A Change To Bear (A BBW Shifter Romance) Read online

  A Change To Bear

  By

  A.E. Grace

  Second Edition

  * * *

  Books by A.E. Grace

  A Change To Bear

  Bear This Heat

  At Full Sprint

  Love of a Tiger

  Her Bark His Bite

  * * *

  Each of my books are standalone, though they are set within a shared universe. Please enjoy them in any order you wish.

  * * *

  Sign up for my mailing list to keep updated on new releases. Click Here! Or paste this into your browser: http://eepurl.com/OKsOP

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  Or visit my website: www.aegrace.com

  Table of Contents:

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  License

  Icy fingers of fear gripped her windpipe. Terry Spencer could draw just shallow breaths. Her wild eyes scanned left and right. All she saw was darkness in the spaces between the trees. All she heard was the rustling of wet leaves as the lupine predator prowled in the night, waiting for its moment to strike out at her.

  “Terry!”

  She whipped her head around and saw Liam, naked, bounding toward her. Blood turned black by the night streamed from the gash down the side of his face. It bubbled from his abdomen where the wolfen hunter’s dagger-like claws had raked him and split the skin.

  “Oh, Liam, thank God!” she cried, running into his arms.

  He held her hard, tight, and wrapped up in his muscular arms, she felt safe again. Cool relief washed over her, but it did not drown out her fear. She knew she was still being hunted.

  “It’s here,” she whispered. “It wants me, I know it does! It wants to hurt me.”

  “I won’t let it,” Liam growled, his voice rumbling with conviction. “Come on!”

  He pulled her, and together they threaded their way through the thin trees, weaving left and right. They were moving toward the nearby lake, where the shimmering reflection of the full moon glowed a bright, ghostly blue.

  “Where are we going?” she asked.

  “You’re going into the lake,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  “This wolf doesn’t like water.”

  “Why can’t we just run?”

  “We can’t run!” Liam hissed, turning hard eyes on her. His gaze, full of aggression, softened as soon as he met her wet orbs. “We can’t, Terry. He’ll just find us later. I have to confront him.”

  “But look what he did to you,” she whispered, gesturing at the deep cuts in his stomach. She squinted, did a double take, and then shook her head in disbelief. “Oh my God, are these wounds healing already?”

  “He caught me by surprise,” Liam said through gritted teeth. “It won’t happen again.”

  They ran past the line of the trees, onto sticky grass that shone with condensation. Crouching, he guided her to the lake. “It’s not deep,” he said. “Go out there, until the water is at your chest.”

  Terry’s breathing quickened. She doubted if this was a good idea. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. He’s afraid of water, always has been. Now get out there!”

  She nodded and sucked on her lower lip as she waded out into the lake. The cool water crept up her body and, even in the warm subtropical night, chilled her to the bone.

  “Terry,” he said, crouching low. Her eyes roamed over Liam’s naked body. Though blood leaked from his wounds, and though blotches of his flesh had turned blue with bruising, she saw in him a stillness, a physical serenity. His muscles were not shaking from exertion, he was not panting. His tight body appeared even more deeply defined in the moonlight.

  “Yeah?”

  “This is not the best time, but…”

  “But?”

  “You’re my mate. I know it now.”

  The words passed through her mind in slow motion. Was this some proclamation of love… shapeshifter style?

  “Just worry about the wolf!” Terry hissed back a moment later. His lips flicked a quick grin, and the cute dimple in his cheek dug deep. Even though their lives were in danger, she allowed herself a small smile back.

  Liam steadied himself on the ground, eyes toward the tree line, waiting for the wolf. Terry grimaced as the first bone cracked. It shook his whole body, echoed in the night. It was his pelvis, and it had snapped clean down the middle.

  He released a mild grunt of pain, and in her mind she imagined the nerve endings within his body melting down, becoming mush. His body began to lose shape. A short snout punched out from his face.

  It was straight body-horror imagery.

  “Your mate,” she whispered at him, but she was certain that her words went unheard. He was no longer a man, but not yet his bear.

  This could be the last day of her life. That fact froze her, terrified her. Panic rippled down her spine. She didn’t want to die. She had learned so much, seen so much. Shapeshifters existed! Who could have thought? She had met one, felt an invisible pull to him, something she could not deny.

  This was the first page of a new chapter of her life, and then the wolf had turned up, threatened to tear it all to shreds.

  The wolf barked, and the ugly burst of sound rippled the water around her. It galloped from the tree line, birthed by the blackness there, teeth glinting like blades, and yellow eyes trained on her.

  “Liam!” Terry screamed, but he was already running toward the wolf. His brown bear, massive, moved with deceptive speed. Each heavy step seemed to shake the earth.

  She watched as the two animals ran toward each other, one fighting to protect her, one fighting to kill her.

  How did it come to this?

  *

  Two weeks earlier…

  Terry Spencer stormed down the street, each forward step building up her confidence. A drop of cold rainwater rolled down the bridge of her nose and then dropped straight off it, but she was too determined, too distracted to notice.

  This was the right thing to do!

  It was what she told herself over and over as her soggy gray flats slapped against the pavement.

  She wore her hair in a high ponytail of wavy chestnut-brown, and it bobbed up and down with her steps, sent off it a shimmering spray of rainwater every time her foot came down. Turbulent doubts swirled in her stomach; it was a nervousness of such intensity she couldn’t remember ever feeling anything like it before.

  She was about to completely change her life, uproot it. What if everything went wrong? Just touching on the thought was almost too much, and she knew that she couldn’t let herself. If she did, she might lose her courage. If she did, she might get to the end of the street, turn around, and go back home, defeated.

  And she wasn’t about to lose!

  She knew in many ways she was her own worst enemy. This time, she was going to defeat that enemy. She wasn’t going to let fear of change, of uncertainty, stop her from doing something she wanted to do, something she had always wanted to do.

  Hearing the rain-smudged grumble of a car behind her, she flicked her umbrella to the side, angled it against the wind, and all just in time t
o catch a filthy spray of charcoal-colored drain water. The driver only managed to soak her already wet feet, but that was why she had worn the oldest, grubbiest flats she had, ones she reserved for the Sundays when she helped her father weed the small back garden of the Teddington town house she grew up in.

  With a rush of victory at having shielded herself against the driver’s inconsiderate broadside, she wheeled around, focused on the blurred red brake lights of his car, and put up her middle finger.

  “Prick!” she yelled.

  She resumed her course, happy with herself, and saw a young mother holding her toddler in one arm and an umbrella in the other barely ten paces away. She bit her teeth together, exchanged an embarrassed glance with the woman, muttered a quiet apology, and put her head down and sidled past her. She was no stranger to foot-in-mouth moments, and so recovered with ease.

  Terry rounded the corner at the end of her street, saw a great corridor of silver-gray mist kicked up by the traffic, and ducked her head down and crossed the road. She could almost imagine that she was tasting the tarmac, garnished with a bit of tire.

  Her feet squelched all the way up the high street. She found the nearest travel agent, and proceeded to whip herself inside as quickly as possible. This was the right thing to do! She was going to do it!

  Mushy carpet greeted her feet. Terry felt it depress like a half-flat tire. In a flurry of movement, her coat was off, the umbrella was in a blue bucket placed near the door, and strands of her hair that had loosened themselves were tucked behind her ears.

  “Horrible outside, isn’t it?” a young man said, walking toward her with his hands clasped together. His frame was noodle-thin, which distorted his ill-fitting suit. He looked too young to be a travel agent – at least, one who was experienced – and Terry, consequently, wasn’t too convinced.

  “Yes,” she agreed, smiling. She looked around the small office, but all she saw were empty desks. “Where is everybody? And why is it so warm?” The heating was on, but someone had fiddled with the temperature controls with excessive bravado. It was a rainy day at the tail end of spring, not mid-January.

  The young man scanned around, and paused, unable to think up a suitable explanation to either question. “Is there something I can help you with?” he asked, apparently deciding to abandon the attempt altogether.

  “I need to book a flight, after which I’ll be switching onto a couple of trains,” Terry said. No, she stated. She nodded afterward once, a bold and decisive punctuation point. It was more for her own benefit. She was about to turn her life upside down, after all. She had to at least look and sound confident, if only for herself.

  “Okay, that should be fine. If you would, please?” The boy gestured at an empty seat at one of the desks. She peered at him for a moment. He did look young. His voice was high-pitched and tinny. Her own voice held considerably more body in it. If she bumped into him wearing a school uniform, she wouldn’t blink.

  But Terry recognized that she was fixating on his young appearance because she was afraid. She was afraid that she might be making a terrible life decision, and that this was simply some form of displacement. Or something. She’d read a book on psychology not too long ago, but the details eluded her now. Maybe she was just looking for an excuse not to do this, to leave the travel agency.

  “Are you an intern?” Terry asked. She noticed that the boy recoiled slightly, and she decided it would be best to soften the question a bit. “I only ask because it’s very urgent, and I need to make sure that everything is done correctly.”

  “I understand,” he said, putting up his hands a little below his chest. “But you’re in very good hands. Trust me.” He smiled at her, blue eyes wide. She thought she detected a bit of Australian in his accent.

  “Okay.” Terry took a deep breath, tried her best to calm her nerves, but found that she couldn’t manage to do so. She pulled out the black metal chair, sat down, and put her elbows on the desk. She leaned forward, resting her chin onto her two balled fists, and peered at her unadorned fingers, and unpolished nails.

  “Well, you see,” she began, speaking first at her hand, before looking up at the young travel agent. “I’m planning on going to Vietnam by way of China. Hong Kong, and Southwestern China, to be precise. I want to then walk across the border to Vietnam at Pingxiang, which should plop me out pretty much right into Hanoi. Or a little north of it. I think that’s correct. I read about it on someone’s travel blog.”

  Terry realized she was speaking rapidly; it had all spilled out of her like water through the crack of a dam. She was nervous, and why shouldn’t she be? Quitting her job, leaving her home country, and going on the road for who knows how long… what if it all went to hell? What if she burned all her savings, and when she came back home, couldn’t find a job?

  “Does that sound like a good idea? Actually, I’ve always wanted to go traveling, you know? Like, proper backpacking, just moving from place to place, seeing all sorts of different cultures, trying different foods. But I’ve just never had the courage to do so. It’s always seemed like a silly idea, and the longer I didn’t do it, the sillier it became. Asia was always my first choice, not just because it’s cheap, but also because it’s just so different, and—”

  Terry stopped herself, and absently rubbed her hands against the tops of her thighs, smoothing out imaginary creases in her jeans.

  The young man blinked, took a moment to mentally map out the trip she had proposed. “Yes,” he said after a moment.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Yes, that sounds like a good idea. Miss…?”

  “Spencer. But call me Terry.”

  “Tom,” he said, and he pointed at himself. “Is my name,” he awkwardly added.

  Terry offered a brief smile. “Okay, so what do I need to do to make this happen?”

  “Well,” he said, switching into work-mode. “Let me take a look here. When were you planning on leaving?”

  “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” he echoed in surprise. “Okay, well, I can get you on a flight to Hong Kong tomorrow evening, but it’s a late flight, last one out of Heathrow.”

  “Great.”

  “And you wanted to get to Guangzhou by train? Guangzhou should be your first stop before you start, uh, traveling west through southern China?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how long were you planning on staying in Hong Kong for?”

  “I don’t know,” Terry said. She extended a finger toward him, her chin now resting on her two thumbs. “What do you suggest?”

  “A few days might be quite fun. Lots of shopping to do?”

  “I’m not going to shop, but thanks for the thought. I’m going to be backpacking through Vietnam, so the less I carry, the better.”

  “Ah, I understand. Well, then, I would suggest a couple of days, take in the sights, and then you can move on.”

  “Wonderful. Let’s do that.”

  Tom paused for a moment, humming. “And what sort of accommodation did you have in mind?”

  Terry looked at him, and was beginning to realize she hadn’t really thought this through. She had the broad strokes, but she had not even considered some of the finer details of her trip.

  For a moment, paralyzing panic gripped her. She had nothing planned! This was all so impulsive, so spur-of-the-moment. Was she making a gigantic mistake?

  But when she thought about her circumstances, she knew that, even if she was fumbling in the dark in a foreign country where she couldn’t speak the language, it would still be better than it was now. She desperately wanted a change of pace, some excitement, and Terry knew herself well-enough to know she’d put this off since her days at university. Her time was running out, and it was now or never. She had savings, she hated her job, and she was unattached.

  Why the hell not, then?

  Recovering, she looked at Tom, a new conviction in her eyes. “Something cheap, not too far away from everything—”

  “Nothing’s too f
ar away from anything in Hong Kong,” he interrupted.

  “Oh, you’ve been?”

  “Stopped off on my way back from Melbourne, which was where I went to university.”

  “Ah,” Terry murmured. “I thought I detected a bit of Australian in your accent.”

  “Really?” he asked. “Must have picked it up.”

  “You like it in Melbourne?”

  “Yeah,” he said, nodding.

  “Well, anyway,” Terry said, returning to the topic of her trip. “Something three star-ish would do. Private bathroom, of course. My budget isn’t huge.”

  “Okay,” he replied, pecking away at his keyboard. He presented a tablet to her, and on it was a glossy digital world map. Hong Kong was highlighted in a vibrant red, barely a pinprick, a dot on the southern coast of the enormous mass of land that was China. A line extended from it leading all the way to London. It was almost like a tether, Terry thought, and that was something she didn’t want. “This will demonstrate to you your route.”

  “Is that all it does?”

  “Well, you can see reviews of hotels we pull up and things like that. It’s quite fancy, but newly introduced, so we’re all still getting the hang of it around here. In fact, I think I’m the only one who knows how to use a tablet who works here.”

  “Right,” Terry said, ignoring the tablet. “And after Hong Kong I’ll be catching a train up to Guangzhou where I won’t spend any time, as I want to get on a connecting train straight to Pingxiang, so I can be in Vietnam the same day.”

  Tom clicked about on his computer for a bit. “Well, the good news is that getting to Guangzhou is easy, and there’s no particular need to make advanced bookings, but you can if you want.”

  “I do.”

  “But getting to the border will take you on an overnight train. So you won’t be in Vietnam the same day.”

  “Really?” Terry asked. She hadn’t remembered reading that bit on the blog.

  “Well, it is quite a long way.”

  “Can I get my own cabin?”

  “Well, singles aren’t available. There are two-bed cabins and four-bed ones. You could always buy both beds in a two-bed cabin if you want the privacy. That’s done fairly often.”