BearTrapped

Escaping the town of Fangor required little effort and subterfuge on Kimber’s part. Within the first few days after the attack on the city by rogue bears from the Ursine clan, her people—the wolf clan—were too busy in the forest finding suitably thick timber to replace the broken gates and ramparts that surrounded the town.
By pure luck, s
he’d escaped granting mating rights to a man unworthy
and uninteresting to
her.

Unlike her friend, Mali, who’d found a love match worth envy with Jaxon, Kimber had been unable to drum up enough interest in any of the available males in the clan during the Moonlight Festival. Certainly there were handsome suitors, but she wanted more than just a pretty face. She wanted a man who would value and treasure her, as Mali had with Jaxon. She only had to observe them for a moment to see that Jaxon adored Mali
, and nothing less would do for her
.
Perhaps it was wrong to desire such things. Her mama had told her to find someone she could be friends with, which made little sense to her. What about passion and lust? Why even bother mating at all if she could only muster lukewarm feelings toward a mate?

She wondered if her lack of
attraction
could be pin-pointed to her
nonexistent
mating heat.
Kimber sighed heavily, hefting her belongings into a better position on her back. Mali had invited her to travel with her and Jaxon to her parents’ home, but that had been out of the question for Kimber. She had no int
ention of
being the odd wheel on that journey.

She could return to her own home, but the image of disappointment on her family’s faces was more than she could endure. With four small children still at home, they’d struggled to gather a proper cache of clothing and supplies to send her away with. They would not want to know that she’d neglected choosing a partne
r for something as silly as passion
.

Winter approached, leaving the valley floor cold, moist, and misty as the weather settled over the land. Fangor was long behind her. What possessed her in this madness to think she could live in the wild by herself until spring? Glancing around with every step, she kept her eyes peeled for a suitable resting place for the night. The days grew shorter and shorter, and she didn’t relish the possibility that she would have to spend another frigid night under the stars
without a den
.

She’d never traveled this far north, however, and her ignorance of the area tempted her to turn back, swallow her pride, and face her family’s crushed dreams of her happily mated.
Obviously, it was too far to walk to the coast—which was her original, poorly planned idea. Mountains seemed to cover the land for miles, reaching for the sky with jagged, rocky hands tipped in snow. Dried, brown leaves coated the ground, and soon even that disappeared as spruce and pine surged from hardened dirt.

This was no place for a comfortable night’s rest. She stopped and looked up, hoping for a depression against the wind. A dark shadow smudged the hill, and at first, she thought it just a shadow from an outcrop of rock. She realized after studying the spot for several minutes that it was a cave.
A thrill raced through her but sh
e tamped it down before she could get
too excited. It could be occupied already, or not nearly big enough for her to sleep in.

Kimber scaled the hill, ignoring the sounds of rocks and gravel tumbling down the hillside as she struggled to the cave using roots for leverage when her thighs screamed at the abuse. She felt like a mountain goat when she finally reached her goal and stood victorious and out of breath at the entrance. Th
e cave was bigger
than it appeared from below--
a full
two feet higher than her head and broad enough she could walk inside abreast of a companion.

Her keen vision allowed her to look into the space shrouded in darkness by the deep walls. A fire had once been kept in the mouth, evidenced by scattered ash and small bits of charcoal. Further inside, she could see dead, dried spruce bows where someone had once made a bed, but there was no sign of recent residence. Kimber hefted her bag from her shoulders and sat it on the dirty cave floor.

Beyond the dim shafts of light, the cave reached back another fifteen feet. There was no one inside—it looked abandoned. “Hello?” she called, receiving no reply except the scratch of leaves on rock as the wind howled through the walls.

“Kimber, you’ve just found your new home,” she said to herself. “Time to go on a hunt and get dinner for tonight.” The fact that she’d begun talking to herself didn’t disturb her nearly as much as it had before. She guessed having a roof over her head and a place to sit out the winter had given her more confidence in her ability to rough it in the wild.

Kimber peeled her long,
red
wool c
loak
off and followed it with her dress, dropping both on top of her bag. Her first priority was to hunt dinner. Once that was taken care of, she’d collect wood and clean up the space
to make it more comfortable
.

She felt positively giddy as she crouched to the ground and allowed her beast to take control, transforming her with practiced ease into the form of a sleek, silver wolf
with flecks of reddish brown around her thick neck
.

***

Heavily laden
with
abundant wool skins, boar hide, and two
bag
s
stuffed with dried goods, pots and pans,
tools,
and everything else he could think of to sustain him until the spring, Braeden lumbered up the familiar landscape to the winter cave he’d hibernated in every winter since he was a young lad.
Every year he seemed to bring more supplies to his winter retreat. At some point, he might make this his year round home but not just yet.

Breathing heavily from the burden and the accompanying sweat on his brow in spite of the plunging temperature, he didn’t notice the small depressions in the ground leading up to his cave until he was nearly upon it.

The scent of a wolf and fresh blood tickled his sensitive nose. He paused only for a moment before the blinding anger washed over his head and clouded his mind with the ferocity to protect his territory. With an agility that defied his enormous size, he bounded the final distance with two steps, landing in the mouth of the cave with a roar that rattled his own ear drums as it reverberated along the walls with deafening sound. No wolf was going to take his cave from him. He didn’t give a damn
about truces. This was his cave!

His bags fell away as he bared his chest and shoulders
and balled his hands into tight fists
, ready for a fight. He was brought up short in his fury by the sight of a naked woman bent over a pile of clothing. Rich, dark skin imbued with reddish tones and curved over an ample backside and gloriously rounded breasts stunned him into
a
stupefied silence. A lifeless boulder could not have been more
unmoving
than Braeden
at that moment
.

The brown skinned woman stood and faced him, narrowing her eyes, unafraid and bold and obviously lacking good sense or one: she should have screamed; two: she should have run; three: she made no attempt to preserve her modesty.

She bared perfect white teeth in a
snarl
that made her
deep
brown eyes look deadly.

Braeden realized his adrenaline ha
d
increased the blood flow from his brain to his groin. That or the fact that he hadn’t seen a naked woman in years.

Somehow, he kicked the stiff cogs of his brain back into rotation. He shook his head as if slinging off a shroud.
“Are ye daft?” he roared, diverting his attention from her tits and the slit peeking from betwixt her legs up to her round face and evil
brownish black
eyes.
“This is my cave!”

“This is my cave. I was here first,” she said through clenched teeth, lifting her chin with bravado.

“
You’re mad
?
It’s mine. It’s been mine since I was a boy
.
Get out!” he roared again, ignoring the stab of guilt in his attempt to terrorize her into submission.

She didn’t
flinch and didn’t back down
—just stood there, calmly watching him
. For some reason, her lack of response
shrunk
his anger from a boil to a simmer.
He stood there in the entrance, trying to think of some way to grab her and throw her out without hurting her or getting injured in the process. She looked lithe and small enough to slip through his arms if she wanted.
He had no idea how quickly she could shift into a wolf, but by the looks of her, she would flay him alive with her teeth if he made an attempt to touch her.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Braeden.”

“My name is Kimber. Do you not know the wolf and ursine clans have made peace? Is that why you feel safe in threatening me?”

He was outraged!
He frowned. “I’ve done no such thing.
I would never harm a woman, even a she-wolf like you,
”
he sneered.

“Coming in here yelling at me to leave—I view that as a threat. Who do you think you are puffing your chest up at me?”

She had a talent for getting his ire up almost at once. “I’ve been wintering in this cave for years.”

Kimber narrowed her eyes and remained silent.

The thought that he could just pick her up and pitch her out the opening
re
occurred to him, but more likely she would only change to a wolf
the moment he stepped closer
and cause him bodily harm before he was forced to retreat or do the unthinkable—hurt her
defending himself
.
It was the truth that h
e’d never hurt a woman before in his life, and he wasn’t about to start
with her
.

Reluctantly, he re
alized they were at an impasse which led him to something his mama had taught him many years ago when dealing with his older brothers—sometimes the only way to get peace is to let the meaner of the argument have their way. At least until he could figure out a way around them.
“I tell you what, you can stay here for the night and leave in the morning. I won’t throw you out into the cold.
It’s too late in the day for that.
”

She put her hands on her hips. He noticed it made her breasts sit higher and her dark nipples winked at him
—in his mind, that is
. The black wool pants
covering his groin was his only protection from her noticing the raging hard cock that seemed out for blood. Bastard serpent with a mind of his own
!
Braeden shifted on his feet, waiting for her answer and
surreptitiously giving his cock a
pinch to cut off the blood flow.

“That won’t work for me. I’m staying here until the spring,” she finally said.
“I have nowhere else to go.”

Anger and outraged bubbled up inside him again.
“The hell you are!”

“The hell I’m not!”

He jutted his chin angrily, crossing his arms over his broad chest. He stomped a foot, turned around, threw up his hands as if the
beast
gods would suddenly answer his prayers and sweep her out of the cave with a strong wind. He turned back around and ran a hand through his hair in agitation. “All right. You can stay. We’ll share the space together. The cave is big enough for the two of us. You keep to your side and I’ll stay on mine.”

“Agreed,” she said. Thankfully, she stooped to grab her dress and slipped it over her head. The moment she did, his whole body breathed a sigh of relief.

“Make yourself useful and get us some firewood, Braeden,” she ordered
, pointing at the cave’s entrance
.

His mouth dropped open at her gall.
He snapped it shut and offered her a thunderous glare.
“I’m not here to serve you.”

She grinned wickedly and her eyes twinkled, giving him an eerie feeling that perhaps she was possessed by the devil with her lack of fear.
Or addle-brained, which was more likely.

“Aren’t you?”
she asked.