Page 7 of Grizzly's Grump
By the time I realize I’ve moved, I’m already at the window. Drawn. Caught. Her scent wraps around me like gravity, and I can’t remember the steps that brought me here—only the need still rising.
I open my mouth. Close it again. Whatever words I was going to say burned on my tongue. Instead, I just stand there—looming, silent, probably looking like some pissed-off lumberjack who wandered too far from the tree line.
She pushes back, of course. All bright confidence and sass. She has no idea what I am, what this means. She thinks I’m a man who doesn’t like cupcakes.
She doesn’t know I’m a bear who’s been starving for years—craving touch, craving connection, craving something that feels like home. She doesn’t know I’ve spent more nights than I can count pretending the emptiness doesn’t ache. That the heat rising under my skin is more than instinct—it’s desperation, threaded through with hunger I don’t want to admit. Not to her. Not even to myself.
The spoken words fall between us, sharp and slow.
She challenges me with her smile, dares me with her voice. She wants to belong. Wants to bake and build a life and tuck herself into this town like it’s a Hallmark movie and not a damn minefield of secrets and bloodlines.
“You’re not one of us,” I say.
I don’t just mean that she isn't a shifter of one kind or another, as is everyone else in Redwood Rise. She’s not like theothers who’ve passed through—curious hikers, nosey reporters. The ley lines react to her. I felt it the second she arrived. The way they thrummed last night—off rhythm, unsettled—it was her. Or something in her.
She’s not safe. Not from whatever’s stirring. Not from the way the ley lines have begun to hum, pulsing in quiet warning, like something ancient waking beneath the soil.
She’s not listening; she doesn't know how or that there is anything to hear. Or maybe she does. Maybe something drew her here—and she’s too brave or too foolish to back down.
She holds out a cinnamon roll, its warm glaze catching the light like temptation incarnate. The scent curls through me—heat and sugar with a sharp, dangerous edge. Like temptation pretending to be harmless. It's not just a pastry—it's a declaration, a lure, a challenge wrapped in sugar. The need rises—fast, hungry. Not a lunge, but a lean. A tilt toward something inevitable.
A raw, inner drive surges forward, clawing toward her presence, her scent, the heat of her nearness. Not a leap across the gravel, but a crash of awareness that leaves my skin too tight, my breath short. He wants to reach her, mark her, claim her. I tighten my grip on the cinnamon roll instead, grounding myself in the human motions of restraint while my bear howls against the confines I’ve kept him in.
I take it. Because refusing it would be worse. Because touching something she made feels like the first step off a cliff I was already standing on.
Our fingers touch—bare skin to bare skin—and a bolt of sensation streaks up my arm like a live current. My breath catches. It's nothing and everything all at once. The bear stills. My body locks. And for a split second, the silence between us is loud with everything I’m not ready to feel.
But it’s enough... too much. The scent deepens. Her breath hitches. I can feel my control begin to unravel.
The world tilts on its axis.
She lifts her chin, but her voice is soft. “I’ll be gone by the end of the week.”
But she won’t. She can’t. Not now.
No one comes to Redwood Rise without the forest watching. Without the wild waking up.
It’s not a promise. It’s a threadbare ritual of defiance—something I clutch even as the truth presses in, stripping away everything I thought I’d buried deep. Denial has teeth, and they’re sinking in.
Everything began to fracture the moment her scent hit me—sweet and wild, laced with something that reached straight into the marrow of my bones. It pulled at something sealed off and forgotten—until now.
She didn’t just break the silence—I didn’t even hear it fall. It was gone the moment she looked at me, and something louder took its place. It wasn’t enough anymore. Not to hold back the beast.
CHAPTER 3
CILLA
By the third time someone pretends not to hear me, I get the message loud and clear: Redwood Rise doesn’t take kindly to newcomers.
I have a tray of pastries—cinnamon rolls, apple galettes, and hand pies—still steaming from the oven, propped open on the bakery window ofSweet On You, and the scent wafts down Main Street like a peace offering. A golden retriever trots by, wagging its tail. Its owner? Doesn’t even glance in my direction. That’s one more cold shoulder to add to my collection.
I paste on my best smile anyway. If I can smile through finding my ex-fiancé's head buried between my best friend's thighs, I can smile through anything. And if I’ve learned anything in the past few months, it’s that you don’t crumble just because the world wants you to. You rise—flour-dusted, sugar-slicked, and stubborn as hell.
Still, this town is testing me. The silence, the wary glances, the invisible line I keep tripping over without meaning to, is all starting to wear me down. I’m used to hustling, to long days and late nights, but at least back then there were smiles, laughter and people who believed in what I was building.
Here in Redwood Rise, it's just me and a stubborn food truck that’s one hiccup away from collapsing. I’ve been sleeping in a glorified metal box, showering with a glorified garden hose and rationing flour like it’s the 1840s and this is a gold rush town. And the worst part? I’m not even sure anyone wants what I’m selling. This was supposed to be a fresh start. Instead, it’s beginning to feel like slow erosion—hope wearing thin, bite by bite.
But I refuse to give in. Instead, I shake my head and go back to decorating a lovely bunch of eclairs. After all, who doesn't love a good eclair?
