just like I have the same kind of wood stove for cold days. Anything can be dangerous. It was an accident. You didn’t mean to knock it over.”

“I did, though. I couldn’t control it. How long before I can’t control something else? How long before I shift into the mountain lion and it tears someone’s face off? How long before the wolf gets so hungry that it starts preying on our own people? How long before even the bear goes awol?”

“Jesus,” she huffed. He couldn’t see her, even when he peeked around the tree and scanned the area. She couldn’t have reached him this fast, this far into the woods on foot, which meant she’d shifted. That was why she stayed hidden. She didn’t have any clothes on.

And why the fuck was that putting all sorts of the wrong kinds of images in his head?

“It was an accident,” she repeated. “You’re going straight to things that would never happen and didn’t happen. Honor and the girls are fine. They got out.”

“I know,” he choked. “I know they did.”

“Then you know that the cabin and the things in it can be replaced. That lamp could have dropped if the table was bumped by anyone. The wolf didn’t try to hurt anyone. None of your animals would. Don’t leave because you think that you’re dangerous. That’s nonsense. You would never hurt anyone.”

That wasn’t true. She couldn’t know that. “The universe sent me a sign when I was pretty much just a kid to tell me that it wanted me to be alone. I didn’t listen and everything has ended in disaster.”

“The universe wasn’t trying to tell you that. Your parents died in an accident because that semi hit them. It wasn’t a universal sign for you to punish yourself for the rest of your life for something that had nothing to do with you. I know how much it’s hurt you and I know you didn’t want to be hurt again, but please don’t leave. Please don’t run. You have so much to stay for. The girls. Honor. Corbin.”

She didn’t include herself on that list, but then, she wouldn’t.

“They’re all better off if I leave.”

“Stop saying that,” she yelped, her voice echoing through the woods. “You don’t get to tell yourself lies anymore. I let you do that, because I thought maybe you knew what was best for you the first time, but not this time. You don’t get to walk out on your responsibilities. You don’t get to take the coward’s way again.”

If she was trying to goad him, it wasn’t going to work. He knew that leaving her was selfish and cowardly. “I know that I can be dangerous. It’s not a lie.”

“Then work at getting it under control. There are plenty of people in the clan who can help you. They teach all their young how to shift. Corbin’s told me all about their classes at school.”

“Not this. They have no idea how to control something that was put into someone else against nature.”

“You’re. Not. Leaving. I won’t allow it.”

“What are you going to do? Shift and challenge me to a bear fight?”

“If that’s what it takes.”

That was never going to happen. Jesus. He might detest his own general existence, but he’d never hurt her. Not physically, and not in a bear fight. He realized that leaving her had likely hurt her far worse, and yet, she was still out here, trying to keep his ass from falling off that brink.

That was the way he’d always been, the harder someone pushed, the more he pulled away.

“Why are you trying so hard, Tabitha? We were only ever supposed to be friends.”

“Yeah. And now we share a child. I never stopped looking for you. Your son is the reason I’m trying so hard.”

“He deserves more than a fucked up father.”

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