Billionaire Bear Shifters A Paranormal Romance Complete Series Boxset - Brittany White Page 0,127

fiercer and protective than that. She was protecting her cubs and he’d upset her, even if it hadn’t been intentional.

“I have to go,” she said. Her voice shook and she wrung her hand, jogging over to her bag and her purse and grabbing them as she made her way to the door. “I have to figure out what to do. I’m sorry. I just have to go. I have to get home anyway. The cubs need me.”

“Jessie, please don’t leave like this,” he said. He ran a hand through his hair, feeling helpless. “Let’s just talk-”

“Please just don’t tell anyone,” she said tearfully. “Don’t take them away.”

He started to run after her but at the door, as he watched her run down the hall, he considered that she just needed some time on her own to calm down.

He’d find her later and hopefully, if he was lucky, they could work this out.

But watching her walk out the door, he felt a little bit like his own heart was leaving him.

45

Jessie

Jessie didn’t even make it out of the lodge before she broke down.

She found her favorite deserted spot for being alone. It was a big comfy chair next to a corner window in a wing of the lodge that looked out over the town of Black Bear Lake below. Most people preferred to sit somewhere with a view of the lake or the mountains on the other side of the building, and the suites in this wing were the less luxurious accommodations, although still much nicer than anywhere Jessie had ever stayed on vacation.

The corner was dimly lit. It wasn’t anywhere near the parking lot or the employee areas downstairs. Jessie hadn’t really been thinking when she’d taken off from Cody’s room. She’d just started running, feeling claustrophobic. She hadn’t even been thinking straight enough to go outside and shift, which often made her feel better when she was upset. Instead, she found her dark corner and sat down.

Jessie could hardly breathe and tears were streaming down her face. It was a ridiculous overreaction and that alone was a little scary. It wasn’t like her to get hysterical out of nowhere.

Her heart was beating too fast and hard. She clutched her chest, hunching over in her seat.

Panic attack, she thought.

She’d experienced such episodes before, but not for years. She’d been prone to anxiety sometimes as a kid and ended up catching her breath in the bathroom at school, sure that the world was ending just because she wasn’t doing well on a test. Her parents had been concerned. There had been some therapy and also sessions with a witch who dealt with such problems among shifters. But she’d seemed to grow out of it and her parents had just sighed in relief, considering it resolved. She’d had panic attacks just once or twice after that.

But this hadn’t happened in a few years now. Jessie got stressed out like anyone else but she had learned to manage anxiety and it had never raged out of control like this before. It made her feel helpless and crazy as she took deep breaths and inwardly waited it out, attempting to calm herself down.

She was shaking. She sat back in the big comfy chair and stared out the window, waiting until it stopped.

Everything is okay, she told herself. Nobody is coming to take the cubs away. Cody just wants to help.

The very thought of anyone taking the cubs away, much less the sleuth finding them was the worst thing she could think of. It made her want to shift and rip somebody’s throat.

It took her several minutes, but Jessie breathed through the worst of it and finally got to her feet and made her way out to her car. She stopped at an ice machine and gave herself a few minutes to hold a paper cup of crushed ice in her hand and let the little chips melt on her tongue because it was calming.

Only then did humiliation hit Jessie like a freight train.

Cody had been trying his damndest to help and she had completely flipped out on him. He must think she was a total basket case. Shame overwhelmed her. Her parents had told her time and time again that it wasn’t her fault when she got so upset. But it was hard to remember that now.

And to have flipped out like that right after they’d had sex...

“Ugh.”

Jessie made sure she didn’t get behind the wheel of her car until she was completely okay