Read Online So Much To Bear (A Werebear Erotic Romance) by Bethany Rousseau - Free Book Online Page A

Jennifer didn’t like. She came into the town proper,
her heart beginning to beat faster with concern. The town she had
grown up in was small—they’d had lynch mobs in their past, and
Jennifer knew for a fact that there were dark days that no one
spoke about in a voice above a whisper out of shame. Maybe it was
just Damon’s stories of watching the members of his clan and tribe
being hunted to extinction, but Jennifer didn’t like the sound of
the obvious crowd that had formed somewhere in the center of
town.

 
    Chapter Six
     

 
     
    Jennifer made her way deeper into the
town, following the sounds of angry discontent as they grew louder.
She was confronted by a large group, milling about, talking in low,
rumbling voices amongst themselves, frowns and scowls on all the
faces she could see. Some of the smoke that had guided her back to
her home town came from a bonfire that Jennifer caught glimpses of
at the center of the gathered mob—and that’s exactly what it was.
What had brought the mob together? Jennifer shook her head in
confusion, hearing the murmuring, muttering voices but unable to
make out details enough to figure out what had mobilized so many
people in the town. It was decades from the last time something
like this had happened in the quiet, sleepy village—part of the
reason that Jennifer had wanted to go away for college had been
because so little happened anymore in her hometown.
     
    Jennifer moved around the oblivious
crowd, peering at the people of all ages who had assembled, trying
to figure out just what was going on. As her confusion and
apprehension mounted, she spotted Robert—and he spotted her at
almost the same moment, his eyes widening with alarm and surprise.
Robert slipped out of the crowd and grabbed her arm, pulling her
back and towards an alley nearby. “Jen!” Robert said, shaking his
head and staring at her wide-eyed. “I can’t believe it.” Jennifer
stared at Robert in confusion.
     
    “What do you mean you can’t believe
it?” Robert shook his head again, looking at her as if she were a
ghost.
     
    “Liam said you were dead—I—I had to
believe him, when no one could find you in the woods where we’d
been.” Jennifer staggered back from Robert, shocked by the slightly
accusing tone in Robert’s voice.
     
    “Dead? Of course I’m not dead! I was
just…” she hesitated; she couldn’t tell anyone, even Robert, where
she had really been. “I was just lost in the woods. I was fine all
along.” Robert shrugged.
     
    “Liam said he’d seen you killed
himself. He said there was a beast in the woods, and he’d tried to
fight it with his knife to keep you from being hurt by it, but it
injured him and then killed you. He’s been telling everyone who
will listen that the beast killed you.” Jennifer shook her head in
bewilderment, trying to think of how Liam could have even concocted
such a ridiculous story—or how he could have been believed. But
then, she thought, she’d been missing for a day and two nights; she
knew that she was fine, but how could anyone in the town have known
that?
     
    “It’s not true at all—there was no
beast, I was never in any real danger—Robert—” The crowd shifted as
Jennifer struggled to explain what had happened without revealing
Damon’s existence, without putting the man who had gone to such
pains to protect her from Liam in danger. The mob of angry town
citizens swept past them, pulling Robert into their midst and
dragging Jennifer in their wake; Jennifer’s heart began to pound
even harder as she saw guns, knives, torches in the hands of people
she knew as the most mild-mannered of folk, their faces set in
angry lines.
     
    The humming, muttering murmur of
discontent had risen into shouts and chants, and Jennifer wheeled
around, trying to figure out where the crowd was going; they were
heading out of town, clearly, headed for the woods. As she looked
around in panic, she caught sight of Liam and his father at