Page 3 of Grizzly’s Grump (Shifters of Redwood Rise #1)

CALDER

I ’m halfway back from a dawn run through the north trail when it hits me.

I don’t run to stay in shape—I run to stay sane.

To feel the ground under my feet, to push past the noise in my head until all that’s left is breath and heartbeat and the way the trees fold in around me like old friends.

Out here, I don’t have to talk. I don’t have to explain the silence.

The redwoods don’t care if I speak—they just let me be.

Most mornings, I hit the northern ridge, where the trail turns to rock and the mist rises thick through the ferns.

The cold cuts deeper than you'd expect for this part of California—but I like it that way. Keeps me alert. Reminds me I’m alive.

My usual route loops through the hollow behind Workshop Row, ends where the creek bends near the western edge of my property.

By the time I circle back, the town’s still mostly asleep. And that’s just how I like it.

Except this morning, something’s different. The earth beneath my feet hums—not a tremor, not wind. Just... pressure. The kind I’ve only ever felt when the ley lines shift. It’s faint, but it’s there. And that’s never good.

Not the scent of pine or loam or creek water drying on my skin. Not a trace of oil or old wood I’m used to from my work. It's something else. Something sweet.

Sugar. Cinnamon. Vanilla. Sunshine.

And under it—her.

I stop dead in the middle of the trail, heart thudding against my ribs.

My bear, never far from the surface, stirs—restless, alert, stretching toward something he’s been denied for too long.

My teeth ache with the need to grit them, to force the feeling back down.

I don’t want this. Not today. Maybe not ever.

But none of that matters. She’s here now—real, radiant, and impossible to ignore.

The bond doesn’t give a damn if I’m ready.

It settles in my gut, thick and heavy, like a weight I didn’t ask for—drawing tighter with every breath she takes.

Fate doesn’t wait for permission. It just is—loud, undeniable, and already changing everything.

By the time I push through the trees and get a clear look at the edge of Workshop Row, the pink eyesore parked along the gravel pull-off tells me everything I need to know.

Who the hell paints a food truck cotton candy pink?

Apparently, my mate. No, I shake my head. No. Not again.

She’s moving inside, opening a side panel, flicking on lights, setting out signs in some frothy, too-cheerful script.

I can’t hear what she’s saying, but her mouth is moving like she’s singing or talking to herself, and there’s this.

.. glow around her. Not literal. But close enough it makes me want to growl.

Sunshine. Chaos. Trouble.

I duck behind the shed and pace the length of the building, trying to shake off the rush of heat and scent crawling under my skin. I’m not ready for this.

I made peace with being alone. Or maybe I just got good at pretending.

After everything that happened with Mary Ann, there wasn’t room for more.

One mistake—that’s all it took. One moment of letting my guard down, of trusting a human heart with the truth of who I am.

She said she loved me. Said she could handle it.

Until the first time she saw me after the mist cleared and couldn’t look me in the eye.

I tried to explain. Tried to make her understand. But she left, and she took the part of me that still believed in quiet miracles.

So I buried it. That ache for connection. That need for warmth. I poured it into the grain of every headboard and table leg I carved. I turned my silence into a sanctuary.

It’s worked—until now.

But the bear? He’s pacing now too. He circles inside me, ears up, waiting. Not growling—yet. Just watching.

And when she waves at me? It’s like a lightning strike—sharp, bright, and aimed straight at the hollow places I’ve ignored for too long.

It rips through my control, splinters the barriers I’ve spent years building, and leaves everything trembling in its wake.

I want to snarl. I want to flee. But mostly, I want to feel it again.

Not because I want to wave back. But because some stubborn part of me does—and I can’t stand that.

The part of me that once believed in second chances is stirring, rattling the cage I locked it in.

While the rest of me—the guarded, the scarred, the animal—braces for impact, every instinct wired for retreat or ruin.

I ignore her... or try to.

But the second time she waves, it’s like watching a sunflower bend toward the sun. Too warm. Too open. Too much.

I retreat to the shop. The smell follows me—sweet, spiced, female—and beneath it all, that unbearable tug of fate.

I slam the bay doors harder than necessary, drag a half-finished table into place, and set to work sanding the edges.

It's a farmhouse design—clean lines, thick legs, made of reclaimed redwood with a rich, swirling grain. The kind of piece that’ll outlive all of us, meant for family dinners and scraped knees and someone’s dog curled up underneath.

I just started hand-planing the tabletop yesterday, carving out imperfections, smoothing the knots, coaxing out the shape that was already hiding in the wood. Now I take to the edges with a block of 180-grit sandpaper, working methodically. Letting my hands do what my thoughts can’t.

For a few fleeting moments, the grind of wood and drift of fine dust calm the restless parts of me that don’t want to be still.

Then she speaks. Her voice is light, melodic, teasing, the kind that should irritate me but slips into my bloodstream, heating places I thought were long frozen.

She wants to know whether she can stay.

Hell no.

But my mouth doesn’t say it. Instead, I nod.

Because I’m weak. Or curious. Or too stunned to do anything else.

She tries again. Introduces herself. Offers cinnamon rolls. Makes a crack about my silence, like she's trying to pry conversation out of stone.

It should annoy me. Instead, I almost smile.

And damn if one of my brothers—probably Eli—wouldn’t razz me for it.

He’d spot the twitch of my mouth and never let it go.

Sawyer would crack a joke. Beau would just give me that smug look, like he saw it coming.

Jonah? He’d probably stay quiet, but the glint in his eyes would say plenty.

I can practically hear them now, ganging up on me for showing even a flicker of interest.

Almost.

But smiling at a stranger—at her—feels like a step I’m not ready to take. So I leave. I try to shake her off like wood dust, like a splinter I can dig out later.

Back inside the shop, I set my drill down and stare at the curved lines of a custom bed frame. Birch and walnut. Steam-bent into an arch like a sunrise.

A shallow relief—mountain ridges, layered trees, a single soaring bird—decorates the frame’s headboard.

I hadn’t planned to carve that bird. But the shape pressed itself into the grain like it was already there, waiting.

Like the wood remembered something I didn’t.

It wasn’t something I usually did, but this commission asked for it and will pay for the time and skill it would take to create it.

Or maybe I wanted an excuse. The carving started as muscle memory, but it’s turning into something else—something that speaks of flight and freedom, of watching from a distance.

I run my thumb along the polished edge, feel the wood’s warmth, and let my shoulders drop a fraction. There’s a rhythm to this work, a quiet reverence. Every stroke of the chisel, every grain exposed, is a conversation I know how to have. Unlike most people.

This bed isn’t just a piece of furniture.

It’s an offering. Proof that someone can shape even broken things into something beautiful.

I lose hours this way—measuring, sanding, building.

It's the only thing that calms the constant tension that pulses through my body, the only space where silence doesn’t hurt.

Until she shows up, and the bear raises his head, scents the air and roars.

Not a real roar—at least not one others can hear. Not yet. Just pressure building behind my ribs, a low rumble threatening to rise. I’ve kept him buried this long. I can keep him there.

But then I hear her voice outside—light, warm, already wrapping around the townies with cinnamon-sweet charm and sunny one-liners. She's halfway to winning them over, and I hate that it’s working.

I hate that the cinnamon roll she offers me smells like salvation, and then, somehow, I'm at her window. I don’t remember crossing the gravel. I just know I need to be closer. To see her. To smell her. To feel her heat.

She turns to face me, a half-poured glaze trailing from her spatula, and those wide, surprised eyes fix on mine like I’m a storm cloud she’s not sure whether to run from or dance in.

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 the others 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.