I came to crack a safe. I didn't come to get caught, cuffed, and kept by the bear who built it.

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I'm an antiques restorer, not a thief. But three years of appeals ate my practice, my savings, and my whole life — and my mother's still in a cell for a murder she didn't commit. The only proof that frees her is locked in a safe on Iron Mountain.

 

So I stopped asking, and went to take it.

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Silas Holt is six-foot-three of muscle, silence, and patience that should terrify me. He catches me hands-deep in his vault, cuffs me, and tells me flat I'm his captive until the sheriff comes. Then a storm tears out the only road down.

 

The gold in his eyes, the growl in his chest every time I get close, tells me the man holding me isn't only a man. It's crazy isn't it? 

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If Silas isn't human, then was is he?

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He wants to protect me. Feed me. Keep me. 

 

When he tells me his bite would bind us for life, with no taking it back, I'm the one reaching for the cuffs. Then my uncle comes up the mountain with hired guns and gasoline, out to burn every loose end with me inside.

 

I broke in to take what this bear keeps locked away. I never planned to become the thing he'd raze the world to keep.