Cal’s mind flashed to a butter-yellow bakery.
“Including the land under the Honey & Hex Bakery.” Theo watched his reaction. “You understand what that means.”
Cal’s bear went very, very still.
“I understand.” His voice didn’t sound like his own. Rougher. Darker. “The baker loses everything.”
“Dahlia Moon.” Beck’s easy demeanor had shifted into focus. “She’s important to this town. Her grandmother started that bakery sixty years ago. The Moons have been feeding Haven Shores’s magic for four generations.” The beta’s eyes narrowed. “And she’s a friend.”
Cal’s bear perked at her name. That inconvenient awareness he’d been fighting surged forward, demanding attention.
“I’ve met her.” He kept his voice neutral. Controlled.
Five pairs of eyes studied his face. Cal felt suddenly, uncomfortably exposed.
Leo’s mouth twitched. “Coffee.”
“That’s what I said.”
Theo turned back to the matter at hand. “Magnus believes integration makes shifters weak,” Theo said. “He thinks communities like Haven Shores—wolves working with witches, lions mating with humans, bears getting ‘soft’ from too much civilization—are contamination. A disease that needs to be excised.”
“Old-school traditionalist,” Cal said. “I’ve heard the philosophy.”
“Then you know he won’t stop at territorial claims.” Theo’s stare could have frozen the harbor. “If he gets a foothold here, he’ll push until there’s nothing left. Until Haven Shores is either destroyed or remade in his image.”
Cal thought about his grandfather, frail and fading in a bed that smelled of sickness. About the sleuth members he’d met over the past three days—tired, scared, hanging on by their fingernails. About a bakery on the boundary line and the womaninside who’d reached straight past his defenses and lodged there.
“What do you want from me?”
“The same thing we wanted from Leo when he showed up.” Hux had regained some of his political polish. “Partnership. Cooperation. Proof that you’re not going to make this worse.”
“And if I can’t give you that proof?”
“Then we handle Magnus ourselves.” Theo’s voice carried no threat, no bluster. Certainty. “We protect this town with or without you. But it would be easier with a functional Ursa sleuth backing us.”
Cal set down his empty beer bottle. Leaned forward. Let them see the alpha that had been buried under years of corporate strategy and controlled aggression.
“I didn’t come here to make things worse. I came because my grandfather asked me to. Because my sleuth is in trouble and I’m the only one who can help.” His bear added force to the words. “Magnus Ironwood doesn’t get to take what’s ours. Not the territory. Not the denning grounds. Not the businesses on the boundary line.”Not her.He didn’t say that part out loud. “I’ll fight for this town. I need time to figure out how.”
The room fell silent again. Different than before. Less assessment, more... acknowledgment.
Theo nodded slowly. “Fair enough.” He reached into the cabinet again, pulled out a fresh beer, and offered it. “Welcome to Haven Shores, Callum Ursa. Try not to fuck it up.”
THIRTEEN
CAL
The conversation shifted after that.
Less interrogation, more... information exchange. Theo walked Cal through the town’s political structure. Hux explained the delicate balance of human-supernatural relations. Wyatt produced a map showing Magnus’s known land acquisitions, his suspected allies, the gaps in their intelligence.
Beck kept the beer flowing and the mood from getting too heavy. He had a gift for it—deflecting tension with a well-timed joke, steering conversations away from conflict points. But Cal noticed the way his attention drifted sometimes. The way his easy humor didn’t quite reach his eyes.
Grief sat behind that grin. Cal recognized the signs. He’d seen them in his own mirror often enough.
“Your bear supplier,” Leo said, pulling Cal’s attention back. “The Torres family. Magnus has been pressuring them to cut off honey shipments to downtown businesses.”
“I heard.” Cal’s grandfather had mentioned it, among the hundred other crises facing the sleuth. “Economic warfare.”
