Page 31 of Once Upon A Bear

“I don’t need help, thank you.”

He turned on his heel and bolted for the door, and Guinevere watched him leave, her heart somehow hurting at the loss of his presence.

She shouldn’t have pushed him away.

It was mean, and rude, and she should have been kinder. He was lonely and sad, and she had been cruel to send him away because she was worried she was getting too close to him.

This was highly inconvenient.

She didn’t want to care about Gideon Rendon.

He was only her patient, and she was being silly.

Magic users couldn’t fall for nobility.

Guinevere swept up the hair and turned her attention to her books. She had to figure out what had gone wrong—probably too much of an ingredient. But which one had she put in for the hair problem?

She couldn’t remember, and that was concerning, because she almost never forgot her potions. And yet she couldn’t remember what she had put into this one. All she could remember was the way Gideon had bravely chugged the potion and told her how well she’d done even though she’d given him hair longer than hers.

And how soft it had been when she was running her fingers through it.

She shook her head. The potion. She had to figure it out. Fortunately, she kept good notes, and so she would review them.

Guinevere sat at her table and reached for her notebook. She was flipping through it, looking for the page with her notes, when she heard a howl of pain.

Her heart leaped into her throat.

It was Gideon.

She ran for the door, snagging her bag as she did.

Guinevere hurried through the forest, searching for Gideon. He had to be here somewhere. She could hear the sounds of an animal in pain, interspersed with the very human sound of him calling her name in a broken voice.

What had happened?

Had the men in town decided to take action with the bear they’d been seeing? What if they’d been lying in wait for him?

She ran faster as his voice called her name again, laced with pain.

“Where are you?” she called in frustration, looking behind every tree as she went. If he was human, he could easily be hidden behind one of them. The howling sounded as if he had turned back into a bear—and as much as she didn’t want that to be the case, it would be easier to find him in bear form than if he was a human lost in the woods.

He was bigger as a bear.

“Guinevere,” he cried out again, much closer this time, and she turned the corner on a large, felled tree and saw him.

He lay on the ground facing her in his bear form, his eyes closed, his sides heaving with each labored breath.

“What happened?” she asked as she slid to a stop next to him, falling to her knees in the dirt.

She reached for his massive head and lifted it in her hands, trying to inspect him carefully. His head was far too heavy for her, but she didn’t see anything wrong with it.

He’d lapsed into silence since she’d arrived.

“Gideon,” she said forcefully, shaking his head. “Wake up. What happened?”

She couldn’t find anything, but then she saw a chain traveling from underneath his body toward the felled tree.

“Oh, no.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. They’d laid a trap.