BIG BEAR ENERGY

  KALA ASTER

  MILLY TAIDEN

  COPYRIGHT

  By Kala Aster

  Copyright © 2025 by Kala Aster

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  CONTENTS

  1. Chloe

  2. Corin

  3. Chloe

  4. Corin

  5. Chloe

  6. Corin

  7. Chloe

  8. Corin

  9. Chloe

  10. Corin

  11. Chloe

  12. Corin

  13. Chloe

  14. Corin

  15. Chloe

  16. Corin

  17. Chloe

  18. Corin

  19. Chloe

  20. Corin

  21. Chloe

  22. Corin

  23. Chloe

  24. Chloe

  25. Corin

  26. Chloe

  27. Corin

  28. Chloe

  29. Corin

  30. Chloe

  31. Corin

  32. Chloe

  33. Chloe

  34. Corin

  35. Chloe

  36. Corin

  37. Chloe

  38. Corin

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  Howl You Doin’ Chapter 1

  1

  CHLOE

  Chloe knelt in the small plot behind Freya's apothecary, her breath fogging in the gray morning air as she worked gloved fingers through the soil around a cluster of winter savory. The herb should have been thriving in late January. It was hardy enough to survive frost, stubborn enough to push through snow. Instead, the leaves curled inward, edges browning like old parchment.

  She sat on her heels and frowned.

  Chloe took off her glove and dug her fingers deep into the soil. It felt wrong. Not frozen, that she could work with. This was something else. Too dense. Too still. When she pressed her palm flat against the earth, there was no answering hum, no quiet pulse of life waiting beneath the surface.

  Just... nothing.

  "You're glaring at that dirt like it’s done you dirty."

  Chloe looked up. Freya stood in the apothecary's back doorway, copper-auburn waves escaping her braid, a steaming mug cradled between her palms. Even in the flat winter light, she looked like something that had grown straight from the forest floor in all warm greens and earth tones and an energy that made plants lean toward her when she walked past.

  "The savory's struggling." Chloe pushed to her feet, brushing soil from her knees. Her pale blonde hair had slipped from its pins again, and she tucked a strand behind her ear. "I don't understand it. I've done everything right."

  Freya's forest green eyes swept over the herb beds. "The valerian's the same. And the comfrey near the fence."

  "I noticed."

  "It's probably just the cold snap we had last week. That freeze came in fast," Freya replied, though her face looked a little more concerned.

  Chloe nodded, but her hands wouldn’t let her believe it. When she'd pulled off her glove earlier to test the soil's temperature, her fingertips had tingled with something sour. Something off-key.

  She didn't say that out loud. She'd learned that mentioning what her hands told her earned her looks in most places, and she had only been in Hollow Oak a year. She knew this place was supernatural but she still had no clue how to interrogate within the others, especially when she didn’t understand it herself. It just came off as suspicious that she had no answers and how her only living relative, her sister, wouldn’t just explain it to her.

  "Come inside," Freya said. "Warm up. I've got that calendula salve ready to jar if you want to help."

  "Give me five minutes. I want to check the other starts."

  Soft steps suddenly approaching made them both glance back.

  Corin Vane came around the corner of the building, a wooden crate balanced against his hip like it weighed nothing. Which, given his size, it probably didn't. The man was built like the bear he shifted into standing at 6'5", broad shoulders and solid muscle, not to mention his hands that were big enough to palm her entire head if he wanted to. His honey-brown hair was wind-tousled as always, and when he spotted them, his hazelnut eyes crinkled at the corners.

  "Morning." His voice was low, unhurried. Everything about Corin was unhurried.

  "You're early," Freya said, but she was already smiling. "I wasn't expecting the honey delivery until Thursday."

  "Bees don't care about schedules." He set the crate on the small wooden table near the door, glass jars clinking softly. "Had a good yield from the winter stores. Figured you could use it."

  "I can always use it." Freya was already reaching for a jar, holding it up to what little light the gray sky offered. The honey inside glowed amber, thick and slow-moving. "This is beautiful, Corin."

  His shrug was a small movement that somehow involved his entire torso. "Bees did the work."

  Chloe watched the exchange with the same quiet attention she gave everything in Hollow Oak. Corin and Freya had known each other for years, their rhythm easy and established. She was still learning these patterns, still finding where she fit into the weave of a town that had existed long before she'd stumbled through its borders.

  Corin's gaze shifted to her, and she straightened without meaning to.

  "Chloe." A nod, nothing more. But his eyes lingered on the herb beds behind her, tracking the same problems she'd been cataloging all morning. "How are the winter starts?"

  "Struggling."

  "Mm." He stepped past her, and she caught his scent of wild honey and woodsmoke, clean earth after rain. It was distracting. "Mind if I look?"

  "Go ahead."

  She watched him crouch where she'd been kneeling minutes before, his massive frame folding with surprising grace. He didn't touch the plants, just studied them, head tilted slightly, nostrils flaring once.

  "Soil's sour," he said.

  So she hadn't imagined it. "You can smell that?"

  "Bear." He said it simply, like that explained everything. Which, in Hollow Oak, it probably did. "When did it start?"

  "I'm not sure. I noticed last week, but it might have been earlier. The freeze made everything look stressed." She stopped herself. She was rambling.

  Corin rose, brushing dirt from his palms. "My orchard beds are the same. Some of them."

  "Really?"

  He nodded, that steady gaze holding hers. "Thought it was runoff from the cold. But it doesn't feel right."

  Freya had come to stand beside them, her mug forgotten. "What do you mean, doesn't feel right?"

  Corin's jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "I'm not sure yet. Just…off."

  Off. Such a small word for the wrongness Chloe felt when she pressed her hands to the earth.

  "Could be a drainage issue," Freya offered. "The thaw and freeze cycles have been brutal this year."

  "Could be." Corin didn't sound convinced.

  A gust of wind cut through the garden, sharp enough to make Chloe shiver despite her layers. Corin's eyes flicked to her, then away.

  "I should get back," he said. "Got frames to check before the temperature drops again." He turned to Freya. "Let me know if the sage turns too. It shouldn't."

  "I'll watch it," Freya promised.

  He nodded once, then looked at Chloe again. "If you want to compare notes on the soil, you know where to find me."

  "The orchard?"

  "Usually." That almost-smile again, softening the hard lines of his face. "Or ask Twyla. She always knows where everyone is."

  "Everyone knows that's true," Chloe said, and was rewarded with a low huff that might have been a laugh before he left.

  Chloe stared at the spot where he'd crouched, at the earth he'd studied with such quiet intensity.

  "He's worried," Freya said quietly.

  "I know."

  "Corin doesn't worry easily. He's…" Freya paused, searching for the word. "Steady. Like the mountain."

  "I've noticed."

  Freya's gaze turned knowing in a way that made Chloe want to busy herself with the calendula immediately. "Have you?"

  "Don't."

  "I didn't say anything."

  "You were about to."

  Freya laughed, the sound bright against the gray morning. "Come inside before you freeze. We can check on the beds again tomorrow."

  Chloe took one last look at the wilting savory, and the still and silent soil that should have been humming with the first whispers of spring.

  She followed Freya into the warm amber light of the apothecary, but she couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was wrong with the land wasn't going to wait.

  2

  CORIN

  Corin pulled his truck to a stop at the very edge of the orchard, engine ticking in the silence as he studied the rows of bare apple trees stretching toward the gray horizon. Frost clung to every branch, every fence post, turning the world into something brittle and crystalline. Beautiful, if you didn't know what that kind of cold could do to a hive.

  He grabbed his smoker and veil from the passenger seat and headed for the apiaries.

  The Vane family had kept bees
for four generations. His grandfather had built the first hives. His father had expanded them. Corin had inherited them five years ago, along with the orchard and the quiet understanding that some people were meant to tend things rather than lead them.

  He didn't mind. Tending suited him.

  The first hive looked fine from the outside with its white-painted wood dusted with frost, the entrance reducer was in place, no signs of moisture damage. Corin lit the smoker, let it build to a steady stream, and eased off the outer cover.

  "Morning, ladies."

  The bees barely stirred.

  That was wrong.

  Even in winter, even in cold this sharp, there should have been movement at the top of the frames. A cluster of bodies generating heat, protecting the queen, keeping the colony alive through sheer collective will. Instead, he found them sluggish, scattered, some crawling in confused circles on the inner cover like they'd forgotten what they were supposed to be doing.

  This was wrong.

  He worked through the hive methodically, checking frames, looking for signs of disease or mites or starvation. Nothing obvious. Plenty of honey stores. No foulbrood smell, no deformed wings. Just bees that seemed... lost.

  "What's going on with you?"

  He sealed the hive and moved to the next. Same story. And the next. By the fourth hive, his jaw had set into a hard line and his bear was restless in a way it hadn't been in months.

  Something was wrong. Something he couldn't see or smell or fix with smoke and sugar water.

  Corin stripped off his gloves and crouched beside the last hive, pressing his bare palm to the frozen ground. The earth should have felt dormant, as though it were sleeping, waiting for spring. Instead, it felt dead. Sour, the way he'd described it to Freya and Chloe that morning.

  The thought of Chloe lingered before he could stop it. Her pale blonde hair escaping in pieces, dirt under her fingernails, that furrow between her brows as she'd studied her failing herbs. She'd felt it too. He'd seen it in the way she'd touched the soil. Not just checking temperature, but listening. The same way he listened to his bees.

  She had good hands. Careful hands. He'd noticed them the first time she'd wandered out to the orchard last spring, curious about the hives, asking questions most people never thought to ask. She'd wanted to know how the bees communicated. What the different dances meant. Whether they recognized him when he came to check on them.

  He couldn’t seem to help but answer in more detail than he usually would have.

  That should have been his first warning.

  "Why the pouting?"

  Corin straightened. His cousin Finn stood at the very edge of the apiary, hands shoved in his jacket pockets, breath clouding around his grin. Youngest of the Vane brothers, built leaner than the rest of them, with the same dark hair but none of Corin's patience. Finn ran the equipment side of Vane Construction. Deliveries, mostly.

  "I'm checking hives."

  "You're crouching in the dirt, staring at nothing. That's pouting." Finn wandered closer, eyeing the hives with the casual disinterest of someone who'd been stung too many times as a kid. "Dad sent me to grab the post driver. Said you borrowed it last week."

  "Shed. South wall."

  "Cool." Finn didn't move. "So what's wrong with them?"

  "Don't know yet."

  "But something is."

  Corin rose, brushing dirt and frost from his knees. "Maybe. I'm still figuring it out."

  Finn studied him for a moment, that sharp Vane perception cutting through his usual restlessness. "You've got that look. The one Elias gets when he's about to punch something."

  "I don't punch things."

  "No, you just get real quiet and then fix whatever's broken." Finn shrugged. "Same energy, different execution. Need help?"

  "Not yet."

  Finn nodded, accepting that without argument. That was the thing about family, they knew when to push and when to let it lie. "Alright. But if you figure out what's killing your bees, let me know. I'll help you bury the body."

  Corin huffed. "Nobody's killing anything."

  "Sure." Finn was already heading toward the shed. "Tell that to your face."

  Corin watched him go, then turned back to the hives. The bees had settled again, that strange lethargy pulling them back into their confused clusters. He should document this. Take samples. Call the agricultural extension office and see if anyone else in the county was reporting similar issues.

  But his gut told him this wasn't a county problem.

  This was Hollow Oak.

  He thought of Chloe again. The way she'd said struggling when he'd asked about her starts. The way her hands had hovered over the soil like she was attempting to feel something that kept slipping away.

  She'd been in town about a year now, working with Freya, keeping her head down, learning the rhythms of a place that didn't explain itself to newcomers. Corin had watched her navigate it with more grace than most. Quiet. Careful. Stubborn in a way that didn't announce itself.

  He liked watching her work. Liked the way she talked to the plants when she thought no one was listening. Liked a lot of things about her that he had no business cataloging.

  His bear rumbled, a low vibration in his chest.

  Not now.

  Corin closed his eyes, breathed deep, and filed the worry away. The bees. The soil. Chloe's failing herbs. He'd keep watching. Keep listening. Figure out what connected them before it got worse.

  That was what he did. He tended things. Fixed them quietly, without fanfare, without anyone noticing until it was already done.

  But as he walked back to his truck, the cold biting at his exposed skin, he couldn't shake the feeling that this particular problem wasn't going to be fixed quietly.

  3

  CHLOE

  The Griddle & Grind smelled like cinnamon and fresh bread and the particular warmth that only came from a place where people actually wanted to be. Chloe wrapped her hands around her mug of chamomile and let the steam curl against her face while Twyla Honeytree held court behind the counter.

  "—and I'm thinking red and pink, obviously, but not the garish kind. Soft. Romantic." Twyla's wheat-colored hair was piled in a messy bun today, loose strands framing a face that looked barely thirty despite the centuries of fae blood running through her veins. Her light brown eyes sparkled with the particular intensity of someone who had already planned the next six weeks down to the hour. "Maybe some of those paper hearts the Brewster kids made last year. They were sweet."

  Diana Merrick sat at the counter, nursing her own tea with the expression of a woman who had heard this speech before. Her honey-blonde curls were damp at the ends from walking over from the inn through the morning mist and her amber eyes held fond exasperation. "Twyla, Valentine's Day is barely two weeks away."

  "Which is barely enough time." Twyla set down the cloth she'd been using to wipe the espresso machine. "You can't rush romance, Diana. You have to cultivate it."

  "It's a café."

  "It's a venue for connection."

  Chloe snorted into her tea.

  Twyla's gaze swung to her immediately. "Don't think I've forgotten about you. I need someone with actual taste to help me with the flowers this year. Maizy's good with arrangements, but she overcomplicates things. Too many ferns."

  "I don't know if I'm the right⁠—"

  "You're perfect. You've got the eye for it." Twyla leaned her elbows on the counter, studying Chloe with that unnerving fae perception. "Besides, you need something to keep your hands busy. I can tell when you've had a rough morning."

  Chloe's smile flickered. "The herbs behind Freya's are struggling. Winter stress, probably."

  "Mm." Twyla didn't push, but her eyes said she knew there was more.

  The café door opened, letting in a gust of cold air and two women Chloe recognized from the textile shop. They nodded at Twyla, ordered lattes to go, and settled into the corner booth to wait.

  Chloe turned back to her tea.

  "—heard the comfrey's dying too," one of them said, not quite quietly enough. "And those herbs she planted near the east fence."

  "Didn't she say she had some kind of connection to the soil? That forest magic or whatever?"

  Chloe's fingers tightened on her mug.