Page 20 of Monsters, Vows, and Growls
“I dropped a box of books on his foot. Then told him I hoped his deltoid tore in slow motion.”
I burst out laughing. “You’re such a disaster.”
“Oh,I’mthe disaster?” she snapped. “He’s the one who’s treated me all my life like an annoying ferret that wandered into his gym bag. You know what he called me this time? Sassquatch. Sassquatch!” She rolled the doubless.
"What?"
"That's what I said, you know what he said?" She didn't give me time to reply. "And I quote,Half sass, half cryptid. Seen rarely, always loud!"
There was a beat of silence. Her entire life, Carol had been relentlessly made fun of because of her height. She was very sensitive about it.
"I'm sorry." I offered. Meaning it.
"It's fine, we all know he's a dick. Like a giant, enormous dick."
“Did you at least tell him to buy one of your books this time?” I teased. “Maybe he’ll recognize himself.”
Carol made a strangled sound. “Ella, if he finds out that I’ve written nine bestsellers with quarterbacks namedGagewho all have tragic backstories and glistening abs—Iwillhave to fake my owndeath.”
“I’ll help you pick a new name,” I said helpfully. “Something low-key, like Chesty LaRue.”
“Ella.”
“Yes?”
“Stop talking.”
After we hung up, I not only felt better, but I had a plan.
The shift came easily.I was still grateful for it. It had scared me when I hadn't been able to shift for over a year after the accident, and I never took it for granted now, like I had before.
I hadn’t done it in weeks—months, really. Not since the last run up north, where I’d needed to scare off a rogue that got too close to the Hollow’s edge. But today, the need wasn’t about safety.
It was about escape and getting some clarity.
I walked out past the edge of Cedar Hollow, just where the tree line dipped and the air grew quieter. I stripped off my clothes, folded them the way I always did, and let the bear come.
It rushed up from somewhere deep, bone-deep, as natural as breathing.
One moment, I was a man.
The next, I was Thorne.
Massive and full of fur. My breath steamed in the cold. The ground felt different under my paws—solid and right. The air was full of scent, full of life.My vision sharpened and narrowed; my mind split into something simpler, rawer. The ache in my chest didn’t go away, but it dulled under instinct. The bear didn’t think in full sentences. He didn’t need to.
He only knewshewas back and that we weren’t whole without her. So I let him run. Through trees that parted around our shoulders. Over creeks still frozen at the edges. Up slopes and down again, until our lungs pulled clean air and the world blurred past.
This was what we were made for—running, surviving,being.No talking. No thinking. Most of all, no guilt.
No ten years of silence unraveling every time she looked at me like I’d never left, like she wanted to scream and sob and kiss me all at once. The bear didn’t know how to fix that. But he knew what he felt when her scent was near. Home.
We slowed only when the sun began to dip, casting long golden fingers through the branches. Thorne snorted once, pawing at a moss-covered stump before settling beside it. He didn’t want to go back.
He didn’t want to shift again and be forced to remember the way she cried, the way she whisperedI don’t trust you,even as her fingers clung to me. He laid his head on his paws to think of her. Not in memories, not like humans. He thought of her in scent and images. In sound. In that little huff she made when she wasannoyed and trying not to smile. In the way she tasted when she kissed us—something the bear rememberedtoo well.
She’s still ours.
This was the part I could never quite figure out. The bear Thorne loved Ella as much as I did, but when I was in my human form, Thorne tried everything to make it clear that he didn't like her.
