Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
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 breaking out 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.
Because he was still in bear form.
Cal’s bear-eyes tracked around the space, taking in details his human brain struggled to process.
He was in a storeroom—Dahlia’s storeroom, judging by the shelves of enchanted flour and spelled sugar, the bins of magical ingredients that lined the walls.
He was curled on a pile of flour sacks that had been arranged into a nest, his massive body taking up nearly half the available floor space.
Her scent was everywhere. Soaked into the walls, the floor, the very air. His bear inhaled deeply, tension unknotting at the familiar sweetness.
And he couldn’t shift back.
He tried. Reached for the human part of himself, the control he’d honed over decades of practice. But his bear didn’t budge. The animal was firmly, immovably in charge, and it had no intention of giving up control anytime soon.
Panic flickered at the edges of his awareness—heart racing, breath quickening, the claustrophobic sensation of being trapped in his own skin.
“Oh, good, you’re awake.”
Dahlia looked up from her cookbook, completely unruffled by the fact that there was a six-hundred-pound grizzly bear in her storage room. She dog-eared her page—a recipe for lavender shortbread, Cal’s sharp bear-eyes noted—and set the book aside.
“You’ve been out for about four hours.” She stood, stretching, and moved to a small table against the wall. “Theo and Wyatt followed you here to make sure you were okay.”
Cal made another sound—somewhere between a grunt and a whine. His bear, the traitor, seemed deeply satisfied with its choice of location.
“Don’t worry.” Dahlia returned with a jar in her hands. Honey, golden and thick, from their harvest at the apiaries. “Your bear decided you needed rest. So you’re resting. I brought honey.”
She said it so matter-of-factly. As if having an unconscious bear shifter deposited in her storage room was a perfectly normal occurrence.
As if she hadn’t had her entire livelihood threatened, hadn’t spent the past days frantically researching boundary stones and ward magic, hadn’t kissed him senseless in Town Hall less than a week ago.
She accepted it. Accepted him.
The animal in Cal stretched with contentment.
Dahlia knelt beside him, close enough that he could feel the heat radiating from her skin. She unscrewed the honey jar and held it out.
“Go on. You need to eat. I don’t know how long it’s been since you had actual food, but judging by how you looked when they carried you in, I’m guessing too long.”
He shouldn’t. He should be trying to shift back, to regain control, to apologize for invading her space and imposing on her time and—
His bear’s massive tongue lapped at the honey before his human brain could object.
The sweetness burst across his senses—rich, golden, magical. Honey from the Ursa apiaries, harvested by Dahlia’s own hands. A rumble built low in his throat—not quite a growl, not quite contentment. Somewhere in between.
“That’s better.” Dahlia’s voice was soft. Her hand came up, hesitated, then rested on the thick fur between his ears. “Rest, Cal. Whatever you’ve been running from, whatever you’ve been pushing yourself toward—it can wait. You’re safe here.”
Her fingers scratched gently, finding the spot that made his bear’s eyes half-close with pleasure.
Safe. When was the last time he’d felt safe? When was the last time he’d let his guard down, let someone else hold the watch, trusted that the world wouldn’t fall apart if he closed his eyes for a few hours?
He couldn’t remember.
His massive head lowered, settling onto his paws. Dahlia kept scratching, kept murmuring quiet nonsense, and Cal’s bear—satisfied that it had found what it was looking for—let him drift back into darkness.