She’d begun to wallow when a strange tearing sound filled the air around her and someone groaned. A real groan, not the bear equivalent. Lauren tensed, not daring to look up. She didn’t think she wanted to see whatever had just happened.
FINN
It was a rookie mistake. He’d been so focused on counting the drug smugglers and their weapons that he hadn’t paid as much attention to where he placed his paws. Finn headed back toward his pack to write it all down and managed to step on a damn bear trap. Illegal as hell and so rusty he couldn’t pry it apart with even his Kodiak strength. He just didn’t have the dexterity to work the springs to open it with paws and legs stubbier than needed.
He’d resigned himself to taking a bit of a rest to clear his thoughts, then shifting to human to crawl to his pack for some tools or find a branch to use as leverage to work his leg out of the trap. It hurt like a son of a bitch and he nearly lost his mind when it first snapped shut and the steel tore into his muscles. An unhealthy fire ignited in his blood and flesh, seeping into his veins and circulating until he couldn’t concentrate on anything and the bear took over.
He’d never unwillingly surrendered control to his Kodiak side. This time there was no real choice. The man sank weak and ineffective into the background, unable to really do anything, while the bear could fight the metal. Finn knew it didn’t make sense but he was powerless to change it. The bear groanedand grumbled and fought the chains, but the trap dug deeper with every movement and deepened the misery. Finn faded into madness, drifting into the worst memories in Africa when they’d been pinned down and injured in a jungle and he’d been so torn up that the guys gave him last rites, just in case, and pumped him full of morphine to make it easier. It dragged him down the same in that forest, even with the scent of pine instead of tropical flowers, as he waited for the bear to fight them into a bloody, miserable end.
And then…a whisper of movement in the air. A hint of scent. Human. Getting closer. Female. Young and female. Breeding age.
The bear stilled. Normally the bear ignored females unless it was to protect them from an immediate threat, then moved on. He was too fucked up in his own head to be around human females. He’d end up hurting them by accident, and he wouldn’t tolerate that in himself. Finn stayed still and silent so she would move by him. Probably a hiker or hunter. She didn’t smell like the drugs the smugglers moved, but there was a faint metallic thread: some kind of weapon. So, a hunter.
She didn’t move like it, though. Hesitant, soft, reluctant. Not comfortable in the forest. Not there by choice, maybe. Finn stayed still. No reason to think she was there for him. She would move past him on the little deer track, past the hollowed-out tree with his stuff in it, and go on her way.
Right into the hands of the smugglers.
The thought left all of him even colder than the pain alone.
He gathered his strength to shift back, fighting the bear for control, but hadn’t won enough by the time the female’s scent grew stronger and she came into view. Her wide eyes found him and stuck, and her lips parted in surprise. Finn froze. The bear lingered in control but studied the girl with a degree of fascination they’d never experienced. She was tall and curvythrough her hips and thighs, though something in her face made him think she was underfed. Well, he would fix that.
Long brown hair escaped from an intricate braid that he didn’t have words for except that it probably would have been strong enough for a gun sling or cargo net. Rich dark eyes met his and those plump pink lips parted and she spoke.
His brain shorted out and her words moved past without sticking. She said something else and her face flushed a charming red. She sat down heavily, dropping a shotgun awkwardly enough that he flinched, expecting the damn thing to go off and finish him. Or blow off his arm. The first thing they’d talk about was how to safely handle a gun like that.
She rocked with her arms around her knees, holding her legs to her chest, and she cried. Shecried. Finn tried to keep up as he struggled to stay conscious. What made her sad? Why did she sit down next to an injured bear and cry?
He didn’t have much experience with crying women, except for the other bears’ mates and particularly the pregnant ones, but his strategy was usually to go outside and stay there until the tears dried up. With this female… He didn’t know what to do. But the bear knew that he couldn’t comfort her as a bear. He’d scare her half to death.
Finn’s thoughts drifted until he latched onto the idea that he didn’t have tostaya bear. He could become a man again. A man would be able to help her, to find out what was wrong, to fix it for her. He could do that.
It wasn’t until he’d changed forms and saw the blood drain out of her face that it occurred to him that watching someone change their shape on its own would distress her. The girl stared at him and blinked, wiping her eyes. A shaky hand moved toward the shotgun.
Finn clenched his jaw against a fresh explosion of pain in his leg as the bear trap clamped harder around his smaller humancalf. He barely swallowed the curses that would have made him feel a little better, and instead held a hand out to keep her from picking up the gun and killing him on accident. “Don’t. Just wait a second.”
The rest of the color left her face and she whispered under her breath.
He struggled to breathe through the agony in his leg. He had to get the trap off. He’d lost too much blood and his strength waned. The longer they sat there on a damn trail, the higher the likelihood that some of those smugglers would come by. And they weren’t the kind of guys who left witnesses alive.
Finn groaned and pushed up on one elbow, trying to reach her foot to touch her boot. Create a connection so she wouldn’t feel as inclined to killing him. She wasn’t a hunter in any form, it was easy enough to see she didn’t even want to put an injured animal out of its misery. The sweetness of her character wedged into the cracks in his heart. He’d never spent much time around people who were that kind, that gentle. The bear wanted that to be in his den. The bear wantedherin his den.
He pushed the thought aside. He couldn’t think that. They were in danger and he couldn’t let lust distract him. He was naked and caught in a bear trap, and had revealed that shapeshifters existed to a complete stranger. Who did not look in any way prepared to deal with that sort of information.
“Breathe in through your nose,” he said, squeezing his eyes shut against his own pain. “It’s okay. Out through your mouth. Put your arms over your head. That’s good.”
She obeyed without question, which he should have appreciated but he knew it was a bad sign. She had to be in shock. It probably took a lot of courage for her to leave the safety of her shelter to look for him, and even more to sit there next to an injured bear. And to then see an unnatural change… He would have embraced her if he could have gotten close enough.
His voice came out rocky from the landslide of fire and pain working its way up his leg. Lightning bolts hot through his muscles and into his spine, the static chasing into his brain and wreaking havoc with his ability to think and speak. Nerve damage, probably. And it wouldn’t heal until he got the damn trap off.
Finn took several deep breaths and braced himself to speak again, forming each word deliberately and carefully, keeping his voice soothing and calm and in control despite wanting to scream and roar. “I need you to help me out of this trap. Can you do that?”
Her eyes grew huge as she looked up at him. Her arms still balanced on top of her head, making her look silly enough to distract him from the steel chewing into his leg. Her voice escaped in a whisper. “I don’t know how.”
“I’ll tell you,” Finn said. His fingers dug into the dirt to anchor against the radiating misery. The sooner she got the trap off, the better. “We’ll take it slow. Can you see a sturdy branch around? One longer than your arm, as big around as your wrist.”
She wiped her cheeks resolutely and wobbled to her feet. “I just dragged firewood away from this part of the forest so I don’t know…”
The girl moved down the trail and started crashing through the undergrowth, and Finn swallowed a laugh and a groan. Definitely had no idea what she was doing in the woods. Absolutely no woodcraft or skills in the wild. He meant to call her back but realized he hadn’t asked her name. He knew her by scent and that was all the bear cared about. He would recognize her anywhere in the world, no matter what she wore or called herself.
