Bella slowly crept into the spare bedroom with her heart pounding, expecting a monster or something to jump out at her.

But there was no monster. Just a small desk against the wall with a stack of papers on top.

Bella’s breath seized in her throat. Did this room have the answers that she was looking for?

She walked up to the desk and took the first piece of paper on the stack, a newspaper article that was so old, it was fading to a shade of yellow. It was brittle in her fingers as she picked it up and read it.

Local surgeon, Logan Wright, saves one-hundredth child.

Her eyes widened as she read the headline. Logan had been a pediatric surgeon and a famous one at that. That’s how he knew the symptoms of a concussion. He must have been a Harvard-educated doctor.

She scanned the article quickly, shaking her head in disbelief as she read how he developed a system to operate on children that increased the effectiveness of the surgery by eighty percent as well as diminishing the recovery time by as much as half.

He was a respected doctor with a thriving practice, saving the lives of sick children who desperately needed him. It didn’t make sense. Why would he leave all of that to come live by himself in the forest?

She placed the newspaper article down on the desk and lifted up the magazine that was under it. She gasped when she saw the man on the cover.

It was a younger version of Logan, smiling without the deep scars running across his face. He was gorgeous. He still was, but without the scars, he belonged on the cover of magazines.

The magazine was Scientific Breakthrough, with the headline of Logan Wright. Advancing Science and Creating Miracles.

She scanned the articles and kept flipping through the rest of the pile of magazines, newspapers, awards, and scientific publications.

It turned out that Logan was one of the world’s leading pediatric surgeons. He had developed dozens of new operating techniques that helped saved thousands of lives.

She lowered the National Geographic magazine in her hand, shaking her head in disbelief. Why hadn’t he said anything? What really happened to him to drive him all the way out here to such an unproductive life of solitude?

Bella looked but she found no mention of his scars and no mention of anything that could drive him to leave civilization.

She heard movement outside and quickly put everything back exactly how she had found it. Logan had returned and he was sitting on the bench on the porch, waiting for her.

“Shit,” she cursed, picking up the fallen lock and hurrying to screw it back into place before he came in and saw her with her hand in the cookie jar. She finally managed to get everything back to normal and strolled outside, fidgeting nervously with her hands.

“Did you find some pleasant reading?” he asked, raising his eyebrow at her.

Bella took a deep breath as she sat down beside him. “I’m sorry I trespassed,” she said, her cheeks turning a guilty red. “Why didn’t you tell me? You’re a world-renowned surgeon?”

“I was,” he said with a sigh. “That was another lifetime ago.”

Bella took his strong hand in hers and traced the lines on his palm with her fingertip. “These hands saved lives,” she said, staring at the rough skin with admiration. “You saved children. You saved families and you saved their parents from having to deal with the worst kind of loss.”

“Like I said,” he answered softly. “It was another lifetime ago. I’m a different man now.”

Bella leaned in close to him, pressing her breasts against his arm as she brought her face up to his. He closed his eyes as she traced the four jagged scars that were carved into the side of his face. “What happened to you?” she whispered.

He stayed silent and still, holding his breath in as he kept his eyes closed. “I was performing surgery on a boy,” he finally said, opening his sad eyes. “Head trauma. Pretty bad stuff and I’ll spare you the sad details. But I saw the stepfather after I saved the boy. He reeked of alcohol. He was abusive to the boy’s mother. I could just tell by the way the two of them were acting that he was the cause of the head injury. He had hurt the boy.”

Bella’s skin tightened as she imagined the scene, imagined a person so evil that they could do that to a poor innocent child.

“My bear snapped,” he said, rubbing his forehead. “He wanted to maim the guy for what he had done and I almost lost control. I was in the waiting room of the hospital, surrounded by people and Cliff was desperately trying to rip out of me. It took everything that I had to rein him back in and I still almost lost the fight. I had never seen him so furious. I barely managed to keep him in but I did sprout fur and it made quite a scene.”

Bella held his hand, rubbing little circles on his skin with her thumb as he went quiet again, needing another moment.

“I don’t know what happened but someone in the military was alerted of my condition,” he said with a tight voice. “I was in their custody a week later.”

“You got arrested?” she asked. “For saving a kid?”

“No,” he said with a shake of his head. “Not arrested. They just took me. No charges. They just came to my house, sunk a dart in my neck, and when I woke up I was strapped to a gurney in some military facility.”

“That’s horrible,” Bella said with anger rushing through her.

“I was a test subject in a secret military program,” he said, lowering his eyes. “Some general had a creative idea to parachute enraged bears into enemy territories and let them reek havoc right before a ground attack. I was supposed to be the first bear.”

“Was your bear a problem before they took you?” Bella couldn’t imagine that he was.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Cliff was great. We had a good symbiotic relationship. I lived near the forest and took long walks every day in my bear form. He watched and even encouraged me from within when I was studying or operating. They were the ones who ruined him.”

Bella felt a cold shiver snake down her back. “What did they do?”

Logan sighed. “Everything. They would give me this serum that would slow down my enhanced healing to a human’s speed and then they would spend the days trying to get my bear as furious as possible.”

“By doing what?” Bella didn’t want to know, but she had to ask.

“They tortured him.” Logan said softly, “Everyday. I could feel him losing it with every painful needle they gave. I could feel his lust for blood growing with every shock of the cattle prod, every stab of the knife.”

“Oh, God,” Bella gasped, inching closer to him.

“I don’t know how long I was in there but it must have been months.”

“Months?” she gasped. Who would do such a thing?

“I wish I had been stronger,” he said, his eyes full of shame. “I wish I could have fought longer, but they accomplished what they had planned all along. They made my bear into a monster.”

Bella’s throat tightened as she rested her head on his shoulder. “He’s not a monster,” she whispered. “And neither are you.”

He exhaled long and slow as he pressed his cheek against the top of her head. “You won’t say that after you hear what happened next.”

Bella’s stomach fluttered as he continued. “My bear was going crazy one morning. Completely losing it. I remember having no control over him and that was a very scary feeling. He was too busy snarling and growling at the researchers on the other side of the bars to listen to anything that I had to say. One especially bad researcher, this psychopath named Kevin, came over with the cattle prod and I could just tell that he was in a particularly bad mood. Maybe he got into a fight with his girlfriend or his car needed repairs, but whatever it was, he decided to take it out on my bear. He got Cliff into such a frenzy that he did this to us,” he said, pointing to the long scars on his face.

“Cliff did that?” she asked, staring at his scarred face in disbelief.

Logan nodded. “The bear was seeing red. It was scary being trapped in an out of control wild animal and powerless to do anything. The thought still gives me nightmares to this day.”

“What happened?” Bella asked. “How did you get out?”

“Kevin had gotten my bear so furious,” he continued, “that he broke through the cage.” He looked down into Bella’s shocked face with a sadness in his eyes. “This is where the monster part comes.”

She raised her chin as she gritted her teeth together. “I want to hear it. Those fuckers deserved it for what they did to you.”

“Maybe they did,” Logan said with a heavy sigh. “And maybe they didn’t. Either way, they’re all dead.”

“All of them?”

He nodded. “My bear killed everyone in the building. Over thirty people.”

Bella held onto him like a lifeline as her body trembled. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Logan just continued, ignoring her words. “My bear broke out of the building through a window but he didn’t stop his rampage there. He started lashing out at the innocent people on the street, trying to kill anything that moved.”

“Did he?” she asked with her blood running cold.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I managed to reign him in before he hurt anyone on the outside but he wanted to. He was begging me to release him again so that he could continue his murderous rampage. They broke him. The killings weren’t just survival or revenge. It was a sport for him. He was enjoying it. I could feel the pleasure he was getting from sinking his teeth into every last one of them.”

Bella stared into his eyes that were overflowing with remorse. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe not,” he said with a sigh, “but it didn’t change the fact that my bear couldn’t be trusted around people any longer. I couldn’t take that risk. He had a taste for murder and I could only do one thing.”

“That’s when you came out here?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Yeah,” he said, swallowing hard. “I moved out here and vowed to never let him see another person again. I didn’t want any more blood on my hands.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said with a trembling chin. “That’s horrible.”

“No,” he answered with a shrug. “That’s just life. Life is pain.”

She looked up into his gorgeous face and forced out a smile. “But life can be beautiful too.”

“Yeah,” he said, looking down at her with a heavy sigh. “I’m starting to see that now.”

His sad eyes locked onto hers, nearly breaking her heart.

He had been through so much and she had no idea. Logan had a perfect life; a famous surgeon saving the lives of children every day and they took it all away from him. Now he was forced to spend the long lonely days alone in the forest with his broken bear, wasting his life away.

Something raw and electric passed between them and Bella lifted her chin up as she gazed into his eyes. His lips came down, pressing against hers in a soft passionate kiss.

She moaned as his silky tongue caressed hers, taking her breath away as he held her close and kissed her. Her head was swimming when they finally broke apart.

Bella wanted him badly. Her nerve endings were tingling and stirring as he stroked her cheek like she was the most precious thing in the world.

“Logan,” she whispered as warmth flooded through her. “Take me inside.”