Page 4 of Asking Fur Trouble

“Coming up slow today, Your Royal Teddy Bear!” Oberon called from thirty feet above, his hulking form perched on a narrow ledge like some impossibly tall spider. “Age finally catching up with you?”

Charov snorted, finding another grip. “Just enjoying the view. Something you might try instead of racing up everything like it’s a competition.”

“Lifeisa competition. Especially with you.” Oberon flashed a wide grin. “And I’m winning.”

The bear shifter growled, his inner beast stirring at the challenge. With renewed vigor, he scaled the sheer cliff face in powerful, deliberate movements, eating up the distance between them.

Both men paused to catch their breath on the narrow ledge, the sprawling forests of Mavac Territory stretching out beneath them. The view was breathtaking—a thousand shades of purple and azure cut through with silvery rivers that caught the yellow and orange lights of the two suns.

“Your mother contacted me this morning,” Oberon said, taking a swig from his hydration pack. “Asked if I could talk some sense into you.”

“And what did you tell her?” Charov wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his forearm.

“That it would be easier to teach a wolf to sing opera.” Oberon chuckled. “She’s worried, though. With your father’s condition...”

Charov’s jaw tightened. “Which is exactly why I need this.” He gestured to the expansive view. “Once the crown sits on my head, my life becomes meetings and treaties and diplomatic functions. This—” he indicated the mountain, the sky, and the freedom, “—becomes a memory.”

The weight of impending responsibility pressed down on him harder than any mountain. His father’s illness had progressed faster than anyone anticipated. Soon, all this fun and excitement would end.

“Your Highness craves one last taste of adventure before becoming a stuffy old monarch?” Oberon’s tone was light, but his brown eyes held understanding.

“Something like that.” Charov surveyed the route ahead—challenging, dangerous, and exhilarating. Just the way he liked it. “Ready for the hard part?”

“Born ready.” Oberon checked his harness. “Though I’ve been meaning to ask—why climbing? Your bear form could just lumber up here in half the time.”

Charov’s blue eyes sparkled with mischief. “Where’s the fun in that? The bear gets enough time to play.” He flexed his hands, feeling the strength in them—the human part of him craved conquest as much as his bear did. “Sometimes the man also needs to remember what it feels like to be alive.”

Without warning, he launched himself upward, finding invisible handholds in the sheer rock face. His taunting echoed against the mountainside as Oberon cursed and scrambled to follow.

If these were to be his last moments of freedom, Charov intended to make every single one of them count.

He pulled himself higher and higher, feeling the satisfying strain in his muscles. The physical exertion was a temporary distraction from the thoughts that had been plaguing him since the royal physician had delivered the news yesterday: his father King Sawyr had just a few weeks left, if that.

“Hell of a view from up here, isn’t it?” he called down to Oberon, masking the hollow feeling in his chest with practiced ease. The bear inside him growled with displeasure at the deception, wanting to roar his grief to the mountainside.

Charov surveyed the expanse of his territory. Soon, it would all be officially his to rule. The thought landed like a stone in his gut.

The wind picked up, carrying the scents of the forest below—pine and wildflowers and the distant musk of a herd of elkara grazing in the valley. Charov inhaled deeply, committing the smell to memory. These were the moments he would need to recall when trapped in endless meetings and obligations.

He found a ledge wide enough to pause on and braced his back against the rock face, letting one leg dangle over the thousand-foot drop. The danger heightened his senses, making him feel alive when everything else inside him felt like it was dying alongside his father.

“You’ve been unusually quiet today,” Oberon noted, joining him on the ledge with a grunt.

Charov stared out at the horizon, where the two suns were beginning their slow descent. “The physician says my father won’t see the next full moon.”

It was the first time he had said the words aloud. They tasted bitter on his tongue.

“Shit.” Oberon ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair. “I didn’t know it had progressed that far.”

“Neither did my father.” Charov clenched his jaw. “He hid his illness from everyone for a long time, including my mother. Claimed he didn’t want to worry us.” His fist clenched around a loose stone, crushing it to powder between his fingers. “Stubborn old bear.”

“Like father, like son.”

“My mother won’t leave his bedside. I’ve never seen her look so... broken.” The image of his mother Queen Zyre’s tear-streaked face haunted him. She had always been a pillar of strength. Seeing her crumpled beside his father’s bed had shaken something fundamental in Charov’s world. “True mates aren’t built to live without each other.”

The reality of what lay ahead crashed over him like an avalanche—the funeral rites, the coronation, the weight of an entire territory looking to him for leadership, all the while watching his mother fade from grief. And underneath it all, the suffocating knowledge that his days of freedom were numbered.

“Sometimes I think about just... running.” The admission surprised even him. “Taking to the mountains in my bear form and never looking back.”

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