Page 8 of Rose's Untamed Bear

He scrambled up. “You witless, graceless meddling brats! May the crows peck out your eyes and the snow bury your bones!” He stomped off through the pines, his curses trailing behind him like black smoke.

Snow and I stood breathless, then burst into helpless giggles.

“Did you see his face?” I gasped, tears of laughter stung my cheeks. “As if we’d lopped off his head!”

Snow shook her head, still pale but smiling. “Fable Forest grows stranger by the moment.”

We bent again to our work, the resin falling in golden chunks into the pot. The cold air smelled of pine and magic, and somewhere far behind us, the troll's howls faded into the hush.

Hunger gnawed at my belly and the inside of my skull alike. Ever since the curse, hunger of one kind or another had been my constant companion—call it the curse of being both man and beast, never sated, always scraping inside for something lost, something just half-remembered: a father’s voice, a girl’s touch, a kingdom’s throne. But now my hunger was sharpened by fear. Not fear for myself, I’d survived blizzards, trolls, even my own reflection. No, I was haunted by a darker thing: the dread that I’d bring ruin to the only two girls who had ever looked me in the eye and chosen mercy over malice.

This time, it was the hunger to end Grimbalt once and for all. Three times now I’d limped out before dawn, my thoughts boiling with revenge, and searched for the tracks and tang of that wretched dwarf. I stalked him because the alternative was to wait—wait for him to find our cottage, wait for him to slipthrough the door the way cruelty always did. He hated me with a precision I’d come to admire, in a grim way. For years, the forest was wide enough for predator and prey, but now the air smelled of endings. Every branch I snapped sounded like a warning.

I trailed Grimbalt’s tracks for miles, over rime and slush, through a corridor of pines so dense it seemed like a dream pressed between pages. Sometimes I found the splintery marks of his axe in saplings, the greasy smears of his fingers in the snow. Always, I lost him in the bogs, where the earth sucked footprints down and the mist clogged every sense. I kept going anyway, even though the pain in my body had begun to fade, the restlessness had not. I knew if I ever stopped moving, he’d be one step closer to them.

I kept thinking of Rose. The way she laughed when I looked ridiculous, the way her hands had not shaken, even when dabbing blood from my wounds. I thought of her careful, secret glances, as if she let herself wonder just for a moment what I was, what I could be.Fool, Derrick, I’d say to myself, her world is her mother, her hearth, and her sister. Nothing else. But memory gnaws louder than hunger when the only thing it has left is hope.

Sometimes, the beast in me whispered that I should just go. Leave them to their lives, vanish into the wild, risk nothing. It was so tempting. But the man in me rebelled. There are debts in this world, and love is always one you pay with everything you have, every time.

One morning, the first real sunlight in months cut through the trees like a sword and caught me unaware. Warmth split the air, dripped through the boughs, turned the snow at my feet slushy and alive with scents. I had been a bear for so long I’d nearly forgotten myself, even the feel of my own skin. I had becomeso comfortable living in the shadows as Magnus that when the burning hit, it was a complete surprise.

Like every time before, it was worse than any fever I’d ever suffered, and because it had been so long since I’d stood in full sunlight, I had almost forgotten the sun's power to turn me back to a man. It radiated out from my spine, turning every nerve into copper wire, undoing the architecture of Magnus strand by strand. My claws shrank, my jaw unhinged, fur sloughed from me in clumps. The world reeled. My body folded in on itself, joints popped, bones reshaped beneath my skin. Every change was a miniature death. By the time it ended, I was curled naked and shivering.

The first breath as Derrick was always raw and clean, as if swallowing a mouthful of lightning. The forest—my home for so long—felt suddenly unfamiliar. The wind cut harder. Every sound was bright and sharp, unbuffered. My hands—my fingers—looked like broken twigs, covered in old scars and new bruises.

I staggered upright and found a stream, where I washed off what I could. My body shone canvas-pale, streaked with mud and blood and the long, red memory of battles lost. I dipped my face into the water, watched the ripples fracture my reflection into a mosaic of regrets. I tried to imagine what Rose would see if she found me like this. Would she see the prince, or just a shattered man with mud in his teeth and sorrow coiled up inside every joint?

I was still crouched there, hands braced on the banks, when a twig snapped. Not bear-silent, not even wolf-cautious. Just a sharp step, and then a voice, hard as a thrown stone.

“Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

Rose Red.

My heart stuttered. I tried to clamber to my feet, slipped, and dropped to one knee in the shallows. Cold water soaked me to the bone, but it wasn’t the river that froze me; it was her. She stood on the bank, bow drawn, arrow trained directly at my heart. Such a formidable sight, so beautiful it nearly blinded me.

“Why are you naked in my woods?” she demanded.

Of course. Of course she’d catch me like this. Not in fur, not with claws, not with any of the strength I’d hidden behind. Not even my dignity. Just skin and bone and shame, laid bare. I almost laughed from the bitter irony.

I opened my mouth. Words scraped my throat like rust. The only sound I managed was her name. “Rose.”

Her grip trembled, but not her eyes. Those stayed locked on me, fierce as ever. “How do you know my name?” Her gaze flicked down, then up again, cheeks flaming redder than her hair. “If you’re some kind of… pervert, I warn you—my aim is true.”

I almost choked on the words. “I—I know. It’s me.”

“Me who?”

Not like this, I thought. Not half-drowned and shivering, not empty-handed and ashamed. But there was no hiding. “Me, your… bear.”

Her disbelief was a blade. It cut across her face in sharp, deep lines. “No. You can’t be. Bear is—he’s…” She looked me over once, twice, her lip curled in confusion. “You’re not him.” And again, because she was Rose, stubborn to the marrow, “You’re not him.”

She drew the bow tighter, her shoulders squared. “Don’t move. Don’t lie, either. Are you a shapeshifter? A sorcerer?”

I shook my head, water still dripping from my hair and body. “Not a good one,” I rasped.

A sound burst from her then—half laugh, half snort—quick and unwilling, but there. It tore at me in the best way. I had come to love her laughter, crave it. Just like I had been craving for her to see me for what I was. A man. Not a beast.

For a moment, we just stared. Both trembling. Me with need; her with something I couldn’t name.