Page 67 of More Than I Can Bear

“That’s not what you need,” Darren, my team mate, a bloke I’d considered my friend, said, urging the girls closer. I flinched when one hand touched me, but when I knocked it away another replaced it. I let out a low growl and that just had the girls cooing.

“Oh my god, Adam, you’re so strong.”

The bear fucking hated this, hated everything to do with this plan.

Hands touched my biceps, testing the muscles.

He paced back and forth inside me, testing the boundaries.

“You’ve got amazing abs.”

He snarled at her for daring to notice. My abs, my body were none of her business.

A hand slid over them, going lower, but I pushed that hand away before it could get too far. But while I was doing that, another went to the back of my neck, and that’s when the bear went rigid.

“Just a little kiss,” she insisted.

In no uncertain terms, he made clear what would happen if the girl’s lips touched mine. He’d erupt from my skin and rampage through this pub to get free. Jack had wanted me to create some kind of PR diversion? We could do that. People would photograph a fucking Eurasian brown bear running through the streets of suburban Adelaide, the media forgetting all about Freya.

“I don’t want that,” I said, trying to pull free without hurting either girl. “I don’t want this.”

“Of course you do,” the other girl said, sliding her hand up my leg and that’s when I lost it.

The bear fucking hated this place, the noise, the alcohol clouding my senses. He hated the artificial scent of these women who weren’t his mate and most of all, he hated this guy, the one my human side thought was a friend, for arranging all of this shit. Darren was taking photos one by one, a sly grin on his face, as my mouth hung open. I was slow, too fucking slow, right up until I wasn’t.

“ENOUGH!”

I shoved the girls backwards, feeling bad when they went flying, but they weren’t my focus, he was. Or at least that small, shiny device. Cameras = bad in the bear’s mind. It was my last encounter with a camera, a real one, that had got me in this shit in the first place. Before that, Freya had visited my dreams. She was sweet and warm and mine, all fucking mine.

And this fucker wanted to take that away from me.

“Jesus, Adam—!” he started to say as I stormed over, the bear and the man moving as one. He tried to fluff up with outrage, but that stopped the moment I grabbed his phone. He watched with complete incredulity as I crushed his phone with my hand.

As glass pricked my palm, as metal bit into my skin then fell to the floor like strange confetti, that’s when Darren finally saw what I was. His eyes went wide, the bathroom filled with the stink of his fear as he tried to take all of me in. The bear was so fucking close, swelling my body, armouring me ready for battle. Back in the day I would’ve been a berserker, a Viking warrior lost to battle fever, attacking mindlessly until there was nothing left standing but me.

“Adam…?” That fucking smirk was wiped away, replaced by an open mouthed stare. “Adam, mate…” He tried for a smile, wanting to humour me out of whatever the fuck this was, but he couldn’t maintain it, not when I was hauling him up by the front of his shirt until we stood nose to nose.

“I don’t want them.” I stabbed my finger in the general direction of the girls. “I don’t want other women, any of them.”

“Right, right, got it. No girls—”

“I don’t want…”

My voice broke on the words and I shattered with it. The combination of everything: alcohol, the last few days, the agony and ecstasy of finding my mate and losing her, all in such a short period of time, hit me harder than an illegal tackle on the footy field. It felt like air was driven out of my lungs and, right as I was gasping, another hit came.

I’d asked the girls not to touch me. I’d asked Darren not to try and hook me up with any girls, and all of them had ignored me. I could never countenance any kind of plan that meant disrespecting Freya, and that’s what they were doing. They were touching what belonged to her and her alone. But when I’d made clear my wishes, the two women had pushed past them, overrode them, confident I didn’t really mean what I was saying. That what they wanted was what I really wanted. And that’s what the blow was: it was a realisation.

I’d done the same with Freya.

Not deliberately, but if I’d tried harder, didn’t let myself get so fucking caught up in my own pleasure, I’d have kept my focus on what she needed. To take things slow, get to know me and the rest of the sleuth, meet the bear and then… I let out a ragged sob, feeling so very fucking tired, so much so I dropped Darren to the floor. He scrabbled away, eyeing me warily, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything, not when I didn’t have her.

Freya.

I whispered her name over and over, lurching out of the toilets and back into the pub. The bear roared at the noise in here, at the people, too many people. Some shouted out my name, but I stumbled over to the front door of the pub, slamming it open. Jack said she’d have some people strategically placed around the entrance to take some photos of me misbehaving and then post them on social media, tagging news channel accounts, and I was dimly aware of the flashes going off as I staggered forward, but I couldn’t pay attention to that. My feet moved slowly, then got faster, the alcohol starting to burn off now the bear was so close to the surface, ending with me running towards her.

Freya, Freya, Freya, I heard her name in my head each time my shoes slammed onto the concrete footpath, as I ran and ran out in the darkness, but of course I couldn’t run to her. And that’s what finally had me stopping.

We searched the streets for her, sure she was close. She had to be, right? She was the other half of my heart and it ached so fucking furiously right in that moment. Get pissed, they’d said, make a disgrace of yourself, but they didn’t know what that meant. The alcohol took what control I had left away, stripping my every defence away until there was only this: pain, so much fucking pain. Pain from the punishment of being away from my mate, but worse.

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