Bear With Me (BBW Paranormal Shifter Romance) Read Online Free

– the trip and everything that had happened since we had arrived, no more than a fading dream.
    But that was okay. That meant that, no matter what happened, I was safe. In dreams, nothing can touch you no matter how real they are or how frightening they can become. They are finite. They will end. They will… They will…
    A low growl rose up out of the thick darkness and stopped me sharply, rooting my feet to the frozen ground.
    “It’s just a dream,” I murmured out loud, the words ghosting in the frost before me. “It’s not real. It’s just a dream. Just a-” I screamed as the howl pierced the silence, the haunting sharpness of it freezing me from the inside out and filling me with utter terror. It was the sound I had been chasing only hours before, now closer, now aimed at me – a warning and a promise of danger. The wolves’ song.
    I should have listened to the Wildman. I should have run to safety. I was going to die in the salivating jaws of a hundred wolves. Just like my mother. I was going to end up just like her.
    I clenched my teeth, every muscle in my body going rigid in terrified anticipation, as the soft crunching of paws on dead leaves reached my ears. Even though I had still yet to see even one, I could hear them stalking around me on both sides until I was entirely surrounded by a ring of soft, sinister growling. There was nowhere to run – not that I had the physical capability to out run even one hungry wolf, let alone a whole pack. I was done for. Utterly and completely fucked .
    I closed my eyes tight shut just as the first pair of bright, amber eyes set deep in a long-snouted shaggy grey face. If this was to be the end, I didn’t want to see it.
    The wolves started to snap and snarl, and I could feel almost feel the sharpness of their fangs through the timbre of the sound. One barked so close to my ear that I could feel the heat of its breath on my neck, the stench of blood so pungent in my nostrils I almost gagged.
    But I forced myself to remain still and calm. Perfectly composed.
     
    I waited for the claws that I knew were coming to pin me down. I waited for the teeth I knew were coming to rip into my throat. I waited for the death I knew was coming to release me from this blanket of fear I had become entrapped in.
     
    And then there was silence – a sudden, sharp silence that forced my eyelids to open just the tiniest of cracks. I knew nothing of wolves, or of their habits, but this seemed peculiar. I found myself looking at a shining wet nose on the end of a long snout. A neat set of canines made my stomach give an uncomfortable jolt, but the wolf’s attention was not on me, just inches away, but on something behind my back. Unwilling to move just in case I caught its interest again, I strained my eyes to look around at the pack encircling me. None of them were looking at me. Each face was pointed towards something seemingly just above my shoulder, and each expression – half-hidden behind varying shades of shaggy grey fur – was alert with surprise. Whatever it was behind me, and I dreaded to consider the possibilities, had managed to alarm the wolves. And whatever it was that had the power to alarm a pack of bloodthirsty carnivores was certain to be no friend of mine.
    The wolf seemed to be considering the intruder careful. Its eyes were flicking back and forth, and I could almost see it thinking. Then its lips pulled back in a snarl – not the triumphant snarl of a beast about to take down its prey as I had heard before, but a fearsome snarl of warning and a signal to its pack that the danger must be taken down. Immediately. Its packmates took up the call at once, and soon the air around me was throbbing with the wolves’ single-voiced growl.
    Behind me, the roar of a different creature responded, declaring war with the utmost certainty. There would be no truce, no mercy. There was to be a fight and that fight was to be now .
    I ducked with a yelp as the wolf bent down and then