Beasts Within (BBW Shifters) Page 2

  When he got close enough, he could tell that it was a woman. She was lying on her back in the space next to the guardrail, and her clothes were plastered to her body. All he could tell was that she was a short little thing with generous curves, and Karic mentally slapped himself for noticing things like that when she was clearly in trouble and worn out from the way her chest was heaving as she fought to breathe.

  “Excuse me, ma'am?” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the pounding rain and the wind that had picked up. “Ma'am?”

  The woman sat up quickly, eyes squinting as she tried to focus on him. “Who are you? What do you want?” she asked, and her voice seemed to tremble. Well, that made sense. It was a warm night, but after taking a plunge into the river, she was probably cold anyway, and she was clearly winded.

  “My name is Karic,” he replied. “Do you need help? Only it's raining, and you're on the side of the road.”

  A dry laugh was her response. “Yeah, I'd noticed that. You…are you from this side of the river?”

  That was an odd question, but Karic nodded, pushing sodden hair out of his face. The longer he stood there, the wetter he was getting, and the remaining drive back to his house was going to be highly unpleasant at this rate, but he couldn't just leave her there. “Look, it's probably going to be coming down like this for the rest of the night at least, and if you need a ride or something, I can help you. Or a place to stay for the night, even? Just…you can't stay out here.”

  He watched as she chewed on her lip, and he couldn't help but smile at seeing the familiar action on another face. Karic didn't know what was hard to decide about getting out of the rain or not, but he supposed he was a stranger to her, so it made sense. This was clearly a woman who had something to be afraid of. Who had something to hide. Or maybe she was being chased, he didn't know.

  Just as he was about to ask again, the woman stretched out one hand in his direction. “Oh,” Karic said, and he could have slapped himself. “Right. Let me help you up there.” He hurried over to her and took her hand, brows furrowing when it was warmer that it should have been. He looked at her face, seeing that she had closed her eyes and seemed to be gathering herself together. “Are…you hurt?” he asked. “I can probably carry you.” Shifters, especially those of the canine persuasion, were gifted with strength, and her ample curves aside, this woman was probably easily lifted.

  Her eyes were on him a second later, and she nodded. “Please,” she said, voice soft. “I think I twisted my ankle when I fell.”

  Karic nodded in return and was careful not to jostle her too much as he knelt and got his arms under her. He rose onto one knee and then the other, holding her close to his chest as he made his way back to the car. The woman was soaked through, and he could feel the frantic thrum of her pulse as he held her. “It's okay,” he said. “I'm not going to hurt you.”

  “I know,” she murmured back, and her voice sounded weaker than it had before. “I don't think you've ever hurt another living thing. Not on purpose.”

  Karic's mouth opened to ask her how she could possibly figure that, but when he looked down, he saw that she was unconscious. “Hell,” he swore under his breath. He'd been planning to have her ride in the front with him, but instead he got her settled across the back seat. His upholstery would dry, and he was almost as wet as she was at this point anyway.

  It wasn't a long drive back to his place, and Karic couldn't help but glance in the rearview mirror at his unexpected passenger every few minutes. She was pretty for a girl who had climbed out of the river, her face sweet and cherubic and framed by dark hair that was escaping from the bun it had been pulled into. There was a bag slung over her shoulder, which definitely supported the theory that she was running from something, and Karic found himself wondering what it was or if she needed help. She looked young, definitely younger than him, and he could smell the musky scent of lion under the water and fear that otherwise clung to her. A shifter, then. He knew there was a pride nearby, on the other side of the river, which definitely went a long way towards explaining why she had wanted to know which side of the river he was from.

  Karic didn't know anything about the pride at all, but he had seen members of it out and about in town. He didn’t do packs or groups, preferring to be alone most of the time, and if this woman was running from her pride, then it seemed like he had the right idea. He'd never had time for the dynamics that went along with packs and similar groups. Karic liked to be able to do what he wanted when he wanted to, and he generally preferred the company of humans to other shifters when at all possible. That was one of the reasons he loved this town so much. People knew about shifters and were more than tolerant of them, but humans outnumbered them five to one, and it was much more comfortable in Karic's mind by being surrounded by other shifters all the time. Shifters were unpredictable, territorial, and brash, and he got stressed out just thinking about it.

  Luckily, he was pulling into his driveway before long, sighing at the fact that it was still pouring down rain outside. It would be warm and dry inside his house, but he had to get himself and this mystery woman out of the car and into the house before he could take advantage of that.

  “Shouldn't be too hard,” he mumbled as he turned the car off and glanced back at the woman once again. He couldn't help but smile at how much more peaceful she looked when she was out cold and not shivering in the rain, but he shook himself and headed back out into the rain to get her out of the car.

  Ten minutes and much muted swearing later, and Karic had them both inside. He had dripped an impressive puddle onto the floor of his entryway, and he sighed and added that to his list of things to take care of tomorrow before his shift. It was looking less and less like he was going to get to have the nice relaxing morning in bed that he wanted, but he couldn't deny that he had brought this on himself. “As per usual.” He put the sleeping woman down in one of the chairs in the living room and then spread a few towels on the couch, moving her once it was ready so that she could lie flat.

  His plan to go to sleep when he got home was clearly foiled. It wouldn't do for her to wake up in a strange house with him off in the bed, so he sighed and went to go change into something clean and dry and then heat up the Chinese food in his refrigerator, planning to settle in until the woman woke up.

  Either the beeping of the microwave or the smell of warm noodles and chicken was enough to wake her, and when Karic came back into the living room, carrying two bowls of General Tso's over chow mein, he was surprised to see amber eyes trained on him.

  “Oh,” he said, and then rolled his eyes at how very stupid that sounded. “I mean, hi. It's good to see you're awake. Do you remember me?”

  She hesitated and then nodded. “This is your house?”

  “Yeah. I didn't know where you were going, and since you passed out and I wasn't about to leave you on the side of the road to be found by some crazy stranger, it seemed like the best thing to just bring you here.”

  “Thank you,” she said softly, wincing as she went to sit up. “Fuck, what an awful night.”

  “Coulda been worse,” Karic pointed out. “You could have drowned.”

  She shot him a pointed look. “I feel like I did.”

  His cheeks colored as he realized that she was still soaking wet and he hadn't offered to do anything about that yet. “Right. God, I'm sorry. It's late, and I was at work forever, so my brain isn't…right. Um…” What was the matter with him? He dealt with people all day and didn't get flustered like this, but he was just going to chalk it up to exhaustion. Not to say that she wasn't pretty because she was. Her dark hair was curling around her face where it had escaped from the bun, and in the light of the living room, Karic could see that she had creamy skin and a smattering of freckles that went across her nose and cheeks. She looked so young, and the compulsion to ask her what she was running from was strong. Instead he got himself together and focused on the matter at hand. “I'll show you to the bathroom. You can have a show
er and get the river water off, and I'll set some of my things out for you to wear.”

  “They…might not fit,” she offered, wrinkling her nose.

  Karic grinned. “No, I've got just the thing. C'mon.” He set the food down on the coffee table and watched as she got up from the couch, making a face when she stumbled, favoring her right leg. “Your ankle?”

  “Yeah, I really think I messed it up when I slipped into the river.”

  “Well, let's work on getting you dry, and then I'll take a look at it, okay? For now…” He went over and offered her his arm, bracing her as they made their way up the stairs. “I'm Karic, by the way. I don't know if you remember me mentioning that.”

  She nodded. “I do. I'm…Camilla. I…thank you. For not just leaving me there on the side of the road. And for being so nice to some girl you don't know.”

  Karic shrugged. “It's no problem, really. Apparently I've got a white-knight complex, and I can't say no to a damsel in distress. Or anything in distress, really.”

  “That's not a bad quality to have,” Camilla pointed out.

  “Yeah, well. It's gotten me into trouble sometimes.” He flipped the light on in the bathroom and stepped back from her. “Can you manage from here, do you think?”

  Camilla nodded, looking around. “I think so. If you hear something crash, then it's me, falling over.”

  “I'll be sure to come save you before you drown in the shower,” Karic said with an easy smile. “You go ahead and get in. I'll leave some clothes outside the door. Feel free to use anything you find in there, too. There'll be some food waiting when you get out.” From the way Camilla's stomach growled at that, she approved.

  “Thank you. Really,” she said again, meeting his eyes.

  “You're welcome. Really. Just holler if you need something.” And he went into his room, leaving her to it while he hunted down clothes for her.

  It was getting hard to breathe, and Camilla cursed herself for not planning this better. The night was pitch black, the inky darkness seeming to close in around her. The heavy clouds in the sky obscured any light from the moon or stars that might have lit her path as she ran, so she had to trust her balance and her memory in order to keep moving. She knew these woods well enough, having spent her whole life that she could remember in this area, but the darkness twisted trees and roots into things that seemed to lurk, waiting to trip her up and send her sprawling. It was at least six miles from the large manor like house the pride lived in to the main road, and she had no way of knowing how many of those miles she had already gone.

  If she had been smart, she would have stopped to at least get her keys before bolting from the house in the dead of night. She could have driven this distance in a matter of minutes, avoided the woods all together, and been in another state by morning. But she hadn't wanted to risk the sound of her ancient car starting alerting anyone to the fact that she was sneaking out because things would have been so much worse than they already were if they found out that she had plans to leave. It was safer to travel the woods anyway. Anyone could have seen her on the road, but very few actually made their way through the woods at night, especially when the air was heavy with the smell of an approaching rainstorm. So this was the best plan.

  It had taken months for her to save up enough money to be able to escape since the leader of the pride didn't allow her to work more than a couple of hours a day. He got antsy when she was too far from him and even made her call in sick a few times a month just because he didn't want her to leave. Honestly it was a wonder she'd kept the job for as long as she had.

  All of that was going to be a thing of the past now, though. She would get away. She would go somewhere where people weren't as aware of shifters as they were here, somewhere where she could hide what she was, blend into the background and not be used like a tool anymore. Camilla didn't really know how she was going to make that happen, but there had to be a way.

  All she knew was that once she reached the river, she would be safe.

  The Abrams River divided the smaller, outlying part of the city from the main part where she could buy a train ticket or a bus ticket and get further away. Once she was across the bridge, she could make her way to the nearest station, but it seemed like that was going to be easier said than done. Overhead, thunder rolled and a fork of lightning flashed, illuminating the area around her for one breath catching moment that made her heart race. She knew that there was no way that any of the members of her pride were lurking nearby; none of them would risk getting caught out in this, and it was late enough that they were all heading to sleep anyway, but in the dark, she couldn't be sure that she was safe.

  “Hate the dark. Really hate the dark,” she huffed, panting as she kept running. It would have been so much easier to do this if she could just shift, spilt her skin and let the lioness out to run wild through these woods, but she was carrying a bag with all the things she couldn't bear to leave behind in it, and that would mean taking her clothes off, which would only be a hindrance in this case. Although, when the sky opened up and it started to rain on her, she was seriously considering it all the same. And didn't it just figure that it would start raining now? She had the worst fucking luck.

  The night seemed to get darker as she moved through the trees, and she had to slow down, both because her heart was pounding dangerously fast in her chest and because the ground was getting wet and muddy, leaves growing slick underfoot and wet earth threatening to suck her shoes from her feet. She would have expected the trees to delay the rain soaking things so fast, but apparently there were enough gaps that the water found its way through. The last thing she needed was to slip and hurt herself, end up with a twisted ankle or something that would just slow her down or get her caught, so she had to be careful as she picked her way over roots and past branches that scratched at her cheeks as she continued on. She was getting soaked as she moved, and Camilla knew she was going to be a muddy mess when she finally made it to town. It would be abundantly clear that she was running from something, and she could only hope that if someone found her, they would be kind enough to let her keep moving.

  Just keep going, she urged herself silently. You can do this. You have to do this. Shifter or not, Camilla was not built for this kind of thing with her short, chubby legs and full figure. She managed to run faster and get tired less easily when she shifted, but exercise didn't come naturally to her in her human form. But the thought of being caught and dragged back to Paul made her keep going as fast as she dared.

  Paul.

  He was the leader of their makeshift pride, put together from other lion shifters who had made their way into the town, some of them cast off from other prides for various offenses, and given their allegiance to Paul. He was in his early forties, tall, handsome, perpetually charming. Paul had a way of making sure that you were going to be loyal to him, subtly manipulating you until you did what he wanted and sometimes even thought it was what you wanted all along. And of course, he’d had her.

  Camilla had been a member of the pride for as long as she could remember, and no one had ever told her how she had come to be there. She was twenty-one now, and all she knew was the pride. All she knew was standing next to the throne-like chair that Paul had set up for himself in the room that served as the pride's meeting place when they needed to have discussions or when someone new wanted to join the pride.

  It was her hands. There was something about them that made her unique, made her able to see things that people wouldn't want her to see. And she had been trained to whisper those things into Paul's ear so that he could use them to his advantage.

  Camilla was sick of it. People had gotten hurt because of what she could do. People had been killed for thinking disloyal thoughts about Paul. They had been silenced before they could tell whatever secrets they knew, and it was all her fault. Sometimes she woke in the middle of the night, a scream trying to fight its way free of her from the images of the people she had wronged that flickered behind her eyes.<
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  “Never again,” she huffed as she ran. “No. Fucking. More.”

  She could see light ahead of her, the trees growing sparser on either side as she followed a makeshift path, feet slipping slightly. Camilla had never been this deep into the woods before, so she could only hope that she was heading in the right direction. The lights she was seeing could have been streetlights or the lights on the bridge, and a heady anxiety filled her at the thought that her freedom could be so close.

  She'd never been across the river. Sometimes members of the pride went out to get things since most of the stores were on that side, but they never took her. They never let her go anywhere other than to school when she was younger and to work now. And even then there was always someone nearby watching, making sure she didn't get any ideas about her own freedom.

  A branch or something snapped to her left, and it broke her concentration, making her snap her head to the side, heart racing. Nothing moved except the trees, branches pushed this way and that by the wind that was starting to pick up. Shadows moved in the distance, and Camilla forced herself not to stand there staring. If she had to, she would just shift. It would be awkward as all hell when she had to shift back later and didn't have her clothes or anything, but she would rather deal with that than be dragged back to the house.

  No, she had to keep moving.

  Unfortunately for her, not knowing this terrain well was more than just a minor hindrance, and the rain didn't help. The bridge was wide, made to be traversable by car or on foot, but she was coming at it from the wrong angle. As the trees thinned out more, she could see that she was meant to have veered left more. There was no way to reach the bridge from where she was standing, and the ground seemed to arch downwards at an angle that led straight to the river.