“Watch out!”

Joss glanced up from her phone in time to see two bear cubs barreling in her direction. At the last second, they split around her and crashed into one another on the other side. She twisted around to see them rolling end over end, tiny teeth gnawing on ears and scruff and paws.

Her heart and ovaries melted at the sight.

“Sorry. So sorry,” their frazzled mother mouthed as she jogged past. She waded into the fight and grabbed both cubs by the scruff of their necks. “Tara! Lynn! What have I told you about watching where you’re running? You could have hurt someone!”

Both cubs ducked their snouts and widened their eyes in such sad admonishment that Joss had to turn away to hide her smile.

Bearden was magic, pure and simple.

She was glad for it. She needed a bit of fairy dust.

Her phone dinged with another message and a reminder of what distracted her in the first place.

Please. I’m sorry. I made a mistake.

Joss shoved her phone into her back pocket with a loud harrumph and restarted her walk across the town square after looking both ways for more runaway cubs. The morning was beautiful and she wouldn’t let anything ruin it for her. Not even her ex.

Two days of wandering brick storefronts and taking strolls near the river before collapsing into her bed at Muriel’s Bed-and-Breakfast had done wonders for her. The time was infinitely better than twiddling her thumbs in Saint Paul and waiting for another slashed tire or rock through her window. Nothing was left for her there after Cal wrecked their life.

Oh, she’d fallen to her knees and ugly cried her way through several days worth of rom-coms, but she’d picked herself back up at the end of her wallow. Partly because she couldn’t stand to look at the walls of a house that didn’t belong to her anymore, but also because she wouldn’t give an emotionally repressed butt zit the satisfaction of more tears.

Cal would flip his flapjacks if he ever found out where she’d gone.

Joss stopped herself from rubbing at the empty spot on her left hand. She still wasn’t used to the lost weight, and she didn’t appreciate the sense of nakedness it gave her. Chalk another point up for Cal.

In her head, the nasty little badger—trademark, Rhodes family—crouched down and hissed. The man lost all right to know where she lived or worked when he slid the divorce papers across the dining room table and started the spiral from happy housewife to shifter with a target on her back.

She took one calming breath, then another. A glance over her shoulder showed the two cubs back at their roughhousing. Even if a pang of jealousy stabbed at her belly, the sight of their freedom to be themselves buoyed her mood.

Magic. She’d come for the magic.

At the other end of the square and past the fire station, the morning rush already took sides in the perpetual war of popularity between the coffee shop and diner. That the owners of each were happily mated with a child of their own didn’t make a lick of difference to the townsfolk, Joss had quickly learned. Teams were picked and names cursed for any perceived treason.

Feeling a strong pull toward tasty, caffeinated drinks, Joss threw her lot in with the line inside Mug Shot Coffee Shop.

“You’re back again,” Faith, Mug Shot’s owner, greeted when she reached the counter. The other barista, Kate, nodded in passing. “I thought we’d have run you off by now.”

“Not yet.” Joss smiled wide enough to make her cheeks hurt. Everyone was so dang friendly. The town felt more like home than anywhere she’d ever lived. “I have another day before I’m due at work.”

“Black Claw, right? Would you mind stopping by tomorrow morning and picking up the cupcake samples Tansey ordered?”

“Not a problem.” Joss fired off her order and shuffled to the side to make room for the customers behind her.

After her mourning period and burning an effigy of Cal the Turd Biscuit, she’d reached out to former coworkers and contacts from her cooking days. Most made noises of commiseration once they heard she was leaving upper crust society, but there’d been a suspicious lack of openings for a trained chef in the city.

She didn’t need to be a genius to figure out the Rhodes family weren’t happy with just breaking up her marriage. That’d be too quaint. No, they had to run her out of town, too.

Probably for the best. Joss took great pleasure imaging an entire canister of cayenne pepper finding its way into the pasta sauce if she ever had to cook for those b-holes again.

So she’d slid into the DMs of a former catering coworker, as the kids said. She thought. She was only half certain what DMs were and even less sure what sliding into them meant. Regardless, she’d reached out to Tansey and quickly learned in rapid-fire messages with about a thousand exclamation points that the woman she’d worked with on her first gig out of culinary school had bagged herself a hot cowboy and a ranch. Joss had hardly even mentioned being out of work before Tansey shot her an all-caps offer to put her chef skills to use. The only catch required relocating to Middle of Nowhere, Montana to the enclave that put supernaturals on the map.

The offer felt like fate. A job in a shifter town when Joss needed both. She’d shouted her acceptance even before Tansey finished her explanation, then remembered how to type a proper, pleasant yes and thanks.

Fresh air, a big kitchen, and space to figure out her inner animal called her name.

Besides, she needed to prove to herself that all the hateful words that poured from Mummy and Daddy Rhodes were wrong. She had worth. And sure, she had a furry side, but she’d make a very fine mother one day. At least her future little ones would only be related to the weasel family and not look like one.

Mummy’s lips looked like a cat’s butt after that retort. Joss thought it an improvement.

Joss juggled her coffee, bagel, and copy of that morning’s Bear’s Den Gazette and watched her feet as she made her way across the cafe and to a corner seat. Her heart jumped when her phone rang, and she nearly spilled her drink in her haste to get it out of her pocket.

What if it was Tansey? What if she’d gotten the dates wrong and was already late for her first day of work? She didn’t want the guests to go hungry.

The hurting side of her brain that still replayed Cal’s stupid words asked a different question. What if Tansey was calling to say she found someone else?

Worse. Cal’s name flashed across the screen.

Joss automatically swallowed her badger’s growl before realizing she didn’t need to anymore. She’d spent her entire life hiding away a whole side of herself. Her father was the shifter, and her mother didn’t know what to do with her after he passed away.

Even the man who should have accepted everything about her preferred to pretend her badger didn’t exist. That worked out well until she had a very, very minor incident involving an unexpected shift, clawing up the in-laws’ wood floors in her haste to escape, and a shoe thrown at her head.

Then came the demands from the family. The Rhodes line would not be infected with shifter blood, Mummy Rhodes hissed while clutching her gin and tonic, shoes firmly back on her feet. Daddy Rhodes agreed and told Cal to choose between the family money and connections, or his disgusting half breed of a wife.

Stupid Cal. He picked money. Joss picked rejecting his call.

Did he take the hint? Oh, no. That wouldn’t be Cal.

Her phone dinged with a new text. Joss sighed and opened the message.

Let me make it up to you. Just tell me where you are.

Joss frowned. How could she trust another word out of his mouth when his till death do us part vows were broken the moment his parents threatened to cut him off?

Even if she deluded herself into believing him again, she had the receipts from a two-month campaign to drive her away and win her back after she’d signed the dang papers! If she ever doubted the man’s indecision, she could take a scroll through memory lane and sift through the backlog of text messages.

He’d gotten angry when he realized she left Saint Paul for parts unknown. Then he’d gone mad when she refused to tell him where she was. Now, he’d swung into pleading. Aside from having a shoe thrown at her head, it was the most unbelievable part of the whole mess. She suspected that in Cal’s world, she would sit and pine away for him until he was ready to toy with her again.

She was tired of living someone else’s dream. Cal wanted the big house and adoring wife waiting for him at home. She’d been happy to play that role until he made his choice to end it.

He gave her a gift, really. She could get back to her roots in the kitchen and learn more about her inner nature than just the ability to suppress it. And maybe, when she found her feet and planted herself firm against anyone else’s idea of her, she could find someone who’d accept her fully and completely.

Distant, that. Number eighty thousand on the bucket list. Her heart still hurt, even if she knew she made moves in the right direction.

Feeling entirely too existential and needing to avoid the crisis that came with it, Joss flipped to the back of the paper for the comics. She had fond memories of learning to read them on her father’s knee. She should have known Cal was bad news when he called the strips silly and a waste of good ink.

Joss growled for real. Eff him. He wasn’t running her life anymore. She could read whatever she liked.

Another ding, another message.

Are you seriously ignoring me? Stop being such a child.

Joss stuck her tongue out at the screen and went back to her childish comics and ignoring stupid boys who didn’t know what they had until they lost it.

She turned the page, expecting more strips to pull her away from the dark moods, and instead found an announcement that made her throat rattle with a growl.

Hunter Shaw and Joss Warren are to be wed...

Joss’s brain broke, and she didn’t register the rest of the words.

No. No, no, no. Nope. Nuh-uh. Not happening.

No marriage. That was done and over. And to this Hunter fellow? There had to be a mistake.

One that needed to be corrected. Immediately. So fast they went back in time and prevented the mistake from printing. If Superman could do it, then she could, too.

She wanted nothing searchable making its way back to Calvin Rhodes or his despicable parents. She’d found a place for herself outside of their grasp. And she certainly didn’t want Cal knowing her location when he couldn’t even stay civil in text.

Faith and Kate suddenly appeared at her side. “Are... you okay?” Faith asked.

“You’re hissing up a storm,” Kate added.

“Uhm...” Joss pointed to the scrunched up newspaper in her hand. The tips of claws broke through the thin sheet. Down, badger. “Can you tell me where to find the newspaper office?”