Page 4 of Rose's Untamed Bear

“Monsters,” I finished for her, grinning. “But he’s ours now.”

The blizzard churned on, but inside, the warmth and the scent of bread baking thickened. The bear’s breathing grew steadier. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that saving him, even if just for tonight, was the very thing the woods had been waiting for all along.

There is nothing more humiliating than convalescence. Except, perhaps, convalescence in the body of a beast, with one’s dignity shackled by a splinted paw and the relentless gaze of a girl who refused to blink.

I should have been Magnus, terror of the pines, prince of claw and fang. Instead, I lay stretched across the hearth rug like some great overgrown hound, my bandages blooming pale and useless against my fur. The snow outside hissed at the windows, reminding me of all I was not: untamed, free, unbroken.

“Hold still,” Rose ordered, dabbing my wound with a cloth that stung more than any hunter’s arrow. Her hair was a wild halo, her hands arrow-straight. “If you’d stop thrashing, this would hurt less.”

I bared my teeth in what I thought was a fearsome snarl. She only arched a brow. “Yes, Bear? Going to bite me? Or just sulk like last night when I wouldn’t let you have the rabbit stew?”

Derrick—the man inside me, chained somewhere beneath all this muscle and fur—groaned.She’s mocking us.

Shut up,Magnus growled back. I’ll mock her when she’s not holding a knife near our paw.

She’s winning,Derrick murmured, maddeningly amused.Look—she doesn’t even flinch. She never did, not even when she first saw me.

Every time her fingers brushed my fur, heat followed, sinking deeper than the wound itself. It wasn’t only the fire warming me; it was her. The sting of the salve burned, but the glide of her hand made my muscles slacken, and traitorously greedy for more.

Magnus rumbled, low and hungry.She smells like the woods after rain. Let her come closer.

Derrick’s laugh stirred in the back of my mind, soft and dangerous.Careful. If she leans any nearer, I might forget we’re supposed to be beasts.

I closed my eyes, hating and craving the way her presence set me alight. For the first time in years, I feared not hunters, not curses, only the girl whose touch stripped away the monster and called the man to the surface.

Rose's sister, who I learned was her twin, Snow, was another matter. She hovered at a distance, fingers forever dancing on her sewing needle, her pale, unsettling eyes darting back and forward like a doe’s. At first, she wouldn’t come near me. Buteach day, her steps closed more of the gap, her silence became more courageous. The night she crept close enough to brush my pelt, I nearly startled to my feet.

“You’re softer than I expected,” she’d whispered, then turned scarlet.

Rose giggled. “Told you.”

That became our rhythm. Rose pushed, Snow watched, and Magnus and I fought our battles not in the forest but in this cramped cottage, where every glance and every touch stripped me of my distance.

Once my paw was a little better, Rose sparred with me daily. “Up, Bear,” she’d command, tossing a stick across the yard, and I would lumber after it with a snort to amuse her. Just to hear her laugh. Even though it didn't snow, clouds still hung low and thick in the winter sky, and I worried she would get too cold, but then she'd call, “Faster!” and clap when I obeyed, laugh when I didn’t, the sound of it making me forget what I had worried about. When she dared to try wrestling me—me, Magnus, with paws the size of her head—I let her push me back a step, then two, feigning defeat while Derrick inside roared with laughter.

You’re letting her win.

Better than breaking her ribs,Magnus retorted.

Admit it—you like it.

Shut. Up.

But I did like it. I liked the way her laughter vibrated against me when she fell into my side, the heat of her body seeping through my fur as she shoved with all her strength. I liked the way her hair brushed my muzzle when she leaned too close, how herbreath tickled my ear when she whispered her mock commands. Every tumble left her tangled over me, flushed and breathless, and gods help me, I craved every second of it.

Snow always watched from a distance, most often from the porch, her arms crossed over her chest, her eyes narrowed with a suspicion that slowly softened by degrees.

Then one day Rose muttered, “You have man eyes,” making me freeze mid-gnaw on a chicken bone.

Her words rang through both parts of me. Magnus bristled. Derrick shivered, fully awake. For one long moment, the bear receded, and the man inside surged forward like a tide pressing against the bars of his cage.

She sees us, Derrick whispered.

Not yet,Magnus snarled. It's not safe.

But Rose's gaze didn’t falter.

As if she had heard her sister, the next day, Snow inched closer. Close enough to lay a strand of red yarn across my paw and say, almost kindly, “You can’t help being what you are, can you?”