Page 37 of Bred By the Beast

She studied him. “You’re a bear.”

“Yeah.”

“An actual bear.”

He swallowed. “Poppy, I understand if you’re scared.” What he needed was for her not to decide he wasn’t mate material anymore. What if all this was a turn off or deal breaker?

“I’m not,” she said.

“You don’t have to lie.”

He exhaled. “You just found out the man you’re sleeping with turns into a six-hundred-pound predator.”

“Is it six-hundred pounds?”

He blinked. “I don’t know. Probably closer to seven.”

“Wow.”

Wilder rubbed a hand over his face. “I thought you’d be scared. That you’d want to run when you found out.”

She stepped closer, placing her hand on his chest. “I’ve watched you care for bee colonies, find a cub a new home, and mend an injured fawn. That tells me who you are.”

“The bear is part of who I am.”

“I know.”

“You don’t understand,” he said.”

“Then explain it.”

“My bear is instinctive. Protective. Territorial. Because if someone threatened you...” His voice turned rough. “I don’t know where the line is. I’d tear them apart before I thought twice.”

“Would you ever hurt me?”

He answered without hesitation. “Never.”

Chapter Fourteen

Poppy watched as Wilder put the finishing touches on his home to make it secure again. It had been two weeks since they were attacked. The fawn he was helping to heal had already been let back into the wild. It amazed her how kind and gentle he was with all the animals.

They hadn’t really talked about his revelation. At first, she thought it was a big fat lie, but then everything else fell into place. The reason she thought of Wilder when she saw the bear. Why the bear disappeared whenever Wilder was nearby. The way the bees reacted as well as other wildlife. It completely explained the cub. It made total sense, and she didn’t feel crazy anymore. Bear shifters weren’t a fantasy.

“All done,” Wilder said.

She looked at him, and she thought about that room. “Your parents were killed?”

“Yes.”

Wilder didn’t talk about his bear shifter, and he didn’t talk about his past. They hadn’t talked about what went down a couple of weeks ago. She was done hiding from it. It felt like a living thing between them, creating an invisible rift.

“And that’s why you had to hide yourself in that room, to keep other ... beings safe,” she said.

“My parents were gone before they could teach me how to control everything.”

She felt so sorry for him. It must have been a nightmare. “You were lonely,” she said.

“I didn’t think of it as loneliness.” He shrugged.