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him, one let out a thunderous roar. Galvanized, Cain took off into the woods.
     
    As he ran under a low-hanging branch, he felt a slight tug on his back, before he heard the human scream. Every muscle in his body seized as he ground to a skidding halt. He snapped his head back in a wild motion, his first instinct being that she had been hurt.
     
    She gave him a desperate look. “The bag,” she said, pointing back to the tree. He jerked his head to see the blue bag dangling from the tree limb.
     
    He could hear the bears closing in, and hesitated, only for a second, but it was a second too long. By the time he neared the bag so had the first of the bears. It reared up, roaring down at Cain. Anticipating the move, he reared up as well, letting out a fierce snarl. As he came down, Cain snatched the bag in his mouth and began to back away. The bear advanced on him, but did not attack.
     
    Cain dashed away, calming marginally once he had put some distance between them. The human had not made a sound throughout the ordeal, only the smell of her fear and the weight of her on his back letting him know that she was still there.
     
    The bears pursued them into the early morning hours, finally falling back as Cain reached the edge of their territory. Upon entering neutral ground, he did not immediately slow his pace. When his energy began to fail him, he climbed to high ground. At the roots of a giant white oak, Cain dug up the snow and dropped his bag, before leaning down to let the human climb off his back and onto the dirt.
     
    His mind, which had been racing for the past few hours, seemed to settle at the sight of her. She was pale and her legs quaked as she found her footing, but she was unscathed. When she looked up at him, her eyes were twin pools of tumultuous waters.
     
    In a scratchy voice, she said, “I think I lost one of your socks.”
     
    In his frenzy to shift, he had thrust his clothing at her. Cain was impressed that she had managed to hold on to his boots. He bent his head to pluck his wayward sock from where it had gotten stuc k in the hood of her jacket and deposited it into her arms.
     
    “ Nice!” he heard her exclaim as he began to shift.
     
    His tired body did not protest this time, exhaustion taking precedence over the pain of the shift. When it was over, he took his clothes from the human, who was facing away from him, the color back in her cheeks again. He dressed slowly, taking the time to admire her. Her long, golden-brown hair was a windswept disarray, and he liked seeing it unkempt. It reminded him of the way her hair looked when she woke up beside him, before she combed it into submission with her fingers.
     
    “We will rest here for a few hours,” he told her as he tied his boots. “ I need to go clear my tracks.”
     
    Cain glanced up to see Sarah looking around the area thoughtfully. “We’re going to be out in the open?” she asked.
     
    He stood, brushing the dirt from his jeans. “We will only be here for a little while. My territory begins a few hours from here.”
     
    Her eyebrows rose. “We’re almost there?”
     
    He nodded.
     
    Cain wished that he had the strength to push on, and get them to his lands before resting, but he had already stretched himself too thin. He needed to rest and replenish his strength.
     
    Before leaving to clear their tracks, he went through his bag. With slight reluctance, he extracted one of the packaged sweets and tossed it to the human. She fumbled, but caught it. Her eyes widened with excitement, and then abruptly narrowed.
     
    “Tell me that you didn’t nearly get us eaten by a bear for a bag full of candy bars?”
     
    Cain laughed as he zipped the bag back up and threw it over his shoulder. He’d been laughing a lot since he met her, and he recognized how unusual it was. Far away from his pack, family, and the responsibilities of being an alpha, she was reminding him of what it was like to just be a male. Of all the things about