Chapter 7
SEVEN
CAL
Margot was waiting in the main room when Cal emerged.
She’d put coffee on—real coffee, not the fancy espresso drinks they served in Seattle. The smell of it filled the cabin, mixing with the wood smoke and the bear-musk and the memories Cal was trying not to drown in.
“He told you about Magnus.” Not a question.
“He told me enough.”
Margot handed him a mug. Her face gave nothing away. “Fifteen years. Fifteen years, I’ve watched this sleuth struggle while you built your empire. Now you want to swoop in and save us?”
“I want to help.”
“Help.” She said the word like it tasted sour. “You don’t know these people anymore, Callum. You don’t know what we’ve been through. What Magnus has already taken from us.”
“Then tell me.”
Margot studied him for a long moment. Whatever she saw made her shoulders drop slightly, some of the granite softening.
“The Torres family—they run the apiaries. Magnus has been pressuring them to cut off the honey supply to Haven Shores businesses. The boundary dispute affects more than our territory. Half of downtown sits on land he claims.”
Cal thought of the bakery. “Including Honey & Hex?”
“You’ve been there?” Margot’s attention sharpened.
“Stopped for coffee.”
A flicker crossed her face. “Dahlia Moon. The witch who runs it. She’s... important to this town. Her grandmother founded that bakery sixty years ago. If Magnus’s claim succeeds and she loses her business...” Margot shook her head. “It would gut Haven Shores.”
Dahlia. Her name landed in Cal’s mind with unexpected resonance.
Dahlia Moon.
His bear perked up, interested.
“The town’s alphas—the wolf, the lions—they’ve been maintaining order while Bran declines.” Margot continued. “They’ll want to assess you. Make sure you’re worthy of leading. Make sure you’re not going to run again.”
He set the coffee down. “I’ll deal with Magnus, stabilize the sleuth, set up someone else to lead—”
“There is no one else.” Margot’s voice was flat. Final. “You’re the heir. You’ve been the heir since the day you were born. The only question is whether you’ll actually step up or keep pretending you can outrun what you are.”
Cal had no answer for that. Not one he was willing to give.
He stayed until dark, going over maps and documents with Margot, learning the shape of the crisis he’d walked into. Magnus had been playing a long game—decades of quiet acquisition, careful manipulation, building toward this moment when the Ursa sleuth was at its weakest.
The boundary surveys. The denning grounds. The economic pressure on local businesses.
It was elegant, in a vicious way. Cal could almost admire it if it hadn’t been aimed at destroying everything his grandfather had built.
When he finally left the cabin, the mountain was dark and cold and silent.
He drove back toward town, toward the rental property Margot had arranged for him. Past the meadows where he’d learned to shift. Past the apiaries where his grandfather had taught him to work with bees. Past the memories he’d been running from.
The bakery was dark when he passed it. Closed for the night. But Cal’s focus lingered on the cheerful Victorian storefront anyway, on the window where she had watched him drive away.
His bear rumbled with interest. With wanting that felt dangerously close to need.
Cal drove on. Parked at the rental. Let himself into a furnished house that smelled of nothing and meant nothing and offered exactly the sort of impersonal space he’d been living in for fifteen years.
He didn’t sleep. Couldn’t, even though weariness dragged at every muscle. His mind wouldn’t stop turning over problems, building strategies, planning approaches.
The plan was simple. Straightforward. Exactly the problem he was good at solving.
But as he lay in the dark, staring at an unfamiliar ceiling, his bear kept circling back to the same image.
Brown-gold hair. Keen hazel eyes. The brush of soft fingers against his. The warmth of it still lodged behind his sternum, hours later, as stubborn as a splinter.
She was going to be a problem. He could feel it in his bones, in the way his bear wouldn’t let go of her scent, in the way his body still hummed with awareness hours after a touch that had lasted less than a second.
The problem he didn’t have time for. Didn’t have the capacity for. Didn’t want.
His bear disagreed.
And Cal, for all his planning and strategizing and determination to stay in control, was starting to realize that maybe—just maybe—the animal inside him knew something he didn’t.
Maybe his bear had found what it was looking for.
The question was whether Cal would have the courage to stay long enough to find out.