Page 56 of Trapped for Her Blood
“What?” She turns, trying to look at me.
But I can’t risk eye contact right now.
I shift so she can’t see me. “You say you feel safe with me. But when I thought you were a witch, I attacked you.”
“You already apologized for that.” Her shoulders lean back, brushing over my chest hair. “You were afraid. You’ve been hurt by magic. I get that. Can we just put it behind us?”
I nod, and even though she can’t see my gesture, she pushes the topic no further.
“What was your life like?” she asks softly. “Your life before…”
“Before my clan was murdered by a witch?” My voice comes out hard.
Her shoulders jerk slightly, but it could be from the cold as she warms. “Yes,” she says softly. “I’d love to know more, if it’s not too hard to talk about.”
I draw a long breath, and the air is a heady mixture of wood smoke and woolen blanket—all combined with the scents of her sweet blood and her overwhelming arousal.
My eyes flutter shut as my mind is transported to the past, to times when there was another woman under a blanket like that. Leaning back, I close my eyes and let memories flow for the first time in so long. Memories I only let appear in my dreams, lest they kill me with grief.
While trying to choose the stories and words to describe my life before, I realize Ember is right—some of my memories hurt, but remembering how I was once happy feels good.
“My life back then,” I say softly wanting her to understand. “Our life was wonderful. My clan was the largest in the area, our woods largely unspoiled. We were happy.”
“Woods,” she says. “Did you live as a bear most of the time?”
“No, we spent most of our time in human form. But on any given day, we took whatever form served our purpose.”
“But you lived in the woods?” She shifts and her scent overwhelms me.
It takes me a moment to recover enough to respond. “We lived high in the Pocono mountains, in log cabins we built with our own hands.”
“Did you come in contact with people often? People who weren’t…shifters?”
“At times. Yes. When we had to. But we preferred to keep to ourselves, and then with other clans when one of our young was ready to take a mate.”
She shifts, pulling the blanket tighter.
Fearing she’s cold, I pull her against me, wrapping my arms around her. Even through the wool, her body draws mine to hers like a magnet, and I have to concentrate to avoid crushing her fragile bones in my embrace, and to keep my rigid log from grazing her lower back.
“According to the stories passed down by my mother and her mother before her,” I continue, “before the Europeans settled, we had more contact with humans, we even had ceremonies and festivals together.”
“With the Native Americans?”
“The original peoples of this land, yes. But the settlers changed that. Pushed the humans we knew from the land, and forced us to more remote areas in the mountains as they claimed the lands we once called home.”
“Your people…were you always from here? From North America I mean?”
“No, not always.” I love how much genuine interest she is showing in me and my kind. “Our stories tell of a long journey, over hundreds of years. From lands far away. But I don’t know where.”
Telling her this makes me see for the first time that my criticism of the settlers could be taken as hypocritical. We came here from somewhere else too. Perhaps over ice in the north across Greenland from Scandinavia.
Our stories are not specific, but given our most common humans features, more light skinned and fair-haired than the humans who lived here when we arrived, it is not likely we were native to this land.
“Grizzly shifters,” I tell her, “we were settlers once too.”
“How old are…” She pauses to draw a long breath. “How many years does a bear shifter live?”
“Bear shifters have natural life spans similar to humans. But I was changed…” My jaw tightens, trapping my words, hating what I’ve become.
