Page 11 of His Bear Bombshell

The problem was, I had no idea.

I yelped as another intense cramp had my belly tensing up. Martin froze, standing on his back legs, his little arms splayed wide.

Unable to stand the pain any longer, I shifted back into my human form. I didn’t care about how fat I had gotten, or that Martin was going to see it. I just wanted the pain to stop.

But it didn’t stop. The second I shifted back, the strangest stabbing, aching, pulling sensation —kind of like shifting, but not— struck me around my taint, of all places. My knees buckled, making me drop to the soft grass beneath me.

“Ow,” I cried, reaching a shaking hand between my legs. “What the—” I cut myself off as I felt moisture and an open seam that had not been there before.

Whimpering, I lifted my hand to inspect it, seeing a dark-ish liquid staining my fingertips in the slivers of moonlight coming through the trees above us. The coppery scent told me what it was, even without better lighting.

Blood.

“What’s wrong?” Martin sounded as scared and confused as I felt. I hadn’t even noticed him shifting back to his human form, but he crouched in front of me with worry lines crinkling his forehead.

“I-I’m bleeding,” I whispered, not understanding what I had done or what was happening to me. Had something gone wrong during my shift? I’d never heard of that happening before, but maybe with my weight gain and lethargy, I wasn’t concentrating, or…something.

“What? Where?”

Lower lip trembling, I gestured helplessly between my legs. Another cramp had my stomach tightening up, and I groaned, wrapping my arm around myself. “I…I think I’m dying.”

“Lie on your back,” my best friend demanded, sounding nothing like his usual playful self. I could hear the fear in his voice as he added, “I’m going to have a look and then…then I’ll get help. I just…I want to know what to tell the doctors when I get them, okay?”

I nodded, biting my lip so I didn’t cry out as he carefully spread my thighs apart. With all the pain and terror, I didn’t have a chance to feel embarrassed about the situation, or about him seeing what had become of me.

“Whoa,” he muttered, and I struggled to prop myself back up on my elbows.

“What? What’s whoa—owwwww.” My belly seized again. Tears leaked from my eyes and ran down my face.

“It doesn’t look like a tear or anything,” my best friend said. “It…it almost looks like…well, like it’s meant to be there, I guess.” He looked up from between my legs and suggested, “Maybe it’s an omega thing? An evolutionary thing now all these alphas exist again? Maybe…maybe something to do with your heat cycles?”

Another cramp wracked my body. “I’m bleeding and my stomach is killing me. This can’t be norm—fuck!” The space between my legs ached —almost stabbed— with a strange sort of pressure.

“I’m going to get a doctor. Just” —Martin cringed— “hang in there.”

Then he pushed back to his feet and shifted into his raccoon form, racing off through the forest faster than I’d ever seen him run.

Chapter Six

Neighborhood watch was usually uneventful. I didn’t fully understand the pack’s need for security at the best of times, but the additional roster during pack runs had something to do with a kidnapping attempt during a run a few years earlier. That was all I’d needed to know when I originally volunteered my services.

Admittedly, when I’d first volunteered, I had still been human — a potential shifter at best. After the successful Unlocking, I was disappointed to miss out on the occasional pack run, but I was proud to help keep the rest of the pack safe. Even if all I kept them safe from was the occasional tourist asking for directions or, on one memorable occasion, a pet dog that had escaped from a backyard in a nearby town and who had managed to travel all the way to us.

So, I was on high alert when I watched the raccoon racing down Main Street in the direction of the Alpha’s home. There were a handful of raccoon shifters in Shifters Sanctuary. As far as I knew, they were all related. From a distance, I wasn’t sure which one was moving faster than I’d known a raccoon could run, but I sensed panic in the air.

Knowing my gut hadn’t ever led me astray before, I turned the key in my truck’s ignition and the engine rumbled to life. Shooting a text to let the person in charge of tonight’s neighborhood watch know I was leaving my post because something seemed off, I drove after the raccoon. It didn’t take me long to catch up.

The animal shifted as I slowed my truck behind him, and I felt even more on edge when I recognized the figure illuminated by my headlights. Martin. Tim’s best friend.

Tim’s best friend who had been his run partner.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded as soon as he had wrenched open the passenger door. I didn’t even give him a chance to climb onto the seat. “Where’s Tim?”

Breathing heavily, Martin grimaced, shaking his head. “We need a doctor,” he managed between panted breaths. “Tim’s…hurt.”

The passenger door wasn’t even shut before I planted my foot on the accelerator, growling out, “What happened?”

Martin yanked the door closed and clutched at the ‘oh shit’ bar as we hurtled towards the dragon-run doctor’s clinic. It shared the same plot of land as the Alpha’s house and was where I knew the on-shift doctor, Eric, was holding down the fort that night in case of any medical emergencies.