Page 10 of Bearly Out Loud

Gerald is thriving. I checked myself.

You’re the only alpha in North America who inspects bread cultures at five a.m. I hope you know that.

He pocketed the phone. The kitchen would be handled—Maren had staffed the den since before Dojin took over the sleuth, and her crew understood the fundamental principle that governed Keiser hospitality: bears eat well, bears eat together, and the alpha makes sure of it. Not by standing over a stove. Bybuilding the operation that kept the stove running and the tables full and every member of his sleuth fed, housed, and accounted for.

Stellan Keiser’s management philosophy came down to two principles:Feed your people. Destroy anyone who threatens them.The old man had delivered both with equal conviction and a calm that terrified board members and reassured bears in equal measure.

Dojin intended to honor both. He resourced the first and kept the second loaded at all times.

He poured himself coffee from the pot and stood at the window. Through the glass, Manhattan sharpened in the pre-dawn. Headlights. Steam. Construction cranes catching first light. His territory. Forty stories of glass and steel with his name on the foundation, his sleuth in the upper floors, and his city spreading in every direction.

His bear settled into the stillness. The animal understood mornings in the den the way it understood everything: through instinct, through provision. A bear who didn’t provide for his sleuth didn’t deserve one.

Dojin had takenthe elevator two floors down and stood in the heart of his sleuth. Reo Tanaka appeared in the main kitchen seven minutes after six o’clock, silent as always, because the head of sleuth security did not announce himself unless he intended to be heard. Over six feet, scarred knuckles, the kind of face that ended conversations in bars and started them in interrogation rooms. He loaded a plate from the spread Maren’s crew had laid out—eggs, thick-cut bacon, roasted potatoes, toast—sat at the counter, and ate three bites before speaking.

“You checked Gerald.”

“Routine inspection.”

“Gerald is my assignment. My feeding schedule. My responsibility.” Reo ate another bite without changing expression. “You gave me the starter because you said—and I’m quoting—‘a man who can run threat protocols for sixty bears can manage a jar of flour.’ I have managed the jar of flour. On a precise twelve-hour cycle. For three years.”

“And I appreciate that.”

“You checked him anyway. At five in the morning.”

“The alpha verifies.”

“The alpha doesn’t trust his second with a sourdough starter.”

“Gerald is seven years old.” The tone landed—not sharp, but final. The voice of a man who did not repeat himself. “And this conversation is over.”

Reo picked up his fork without pushing it. Twenty years of friendship had taught him exactly where the line sat between ribbing his alpha and testing him, and Reo Tanaka did not cross lines by accident.

He ate. Dojin leaned against the counter with his coffee. The silence between them had the weight of long familiarity—two men who’d grown up in the same sleuth, fought in the same corners, and divided the world into the same clean categories: their people, and everyone else.

“Voidborn casting.” Reo said it the way he reported threats—monotone, factual, waiting for direction.

“Her agent confirmed interest. We’re waiting on formal acceptance.”

“Nari Wixx.” Reo’s inflection didn’t change. “Hideo Saito’s granddaughter. Empress Kira. Three Ronin films. Emmy-nominated.” He paused. “And you’ve listened to her demo reel how many times?”

“Twice.”

“The system logs plays. You’ve run it six times since Tuesday.”

Because Reo wired the system, and Reo logged everything, and Reo would make an exceptional stalker if he weren’t already the most loyal man alive.

“Play it.” Not a request. Dojin pulled up the reel on the kitchen’s media system—wired by his father thirty years ago on the principle that music made food taste better—and let Nari Wixx’s voice fill the room.

Range demonstration first. A twelve-year-old heroine, fierce and bright, shifting mid-sentence into a sorceress whose voice dragged centuries behind it. Impressive. Technical. The work of a professional who’d mastered her instrument.

Then Empress Kira. The throne room speech. Episode Twenty-Two—the confrontation where Kira faced the man who’d murdered her sister and delivered a monologue the writers hadn’t earned. Nari Wixx had taken their mediocre script and made it bleed. She’d built the emotional arc of a three-minute speech the way a demolition expert wired a building—every charge placed, every support targeted, the whole structure rigged to come down exactly when she decided it should.

The forty-seven-second mark. Her voice dropped into a register so low and raw, it scraped the bottom of the audible range.

His bear locked on.

The animal lunged forward with a force that tightened his back, sent heat down his arms, and narrowed his entire world to the voice coming through the speakers. His hands gripped the counter’s edge. The rational mind’s objection—you haven’t met this woman, you are reacting to a recording, control yourself—arrived too late to matter.