Rose knelt next to Liam and tried to cover his wound with her hands. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I never should have come here,” she said. “If I never would have come, you’d still be alive.”
Liam laughed then. “I would have been breathing, yes, but I wasn’t really alive until I met you. I was an animal, going through the motions of being a man.”
“Hold on. Just hold on. Don’t say such stupid things. We’ll get you help.” Tears brimmed in her eyes. She took his hands in hers for what Liam thought was probably the final time.
“There’s no help. Just save yourself,” Liam said.
Ronald had walked a few paces away. He was holding his gun in one hand and his phone in the other, waving it around to try and find a signal.
“I can’t leave you,” Rose sobbed. Then she leaned over him and, placing one hand on his chest, she kissed him. Her lips were wet with tears and trembling. They were soft and warm and the kiss seemed to last forever.
For a moment, Liam could see the hitchhiker who had cursed him all those years ago. She was standing above him, ghostly and indistinct, totally invisible to Rose. The hitchhiker looked down at Liam and smiled.
There was a sound then like glass shattering and also like fabric tearing, and where Liam had been now stood an enormous bear.
“This is my mate,” it growled at Ronald. “My true mate. And any who threaten her will die.”
Ronald’s eyes went white with terror. He lifted the gun again and fired shot after shot into Liam.
But Liam didn’t even feel it.
The curse had broken. He was a full-blooded shifter again, and no weapon forged by man could hurt him.
Seeing that the bullets did nothing to Liam, Ronald whipped the barrel up to aim at Rose but before he got halfway there Liam surged forward and bit the gun out of Ronald’s hand, along with two bronze fingers. Ronald shrieked with pain, turned and ran away.
The beast was gone from Liam’s heart. They had been split and now they were reunited. He was whole again. He felt a clarity that he’d never had before. All of the rage and anger and disgust and regret he’d been carrying around with him had died with the curse.
He turned to Rose then, who was studying him with a look of wonder on her face. She reached out to touch his big bear head, patting him gently and then scratching behind his ears.
“Is this what you really look like?” she asked.
Liam shook his head, stepped back, and shifted.
Chapter 7
As a bear, Liam was handsome, with a golden brown fur that glowed in the sun. But as a man, he was heart-wrenchingly gorgeous. His light brown hair fell in his eyes and he smiled at her with a big toothy grin. His hands were normal again. His body was normal—no, better than norma
l—all muscular and thick.
A laugh of delight bubbled up from her lips.
“What the hell is going on?” she said.
“I was cursed,” Liam said. “Now I’m not. I think maybe sacrificing myself for you did it.”
“A kiss from a prince? Am I in a fairy tale?”
Liam smiled at her and her heart shattered into a million pieces.
“Do that again,” she said. “Make me feel this way forever.”
“I will,” Liam said softly, stepping closer to her. “But we’re not in a fairy tale. If we were, you could hum and have a little army of mice come and clean our house and badgers would rebuild the holes I put in the walls and birds would bring me clean clothes, because I really have none now.”
The man was entirely, gorgeously, magnificently naked. Rose glanced down and then glanced away. Her breath had gone all shallow and funny at the sight of him. She tried to focus her attention on a higher up part of his body.
Rose reached out and touched his chest. It was hot and firm and inviting. “Where’s the gunshot wound?”
“All healed up.”