The Bear's Protected Guest
(2026)(The fourth book in the Bearstone Lodge Fated Mates series)
A novel by Ciera Knox
She came to stop running. He was already waiting.
Sofia
I don't know how to relax. I turned my phone off. I set an out-of-office. I booked the most remote cabin at the most remote lodge I could find. And I still woke up at 5 AM and made a to-do list for my relaxation. I'm a mess.
Then I find the garden. And the man inside it.
Aiden Calloway doesn't talk. He grunts. He plants things. He has hands that could crush stone and he uses them to tend tomatoes and talk to bees. He scares me. Not because he's intimidating — though he absolutely is — but because when I sit next to him in the dirt, my brain goes still. I forgot what stillness felt like.
He reminds me.
Aiden
I had walls before she showed up. Good ones. High, secure, built after the last person I trusted tore me apart.
Then she stumbles into my garden — exhausted, vibrating, incapable of rest ''' smelling like wildflowers, and my bear goes from dormant to thunderous in one heartbeat.
She doesn't push. She doesn't pry. She just sits there, in the sunshine, finally still.
I look at her and think the walls I built were meant to keep everyone out. But she didn't try to get in.
The gate opened on its own.
Bearstone Lodge Book 4 is a cozy, high-heat bear shifter novelette featuring a thunderstorm of a man, a woman who finally stops running, and the revolutionary discovery that stillness isn't emptiness — it's where everything real begins to grow.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Sofia
I don't know how to relax. I turned my phone off. I set an out-of-office. I booked the most remote cabin at the most remote lodge I could find. And I still woke up at 5 AM and made a to-do list for my relaxation. I'm a mess.
Then I find the garden. And the man inside it.
Aiden Calloway doesn't talk. He grunts. He plants things. He has hands that could crush stone and he uses them to tend tomatoes and talk to bees. He scares me. Not because he's intimidating — though he absolutely is — but because when I sit next to him in the dirt, my brain goes still. I forgot what stillness felt like.
He reminds me.
Aiden
I had walls before she showed up. Good ones. High, secure, built after the last person I trusted tore me apart.
Then she stumbles into my garden — exhausted, vibrating, incapable of rest ''' smelling like wildflowers, and my bear goes from dormant to thunderous in one heartbeat.
She doesn't push. She doesn't pry. She just sits there, in the sunshine, finally still.
I look at her and think the walls I built were meant to keep everyone out. But she didn't try to get in.
The gate opened on its own.
Bearstone Lodge Book 4 is a cozy, high-heat bear shifter novelette featuring a thunderstorm of a man, a woman who finally stops running, and the revolutionary discovery that stillness isn't emptiness — it's where everything real begins to grow.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Used availability for Ciera Knox's The Bear's Protected Guest