Page 22 of Once Upon A Bear

She might have been able to help them figure it out sooner…but where was the fun in that? Thea and Nathaniel had figured it out on their own, and that was the important part.

“Me too,” Nathaniel said, nodding in agreement as he lifted Thea's hand and pressed a kiss to her knuckles.

Guinevere sighed and made her way out of the kitchen toward the front of the café, where Linnea was standing behind the counter.

“What’s got you down, Guinevere?” her friend said brightly, and Guinevere smiled.

“If I had to spend another moment with the two of them being lovestruck, I thought I might gag,” she told Linnea, who laughed.

“They're quite sickening, aren't they?”

“Not that you and Conrad are any better,” Guinevere grumbled.

“Someday you'll find someone who will love you the same way I have,” her friend said, leaning over to wrap her arm around Guinevere’s shoulders.

Guinevere tried not to, but she sagged into the friendly touch. She didn't get much of that these days.

But all too soon, the moment was over and Linnea let go, leaving Guinevere feeling alone once again.

Perhaps she would find someone like Linnea had suggested.

Or perhaps she would fall in love with Gideon and have to let him go, knowing that he was nobility and she was an illegal magic user.

Neither sounded like a good option.

Chapter ten

Gideon

Gideon woke on the floor, quite alone and quite cold. The hard wooden planks beneath him were not comfortable, and his warm fur had melted away, leaving him in his clothes once more.

He was fortunate that his clothes remained with the transformation. He didn’t have much experience with curses other than his own, but it seemed more far-fetched for his clothes to stay with him than for them to be torn to shreds when he turned into a bear.

If that was the case, his transformations would be far more awkward, and he would probably have fled the area long ago.

He did his best to escape to his den when he transformed into a bear for other reasons, though, after a few times where he’d been trapped in his room at home. Fortunately, those had been short-lived appearances of his ursine self, and he had transformed back with no one the wiser.

But this, this was not his room. Where was he?

He looked around the room with a fire against one wall, rows of neat storage on another, and a messy worktable in the corner.

Guinevere’s cottage.

That’s where he was.

And the lady of the house was nowhere to be found, and he was starving.

He was far too hungry for it to have been a short nap. The transformation often made him hungry, but this was more than the usual hunger from a few hours spent in his bear form.

It had probably been overnight, if not longer.

He stumbled to his feet, letting his balance readjust to being a quarter of his bear size, and began rummaging through her cupboards. He would have to pay her back for the food he was taking, but there was no way he would make it all the way home without eating something.

He looked through packets of flour and a bag of dried beans and some dried meat of some sort that seemed the most appealing. But then his eye caught the jar of golden goodness hiding in the back, and the bear inside him went feral.

She had a jar of honey.

He made his way to the table, where a chair was missing, and he located it next to the fire with a bowl and spoon sitting on it. Had she left something for him? He set down the jar of honey and discovered the pot of porridge on the fire.