ROMANCE: Forbidden Bear Obsession (Werebear Shifter Taboo Paranormal Romance) (New Adult Contemporary Paranormal Romance Short Stories) Read Free

be—“
    “I’m going to the office,” he said, cutting me
off. He left me alone at the dinner table, and disappeared into his office. I
looked down at my plate. I had suddenly lost my appetite. I got up and cleared
the plates, scraping the food into a container and putting it in the fridge. It
would probably spoil long before Lashan decided my food was worth eating.
    My skin itched. I felt like it was too tight,
shrinking against my body. I untied the apron around my waist and let it fall
to the floor. I leaned against the window, pressing my cheek against the cold
glass. The night was calling me. I looked at my watch.
    It would be sunrise in less than an hour. It
was dangerous for me to be out that close to dawn. If I got stuck, I had a real
problem. A lot of the creatures we mixed with could handle sun, but vampires
weren’t that lucky.
    In the bedroom I dressed into my running
clothes. I had to get out of the house. The walls were closing in on me. I felt
like I was suffocating. When I broke free of it and ran into the woods that
started at the perimeter of our property, I felt like I could breathe again.
    I ran, my shoes beating a muffled tattoo in to
the mulch underneath my feet. I jumped between trees, reducing myself to the
animal inside of me. I relished the open air, the trees that wouldn’t judge me.
I ran until my muscles screamed and my lungs cramped and I became sufficiently
numb. I ran, leaving behind a perfect life that didn’t want me.
    When I couldn’t run anymore, I stopped. I
leaned my hands on my knees, trying to breathe around the searing heat that
twisted through my lungs. My legs trembled. I was in a part of the forest I
hadn’t been in before. It was live with birds, singing a welcome song to the
dawn.
    The light was already changing. Instead of the
inky black that colored the trees into shadows of the night, it was a silvery
gray now, making the forest look like something out of a story book. I knew I
had to get home, but there was something magical in the air, gluing me down,
keeping me there.
    I noticed a dark shadow in between the trees.
At first I thought it was a clump of underbrush, something like a handful of
berry bushes. They were scattered throughout the forest. But then the shadow
moved. I was rooted to the spot, staring at the bulk of darkness that moved
slowly through the trees. I strained my ears, but it wasn’t making a sound.
Somewhere in the back of my mind a little voice told me to run, to get out of
there. But there was a magnetic quality to the air, something that bound me to
the forest and kept me there.
    The shadow moved closer to me, and I started
making out it’s against the brighter light of the impending dawn. The black
mass took shape. Strong shoulders, thick brown fur, and a muzzle.
    It was the biggest bear I had ever seen.
    When it saw me, it blew hot air through its
nostrils, no doubt picking up my scent. Its lips curled back, revealing a row
of sharp, pointed teeth. I had to run. I knew I had to. But I was stuck. It
dawned on me that the magnetic attraction, the inability to run, came from this
bear. It wasn’t an ordinary bear. It used magic to catch its prey.
    And I was going to be the next meal.
    The bear roared a sound that rumbled form the
deep recesses of its bowels, and tearing through the forest. It whipped around
me, every fiber in my body numb with fear.
    When the roar stopped, everything was quiet.
The birds had stopped singing. An eerie silence filled the forest, thick and
palpable. I couldn’t breathe. Shrewd black eyes stared at me from the mass of
brown hair.
    The bear moved toward me, so fast it closed
the gap between us in less than a second. It towered over me, pinning me
against a tree. I gasped for air, the magic wrapping around me like a wet
blanket. I couldn’t breathe. This was the end. This was where I was going to
die.
    But then the bear started to change. The hair
on its body shrank away from its skin. The muzzle shrank, and teeth