Page 7 of Bear and Order

Several customers glance in our direction and I immediately regret everything about the last thirty seconds. Juniper's grin grows to genuinely dangerous proportions.

"Don't," I mutter.

"I'm not doing anything," she replies, still grinning.

I clear my throat and attempt to recover whatever professional dignity remains. "I actually came to ask something."

Her expression shifts, the teasing softening into something more attentive. "What?"

"Your tax records," I tell her. Confusion replaces the amusement immediately.

"My tax records?" she replies. "Why?"

I move closer to the counter. "The complaints don't make sense," I say, and the smile disappears entirely — not because she's offended but because she's tired, the change subtle enough that most people wouldn't catch it.

"They don't make sense to me either," she admits quietly.

"Are they properly filed?" I ask.

"Yes," she answers.

"Is everything current?"

"Whenever I can manage it," she says, and the honesty surprises me — most people would have simply said yes and left it there, but she doesn't. "My accountant handles most of it. Why are you asking?"

"Because I'm trying to understand what's actually happening," I tell her. For an instant, she simply looks at me with the teasing gone and the defensiveness gone, and what remains is exhaustion — the kind people carry when they've been fighting something alone for too long.

"I can show you the records," she offers without hesitation, and disappears into the office before I can respond. I wait near the counter, and a few moments later she returns with a folder and extends it toward me.

I reach for it and our fingers coincidentally touch.

The world stops. There is no other way to describe it — one second I'm reaching for a folder and the next something crashes through me, a violent surge of energy tearing through every nerve from the point where our skin makes contact and spreading outward instantly. My chest tightens and my lungs forget how to work and my heartbeat slams against my ribs, and for one impossible moment the bakery disappears entirely — the voices, the customers, everything — beneath the force of what I feel. A connection, primal, ancient and instinctive. My bear explodes awake with a single word roaring through my mind.

Mate.

The possessive certainty surges forward with shocking force, crashing through every wall I've built over the years — every defense, every carefully maintained distance — and for one horrifying second I feel it all. Belonging, recognition, need, certainty. The force of it nearly drives me back a step, and then resistance slams up against the instinct and I force it behind the walls I've spent years constructing.

Duty. Control. Discipline.

The roar continues for a moment and then recedes — not defeated, just contained — behind walls that suddenly feel considerably less stable than before.

My breathing remains uneven and I force it under control slowly and deliberately, and then I look up. Juniper is staring at me, breathless and frozen, the folder still hanging between us and her cheeks flushed and her eyes wide. The expression tells me everything. She felt it too — every second, every impossible moment — and the realization hits harder than it should.

"Inspector?" Her voice comes out softer than before, uncertain in a way I can't afford to engage with.

I take the folder from her hands without answering, my control returning in careful deliberate pieces. Mate bonds complicate lives and careers and everything else, and I've spent years avoiding complications. I close the folder, turn toward the door, and walk out without looking back because I already know what I'll see — Juniper Bell standing exactly where I left her, trying to understand what just happened the same way I am and the same way I refuse to.

The word follows me down Main Street regardless.

Mate.

No, I tell myself firmly, and keep walking. No matter what my instincts insist or what my bear wants or what that impossible connection felt like — the answer is no. I've ignored worse. I can ignore this. At least that's what I tell myself, and the problem is that my bear doesn't sound remotely convinced, and neither, if I'm honest, do I.

5

JUNIPER

"Not today," I tell the mixer, and it answers with a grinding noise that makes my stomach drop. The machine shudders violently and then stops completely, and the quiet that comes is the particular kind that costs money. Behind me, Ollie slowly lowers the bowl he was carrying.