Unleashed By her Bear by Felicity Heaton
Chapter 3
Callie had gone from one bad situation to another. She growled as the big male manhandled her, tightly gripping her scruff, his nails piercing her skin, making it sting. Payback. It was payback for what she had done to him. He wanted to hurt her, to make her bleed as she had him, and wanted her to know that out of the two of them, he was the stronger and more dangerous.
Anger and fear were joined by irritation and a serious dose of shame as he stood in one fluid motion and hauled her into the air with him. He held her aloft before him, as if she weighed nothing, the muscles of his right arm flexing hard beneath his form-fitting black zip-up fleece. Fire blazed in her scruff where he held her in a vice-like grip, her weight pulling on it as she hung from his hand, her legs dangling above the dirt.
Callie reacted fiercely, the feeling he was mocking her rousing a reaction in her that she couldn’t contain. She couldn’t stop herself from twisting and snarling, snapping her fangs at him and shaking her head. The bastard was belittling her. He was making it painfully clear that she was no match for him. That feeling grew, spread poisoned tendrils through her mind as he just stared at her, his pale blue eyes ice-cold and impassive. She kicked her back legs, jerking her entire body in a bid for freedom.
He only tightened his grip in response.
She bared fangs at him, kept on growling and snarling, viciously snapping her teeth at him. He was right to hold on to her. If he released her, she would sink her fangs into somewhere that would be far more painful for him than his arm.
The big brute arched a dark eyebrow at her.
As if her fury, this rage that burned inside her, born of the fact he was drawing a line between them by holding her like this, by easily caging her, meant nothing to him. She wasn’t weak. She might be female, but she was strong, and if he let her go, she would prove that. She would make him see that he was wrong about her, and about females in general. She would rewrite his opinion of her gender in blood.
His blood.
“Calm down,” he grunted as she made another attempt to wriggle free of his grip.
Easy for him to say. He wasn’t the one being held at someone else’s mercy, threatened with death if he didn’t answer their questions.
The wolf in her said to keep struggling, keep fighting, and she would escape his hold. The more logical side of her brain said that there was only one way out of this. She wasn’t sure she wanted to take it.
She settled and slowly swung towards him as she went still, allowing her to see him. To see those cold eyes. That scar that said he was a fighter. The hard and unyielding cut of his mouth as his lips flattened.
Callie had never been shy, but something about this male made her acutely aware of how naked she would be if she shifted back.
It was the only way to make him release her though.
At least, she hoped he would release her.
The alternative didn’t bear thinking about.
“Wolves,” he scoffed, spitting that word as if it was disgusting to him. He sneered, his lip curling, and muttered, “Should’ve known you’d have a bent moral compass too. You’re all the same. Thinking you can do as you please. Thinking only of yourselves.”
The look in his eyes shifted, backing up his words and making her feel he would rather kill her than spend another second in her company.
It was the last straw.
Callie willed the shift, giving up her fight to hold on to her wolf form. Her feet easily touched the ground as her body morphed, bones lengthening and changing as her fur swept away to reveal flushed skin.
Skin that flushed even deeper pink as she grew intensely aware of his gaze on her naked curves.
She turned to face him, covering her awkwardness by stoking her anger, denying the hot flash of desire that rolled through her by focusing on her rage, on the fury born of what he had said to her, speaking of her as if she was despicable.
He didn’t know her.
She planted her hands on her hips and glared at him. “What’s your problem?”
The brute stared right back at her and growled, “You’re my problem.”
Callie swept her left arm up and knocked his hand away from her nape, must have caught him off guard because he looked pissed as he lost his grip on her. He lunged for her and she hopped back a step, placing herself beyond his reach and making sure she landed on her good leg.
She flicked her fall of black hair over her shoulder and tipped her chin up, and tersely said, “Thanks for freeing me. I’ll be on my way now. No more problem for you.”
She went to turn.
He seized her wrist.
Callie smacked his hand away again, growled at him and bared her fangs. “Keep your filthy paws to yourself, buddy.”
His pale blue eyes flashed with chilling fire, with rage she knew she was stoking, but she couldn’t bring herself to heel. Something about him riled her, rubbed her the wrong way, made her want to push and fight him despite his size and how strong he was.
Maybe she was just sick and tired of overbearing males thinking they could order her around.
He proved how overbearing he was by saying, “Answer my questions and I’ll think about letting you go.”
She huffed at that. “How kind of you. I’ll skip the answering questions part and move straight to the leaving, thanks.”
He made another grab for her.
Callie was on to him, moved too quickly for him to keep up, nimbly leaping away from him to place a good ten feet of dirt between them. She grimaced when she placed some weight on her right leg as she landed and pain shot up it, arcing along her bones.
He growled, only this time it was a low groaning sound that bordered on sorrowful or oddly melancholy, and it sent a shiver down her spine and rang alarm bells in her head as it revealed what he was.
A bear.
She had never had a good experience with a bear shifter. They were ridiculously territorial, almost as bad as the felines. Felines were worse though. She wanted to spit on the ground at just the thought of them, while at the same time she wanted to run as fast as her tired, aching legs could carry her.
The term ‘fighting like cats and dogs’ was applicable in the shifter world too. Callie had lost count of the number of fights she had gotten into with a feline shifter just because she was a wolf.
“If you won’t answer me, then you’ll answer to my alpha.” Bear was surprisingly quick, closed the distance between them without giving himself away, and had his hand on her arm before she could blink and catch up.
She had been watching him closely, should have spotted the moment he decided to move. He hadn’t broadcasted his intent at all though. One moment he had been standing there, as calm as anything and showing no sign he was going to try something, and the next he was right beside her.
For some reason, that terrified her.
Who was this male? Or better still, what was he? She had never seen a male move like he did. Not even the warriors at her old pack had moved like him, without broadcasting anything to the enemy. When she had watched them sparring, something she had often done because she wasn’t allowed to fight since she was female, she had always been able to spot when they would move. The slightest shift of their weight. The smallest change in their eyes. Even a secretly drawn breath. There had always been a tell, something to warn her they would make a move against their sparring partner, something most of the warriors always seemed to fail to notice.
But not her.
She had been good at spotting them.
Which was why she knew he hadn’t given away his intent to move.
She stared up into his eyes as he loomed over her, easily a good nine inches taller than her despite the fact she was pushing five-eleven, was tall for a wolf female. A cold abyss stared back at her. No trace of emotion. Not even rage.
Everything about him was carefully, meticulously controlled.
Right down to his breathing and the pressure of his grip on her arm. Not hard enough to hurt her, or gentle enough that she could twist free. He held her just tightly enough that she knew she couldn’t escape him, not without resorting to a desperate act of violence. Even then, she had her doubts it would be enough to break free of his grip this time.
Callie studied him, swiftly cataloguing everything about this dark male, this dangerous bear.
Was he a warrior too?
If he was, he was on another level to those she had known back at her old pack, back when her life had been better.
It struck her that Bear hadn’t moved in the whole time she had been staring at him, had locked up tight, as if placing his filthy paw on her had startled him. If it had, nothing about him other than his stillness gave it away.
Callie found herself relaxing a little, some of the tension draining from her when he made no move to hurt her or drag her somewhere, just stood there watching her, his eyes glacial. She wanted to break through that layer of ice for some reason, felt compelled to provoke him and gain a reaction. Some twisted part of her wanted to crack the cage around his emotions wide open and see what came out.
She raked her eyes over him, an appraising look that she hoped rankled him. “You’re not the alpha?”
He was a big male. Bigger than any wolf she had ever met. He had to be twice Carrigan’s size. Outmuscled even Carrigan’s biggest goon.
If Bear was this big, then how big was his leader?
She didn’t want to find out.
“I’m good.” Those words came out as flippant as she meant them to, had a flicker of cold fire igniting in his eyes again. “I don’t need to meet your extended family. I’ll just be on my way.”
“On your way where?” He tightened his grip on her arm, the barest flex of his fingers. It was enough to deliver the silent message that she wasn’t going anywhere.
Not until she answered his questions.
Well, they were both shit out of luck then. She wasn’t going to tell him anything about herself, because it was safer that way, and he wasn’t going to let her go. A stalemate. She looked at him, her resolve wavering. He was from this valley, lived here and must have come to find her when she had howled, dispatched by his pack to locate her and bring her in for questioning.
Which meant he would probably be able to tell her whether or not the White Wolf pack was near here.
She needed to reach that pack and soon. Every second she spent here with Bear was another second that Carrigan closed in on her.
The longer she stared into his eyes, locked in a stalemate with him, the stronger a feeling grew inside her—Bear wouldn’t answer her questions. He wanted to ask his and hear her answer them, and that was that. She had met males like him in the past, ones who were rigid about how they went about things, inflexible and unlikely to bend to accommodate others.
Her eyes widened as he tried to prove her wrong about him, as he released her arm and eased back a step, placing some distance between them. Maybe he wasn’t as bad as she was painting him.
She thought he might be worse when he unzipped his thick fleece and pulled it off, stripping down to only a black T-shirt that hugged his heavily-muscled torso like a second skin.
“What are you doing?” She hated that note of panic in her voice, how her words warbled and how he looked at her as if she was weak.
Or perhaps insane to fear he wanted to do anything nefarious to her.
“I’m tired of seeing you naked.” He held the fleece out to her. “Put it on.”
“No.” Callie stood her ground, ignoring the way her cheeks heated as he stared at her, as a voice in the back of her mind taunted her for fearing he had been about to try something with her when she apparently wasn’t attractive enough for him.
Her blood burned for another reason as that hit her. Plenty of males had told her she was beautiful and had pursued her, desiring her as their lover. Some of them had wanted her to be more than that for them, and while she had been flattered, she had turned them all down. None of them had been quite right for her.
They hadn’t ignited the spark she wanted to feel, the one that came from finding a true mate. She wanted a love like her parents had shared—the love only capable between fated mates.
Callie told herself that she would find that love one day.
What did it matter that Bear wasn’t attracted to her? What did it matter that, judging by the look in his eyes, he found her repulsive? That was a good thing. It meant he was unlikely to try anything with her. It meant she was safe.
“Put it on, Wolf.” He shoved the fleece towards her again, his rough features hardening like granite. “I’m taking you to Black Ridge. You’re going to answer to my alpha and if you want to do that naked, it’s up to you… but there are unmated males at the pride.”
She tensed.
Unmated males that Bear clearly felt would ogle her and want to do things to her if she was nude. She wasn’t attractive enough for Bear, but he believed she would be alluring enough to these males.
She didn’t want him to feel he had scored a victory over her, but she snatched the fleece and pulled it on, was quick to zip it up. She paused with her hand near her throat as his scent hit her—rich, earthy, warm. Her eyes lifted and locked with his, her fingers lingering on the tab of the zipper, her thoughts twisting and twining together. She felt unsteady as she gazed into his eyes, as something crossed them, a flicker of feelings that were there and gone in a heartbeat, erased before she could decipher them.
She convinced herself to release the zipper and tried not to think about how she was wearing something of his and how it carried his scent—scent that was now stamped all over her. There was something pleasing about the way he smelled, something that eased her tension and her fear. No. It wasn’t his scent doing that. She told herself that on repeat. It was the fact she was covered now, the warm fleece concealing everything from her shoulders to midway down her thighs. She was covered and that was the reason she felt safer.
It had nothing to do with Bear’s scent.
She thought about what he had said about the bears at this Black Ridge place where he wanted to take her.
Did Bear have a mate? He didn’t strike her as the sort of male who had one. He had too many rough edges for that, but stranger things had happened.
Someone in this world might have thought the brute act appealing.
Bear continued to look at her, his gaze searing her despite the fact it was devoid of emotions, the thick impenetrable layer of ice concealing what he was thinking. She wanted to know what was running through his mind, couldn’t hold her tongue as he remained standing close to her rather than distancing himself as she had expected.
She angled her head back, tipping it up towards his, and whispered.
“Why are you staring at me?”
