CAL
Four days.
Cal hadn’t slept in four days.
Ninety-six hours of caffeine and adrenaline and the grinding determination that had gotten him through college, through building his company, through every obstacle life had thrown at him.
He stood in the back room of Wolf Moon Brewery, staring at a map spread across the scarred wooden table, and tried to remember the last time he’d eaten anything that wasn’t caffeine. Yesterday? The day before? Time had become slippery, the hours bleeding into each other in a haze of meetings and phone calls and documents that all looked the same.
His hands trembled when he reached for his coffee cup. He hid the tremor by gripping the ceramic too tightly, letting the heat burn into his palms. Focus. He needed to focus.
“—boundary markers here and here.” Wyatt’s voice cut through the fog. The panther shifter pointed at locations on the map, his expression characteristically unreadable. “Dahlia’s research suggests these are the original stones. If we can?—”
“Cal.”
Theo’s voice. Sharp. Cal blinked, forcing his attention back to the map. The lines swam in front of his eyes, refusing to resolve into anything meaningful.
“I’m listening.”
“You’re standing up by sheer force of will.” Theo moved around the table, those wolf eyes taking in every detail of Cal’s appearance. Whatever he saw made his mouth flatten into a grim line. “When was the last time you slept?”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Cal’s hands curled on the edge of the table. “There’s too much to do. The boundary stone survey. My grandfather’s medical records—Wyatt’s theory about the poisoning. Magnus’s next move. I can sleep when?—”
“When you’re dead?” Wyatt’s tone was flat. Clinical. “Because that’s where you’re headed, Ursa. Your bear has been dangerously dormant for months. You’re running on cortisol and spite. That’s not sustainable for any shifter, let alone one facing a challenge.”
Cal wanted to argue. Wanted to insist he knew his limits, that he’d been functioning at this level for years, that rest was a luxury he couldn’t afford.
But his bear?—
His bear was silent. Had been silent for days now, ever since the Town Hall confrontation with Magnus. Not the quiet, content presence Cal felt around Dahlia. This was different. This was the ominous stillness of a creature conserving every last resource for survival.
“I’ll rest after we find the stones,” Cal said. “After we have evidence to take to the council. After?—”
The world tilted.
Cal grabbed the table, fighting for balance as his vision blurred. Hot. He was suddenly, impossibly hot—sweat breakingout along his spine, his skin prickling with feverish intensity. Then cold, so cold his teeth wanted to chatter, his muscles seizing with the temperature swing.
“Cal?” Theo’s voice came from very far away. “Cal!”
And then his bear—his silent, dormant, nearly-forgotten bear—roared to the surface with undeniable force.
The shift hit him like a freight train. Not the controlled transformation he’d learned as a teenager—smooth, deliberate, a negotiation between human and animal. This was a coup. His bear seizing control because the human half had proven too stupid to survive on its own.
Cal stumbled toward the back door, barely aware of Theo shouting behind him. His bones were already shifting, his skin splitting to make way for fur, his spine curving into shapes his human body wasn’t meant to hold. He crashed through the door into the alley behind the brewery, and the last thing he remembered was the cool evening air against his muzzle before everything went black.
Awareness came back in fragments.
Heat beneath him. Softness.
Cal opened his eyes.
The first thing he saw was Dahlia Moon, sitting on a storage crate three feet away, reading a cookbook.
He tried to speak. What came out was a low, rumbling growl—not threatening, confused.
