She came home searching for answers. She found her destiny instead.

Aleece Reeves never quite belonged anywhere, not in the shifter town that raised her, and not in the human world where she went to college. As the adopted human daughter of Timber Ridge’s mayor, she’s spent her whole life caught between two worlds. Now, graduated from college, she’s back home for good, and more lost than ever.

When bear shifter Charles Monroe shows up to fix her father’s burst pipes on a freezing January morning, the instant connection between them takes her breath away. Charles is everything she didn’t know she needed: patient, kind, and building his dream home with his own two hands. Working alongside him on his renovation project, she finally feels like she’s found where she belongs.

Just as Aleece begins to imagine a future in Timber Ridge and with Charles, her biological father appears, bringing devastating truths about her past. Now she must choose between life in the city and the terrifying possibility of loving a bear shifter who could break her heart.

Sometimes the bravest choice isn’t running away, it’s standing still and building something that lasts.