Chapter 12
QUINN
The tavern feels too quiet after Eli leaves.
I stand in the middle of the dining room, still holding the dish towel he handed me before his phone started buzzing. The omelet sits half-eaten on the bar, cooling. My coffee's gone cold in the mug.
Family emergency, he said. The look on his face when he read that text—not fear exactly, but urgent and desperate, the kind of look that made him bolt out the door without a backward glance.
I lock the door like he asked and turn to survey the empty space. Sunlight streams through the windows, illuminating dust motes floating in the air. Everything smells like butter and peppers and coffee. Normal. Mundane.
Except nothing about this morning has been normal.
For us, he said. The land brought you here for us.
I sink onto the barstool and drop my head into my hands. Magic. Ley lines. Destiny. And now some kind of emergency that sent Eli running like the building was on fire.
What the hell have I gotten myself into?
My phone sits on the bar where I left it, silent and accusatory. Three missed calls from my agent. Two texts from former colleagues asking where I disappeared to.
I swipe them all away without reading.
The truth is, I don't care about any of that anymore. The stolen byline, the lost reputation, the career I spent ten years building—it all feels distant. Like it happened to someone else.
All I care about is the man who just ran out of here, leaving me with more questions than answers.
I finish my coffee—still able to taste it, thank god—and wash both our plates. The domesticity of it should feel strange. We had sex once. One time. On this very bar, actually, which makes washing dishes here slightly surreal.
But it doesn't feel strange. It feels right. Like I've been doing this for years instead of hours.
The land brought you here for us.
I'm still turning that phrase over in my mind when I hear the truck pull up outside.
The door opens and Eli steps inside.
He looks exhausted. His hair is disheveled, like he's been running his hands through it. There's dirt on his jeans and a scratch on his forearm that wasn't there this morning. But he's whole. Safe.
Relief floods through me so intensely I have to grip the doorframe.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey." I step back to let him in. "Everything okay?"
"Define okay." He scrubs a hand over his face, and I catch the tremor in his fingers. "Everyone at the compound is safe. That's something."
"What happened?"
Eli's quiet, weighing how much to tell me. Then he sighs. "My brother Jonah went missing six months ago. No trace, no leads, nothing. We've been searching ever since."
My throat tightens. "I didn't know."
I move to stand beside him, close enough that our shoulders almost touch. "I'm sorry you're going through this."
"Me too." He turns to look at me, and the vulnerability in his expression makes my throat ache. "I'm sorry I left like that. You had questions, and I just...”
"Ran out because your family needed you. I get it." I do get it, even if part of me wanted him to stay. Wanted answers more than I wanted to be understanding. "But I still have those questions, Eli."
"I know."
"You said you were holding something back. That it was complicated." I meet his eyes. "I'm ready to hear it. Whatever it is."
He's quiet for a moment, searching my face for something. Then he straightens. "Come with me. There's something I need to show you."
"Show me what?"
"The truth." He holds out his hand. "All of it."
I take his outstretched hand—calloused, strong, steady. This is it. The moment where I decide if I'm really all in, or if I'm going to protect myself and walk away before this gets more complicated.
Except it's already complicated. Has been since the moment I tasted his beer and felt something wake up inside me.
We walk through the woods behind the tavern, following a trail I didn't know existed. Eli's grip is firm, steadying me over roots and rocks. The forest smells like pine and earth and something else—that green, alive scent I noticed in the cellar.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"Not far. There's a convergence point about half a mile from here." He glances back at me. "You'll feel it before you see it."
He's right. After a few more minutes, the air changes. Gets thicker somehow, charged with energy that makes my skin prickle. The trees here are older, their trunks massive and gnarled. Sunlight filters through the canopy in shafts of gold.
Eli stops in a small clearing where five trees form a rough circle. The ground between them is covered in moss that glows faintly silver-green in the shadows.
"This is one of the ley line markers," he says. "A place where the energy is strong enough to see. To feel."
I step into the circle and gasp. The pulse I felt in the cellar is here, but stronger. More insistent. It thrums through my bones, warm and welcoming and ancient.
"It's beautiful," I whisper.
"Yeah." Eli's watching me, not the clearing. "Some people can feel it more than others. You're one of them."
"Why?"
"Because the land recognizes you. Knows you belong here." He moves closer, his expression serious. "Quinn, there's more I need to tell you. About Redwood Rise. About me. About what we really are."
My pulse quickens. "Okay."
"I need you to promise you'll hear me out before you react. Before you run."
"I'm not going to run."
"You might." His jaw clenches. "What I'm about to show you—it's going to change everything. Once you know, there's no unknowing it."
Fear and excitement war in my chest. "Tell me."
Eli opens his mouth to respond, but before he can speak, the ley line pulses.
Not the gentle throb I've been feeling, but a surge that knocks the air from my lungs. The moss flares bright silver, and the trees seem to hum with power. My knees buckle.
Eli catches me, one arm around my waist, but I feel him tense. See his pupils dilate and his breath come faster.
"Eli?"
"Go back to town." His voice comes out strained, almost a growl. "Now, Quinn. Please."
"What's happening?"
"The surge—it affects us. Makes it hard to control...” He breaks off with a sound of pain, doubling over.
I grip his shoulders. "I'm not leaving you like this."
"Quinn...”
"No." I hold on tighter, even as his skin grows hot beneath my hands.
He looks up at me, and his eyes have changed. Still brown, but deeper somehow. More animal than human. "I can't hold it back. Not through this."
"Hold what back?"
The answer comes not in words, but in the swirling mist that rises around him.
Silver-green, just like in the cellar. Just like the ley lines themselves. It obscures him for a heartbeat, and when it clears—
My scream catches in my throat.
Where Eli stood, there's a bear.
Massive. Grizzly. Its fur is dark brown with silver tips that catch the light, and its shoulders are broader than any bear I've ever seen in documentaries. It has to be six feet tall at the shoulder, maybe more, with paws the size of dinner plates.
The bear's eyes lock onto mine.
Brown eyes. Eli's eyes.
My legs won't move. Can't move. Every instinct screams at me to run, but I'm frozen, staring at this impossible thing that just happened. That can't have happened.
Except it did. I watched the mist swallow him. Watched his form blur and change and become this.
The bear takes a step toward me. Slow. Careful. Like it's trying not to spook me.
Too late for that.
Another step. Its massive head lowers, and I catch the scent of cedar and smoke—Eli's scent—mixed with something wild and animal.
"Eli?" My voice comes out barely a whisper.
The bear stops. Makes a low sound in its chest that's not quite a growl. More like a rumble of acknowledgment.
It's him. Somehow, impossibly, it's him.
The bear moves closer until it's right in front of me, so close I could touch it if I dared. Its breath is warm on my face. Those brown eyes—Eli's eyes—search mine with an intelligence no animal should have.
Slowly, so slowly I barely breathe, the bear lowers its head. Presses its massive snout against my trembling hand.
The touch is gentle. Deliberate. A question and a reassurance all at once.
"You're a bear," I say stupidly, and a slightly hysterical laugh bubbles up in my throat. "You're actually a bear."
The bear—Eli—makes that rumbling sound again. He adjusts his weight, and I realize he's trying to seem smaller. Less threatening. It's almost comical given his size, except nothing about this is funny.
My hand is still pressed against his snout, fur soft and warm under my palm. My other hand lifts without conscious thought, reaching for his massive head.
"The bear from that night," I whisper. "In the woods by the Inn. That was you."
He nods. Actually nods, the movement so human it steals my breath.
"You've been watching over me."
Another nod.
Wonder blooms in my chest, raw and startling. Not fear—I should be terrified, should be running—but something else entirely.
I sink down onto the moss, my legs finally giving out. The bear follows, settling onto his haunches in front of me. Still huge. Still impossible. But not threatening. Never threatening.
"How many?" I ask, remembering fragments of stories. Urban legends about shifters, about people who could become animals. Things I dismissed as fantasy. "How many of you are there?"
The bear can't answer. Can't speak. But his eyes hold mine, and I see the answer there.
A lot. More than I can imagine.
"The whole town?" My voice cracks. "Everyone in Redwood Rise?"
He dips his head once. Yes.
I drop my face into my hands, trying to process. Trying to make sense of any of this. "Cilla? Evelyn? Beau?"
A huff of breath that might be affirmation.
"What are they? What kind of...” I gesture helplessly at him. "Are they all bears?"
He shakes his massive head. Makes a more complex gesture with one paw, like he's trying to communicate something he can't say in this form.