Heat. Soft skin. A jolt that ran up his arm and lodged behind his sternum, spreading through his torso like the first sip of whiskey on a cold night. His bear didn’t roar or growl or demand. It just... sighed. Laid down some internal burden Cal hadn’t even known he was carrying.
Rest,his animal seemed to say.Finally. Rest.
He jerked back so fast, the coffee nearly sloshed over the rim.
Her eyes had gone wide. She’d felt it too—he could see it in the flush creeping up her throat, the quickened rise and fall of her breathing, the way her pupils had dilated.
No.The denial was fierce, immediate.I don’t have time for this. I don’t want this. I don’t need?—
“What do I owe you?” His voice was harsh. Wrong. The voice of a man retreating from something that scared the hell out of him.
She blinked. A flicker crossed her face—hurt, maybe, or surprise at his rudeness. “Three-fifty.”
He dropped a ten on the counter. Didn’t wait for change. Didn’t let himself look at her again, at those knowing eyes and that soft presence that made his bear want to curl up at her feet and never move.
The bell jangled overhead as he fled.
Because that’s what it was. Flight. Retreat. The same thing he’d accused his father of, the same thing he’d sworn he’d never do—running from a feeling too big to handle.
He made it to his truck on unsteady legs. Slammed the door. Gripped the steering wheel with both hands and stared straight ahead, breathing hard.
What was that?
His bear was silent again. But different now—not dormant, but satisfied. Content in a way Cal hadn’t felt from his animal in years.
You can’t be serious.He directed the thought inward, at the creature that shared his skin.A woman in a bakery? That’s what wakes you up after months of nothing?
No response. Just that infuriating sense of rightness, of having founda crucial discovery.
Cal looked up at the bakery window.
She was there. Watching him. That penetrating stare tracked him with an intensity that made his skin prickle.
He looked away first. Put the truck in drive. Forced himself to pull away from the curb and head toward the mountain road that led to his grandfather’s cabin.
He didn’t look back.
He didn’t need to. The memory of her—honey and flour and those perceptive eyes—was already burned into his brain. His bear carried it with animal satisfaction, turning it over and over.
Forget her.Cal took a sip of the coffee, letting the bitter heat ground him.You have work to do.
His bear disagreed. But it didn’t push. Didn’t demand.
Bears were patient. His animal could wait.
SIX
CAL
The mountain road wound upward through dense forest, switchbacks cutting across terrain that had been Ursa territory for six generations. Cal’s hands knew this route even if his conscious mind had tried to forget. Left at the split oak. Right at the boulder shaped like a sleeping bear. Straight through the meadow where his grandfather had taught him to shift for the first time.
The cabin came into view, and Cal’s hands went white on the steering wheel.
It looked smaller than he remembered. The logs that had seemed massive to an eight-year-old now showed their age—weathered, gray in places, the chinking between them dark with decades of mountain weather. Smoke rose from the chimney despite the mild afternoon. The porch where he’d stood watching his mother’s taillights disappear needed new boards.
A woman waited on that porch. Gray hair cropped short, spine straight despite her years, arms crossed in a posture that promised nothing good.
Margot Ursa. His grandfather’s sister. The woman who’d been holding the sleuth intact with sheer force of will while Bran declined and Cal stayed away.
