Page 14 of Roaring Heat (Shifters of Redwood Rise #2)

BEAU

T he forest doesn’t breathe again after she leaves. It holds its silence like a secret, like a warning. I stay back just long enough to make sure she’s headed down the trail without looking over her shoulder, but the second she disappears into the trees, I drop the pretense and move.

The tension crawling under my skin hasn’t eased since the moment I felt the pulse hit her.

It wasn’t just a ripple beneath my boots.

It was as if a live current slammed through my spine.

My shoulders lock. My breath catches hard in my lungs.

For one raw, disorienting second, I feel the earth responding to something I can’t name.

Energy like that doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

It reacts. And it reacted to her. The land doesn’t answer like that unless it’s personal.

Whatever force surged through the clearing earlier wasn’t some random flare.

It was because of her. And something else that had been watching.

I track her path quickly and quietly, slipping through the thickest patches of shadow like the forest itself is helping me move unseen.

Every step she takes drags my focus tighter.

She doesn't sense the danger lurking at the edges of the clearing. She doesn’t know the rhythm of the earth has buckled.

The pulse I felt earlier hasn’t faded; it’s turned razor-edged.

And whatever it is, it’s circling. She’s out here alone with something I haven’t been able to identify yet, and I’ll be damned if I let it reach her before I do.

A soft tremor ripples through the earth beneath my boots, faint but undeniable. I stop in my tracks and brace, knees slightly bent, eyes narrowing as I scan the shadowed ridgeline for movement or sound.

A moment later, I hear it. Branches snapping in a rhythm too fast and deliberate to be natural, as if something massive and wild is crashing through the forest with deadly intent.

A branch snaps in the distance, sharp and sudden. Another follows, closer this time. Then comes a low rumble, deep and resonant, like thunder rolling across the forest floor. It's the unmistakable drumming of hooves bearing down fast.

"Shit."

I break into a run, heart slamming in my chest, muscles wound tight as the crashing thunder of hooves barrels closer. The underbrush tears at my legs. Adrenaline blurs the edges of my vision, but I don’t stop. Not when the sound behind me builds to something monstrous.

It comes like a landslide. A deep, resonant pounding that swells into the kind of roar you feel in your ribs before you hear it with your ears. The herd breaks through the ridgeline above town, too close, too fast, moving like they’re being hunted.

Elk don’t charge like this without a cause.

Something has driven them into a frenzy.

It's more than a reaction to a predator, more than instinct. The herd is terrified, fleeing from a threat I haven’t seen yet but can feel pulsing in the air like a storm about to break.

The unnatural surge in their movement sends warning signals racing up my spine, each hoofbeat echoing louder than the last.

I skid to a halt at the edge of the trees, heart hammering, and catch sight of Anabeth just a hundred yards ahead.

She’s making her way back toward the path, her bag slung over one shoulder, head tilted down as she rifles through something, completely unaware of what's behind her. The sun cuts slants through the branches overhead, casting light across her hair. For one gut-twisting second, I see her not as she is, but as she might be—hurt, broken, lost. If I don’t reach her in time, I may never get the chance to see her whole again.

She’s too distracted to notice the pounding chaos behind her. I shout her name as loud as I can. She spins around.Her eyes go wide at the same moment the first few elk crash through the underbrush.

There’s no time. I throw myself forward, tearing my clothes off and covering the distance in seconds.

She freezes for half a breath, then bolts toward me, but it's not fast enough. My heart slams against my ribs, fear clawing at my throat. The sight of her running straight into the path of a stampede makes my chest tighten. I push harder, adrenaline burning like wildfire in my veins, but it feels like I’m chasing time I can’t outrun. Not for what's coming.

"Get down!"

I don’t wait for her to obey. I hurl myself into her path and slam into her, twisting midair so she hits the ground beneath me with a thud that rattles my bones.

The impact jars us both, but I keep her pinned, trying to shield every inch of her with my own body.

Her breath rushes out in a gasp beneath me.

The earth trembles with approaching hooves, each beat a countdown I can’t stop. The herd isn’t slowing. They’re moving like a freight train with no brakes. One stray hoof, one wrong angle, and she won’t survive it. My arms cage around her. My body locks tight. It still won’t be enough.

My hands dig into the dirt on either side of her, grounding me against the chaos pounding through my skull.

My heart jackhammers in my chest, straining against a cage of panic and pure, blistering intent.

I don't think. I don’t plan. Something deeper takes over—a primal need carved from bone and blood, surging with one unrelenting truth.

I won’t lose her. Not like this. Not now.

Mist coils and erupts from the forest floor, thick and fast, rising like steam from boiling water.

It engulfs me in seconds, heat buzzing through my blood, vision swimming as the world blurs at the edges.

The ground feels like it's vibrating under my knees, humming with ancient power.

I suck in a breath that tastes like metal and rain, and the sound of pounding hooves fades beneath the roar building in my head.

It surges up my spine, swallowing me in a rush of heat and light as the world slips sideways. Muscles stretch, bones dissolve into something deeper. The air tastes like earth and adrenaline. The sounds of the forest sharpen. And when the mist falls away, I am no longer crouched over her as a man.

I am what I truly am.

My bear rises, erupting from the deepest part of me with a force that steals the breath from my lungs.

My pulse spikes. The adrenaline doesn’t dull.

It spikes with razor precision, igniting every muscle into action.

My thoughts fragment as instinct floods in, and the fear that twisted my gut vanishes beneath something ancient, something powerful.

I don’t fight the transformation. I give in to it because she needs the part of me strong enough to stand between her and the stampede.

A grizzly, immense and elemental, rises from the mist with muscle taut and eyes gleaming.

Power thrums beneath thick fur, every nerve strung tight, awareness razor-sharp.

My paws crush the earth with purpose as I take in everything: the movement of elk, the snap of branches, the razor-thin boundary between her safety and chaos.

I brace myself, ready to become the line that holds it all at bay.

The elk skid to a halt, hooves gouging into the soft earth.

I surge upward, front paws raised, and unleash a roar that rips through the clearing like a cannon blast. Trees tremble.

Birds take flight. The force of it echoes off the ridgeline, a primal warning that demands submission.

The ground quakes beneath the weight of my fury.

The herd reacts instantly, their tightly packed mass veering as one.

Panic fractures their momentum. They split around us in a tide of muscle and panic, redirected by the sheer dominance of a predator none of them expected to face head-on.

They veer off, thundering around us in a chaotic swirl of muscle and instinct, kicking up leaves and branches.

One brushes close enough for me to feel the heat of its flank, but I plant myself between it and her, immovable.

When it ends, the forest holds its breath.

The crash and thunder of the herd give way to a stillness so complete it presses against my eardrums. Only the ragged rasp of her breathing breaks the silence, raw and uneven, scraping through the charged air.

The leaves around us tremble in the aftermath, but she doesn’t move, and neither do I.

I lower slowly, the weight of my form pressing into the grass, blades snapping beneath the force of each step.

My massive paws leave deep impressions in the earth.

I turn my head toward her, muscles tight with tension, ready to respond to the slightest movement.

Her presence pulls at me, anchoring the wild energy still thrumming in my veins.

She’s staring up at me, eyes wide and unblinking, locked onto mine like she’s trying to piece the impossible into something that makes sense.

Her chest rises and falls in shallow bursts, lips parted, but she doesn’t flinch or look away.

There’s no fear in her gaze—only awe, confusion, and something fierce just beneath the surface.

Not terror. Awe.

Her lips part, hair wild around her face, but she doesn’t run.

Doesn’t scream. Just looks at me like I’ve cracked the world open, and there’s no turning back.

For the first time, someone outside the fold has seen what I am.

Not just the man, but the grizzly within.

There should be fear. Panic. A scream I won’t be able to silence.

Instead, she watches me with wide, disbelieving eyes, as if some deep part of her already knew.

Linking me to the massive grizzly that just faced down a stampede should make no damn sense… but something in her gaze says she’s already accepted it. Even if it tears apart everything she thought she understood.

“Beau?” Her voice trembles. “That… that’s you, isn’t it?”

I take a step back and let the mist rise again.

It spirals upward, thick and fast, dissolving the bear and pulling me back into my human skin.

The return is jarring in its completeness, leaving me kneeling in the churned earth, breath ragged and limbs unsteady.

Dirt clings to my legs. My chest heaves as I reach for her, every muscle aching with the effort of the change and the weight of what I’ve just revealed.

She doesn’t retreat. But her gaze drops—then jerks back up with a snap of realization.

My jaw tightens. The truth of what I am is out, and I'm standing here naked, body scraped and marked from the impact, with nothing to shield her from seeing all of me.

I alter my stance just slightly, giving her the illusion of space while keeping a wary eye on her face. "Not exactly how I meant to have this conversation."

Her cheeks flush, and she quickly looks away, focusing on the trampled earth instead of the very naked man standing in front of her.

I reach for the clothing that lays scattered and trampled in the dirt, shaking it off as I do so.

Cold fabric brushes my fingers, as I pull them on.

The rough cotton scratches against scraped skin, grounding me.

I approach her slowly and crouch beside her, muscles still tight from the shift, my breathing uneven.

My clothes cling damply to my skin, and the pounding of blood in my ears hasn’t quieted.

Her gaze locks onto mine, and I feel it like a current, fierce and unrelenting.

My heart still hammers, syncing with the echo of the stampede that hasn't fully left my veins.

"I suppose trying to convince you that you didn't see what you just saw would be kind of pointless," I say, voice hoarse with the weight of everything that just happened. My pulse is still pounding, each beat echoing the raw adrenaline still flooding my system.

She nods once. No questions. No words. Just a silence dense with the weight of a hundred broken rules. There's a sense that even more are waiting, wound tight and ready to snap.

Her worldview didn’t get bent or slightly altered. It was cracked clean through, splitting along the seams of logic and science until only the raw, impossible truth remains. She stares straight into it, and me, without blinking.

I step closer, chest still heaving from the aftershocks of the shift, every breath a jagged edge against my ribs. The air between us crackles with tension, but beneath it runs something gentler—an ache to ease the confusion stamped across her face, to reach her through the chaos I just unleashed.

“I need you to breathe, Anabeth.”

She blinks slowly, like she's surfacing from deep underwater, and finally exhales a breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding. Her shoulders drop a fraction, the tension releasing in a visible wave, but her eyes never leave mine.

“I don’t... I don't understand what I just saw.”

“I know.”

Her eyes search mine. “But it was real.”

“Yes.”

She shudders. “That was a grizzly. A real, live grizzly. And... and it was you."

“Yes.”

Her knees buckle, and she drops to the ground, waving me off with a shaky hand as I move toward her. She doesn't faint. She just lowers herself to the ground, trying to find a little stability in a world that’s tilted just turned upside down.

“I need a second,” she says.

“Take it. Take all the time you need,” I say crouching down where I am.

The silence that follows feels fragile, delicate in its stillness.

It’s the breathless moment between lightning and thunder, full of tension and unanswered questions.

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t speak. But something in her posture says she knows it isn’t over.

She knows the storm hasn’t passed. It’s only waiting, crouched in the quiet, for her to catch up.

She lifts her head, eyes blazing.“What the hell are you, Beau Hayes?"

The words come out rough, but not with fear. They slam into place; her eyes lit with something fierce and unrelenting. They pin me in place, vivid and defiant, flickering with something I can’t quite name. Wonder? Rage? Curiosity? Maybe all three.

Beneath her voice, I hear the stutter of her breath, see the faint tremble working through her hands. She’s not frozen in fear. She’s trying to keep from unraveling, trying to piece together the impossible with logic that no longer applies.

Her eyes stay locked on mine, not with panic, but demand. She wants the truth. Not distance. Not escape. Just the truth.