Page 9 of Once Upon A Bear

It was a terrible feeling to feel so alone in his own home, and yet he wasn’t sure it could ever be different.

How could it be?

There was no reason for it to change. His life had been forever changed when he’d come across a man in the woods fixing a dragon egg to the end of his staff.

No matter how many times he’d thought about that day, he couldn’t change it.

There was nothing he could do about the fact that he’d been arrogant and thought he ought to confront the stranger trespassing on his family’s land, when he should have run away as fast as he could.

If he could go back to the past, that’s what he would do.

He would run and not look back. He would avoid being cursed by a madman. Maybe then his life would have turned out the way he’d always thought it would.

But no, instead, he was here, running away from his family yet again as they celebrated something happy.

It wasn’t that they didn’t include him. If anything, they tried desperately to involve him in their lives, but it didn’t work. He had to be separate, kept apart. And after years of him keeping his distance, they didn’t fight for him anymore.

He was sure they didn’t want to, but he’d done well enough at staying away that they’d eventually given up.

For not only did he have to be a bear, but the sorcerer had woven into the curse that he couldn’t tell anyone about it. No matter what he tried, the words wouldn’t come out.

He could hardly allow himself to hope that this would be different, that Guinevere would be able to break his curse the way she said she could, because if he hoped, then he would be forced to reckon with it if the curse was never broken.

It was better to pretend that she had said nothing than to hope that things might change, even as he desperately prayed that she could break it, that things could be different, and that he could go back to living life as Gideon Rendon once more.

Because life as Gideon the bear was not the life he dreamed of.

As he entered the woods, he found himself running, though he’d never been able to outrun his curse. Running had become a way of dealing with it. Plus, it helped to keep him in shape.

In the beginning, he’d let himself give in to the melancholy, and the resulting fitness decline had turned out to be a problem in his bear form, when he could no longer climb a tree to find food without nearly dying.

It was better when he stayed in shape.

Of course, that meant that there were plenty of young ladies his mother sent his way who saw an eligible young lord in prime condition and thought they would be a perfect fit.

But his mother could only host so many parties, and there were only so many eligible young ladies who would come to the Northlands, and Gideon absolutely refused to go to the city. There would be no place for him to hide in the city when his curse took hold.

And as much as Gideon Rendon disliked becoming a bear, he would rather be a bear than be dead in the city. So he stayed in the Northlands, away from many eligible young ladies…despite his mother’s pleading.

Not that any of them would want to marry a man who transformed into a bear without any way of stopping it.

Hopefully, someday, he would be able to change that.

If he wasn’t cursed, perhaps he wouldn’t mind the matchmaking as much, maybe he’d even enjoy the dance of finding a wife who could love him and didn’t only look at him for his title.

But with the curse, it was only frustrating, because he could desperately want to find someone, to find his future, and it didn’t matter. His future, right now, was to be a bear.

As he came to a stop, he found himself outside his den, and while he hadn’t planned on coming here, he wasn’t surprised. It was his safe place and where he often found himself when he ran with no destination in mind.

But now there was perhaps another reason drawing him to this place.

Gideon looked at the hill that Guinevere had disappeared behind. She lived so close, and he’d not once found her out here. At least, she said she lived close. Perhaps she lived farther than he’d assumed, and that was why she had evaded him for so long.

Before he truly realized what he was doing, he began ambling toward the hill.

Perhaps he should go see if she was making any progress on breaking his curse.

That was the only reason he was going, he told himself. He was not going to see her because he wondered if her hair truly was the color of honey that the bear cubs in his imagination had been.