Page 43 of Wild in the Woods
Except that it wasn’t nonsense. Looking at her now, smelling her scent in his bear form, he knew it was all true. She was meant to be his. The mother of his cubs. His lifemate.
Fox lowered his head submissively and stepped closer to her. She was close to panic now and since he couldn’t just shift back at the drop of a hat, he had to let her know it was him. Lowering himself to be less intimidating, he crawled forward, his breath puffing against her leg. She was frozen in place with the branch held above her head. Her limbs trembled. Her tears killed him.
Fox rubbed his snout against her knee like a dog and kept his head down the way Osprey did when she did something wrong and wanted forgiveness. Lulu lowered the branch.
“F-Fox?”
He rubbed her leg again.
“Oh my God. Are you serious?”
Inside, he smiled. But on the outside, he drooled on her foot. Oops.
Lulu reached tentatively to touch him, the same way she did to pet Osprey. Fox lifted his head to meet her fingers and they trailed into his thick fur. Their eyes caught, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight.
She held him until his body began to morph, slowly shrinking down from a thousand-pound grizzly to a two-hundred-pound human. His fur retreated, his muscles melted and retracted. His bones and joints and ligaments reconfigured, and Lulu clung to him the entire time, until he was able to slip a human arm around her and hold her back. Her eyes were tightly clenched as if she hadn’t wanted to watch, but she opened them now.
Her lips parted and she blinked, fear replaced by the shadow of a cocky grin.
“You’re naked again.”
There was the Lulu he was coming to know. His body shook as an after-effect. He’d used a hell of a lot of calories to make that shift. It had been a long time since he’d done so, and his body had worked extra hard at it.
“I am very naked again.”
“I’m going to get your backpack and then I’ll make a fire, okay? Just stay right here.”
He snagged her wrist. “No way. I already failed you. I’m not doing it again.”
Her brow furrowed. “You didn’t fail me.”
“I didn’t sense the bear fast enough. I let you go into the woods alone.”
She cupped his cheek. “I knew better; I just saw a few sticks just inside the trees and the bear was right there. I didn’t smell him or see him. He was just, there.”
“We go together. It’s not like you haven’t seen me naked. It doesn’t bother me.”
Lulu slipped off her lightweight jacket. “Maybe you can tie it around your waist.”
The sleeves barely fit around his hips, but he was able to tie them just enough that the jacket covered his front while his rear hung out in all its naked glory.
Fox didn’t realize how weak he was until he retrieved his boots and started walking back to camp. He needed to shift more so it came more naturally and used less of his body’s resources. But shifting made him nervous. His father had gotten out of control more than once, using his grizzly to terrify and intimidate Fox’s mother. There were a lot of unspoken rules among the Estes Park pack and the very first was to never harm a woman. Ever.
Those who did were shunned if they were lucky, and un-alived by the pack if they weren’t.
In his heart, Fox knew he was a decent human, but the fear was always there. He’d witnessed his mother go through a lot of abuse when he was just a child. He’d protected Ryker the best he could. Trauma didn’t go away because you grew into a massive grizzly shifter with the strength to kill four humans at once.
No, it haunted you because you knew what you were capable of.
“Here,” Lulu handed him his backpack. “I’ll work on the fire.”
She’d grabbed a few thinner branches on their way out of the woods. Observing her as he dressed, his pride in her grew as she put her fire making skills to the test. And failed. But she tried again, and again, and finally got a spark to grow.
“Are we catching fish?”
Fox bent over to tie his boot and wavered on his feet. Catching himself with a hand against a large rock, he waited for a wave of dizziness to pass. Lulu was there, guiding him by the shoulders and helping him sit on the rock.
“What do you need, Fox? What can I do?”
