Marked (Primal Obsessions #2) - Cara Wylde Page 0,3

my head. Maybe it wasn’t real. Maybe I had just hit my head spectacularly hard and I was imagining things. No way people turned into animals. Bears. I glanced up. Nothing. I quietly and gingerly moved to the front of the car and looked around. There it was – brown fur. Okay, persistent hallucination.

“911, what is your emergency? Madam?” the woman repeated, over and over again, her voice mixing my reality with my delusions, but I was too shocked by what my eyes were seeing to reply to her. I just let my phone drop, and I screamed when the bear seemed to notice me and seemed to be reaching out her paw toward me. I watched the she-bear drag herself further through the broken glass, needing to come closer to me, and all I could do was crawl away, in fear mixed with awe. My back had just hit a tree on the side of the road, and luckily for me, she stopped, too.

Dead.

She looked dead.

“Oh, God, Rosalie, what now? What NOW?!”

When I was done with my new outburst of panic, I could no longer see the she-bear’s chest rising and falling. She’d stopped breathing, confirming my worst fears, yet I could definitely hear a baby’s soft cries.

With that new knowledge, this situation had gone from a terrible accident, to outright tragedy. I peeked in, craning my neck, and there it was, the source of the crying. Not a baby, but an actual child, a beautiful baby boy, with eyes blue like the petals of a forget-me-not flower. Was it a bear like her, I wondered? It didn’t matter. It was small and innocent, and I was going to help it. Him. Whatever.

I worked the door loose and picked him up in my arms, where he finally seemed to be calming down a little. I wondered if he had any idea about what had happened. I ran my hands over his little body, and he didn’t seem to have broken anything. He must’ve thought this was a game, because he giggled and smiled at me, a toothless, drooly smile. He was so cute and innocent.

“That makes one of us, buddy,” I whispered and smiled. All babies were pure and deserved a chance to live, and this one seemed so harmless, despite his mother being a damn bear.

A bear!

I shook my head in disbelief, still.

I looked around. No one was coming from either direction, from anywhere I cared to look. I grabbed my backpack, then tossed it over my free shoulder, ignoring my muscles and their protesting. I decided to continue on foot, through the forest, parallel with the road. I had no destination, but I knew I should be going through the forest, half-hidden by the trees, just in case there were more things like whatever had scared that she-bear into driving like a maniac and bumping into me. She must’ve been in big trouble.

At least the child had totally stopped crying.

With one last glance at the wreckage, I held the boy tighter and started running toward my new life.

Our new life, I supposed.

Two

Brooks

I was putting the kettle on when I felt it – a sharp pain in my chest. I grunted, pressed my hand to my heart, and fumbled with the stove to turn the burner off. I took a couple of steps back, grabbed the edge of the countertop behind me, and focused on breathing in and out. It felt like a heart attack. But that was ridiculous. Men like me didn’t suffer from the ailments of humans. Men like me, who were only half human and the other half pure beast, didn’t suffer from anything. Except from a broken heart, maybe. Why had this thought entered my mind all of a sudden? Another stab in my chest, and my instinct kicked in. My eyes went wide when I realized… I hadn’t seen Krista and Milo today. Granted I’d just woken up after a long night at the pub with the guys, and I was a little groggy and out of my element… What time was it? I grabbed my phone. It was eleven in the morning, and Krista wasn’t working today. She was on the second shift. I straightened my back, wincing when the pain didn’t subside. No. Everything was okay. It had to be. She was probably in her trailer with the cub. Not caring that I was only in a pair of old, faded pants, no shirt and no shoes, I stormed out and