Page 1 of Hunny and the Bear

One

Pressing a hand to her belly, Hunny Russo stared at her reflection in the vanity, eyes wide with shock. The droning of the small TV behind her nearly blocked out the frantic beating of her heart, but she was too anxious to understand any of the words blaring from the device. Too freaked out to do anything but stare at her stomach.

Pregnant.

She waspregnant.

“I can’t believe it,” Hunny murmured to herself, lifting her shirt up a few inches to inspect her flat belly. She couldn’t be more than a few weeks along—that’s when she’d met Jason, Alpha of the Moon Rose pack, and he was the only one she’d had sex with in recent months.

Her vehicle had gotten a flat tire as she’d driven through Montana and, as fate would have it, Jason had stopped by her rickety old truck pulled over on the side of the road, offering to help. All it had taken was one look into his steel-blue eyesand she’d felt the true mate bond flare with recognition between them. A powerful flood of emotions poured into her very psyche.

And the most prominent emotion?Lust.

Hunny shivered, recalling that night so vividly. Jason had nearly ripped her truck door off its hinges in his haste to sink inside her, his eyes glowing a bright blue as his wolf pressed close to the surface. As soon as he’d invaded her space, their animalistic urges had consumed them, flooding them with need. They tugged each other’s clothes off right before he’d rutted her, his thick, muscular body pressing her slender form into the cracked leather cushions, both desperately clawing at each other for more.

Afterward, he’d taken her to a little cabin deep in the woods within his pack’s territory, promising she’d be safe while he sorted out some issues with his pack mates. He hadn’t gone into detail and she hadn’t asked, too nervous to overstep. As a lone rabbit shifter, she didn’t have a nest and she didn’t want to start off in a wolf pack by displeasing her Alpha.

Hunny’s brow pinched. Well, he wasn’t her Alphayet, as he hadn’t formally invited her into his pack. But he would.

He had to. They were true mates.

An uneasy feeling, mostly one of wariness, settled in her belly, the sour emotion growing stronger with every passing day she remained alone in this cabin. She couldn’t help wondering, was she being locked away like a dirty little secret?

Life hadn’t been the greatest for Hunny. Not so far, anyway. Both of her parents had passed away when she’d been only seventeen years old, and shortly after that, her old Buck, a rabbit shifter equivalent to an Alpha, had attempted to force her into mating him, insisting she needed his protection from the outside world to survive. What he’d really wanted was to prey on her. Disgusted, she’d left her nest, determined to explore the world on her own.

Too bad that at seventeen she hadn’t truly understood the harshness of living on her own. She’d struggled to make ends meet over the past five years, moving from one place to the next in the search of something better. Somethingmore.

Truth be told, Hunny had almost given up until she’d neared the mountains in Montana, her beat-up truck on its last leg as she’d turned down a road around a cliffside. She’d stared in awe at the surrounding landscape. Mountains as far as the eye could see were enveloped by lush green forests. It was so different to the plain states she’d spent her life in. That day, with the sun’s rays poured in through the windshield as if welcoming her home, something inside her had settled.

Now that she knew her true mate was here, it all made sense, though she wished things between the two of them would progress a bit differently.

Jason had come back a few times over the last three weeks, always at night, and always too eager to bed her to do anything else, like discuss their future. She enjoyed his visits, but she longed for him to hold her after sex or tell her something about himself.Anything.She yearned for an emotional connection to form between them, not just a physical one.

Would it be so bad to just relax in each other’s company and enjoy some pillow talk? Apparently so, because every time she started to converse with him, he hastily pulled his clothes back on as he hurried from the bed, saying he had to go before promising to return soon. Sometimes he came back the next night. But sometimes three to four days passed before he returned to her.

That’s okay, Hunny told herself, ignoring the uneasy feeling that grew as she thought of how little she actually knew about Jason.There will be plenty of years to get to know him.He’s your mate.

Her eyes flicked up the length of the mirror to her bare, unmarked neck.

Well, he wastechnicallyher mate, although they hadn’t made it official with a mating bite. Just like he hadn’t officially invited her into his pack …

When she’d asked him about it yesterday, Jason had assured her that their mating was coming. And then he’d retreated once more, disappearing through the cabin door and into the woods.

Tugging her shirt down over her belly, Hunny ran her hands through her long, wavy lilac-colored hair.

Although she couldn’t be happier at the idea of welcoming a kit into this world, and she was eager to share the news with her mate, she couldn’t help but feel …distressed.

Nerves had set in days ago—a lurking suspicion that Jason was just using her for sex before inevitably rejecting her. It was rare, but rejections could happen among true mates. Jason was an Alpha to a wolf pack, and Hunny …? She shifted into their prey. She wasn’t dominant where it mattered most, and a fluffy woodland creature wasn’t exactly an ideal selection for a pack’s Luna.

But if Jason planned on rejecting her, why bring her to his cabin? Why visit her at all? It would be in both of their best interests to cut ties to one another before they bonded; a natural occurrence between mated pairs, where their minds linked and they could feel each other’s emotions, though no one knew exactly how the bond formed. It could be because of close proximity or maybe mutual affection, like love. While a bondalwayshappened between true mates, it could also occur with chosen mates, though it often took longer to form.

Suddenly, the knob on the front door rattled, breaking through Hunny’s thoughts. She jumped, head snapping up to the front of the cabin. Faintly, she heard a key slide into the lockand the door pushed open, revealing Jason standing on the front porch.

He was tall, with powerful muscles, shaggy blond hair and a clean-shaven face that showed off his rugged jawline. His fists were clenched at his side, his blue eyes colder than she’d ever seen. She brushed off a sudden onslaught of unease, focusing on her excitement to see him.

“Hi, Jason. I’ve missed you.” Smiling, Hunny moved toward her mate, only to pause when his scent drifted into the cabin. She inhaled, stiffening as she caught the offensive odor of another female’s perfume intertwined with his—like some bitch had rubbed herself against him only minutes prior.

Instinctively, her eyes shot to his neck, widening in horror as she gasped.

---