Bearly Breathing (Alpha Werebear Shifter Paranormal Romance) by Lynn Red

back and smelled the night, remembering her scent, the way her hair and her skin and her hands felt. Remembering the heat from her body and how badly he’d wanted to grab her away, make her his.
    And then he remembered that there were other things that he had to take care of before he could allow himself to be in love.
    Absent mindedly, Orion turned the crank on his dilapidated old radio. Someone fuzzed in, talking about how Bigfoot wasn’t actually an ape man, but was in fact an extra-dimensional being, and the reason no one ever catches one, or finds a dead one, is because they can teleport.
    He scoffed a laugh. “You come to this place, Bigfoot will be about the least weird thing you find. Although... it is a little weird that I’ve never seen one, what with all the time I spend lurking around in forests.”
    Taking a deep breath, he inhaled the night air. Cool, slightly damp, and tinged with aromas of earth and fir sap. The only face he saw when he closed his eyes was Clea’s gentle, heart shaped face, her up-swept eyes, and those entrancing light blue irises. He shook his huge head, laughing. “God, what’s happening to me? I go from street tough biker-gang enforcer to lovelorn teenager in... two weeks? That must be some kind of record.”
    A rustling sound caught his immediate attention but seconds later it quieted. He passed it off as a squirrel, or a rabbit, or a teleporting Bigfoot. Turning the knob on his radio, he scanned the airwaves until the dulcet tones of the BBC’s news hour jingle met his ears. Something was going on in Jordan, stocks in Hong Kong were down, but those in Beijing and Japan were up. There was some kind of controversy about a new energy production method that had to do with burning corn husks.
    It all just washed over Orion’s head as he watched the sky. A meteor streaked from east to west, through the belt of his namesake constellation. For all the shit his father had pulled, at least he got a good name for his pain. Although Orion always kind of suspected his mother had named him, since as far back as he could remember, all his dad called him was college boy, dipshit, or stupid.
    He didn’t need any of that anymore.
    It felt good to be free, to be on his own.
    Even if he had to keep watching his back to make sure he didn’t take a couple slugs, it was worth the sleepless nights and the paranoia.
    “But Clea,” he said, rolling her name around his tongue like a deep drink of ice cold beer on a hot Jamesburg afternoon. “I’ve got to keep her safe from him. I can’t let them find out about her.”
    Dangling his leg along the limb where he was sitting, he slowly moved it back and forth, the bark scratching his calf, tugging gently at the hair. He knew something had to be done, but not what , exactly. He couldn’t take on the entire gang, not unless he...
    Wait a minute. All I’d have to do is take them by surprise. There was a reason I was the chief enforcer, even if I wouldn’t kill, they still relied on me. I’m the biggest, I’m the best... and if I can get the jump on them, I can cut off the hydra’s head before the rest can react .
    But cut one off, and more will sprout.
    He grunted as the jangly BBC intro music played again, this time heralding the beginning of Asian financial market discussion hour. That meant it was two in the morning. Orion could generally get within a few minutes of telling time by the sun, but, he did have every single thing that played on BBC radio memorized by jingle, so as long as he had a radio, he could tell the time.
    “Or I could get a damn watch,” he said, chuckling.
    A snap caught his attention again. This one thicker, heavier sounding, than the one before. This was no squirrel.
    Gingerly, he pushed himself up on his hands and got his feet underneath him, balancing carefully in the crotch of a massive, comfortable sleeping tree. The muscles in Orion’s arms flexed tight and then released as he listened for another sound.
    There it