Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
CAL
The bald one finished his transformation first—a massive brown bear with scarred shoulders and yellowed teeth. He lunged without warning, jaws snapping for Cal’s throat.
Cal twisted aside, claws raking across the attacker’s flank as he passed. Blood sprayed. The brown bear roared—pain and fury—and pivoted for another strike.
The second enforcer hit him from the side before he could recover.
Teeth sank into his shoulder, tearing through muscle, grinding against bone.
The agony was blinding, but Cal’s bear refused to fall.
It spun, driving its bulk into the attacker, and they went down in a tangle of claws and fur and snapping jaws.
Three against one. Bad odds for any fight. Worse when all three opponents were trained killers.
But Cal’s bear didn’t care about odds. Didn’t calculate risk or weigh outcomes. It knew one truth: these invaders were on his territory, threatening his people, and a woman who smelled like honey was waiting for him to come home.
He fought with a ferocity that surprised even himself.
The bear on top of him went for his throat. Cal got a paw under its jaw and pushed, claws sinking into soft flesh, and the enforcer screamed—a high, animal sound of agony—as Cal’s claws found purchase. The bear collapsed, twitching, and didn’t get back up.
Two left.
Cal rolled to his feet, blood streaming from his shoulder, his ribs screaming where claws had opened deep gashes across his side. The bald one circled left. The third enforcer—younger, faster, still uninjured—circled right.
They came at him simultaneously.
Cal met the younger one first—ducking the snapping jaws, driving his shoulder into the bear’s ribs, using momentum to flip him over a fallen log. The enforcer crashed into the underbrush with a yelp of surprise.
Then the bald one was on him, and there was no time for strategy.
They collided like two mountains crashing—raw power against raw power, claws tearing, teeth snapping, each trying to find a killing hold. The bald bear was stronger. More experienced. He must have won dozens of fights like this, and it showed in every calculated move.
Cal took a blow to the head that made his vision gray at the edges. Tasted blood where his teeth had cut the inside of his cheek. The brown bear pressed the advantage, driving him back toward a ravine’s edge, trying to trap him against the drop.
But Cal had what the enforcer didn’t.
He thought of Dahlia. Her smile when she’d watched him fumble with croissant dough. The way she’d stroked his fur while he slept in her storeroom, never asking for anything, being there. The taste of her mouth when she’d kissed him in Town Hall.
The bald bear’s claws raked across his already-injured ribs. Cal roared—not in pain but in fury—and threw himself forward. His jaws closed on the enforcer’s throat. Not a killing bite. A dominance hold, teeth pressing hard enough to draw blood, to make the message clear.
Yield.
The bald bear went still. For a long, terrible moment, neither of them moved. Cal could feel the enforcer’s pulse hammering against his tongue, could smell the fear beneath the rage.
Then, slowly, the brown bear lowered his head. Submission.
Cal released him. The enforcer stumbled back, shifted to human with a grunt of pain, and pressed a hand to his bleeding throat. His eyes—human now, dark with humiliation—found Cal’s.
“This isn’t over.” The words came out ragged, half-growled. “Magnus won’t let this stand.”
Cal shifted back to human—a process that sent fresh agony screaming through his wounds. He stood naked and bleeding, swaying on his feet, and met the enforcer’s glare without flinching.
“Tell Magnus this: Ursa territory is not for sale. And the next time he sends his dogs onto my land, I won’t be so generous.”
The bald one spat blood into the dirt. “You’re a dead man, Ursa.”
“Maybe.” Cal’s legs were threatening to buckle. The blood loss was catching up to him, dragging at his consciousness. “But not today.”
The third enforcer had recovered enough to help his fallen companion—the one Cal’s claws had torn open—to his feet. The three of them retreated into the forest as a group, leaving blood trails on the leaves.
The one his claws had taken down was moving under his own power, limping badly, but alive.
Cal watched them go. Then his knees gave out, and he collapsed against the lightning-split oak where he’d found the first ward marker.