Page 18

I didn’t think. I just ran. My dress caught on branches, my shoes slipped off—I didn’t even notice when. All I knew was that I had to move, to get away , before I fell completely apart in his arms. Again.

The tears came fast. I didn’t sob, didn’t scream—just ran like my lungs were on fire and the forest floor was chasing me.

Needing to get away. From him. From the memories.

From the present. It was all too much. I wasn't ready for this kind of emotional turmoil.

I wasn't ready to give myself to Patrick again.

I wasn't sure I ever would be. At the same time, my heart was breaking harder with every step that took me further away from him. I couldn't be without him either.

And then I heard it. A loud sound like… crashing. It was heavy and fast and oh, so wrong. I turned just enough to see it— a bear! A massive, hulking, fur-covered beast, charging through the trees like the forest itself was nothing.

I couldn’t breathe.

A bear. A real bear. His eyes were wild, his snout snarled, his head was as big as a damn truck, and he was coming for me.

Terror rooted me where I stood. I was utterly frozen, all I could do was stare as he thundered toward me—and then, right as he launched into the air, right as I knew I was about to die?—

He shifted.

Fur peeled back into skin, fangs into teeth, eyes into eyes I recognized?—

Patrick.

Naked. Wild. On his knees behind me, chest heaving like he’d been running for a hundred years.

“Ella,” he rasped.

My mind could not keep up. I stared at him, frozen, my body too caught between primal terror and raw relief to move. First, there was a bear, then there was a man . There was a… both?

“What—what the hell was that?” I whispered, voice shaking. “Was that… a bear?”

Patrick’s hands were on either side of me, caging me in—but not touching. Like he knew I might shatter, and that he would be the reason for it. His voice was breathless, "Don't run from me. Not ever."

"I didn't mean to run," I tried to explain my panic, "I just…" I didn't know how to form the words, my heart was racing a hundred miles an hour, and my mind didn't seem like it wanted to work and explain all the jumbled emotions that went through my head. "I couldn't."

He closed his eyes, his voice was deep and filled with empathy, "I know." He swallowed hard and repeated, "I know."

I was still having a hard time understanding what just happened; that had been a bear chasing me, right?

Where did he go? I looked around wildly, he could still be out there.

Patrick must have seen him. "Was that… that bear, there was a bear…

" While I was turning my head this way and that, my eyes landed on Patrick.

A completely naked Patrick. What the hell? “Why are you naked? Patrick?”

He swallowed hard, eyes still wild but… there. “That was me, Ells. In bear form.”

I blinked. “You ? ” I repeated.

He nodded once, slow and careful, as if any sudden movement might send me bolting again. I stared at him for a long moment.

“Oh,” was all I could get out. It didn't make any sense. A bear! Patrick was a bear .

I had known he was a shifter . I had thought I’d known what it meant, too.

I’d been wrong. This entire time, I’d thought it meant bloodlines.

A family history. Something that might have made him faster and more agile, given him an above-average sense of smell, and maybe even made his bones ache at the full moon.

But not this. Not an actual bear-charging-through-the-woods-and-stripping-out-of-his-body shifter. This stuff only happened in books.

Yeah, denial is a bitch , my inner bitch chimed in.

Unfortunately, she was right. I had been in denial.

All my life, my mom had told me how horrendous shifters were, how dangerous.

Not that I had given my mom's words much thought, because my mother is, to put it nicely, certifiably crazy.

But somewhere over the years, I must have internalized it, enough so that when I actually fell for a shifter, I never dared talk about it with him. Did that make me a bad person?

I sank back against the tree and slid to the ground, still breathing hard.

“Okay,” I whispered again, more to myself than him. “Okay. So you’re a bear.”

He crouched in front of me, still giving me space. Still naked. “Yes.”

I tried to laugh. It came out halfway between a sob and a wheeze. “And I thought I had emotional baggage.”

He smiled faintly, just enough to break my heart a little more. “You always did have a way of deflecting at high speed.”

“I’m trying,” I muttered. “But it’s hard to crack jokes when there’s literal bear fur still stuck to the tree behind me.”

Patrick chuckled softly, but it didn’t reach his eyes.

He remained crouched in front of me, bare knees pressed into the mossy forest floor, arms resting loosely on his thighs.

His body—his human body—was familiar, and yet not.

Broader. Older. Marked with new scars. He looked like a man who’d fought to earn every breath he took.

Suddenly, all I could feel was the weight of everything we hadn’t said.

“I didn’t know,” I whispered.

His brows drew together. “Didn’t know what?”

“That it was like that . That you were like that. That this”—I gestured vaguely at him, at the claw marks still fresh in the earth—“was real.”

He tilted his head. “I tried to talk to you about it. Back then.”

“I know.” I winced. “I just… never knew what to say.”

Patrick nodded slowly. “I noticed.” He flinched. "It hurt. And it made it too easy."

I blinked. “What do you mean?”

He looked down, drawing a small line in the dirt with his finger before answering. “It made me think you didn’t like that part of me. That you didn’t accept it. You never asked about it. Never even said the word, shifter. I figured you loved me in spite of it, not with it.”

“That’s not—” I started, then stopped. Because…

I didn’t know how to finish that sentence.

I’d always prided myself on being a tolerant person.

But what good is tolerance when you close your eyes and willfully refuse to see the truth?

That was on me. Acceptance doesn’t matter much when it’s offered by a person who denies your very existence. The truth… hurt.

He nodded again. “Yeah. I know. You were seventeen. So was I. And you weren’t exactly raised to think of people like me as a safe bet.”

I swallowed. “My mom?—”

“I know.” He gave me a small, sad smile. “Lisa isn't… subtle. She looked at me like I was a bomb waiting to go off.”

“She’s not exactly a shining example of sanity.”

“No. But you still absorbed it.”

Oof. That hit. Not because he was trying to hurt me, but because he wasn’t wrong. I looked away, guilt slamming into my gut. “So you broke up with me because of that?”

“No,” he said. “I broke up with you because I thought I was broken. Because I was broken. Literally. I couldn’t walk.

I couldn’t shift. I didn’t want you to spend your life taking care of someone who might never be whole again.

And yeah, part of the reason was because the girl I loved didn’t love all of me.

Not the part that was already… different.

I thought if you hadn't accepted me as a shifter, you wouldn't as a cripple either. "

My chest clenched as his words hit home.

I looked up at him. His eyes were so open and raw. Pain and anguish were written in them, and once again, I saw my teenage self in them, but this time, she beckoned me forward. It was then that I realized how wrong I’d been.

“I didn’t know how to love that part of you,” I whispered. “But I wanted to. I wanted to understand. I just… I was afraid.”

He nodded once. “I get that now.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” I added quickly, meeting his gaze. “I mean, yeah, okay, the bear thing startled me . But I’m not scared of you. Not anymore.”

Patrick exhaled, something easing in his shoulders.

“Good,” he said. “Because the man and the bear? They’re the same. And both of them are still in love with you.”

My breath caught.

There was no dramatic music. No movie lighting. Just the quiet of the woods around us, the hush after the storm, and the bare-chested man in front of me, covered in dirt, breathing like he was still halfway between human and beast.

And somehow, those words hit harder than the chase. Both of them. Man and bear. Still in love with me.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered.

“I don’t either,” he said, without hesitation. “But I want to try. If you’ll let me.”

I stared at him, at the sweat on his brow, the tensed line of his jaw, the curve of his throat where his pulse thudded. So hard and real. That's when I realized I wasn’t scared anymore. Not of the bear, not even of Patrick.

I was scared of me.

Of the fact that I still loved him . So completely it was terrifying.

I didn't think I had ever stopped loving him—it had just gone underground and waited, coiled and patient, until the moment he reappeared and everything cracked open. Slowly, giving myself time to stop, I lifted a trembling hand and touched his chest. Just the center, right over his heart. Tears welled in my eyes—tears I didn’t want to shed, not here, not now—but they came anyway. Hot and silent and stupid.

“I tried so hard to move on,” I whispered. “I dated. I worked. I built everything. But it always came back to you.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t push. He just stayed there, still and waiting, while I collapsed slowly forward into him.

He was ready for me; his arms wrapped around me, careful at first. Then tighter.

This time, I didn’t sob. Not like before.

I just let go. Of all the years I’d been angry.

Of all the things I hadn’t said. Of all the pieces of myself I’d buried to survive without him.

And for the first time in ten years, I felt whole.

Not fixed.

Not perfect.

Just… held .

“I don’t forgive you yet,” I said softly.

“I don’t expect you to.”

“But I think I want to.”

He nodded, pressing his forehead to mine. “That’s enough.”

We stayed like that for a long time. Long enough for my pulse to slow. For my breathing to return to normal. For the forest to remember we were just two people again, not a storm tearing through the trees. Finally, I pulled back enough to look at him. “You’re still naked.”

He grinned. “Didn’t hear you complaining.”

I wiped my face. “Trust me. I will if we get ticks.”

He laughed, kissed my forehead, and said, “I’ll shift back, let Thorne cool off. He’s… dramatic.”

“I gathered,” I muttered.

He stood, and I immediately averted my eyes. “Blanket. Now. Before you scar me forever.”

“Ells?”

“Yeah?”

His voice was soft. “Thank you for staying. For giving me, us, another chance.”

He didn't give me a chance to reply before he changed back into a bear, Thorne. And yeah, I won't lie. It was terrifying. Seeing this massive beast appear in front of me… but something in his eyes caught my attention. There was a hint of Patrick in there.

Tentatively, I moved a step forward, holding my hand out. "Good bear… I mean, Thorne. Hello."

I felt stupid. Incredibly stupid.

Have you ever thought you would die one day because you petted something you weren't supposed to? I did, a lot of times. A lion at the zoo, a jaguar on TV, even a peacock at an outdoor wedding once—don’t ask, it looked smug, and I took it personally.

There was also a goat at a farm fair who tried to headbutt me after I complimented his beard, a parrot who lunged at my finger like it owed him money, and a raccoon I briefly considered adopting until I realized it was trying to steal my sandwich and my soul.

I had a lifelong problem with trying to touch beautiful, dangerous things. Apparently, that included emotionally complicated bear shifters with carved jawlines and abs that could trigger a national emergency. And a shaggy bear, who, incredibly, patiently, let me step closer.

His snout moved forward. God, it was big.

Huge. And his fangs? Yeah, I saw those. A shiver moved through me—equal parts holy hell and please let me live .

His breath puffed warm across my fingers.

It smelled like moss and wildness and something oddly sweet.

Like clover, maybe. Or like something ancient pretending to be gentle.

"Okay," I whispered. "You're not mauling me. That’s a good sign."

Thorne blinked—slowly, thoughtfully. Then, to my complete surprise, he leaned his head down and nudged his snout into my palm.

I froze and forgot completely how to breathe.

Because, holy shit, there was a bear right in front of me.

And not just any bear, this was Patrick.

This was Thorne. This was trust, laid bare in teeth and fur and restraint.

“Oh my God,” I murmured. “You’re… real.”

The bear made a sound. Not quite a growl, but something deeper.

More like a huff. Like he was offended it had taken me this long to catch up.

And then— oh no —he leaned his full weight into me.

All four hundred something pounds of him.

I yelped and stumbled back, but not fast enough.

I ended up half-wedged between a tree and a literal bear hug.

His massive head was pressed into my shoulder, and I could swear— swear —he was purring. Or something close to it.

“Oh no,” I whispered. “You’re a cuddler . ”

His ears twitched.

“Don’t you dare look smug about this,” I muttered, trapped and probably covered in leaf bits and bear drool. “I already gave a raccoon too much power in my life. I’m not letting you join that list.”

Still, I didn’t push him away. I let myself stay there, one hand resting on the thick fur of his back, the other buried somewhere under his chin. His eyes stayed on mine—watching and waiting.

And something in me… cracked. Not in a painful way. Not like before. It felt… it felt as if the pieces of my shredded heart were realigning.

“Okay,” I whispered, softer now, fully leaning into his embrace. “You win.”

Thorne chuffed again, content