Page 10 of Rose's Untamed Bear

She did.

Our mouths met, a collision both clumsy and exquisite. It was a kiss made of hunger and all the days we’d watched one another from opposite sides of the room, from behind fur and fang. I’d never been kissed like that. My last memory of a woman’s lips belonged to a lifetime before, the velvet warmth of a courtesan in a palace hall. Nothing like this. Nothing with the taste of wild spring and river water.

Rose. My Rose.

She pressed against me, cautious at first, then bold, her hands slid from my cheek to the back of my neck. Her fingers tangled in the wet mess of my hair, and the touch sent sparks all the way down my spine. Her body fit against mine like a memory I’d spent years forgetting. I pulled her closer, careful even in my hunger: even now, I feared crushing her, feared the old rage and strength that could fracture bone or heart without warning. But she melted into me, every doubt and horror fled, until we were both nothing but breath and heat.

Every sense sharpened. I could smell the crushed grass beneath us, the heart-thump of the deer that had watched from a thicket, the wet stones balanced in the shallows. Her skin was cold where the wind touched it, but our mouths were fire, so much fire that I forgot the stream, forgot the world, forgot even the curse that haunted my bones.

She was mine. Gods, she was mine. I would have sworn to every ancient star that nothing could take her from me, not now, notwith her hands shaking and sure around my neck. I wanted to devour her, to crawl inside her skin and stay there forever, a secret creature hidden from everything that meant us harm.

I thought, for a moment, of what would come next. I imagined carrying her home, wrapped in her own cloak and the memory of this kiss, imagined kneeling at her mother’s table, trying to put words to the miracle that I’d been given another chance at life, that I could stand beside her as a man and mean it.

But the sun is greedy in early spring. It climbs fast, swallows the cold, and casts shadows where none belonged. A cloud passed. The light dimmed around us, and the world shivered with the shift. In that instant, I remembered what I was, what I would always be.

Pain struck like a hammer, white-hot and sudden. It started at the base of my spine, then raced up my back, through my ribs, down my arms and legs until every inch of me was screaming. My head snapped back, my teeth clenched, and I wrenched away from her with a gasp torn raw from my throat.

“Rose—” I tried to say, but the word came out half roar, half plea. My vision blurred. My hands—no longer hands—twisted in on themselves, my fingers thickened, my nails blackened into claws. Fur rippled up my arms, across my chest, hot and wet and stinking as it burst through the skin.

I staggered away, my bare feet gouging ruts in the river mud while every single muscle locked in agony. My eyes watered with the pain, with the shame.

“Move back!” I rasped, but my tongue was already thickening, already losing the shape of the words. Behind me, the stream hissed as it boiled around my reshaping ankles. My shouldershunched. My jaw pressed forward, my teeth split and lengthened with a crunch I’d never get used to.

She didn’t run. Even with the horror blooming in her eyes, even as I fell thrashing to the earth, Rose held her ground.

“Derrick?” she cried, her voice barely a threadbare question. Her hands, so quick to comfort, now hovered at her collarbone like she feared her own heart might leap out.

I tried to speak again, to tell her it was all right, that I could still hear her, still love her, still want nothing but to see her safe. All that came out was a guttural snarl, a bear’s sound, monstrous and final. She flinched, but only for a moment. Then she did the bravest thing I’d ever seen in my two broken lives.

She stepped toward me, even as I doubled in size and the world reeled with the transformation. I could smell her fear—sharp, salt-sweet—but she stood firm. Her cloak slid from my shoulders as my limbs ballooned, but she caught a fold of it, held it out like a banner, as if daring the universe to take me from her again.

My skull split, reknit, my fur thickened until the human sight was all but gone. Where my eyes had been, darkness expanded, a tunnel of pain, ringed by the desperate memory of her touch. Then even that light faded as the curse finished its work.

Magnus howled inside my mind, wild and triumphant, but I—I stayed my ground, holding on by a splinter. I would not let the beast erase me, not this time. Not with her watching.

The bear slammed into the river, scattering spray and stones. I staggered, blinded, then shook out my new body, massive, bristling, the color of night under wet leaves. My vision sharpened slowly, returning in pulsing, animal colors. Rose’soutline blazed in the gray, her hair a tangle of red fire against the pale morning.

She was crying. But she had not run.

She wrapped herself back into her cloak; her hands were steady even as her shoulders shook. The bear in me wanted to charge, to run, to forget everything and lose itself in the forest. But her scent, her tear-streaked face, the remembered shape of her palm on my cheek, held me rooted to the spot.

I roared—because Magnus demanded it, because the pain had to go somewhere. The sound shook the trees, sending birds scattering in a white storm overhead. Rose didn’t flinch. She waited until the echo faded, then spoke in a voice that shamed the sun.

“You told me to run before,” she stated, her voice was steady and unwavering. “But I won’t.”

The bear’s ears swiveled forward, instinctively catching every syllable.

She took another step, uncaring of her feet sinking into the river mud. “I don’t care what you are. I don’t care if you’re a man, or a monster, or both. You’re still Derrick. You’re still my bear. You’re still mine.”

My heart—such as it was—lurched. The urge to flee, to spare her the horror of what I’d become, fought with the desire to stay, to protect her even if the only thing I could be was a wall of muscle and teeth.

She reached the edge of the stream, hesitated only for a fraction of a moment, then put her fingers against the side of my snout, gently moving them back and forth.

“Can you hear me?” she asked. Her breaking voice tore at my heart. “Are you still in there?”

I wanted to answer so badly I could have torn the world in half with my longing. The bear grunted, an ugly sound, but I made myself nod. Just once. Just enough for her to see.

She smiled. It split her face open like sunlight, even through the streaks of mud and tears.