Page 10 of Gunnar

That figures.

I hook my thumbs into the straps of my backpack and give him my hardest look. “What the hell just happened?”

My voice echoes in the clearing. I’m grateful for that. It sounds stronger than I feel.

His nostrils flare and he looks all mad again. “They shouldn’t have brought guns onto my land.”

I blink slowly, fatigue weighing on my eyelids. “Why did they?”

“They were testing us. It cost them.”

I think about the injured men—half-killed for my sake. “I’m a high-value witness,” I say, as it hits me—really hits me—for the first time.

“Dumb assholes.” Anger flares in his eyes. “That stunt could’ve got you hurt.”

I blink. Wonder why that bothers him.

“So, that thing?” I wave my arm, a small part of me still wondering if I imagined the whole thing. “Where you just turned into grizzly bears⁠—?”

“We’re shifters.”

He says it like it’s as ordinary as breathing.

“And you can just… do that whenever you want?”

“Yes.”

“And the man who brought me here knew that?”

“Yes.”

I turn slowly, scanning the tree line, the empty road, the collapsing lodge behind me.

Then I look back at him. “I’m not staying.”

The other two stop moving.

He gives me a hard look. “You don’t have a choice.”

“Like hell I don’t.” My voice rises. “You think I’m just going to live in a broken-down cabin with three strangers who are half-animal?”

“Much safer than the city,” he says.

“How can you say that?”

“Because this is my land.”

There it is again.

My land.

He gestures past my shoulder. “You see that ridge?”

I turn, despite myself. A dark line of rock cuts against the fading sky.

“From there down to the river bend. East to the old logging road. West to the ravine. Thirty-two thousand acres. This is our territory.”

I stare at him. That isn’t a backyard.