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

was. He turned his head left and stared into the darkness.
    Snap! Closer this time, the sound was definitely a footstep, and definitely from a big person or a big animal. Or a big... foot.
    Seconds later, another halting stutter-step sounded through the forest. It was twenty, maybe twenty-five feet from where he was sitting, but whatever animal it was, Orion was downwind. He sniffed the air silently, and then squinted in confusion. It smelled like... something dead? Not the sickening, horrible odor of decay, but just a very faint, musty, earthen aroma.
    It wasn’t a nice odor, but then again it wasn’t especially bad either. There was an odd aspect to the smell. He wrinkled his nose, sniffing the air again as the top of a head emerged from the undergrowth.
    A pair of pigtails bobbed on either side of a very large, and very... lumpy? head. Orion craned his neck, not really sure what he was looking at, or even sure if he was actually awake.
    Another sniff, and he recognized the mystery aroma. Lilac? Orion shook his head. Jamesburg was weird, sure, but this was...
    “Huhn...?” the visitor groaned. She shuffled out into the open.
    Orion’s eyes shot wide open. The pigtails were just about the most normal thing on the creature he beheld. The face was slightly green under the silver moonlight, the arms massive, powerfully muscled and obviously strong, but also slightly different lengths.
    She took one step, tromping on a branch that had to be at least two inches around, and snapped it right in two. Orion just watched, dumbfounded, as the creature groaned again, bent down and picked up one half of the broken stick, and then stuck it straight in her mouth.
    A line of impossibly straight, square teeth opened as a long tendril of drool ran down the thing’s open lips all the way to the ground where it collected on the leaves at her feet. She opened up, inserted the stick and took a bite .
    “What in the fuck?” Orion accidentally whispered under his breath. Did that thing just...
    And then she took another. The thing groaned like she’d just got a mouthful of perfectly cooked steak. “Go...od,” it said, very slowly. With the third bite, she finished her snack, crunched and crunched, and then swallowed the wood.
    Orion closed his eyes tight, massaged his forehead with his palm, and then opened them again, expecting that he’d been hallucinating. Unfortunately? No, the thing was still there, although then he noticed there were a couple leaves in the corner of her mouth. Had this thing just been wandering around, eating whatever she came across?
    A slow turn to the left, then the giant pried some fungus-covered bark off a fir, and stuck that in her mouth, too. Orion just kept shaking his head, watching her shuffle around and graze. He’d never been one for watching train wrecks, or rubbernecking at accidents on the road, but for some reason, he could not stop himself from just staring at this impossibly strange creature going on about her day.
    She bent to get the other half of the stick – apparently her favorite of the completely inedible treats she’d eaten – but something caught her attention. She turned her head very quickly in Orion’s direction. He noticed that her eyes, just like her massive arms, they were slightly uneven, but all things considered, that wasn’t the strangest thing about this lady.
    “Hell...er?” she asked. “Boo...ba...ba?”
    It was almost like she was learning to speak and trying out sounds. He’d never had kids of his own, but Orion had been around babies a time or two, and had watched them do the same thing.
    For a moment, Orion considered responding, but something kept him from taking that particular leap just yet. He didn’t want to threaten or frighten this thing, and certainly didn’t want her attacking him, because even with Orion’s size, she was about as big.
    She took another halting, shuffled step toward the tree where he was, and her dress caught his attention. It looked