Page 12 of Roaring Heat
When the mist falls away, I’m no longer standing upright. My body is heavy with muscle and fur, massive and rooted in a strength older than memory. The man recedes, quiet in the back of my mind. The grizzly steps forward with steady purpose, wild, focused, and completely whole. This isn’t just instinct. It settles over me, enveloping every part of me with a fierce familiarity. It’s not just a transformation. It’s a homecoming, a return to what’s always been beneath the surface, to what has always been true.
The earth responds beneath my paws, pulsing in quiet acknowledgment. The forest opens ahead, not merely as a path I traverse, but as an extension of my being. I am bark and breath, claw and shadow. I blink once, slow and deliberate, immersed in the present, fully embodied in what I was always meant to become.
The forest shifts with me. The change is not confined to my body; it settles into the terrain itself. Every sound sharpens, each leaf and limb bending with recognition. Trees seem to draw nearer. The thump of my paws against the damp soil reverberates, deep and resonant, as though I have been absorbed into some ancient, living rhythm.
My grizzly is grounded in a way the man never can be. Every sound registers. Every vibration. My body is heavier, stronger, older. I am not separate from the woods now. I am part of it.
I pause long enough to orient, ears twitching, nose lifted to catch what the air won't give away. The forest’s rhythm is wrong. There’s a silence that thickens with each breath. Deer tracks crisscross in confused spirals, not the steady lines they normally follow. A bobcat’s trail winds dangerously close to the northern boundary, a meandering path that speaks of unease rather than purpose.
My muscles go taut. The balance is wrong, disrupted in a way that makes the air feel heavier. The ley lines beat beneath me with an uneven pulse that reverberates through my limbs, a discordant rhythm that doesn’t belong. Under my paws, the earth trembles with a pressure that's never surged this strong before. It radiates outward from a single point—directly beneath her cottage.
I push through the undergrowth, staying low and moving fast, flanking her place from the east where the trees thin just enough to catch a glimpse. The cottage is dark and quiet, its windows offering no sign of life—until her silhouette appears, softened by the curtain’s gauzy edge. She's seated on the couch, back straight, journal open on her lap like a shield. Still. Focused. A lone sentinel braced against the night.
I linger, breath held, an ache settling low and insistent in my chest. She doesn’t know I watch her from the shadows, silent and unseen, noting the quiet tension threaded through her posture. There's a stillness in the air that she senses too, a change in the night’s rhythm that makes her sit a little straighter, her body taut and alert, as if waiting for something she can’t quite name. Her shoulders are squared, chin lifted just enough to suggest she’s bracing for more than silence. She's notuntouched by this place. She's not afraid. She's bracing. Ready. And even alone, she’s standing her ground.
I want to stay. Just for a minute longer. To make sure the stillness isn’t hiding something deeper. My paws sink into the cool soil, muscles drawn taut, every instinct anchored to the quiet cottage beyond the treeline. The bear inside me aches to hold vigil, to wait through the dark hours with the ancient calm only he can offer. But it isn’t only instinct that chains me here... it'sher.
Something elemental stirs beneath my skin, raw and live-wired. Her silhouette lingers behind my eyes, backlit by that faint amber glow in the window. I swear I can feel the rhythm of her heartbeat through the earth. Not imagined. Not sensed. Just... known. It draws me, steady and relentless, like an invisible thread stretched taut between us.
I inhale, slow and deep, grounding myself in the weighted hush of the forest, the quiet stretch of trees and the brittle crack of distant limbs. No enchantment. No heightened senses. Just her, existing in this world with such presence that it shifts the balance around her. The wild tilts toward her. And so do I.
God, I want to stay. Every part of me strains to remain in this moment. But wanting doesn’t grant permission. Not tonight.
I force my body to turn away. My grizzlywants to stay all night, but I can't.
I circle back. Down the slope, through thicker brush, deeper into the woods. The ley lines fork here. One streaks west toward the coast. The other snakes inland, past the ridges. I pace the edges where they meet, senses stretched tight.
Something moved here.Not just an animal. Something more. Something else. A presence I can sense but not define, as if the forest itself is reacting to something older and deeper than words. The feeling roots in my bones, threading tension throughmy spine. It's not confusion exactly, or fear, but a primal certainty that resists translation.
The trees glisten faintly from the lingering fog, their trunks slick with moisture. I move closer to the base of a redwood, the soil soft and giving beneath my paws. There, buried beneath the familiar pine and damp earth, something faint scratches at my senses. The trail is subtle, faint and acidic, slicing through the forest's tapestry like a wound. It cuts against the harmony of the terrain, jarring and foreign, a scar that shouldn’t be here. It doesn’t belong, and it raises every hair along my neck.
Predators don’t move like this. Not the natural kind. Whatever it was had circled the cottage with eerie precision before veering back across the ley line, as if it moved with purpose, like it recognized something ancient beneath the surface and followed it by design. That calculated retreat sends a chill crawling up my spine, not just for what it implies, but for what it refuses to reveal.
A low growl rumbles from deep within me, the vibration thrumming through my ribs and into the silence around me. It bleeds into the night air, unspoken and unmistakable, a primal warning meant for anything lurking beyond the trees.
Another deer bolts nearby, its hooves skittering in the brush, jolting through the undergrowth like a startled thought I can’t quite catch. My ears twitch, tracking the sound as it cuts a ragged path too close to the boundary of her property. I tense, eyes narrowing, instincts flaring hot and sharp. They're not merely startled. They're responding to something precise, something they can sense but not outrun. Drawn instead of scattered, and that sends a fresh spike of unease through me.
I adjust my stance, recalibrating my balance with a measured step as my gaze tracks back toward the dark line of trees that shroud her cottage from sight. My chest tightens. If the deer are circling instead of fleeing, it means the ley energy iswarping the natural order. I feel it now more than ever, a primal hum threading through the ground beneath my paws, as if the heartbeat of the earth itself is drawing them in with an ancient, inescapable pull.
A low sound builds in my throat, but I swallow it. No use giving myself away. Not yet. I'm too close to town; too close to her. They're being drawn toward the energy instead of repelled by it.
My instincts press hard. I circle again to try and find the source and stay close.But I force myself to move on. Not far, but enough to widen the sweep. There’s more land to check. More threads of tension to trace. I have to trust she’s safe inside those walls for now.
Still, I can't quite pull myself away. I mark the edge of the ridge one last time, casting a final glance toward the veil of trees that hides her home. My gut's tight, my instincts rigid. But I make a choice. I’ll loop back before the sun crests the horizon. Sooner, if that feeling in my chest flares again. Either way, I’m not done here. Not even close.
And if anything dares cross that threshold?
It’ll find itself hunted—stalked through the dark by something it never sees coming. I won’t let it leave. Not with her still inside that cottage. Not while I breathe.
CHAPTER 6
ANABETH
Ibarely sleep. Not because the fog returns, but because it doesn’t. The quiet is worse. No scraping on the porch. No phantom growl. Just a silence that stretches too long, too still, until even my thoughts begin to sound like lies. Morning creeps in like a thief, soft and guilty, and I wake up tense, annoyed, and with too much time to think about Beau Hayes.
So I don’t. Not at first. I try to force his name out of my mind, bury it beneath data points and biological theories, but it refuses to stay gone. It lingers, slow and insistent, a pressure behind my eyes that throbs in rhythm with a need I don’t want to name. His voice from yesterday plays over and over, that calm confidence threading through me until it’s all I can hear. That deep timbre shouldn’t affect me at all. It’s just a voice. But it settles too easily into my bloodstream, stirring places I didn’t realize were sensitive until he spoke. It burrows in like he already knows where to press, like the sound of him alone can rattle the cadence of my thoughts. And I hate that it does.
Worse than the silence, worse than the questions I can't answer, is the memory of his body braced between me and the cottage wall. The heat of him soaked into my skin, his nearnessthreading through every breath until it felt like he lived there. It wasn’t just touch. It was pressure, possession, a promise I didn’t ask for but couldn’t ignore. Something dark and unrelenting curled around the fragile edge of my self-control and whispered a word I refuse to say aloud. Mine.
