Page 35 of Handcuffed to the Bear

Mara snarled, and her self-control broke. Her muscles bunched, and she sprang forward, covering the distance to the cabin in a series of great, leaping bounds. Two leaps. Three?—

Her whole weight came down on the rotten cellar roof. It disintegrated under her.

Jack jumped as hard as he could, caught his toes on the edge of the window, and pulled himself to the top of the wall. After all this time of being locked to Casey, unable to move at his own speed, the ability to use his body to its limits felt like breathtaking freedom. The ache of his arm, the cold, his own exhaustion faded away. He had never felt so alive or so present in his own skin.

As he sprang from the top of the wall, he shifted. It was a man who leaped off the wall, but a grizzly bear who landed, crashing heavily into the wet snarl of weeds behind the cabin.

Mara was thrashing around in the wreckage of the cellar roof. It wasn’t that deep, but her legs were tangled up in broken boards and clinging brambles, and from the way she was struggling, there must be nothing but mud underneath. Jack lumbered forward and was on her just as she got her forelegs on solid ground.

He chomped down, aiming at her head, but she recoiled in horror and he missed, sinking his teeth into her shoulder instead. Jack’s rational human mind might technically have veto power, but as soon as he’d shifted, his bear instincts had come erupting to the forefront of his brain—and his inner bear waspissed.

The noise Mara made was probably the closest thing to a scream that a leonine throat could produce. She’d expected two fragile humans, hurt and scared and severely hampered by the cuffs holding them together. Instead, she found herself fighting an enraged grizzly bear.

Jack’s teeth ripped out of her shoulder as she managed to tear away from him. Rearing back, he swatted her across the side of the head with one enormous paw.

But now Mara was starting to rally. Normal lions weren’t quite as big as bears, but Mara was not an average-sized lion, and she, like Jack, had a human brain driving her enormous predator’s body. She turned the disadvantage of her lower position into an advantage, ducking under his swinging paws and then coming up from below. Her teeth sought a grip on his throat, failing to sink in only because of his bear form’s heavy fur; she got a mouthful of fur and loose skin instead. Her front claws tore at his chest and belly.

With Mara ripping and clawing at his underside, Jack bit at her back. His jaws would have been capable of crushing her spinal cord, but she was moving too much. All he could do was slash her golden fur, leaving bloody stripes.

Mara finally managed to get out of the hole. They both staggered backward and glared at each other through the pouring rain. Mara was coughing and spitting; blood mixed with rainwater dripped off her fur. Jack felt the sting of new cuts from Mara’s clawing. His mouth tasted like blood, which made the human part of him uneasy even as his bear side relished it.

The fight had seemed to take forever, but Jack realized it had only been a few seconds when Casey appeared around the corner of the cabin, loping along in lynx form. The silver chain of the handcuffs flashed at her ankle, where the cuff was still attached.

Mara’s ears flattened as she reoriented on the smaller and therefore more tempting target. She crouched and launched herself like a hunting housecat.

Jack roared. He slammed into Mara before she could reach Casey, knocking her down. Rather than falling, she latched onto him, furious. Her claws sank into his sides, and she raked at his belly with her powerful back legs. Jack snapped at the back of her neck and finally managed to sink in his fangs.

They rolled in the mud, tearing at each other. Jack glimpsed Casey trying to dart in and bite Mara to help him.No, he wanted to tell her,stay back!She was only going to get herself hurt.

And he was going to win. His strength was fading, but Mara’s was fading faster, her attempts to disembowel him getting wilder and less effective. She’d picked a fight with a larger predator, and now it was coming back to bite her—literally. His jaws ground down through flesh and sinew. He didn’t want to kill her, but he had no choice. In their world of predator and prey, it was kill or be killed; there were no other options.

An earthshaking roar came from the trees, and another lion charged out to join the fray.

It had a mane; it was a male. Jack didn’t know if this was Roger or his brother Rory, but it hit him with teeth and claws fully deployed. White-hot pain tore through his side, and he had to let go of Mara and scramble away before he was ripped open.

Mara rolled to her feet, slowed down by her injuries, but refusing to stop. She lunged as the other lion came in from the side, the two of them fighting as a smooth team with the ease of practice. Jack managed to avoid Mara’s charge, but the other lion sank its teeth into his back leg.

He whipped around, roaring, and his teeth snapped on empty air as the male lion let go and danced back out of reach. Unlike Mara and Jack, he was still fresh, uninjured and at full fighting strength.

This was bad. Very bad.

Jack backed toward the cabin, head down and hackles raised, while the lions closed on him in a V formation. Mara was limping, one of her legs dragging, but Jack was limping too. He’d reopened the injuries on his front leg, and now he was bleeding from a dozen new places as well.

There was a sudden scrabble of claws from inside the cabin. Jack risked a glance over his shoulder—an awkward twist that bears weren’t really designed for—just in time to see Casey, still in lynx form, appear at the top of the wall, with her paws hooked over it like a climbing housecat.

She was holding something in her jaws, and her eyes were screwed tight shut.

Jack realized what it was just as she sprang, leaping over him and into the middle of the lions. Casey opened her mouth as soon as her paws hit the ground, letting her burden fall, and kept running. She sprinted for the trees like all the hounds of hell were after her.

The paper yellowjacket nest, trailed by a lot of angry wasps, rolled under the male lion’s belly.

There was a frozen instant as the reality of the situation sank in; then the male lion shot into the air like ... well, like someone had dropped a wasp’s nest on him. Mara fled for the shelter of the cabin, reacting on instinct rather than conscious thought, but she was too big to get through the door. Her shoulders collided with the doorframe and collapsed the wall inward—which took down what remained of the roof, and brought the rest of the wasps boiling upward in a surge of insectile fury.

Jack made a break for it.

Grizzlies weren’t graceful, but they were fast. A bear running flat out was as fast as a galloping horse, and Jack was anextremelymotivated bear. He hit the edge of the woods running at top speed.

Casey was waiting for him there. As he raced past her, she fell into step with him.

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