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

you owe me anything when I should be dead right now?”
    “ And what would have been the point in saving you only to throw you back to the wolves?”
    I found that I couldn’t really argue with that. “Thank you,” I told him earnestly, wishing there was some more adequate way of expressing my gratitude.
    David straightened up, coughing awkwardly. “Well,” he said, his voice deepening several octaves in evident embarrassment. “You must do exactly as I tell you, mind. You must learn to be a tracker, to be completely inconspicuous. And you must rely on nobody but yourself, even with me on your side.” He offered me a rough hand and, when I accepted it, he pulled me easily to my feet. “You are strong. You have something of the wild in you. No,” he added as my eyes widened in fear, “I’m not talking about werewolves or anything of that sort. It's something that was already there. Remember how you felt when you attacked that wolf-bitch. That’s your wild, and you must work hard to harness that. Do so, and there won’t be a single creature in this forest who will be able to prey upon you.”
     
    *
     
    “See there?” David pointed up through the canopy of trees to where, in the distance, I could just about make out the silhouette of a mountain in the moonlight. “That’s where we are going.”
    I chewed my lip nervously.  It would be hell trying to scale such a height. “How long will it take?”
    David looked down, appraising my speed and strength. “Two days, perhaps. If we are able to go unnoticed. If not…” He raised his hands in a hopeless gesture. “If not, then no doubt it will not make any difference.”
    We walked on in a glum silence. I couldn’t help but feel like a convict walking to my doom. David’s presence did comfort me a little, but it was as though he had already been given his sentence and had nothing left to lose at that point. It felt like he was accompanying me as something to distract himself from the inevitable, rather than out of any confidence that we would emerge from our quest victorious.
    “What did you mean?” I asked, keeping my voice as low as I could – I had already been told off for not being careful enough to remain inconspicuous. “When you said that we had broken the cardinal law of the forest. What is that?”
    “ Every society has laws,” David told me, moving aside wiry branches to keep them from whipping in our faces. “The forest is no different. Every creature – bird, fish or beast – is bound by those laws. They are basic, but they are necessary to keep the natural order. The cardinal law of the forest is that no creature must take another’s life unnecessarily. You may kill for food, you may kill to protect yourself or your young. You may not involve yourself in a dispute that does not concern you. You may not attack for the purpose of taking another’s meal. Basically, the law is ‘live and let live’.”
    “ That makes sense…”
    David gave a deep sigh and looked down at the leaves crunching beneath his bare feet. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes it does. But that law dictated that I did not interfere, that I let the she-bitch take you for her own. Just as she took your mother.”
    My heart gave a sickening lurch at the mention of my mother. The image of her trying to defend herself from the wolf’s attack flashed before my eyes. “I’m glad she’s dead,” I spat vehemently, my fists clenching unwittingly at my side. “I’m glad it was her. And I’m glad I had a part in it.” David gave a low chuckle and I glared up at him – he was a huge man, standing well over six feet high compared to my barely-five-foot frame. “ What ?”
    He smiled down at me with an expression I could easily have mistaken for fondness. “You’re a surprising one, Wildgirl, that’s for sure.”
    For the first time I was grateful for the darkness as it hid my blush. “My name’s Helen,” I muttered, although – to be honest – I quite liked