Read Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) for Free Online

trying to get Millie.
    Poor Millie, she could hardly swim. She’d just let her little salamander go and so she was out in the middle part of the river. Right under the falling tree.
    My clothes ripped apart, my shirt tearing and my jeans splitting down the seams. In a half an instant, my muscles went tight and hard, tan fur surged out of me, and all around me the world became a thousand times more vivid and clear. Blood flowed through my muscles, making my entire body tingle.
    I was running before the transformation completed, and by the time I was full lynx, I was blasting across the distance between the little cub and where I was standing.
    With every ounce of strength I had, I charged toward the panicking bear cub. I dove, pushing her to the ground and roughly covering her. The sandbar in the middle of the river had a little give to it, but not enough to keep me safe. I gritted my teeth, waiting for impact.
    At least she’ll be safe , I told myself.
    I heard Dean shout and then I heard Malia scream. Leena, bless her heart, yelled something I couldn’t understand, and underneath me, Millie wept.
    The tree, it was coming. I heard the wind rushing through the needles. I felt the blast of air.
    A branch scraped my back. It was about to pin me down to this sandbar, I just knew it. My thick muscle would keep Millie safe, but me? Not a chance.
    I closed my eyes, and held them tightly shut.
    The pain I expected never came.
    Instead, I heard a grunt. I heard a roar, and then I heard the tree crackle and split. I lifted my head to see what in the world had just saved my life.
    Not what , I realized. Who .
    “You?” I asked in the way you do when you’re staring at death and not entirely sure why you aren’t dead. “Is that... is that really you?”
    “Might... want to move...” the massive, muscled-up half-bear groaned. “Like... soon.”
    Immediately, I thought back to my feeling that fate was a stupid thing to wait on.
    Yeah. This wasn’t the first time I was dead wrong.

-4-
“Mating is such a complicated thing. But right now? Seems really damn simple.”
-Clea
    ––––––––
    “Y ou should marry him!” Leena squealed. “He’s probably stronger than my daddy and my daddy is real, real strong.”
    The poor bear who had just saved me and a tiny cub from being smashed into paste underneath a tree trunk smiled uneasily. I could tell he wanted to escape, but something was making him stay. He looked a little like he’d seen a long dead relative reanimated and walking around.
    Come to think of it, that wasn’t all that out of the ordinary in Jamesburg.
    It took a few minutes for me to really come around to thinking straight again, but when I did, blown away are the first couple of words that came to mind. The stranger wore a tight, torn up cotton longsleeve, and old cut off fatigues that were shredded about halfway up his thigh.
    That’s one of the main dangers of shape-shifting: the loss of wardrobe. I can’t even begin to list all the outfits I’ve lost to accidental shifts in the throes of passion. Okay, okay who am I kidding? The last time anyone got me excited enough to shift in mid-sex was... yeah, right, that’s never happened. But damn if looking at this mysterious stranger didn’t get me thinking naughty, naughty thoughts.
    A complex series of tribal designs circled his thickly muscled stomach and crawled up his chest. On his face it was hard to tell tattoo from scar. Both were intricate and beautiful. The scars were like a torn spider’s web draped across his cheek, the tattoos a delicate collection of lines around his eyes and down both sides of his face.
    But then when I looked into his, I saw something very familiar to me.
    Pain.
    Like the deep, burning kind that you keep putting away in bottles and trying to forget about, but it never actually goes away.
    “Are you okay?” I asked my mysterious savior, putting my hand on his muscled shoulder. I noticed a slight tic in his eye and when