Page 16 of Rose's Untamed Bear

“Of course it isn’t working, you harebrained cabbage,” the troll wailed. “You’re ruining everything!”

Snow leaned close and hissed in my ear, “He’s impossible.”

I sighed, pulling my knife from my belt. “There’s only one way.”

His eyes bulged as he saw the blade. “No! Not again! You wouldn’t dare?—”

Snip.

The knife sliced clean, and his glorious beard fell loose from the rocks, trailing ragged and dripping. He tumbled backward with a splash, sputtering, then scrambled to his feet. He clutched the hacked end of his beard in both hands like it was a mortal wound.

“You wicked, wretched, witlessgooses!” he roared, and his voice cracked with fury. “Do you haveanyidea what you’ve done? None! Not a scrap! You’ve destroyed years—decades! That was a work of art, a tapestry of greatness, and you’ve butchered it like pig slop!”

Snow snorted, arms crossed. “You’re welcome.”

The troll stamped his soaked boots, his beard dripping, his face redder than a boiled beet. “May your needles rust, may your pelts rot, may the wolves line their dens with your hair!Gooses!Both of you! Feather-brained, root-sucking, pine-sniffing gooses!”

With that, he stormed off into the trees, shrieking curses so foul and creative even I felt faintly impressed. Snow and I sat back on our heels, wet and breathless. Then we looked at each other—me dripping with stream water, her cheeks pink from laughter she tried and failed to bite back.

And we both burst out laughing.

If I could have stayed away, I would have. Gods, I would have. Let a beast gnaw off his own paw at the trap before returning, so the old stories went, but I was neither man nor beast, caught in the teeth of a curse that made every dusk a test of will, every dawn a new and lacerating hunger. I tried. Every morning, I swore to the bare branches and the bones of myself that I would not circle back, would not let my shadow stain the doorstep of that little cottage, not now, not ever again. But each night, I found myself drawn down the slope toward the orange glow of their window, the way a dying stag staggers to the river, with no hope, only instinct.

I made my drop-offs at the threshold, always with the care of a thief. Fresh kill, still warm. A bundle of sweet roots, cleaned and tied with winter grass. Herbs for a cough, a little honeycomb I’d risked my hide for, stolen from a bear den deeper in the gorge.I’d set them down with my heart thudding, then would slip back into the bracken before I could be discovered. I never let myself linger, not at first, though the urge to press my snout to the wood and breathe in the scent of them—Rose and her sister, their mother, the safety of a home—nearly strangled me every time. I longed to hear Rose’s voice through the crack, see the arch of her neck as she stooped to gather my offering. I told myself the ache would fade if I only suffered it enough times, that the hollow inside me would shrink if I filled it with distance.

But the world had shifted, as surely as the snowline on the mountain. What once was a game of patience—waiting for the curse to ebb, waiting for Grimbalt to slip, waiting for the world to let me back in—was now a matter of survival. Not for myself, but for them. I could smell the rot at the edge of the forest, see the flicker of Grimbalt’s hate in the way the birds fell silent, hear the snap of a twig that was not made by any beast I knew. The threat was closing in, and the line between watcher and watched was growing thinner, day by day.

I tried to convince myself that distance was safer. That if I kept away from Rose and her family, I’d spare them whatever horror might find me next. But it was a lie, and I knew it, the way a fox knows the trap is sprung even before it bites. I kept returning, night after night, each visit a little closer than the last.

Sometimes, after the house had gone quiet and the fire was nothing but a red eye in the gloom, I would circle to the window and crouch low, hidden behind the old hedge. Through the cracked slats, I watched Rose brush out her hair by candlelight, fingers combing through the wild red tangle until it shone like spilled wine. I’d see her mother, moving slow and tired, pouring tea or mending a bit of torn sleeve. Snow always curled tightin the corner with a book, one pale finger tracing the words. Sometimes they laughed, small and sharp, and the sound made my insides ache with a need I could hardly name.

But not all nights were laughter. Sometimes I saw Rose pressed flat to her pillow, fists knotted in the blankets, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs. Those were the nights that broke me down to the bone and left me pacing in the woods, claws ripping at the frozen earth.

Was it grief for me? Did she blame herself for my disappearance? Or was she sick, some fever eating her from inside? The thought of her hurting, of anyone hurting her, made me wild. I wanted to crash through the door and gather her in my arms, to lay her head on my chest and promise that nothing—not man nor monster nor troll—would ever harm her again. But I couldn’t. I was a beast, a curse, a danger to everything I loved. To go back would risk bringing ruin with me, and so I hovered at the edge of her life, a mute guardian, a ghost who left food but could not speak.

Often, as I crouched in the snow and watched the play of candlelight across her face, I imagined myself as I should have been: Derrick, the man, the prince, laughing beside her at the fireside, carrying her in my arms across the threshold, making her a home that was more than just borrowed stone and timber. But those dreams were dust. I was a thing of claws and fur, a walking reminder of all that had been lost.

The only thing I could give her now was safety. So by day, I roamed the woods, hunting for Grimbalt—the worm at the root of all this. I followed the traces he left behind: a print in the mud smaller than my own paw, the stench of his pipe lingering in a hollow, tufts of hair snagged on a bramble that shimmered oddly in the sun. He was always ahead of me, always just out of reach.Sometimes I doubted if I was even truly hunting him, wondering instead if he was leading me in circles, laughing as I chased my own tail. But still, I tried. Still, I searched. Because every night, as I lay outside Rose’s cottage and listened to the soft rhythm of her sleep, I remembered the promise I’d made in the agony of my transformation: I would not let him win. I would not let the world turn cold around her.

There were nights when her weeping grew too much to bear. I would curl on the stoop, pressing my ear to the wood, desperate for a sound, a word, any proof that she endured. Once, in a fit of madness, I scratched at the door with my claws, slow and careful, a gentle rapping. The noises inside stopped. I heard footsteps, the whisper of a cloak. The handle turned. My heart pounded so hard I thought it would break the spell and call the whole family to the threshold. But Mother was wise—she only opened the door a crack, peered out into the darkness, and then, seeing nothing but the night, closed it again. I caught a flash of her eyes, sharp as a knife in the gloom, and I wondered if she knew. If she had always known.

No one ever called my name. No one ever saidDerrickorMagnusorbeast. I was just the shadow in the trees, the howl on the wind, the rumor that the woods were not so empty as they seemed. I tried to take comfort in that, to let the distance be a kindness. But it gnawed at me, made my dreams restless. Every morning, I woke with the taste of longing on my tongue, and every night, I went back, drawn like a moth to the one light left in my world.

I told myself it was enough. That Rose was safe, that she would heal, that one day, she might even forget me entirely and live a life unmarred by curses or memory. That was the best I could ever hope to give her. If I kept moving, if I kept Grimbalt at bay,maybe the poison would not touch her, maybe she could have a chance at something normal.

But one morning—no, it must have been nearly noon, because the sun pushed through the clouds with a force I hadn’t felt in weeks—I caught sight of Rose outside the cottage. She was gathering sticks, her hair a ragged halo of gold and red, her cheeks ruddy with cold and effort. She was singing, a song I half-remembered from my days in the palace, something silly about a fox and a fisherman’s wife. The sight of her—alive, strong, unbroken by winter—made me stop dead in my tracks. I stood there in the shadows, unable to move, and watched as she knelt to tie up the bundle, her breath rising in little crystal clouds.

She looked up, suddenly, as if she’d felt my gaze. For a terrible moment, I thought she saw me. But she only stared down the path, lips parted, eyes searching for something she could not name. Then she went back to her work, humming low, and when she vanished into the house, I felt the world collapse in around me.

I could not keep doing this.

The line I’d drawn in my head—the line that said stay away, keep them safe—was no longer enough. I was as much a ghost as any of the legends spun about my old family: a prince who vanished, a father turned to stone, a bear who haunted the forest but never came home. Rose deserved more than a phantom. She deserved a man, or at the very least, a truth.

That night, I made my delivery as usual—a pair of partridges, gutted and plucked, laid out on the stoop like a peace offering. But this time I waited, pressed close to the wall, hidden by the eaves. I wanted to see her, needed to see her, if only for a heartbeat. The door opened, light spilled out across the snow,and there she was: Rose, wrapped in a threadbare shawl, hair unbound, eyes shadowed with sleeplessness, but alive. She bent and picked up the birds, then she paused, and her eyes searched the woods. When she didn't find anything, she sighed, before calling out loud enough for me to hear, "As soon as the snow is gone, I will go into the village. I will find out about that wizard, and Iwillfind a way to break the spell."

By the gods, I knew she would make good on that promise, and I knew I had run out of time. I needed to find Grimbalt and the hoard he was keeping. Hidden inside the gold he had amassed was the only thing that could break the spell that hung over me and my family. A red crystal.

In order to do so, I would have to go deeper into the forest; If I truly wanted to find Grimbalt—and the hoard he guarded so jealously—then I couldn’t just circle the same trails like a chained dog. I’d have to go further, deeper into the woods than I’d ever dared. Into the old places where even wolves went silent and the trees leaned in to whisper curses.