Chapter 1

"I'm not getting out."

I pulled the seatbelt tight and kept my hand on the buckle.

Curt Brennan was the first to react. His hand came over the seat and landed hard on my right shoulder. "What are you doing? Are you actually chickening out?"

The back seat went quiet for a few seconds.

Petra Winslow frowned. "You don't believe me? I told you, I heard the bear. It's just hungry. It's not going to hurt anyone. What are you so afraid of?"

"I'm not afraid. I just don't want to go."

Petra turned to me and put on that look, the one that said she was only thinking of my well-being. "Owen, we're doing this for your own good. How are you supposed to do fieldwork if you can't get past your fears?"

My own good. Right.

I stared at the skeletal Greyridge bear through the windshield.

In my last life, I had talked them out of it, and the bear died. Petra then made a post on social media with the caption: [That poor Greyridge bear starved to death!]

The rest of the team piled on in the comments.

[This is all on Owen Fielding from our team. He refused to help, and a rare Greyridge bear starved to death because of him!]

Overnight, I became the target. My home address was doxxed. Protesters showed up outside my father's office with signs. When my mother went to get groceries, someone filmed her and posted the video online.

The caption read: [Mother of the man who killed the Greyridge bear.]

Then, someone cornered me. A cold blade sank into my stomach, and the last thing I heard was a curse screamed into my ear.

"Die, you piece of shit! You killed that bear!"

I pushed the memory away and looked around at their faces. There was no point arguing with people like them. Even winning would not change anything. When the bear attacked, the cowards would be the ones still breathing.

I leaned back in my seat. "Yeah, I'm a coward. A total coward."

Petra shifted to face the rest of the car, turning her back to the bear outside the windshield.

Her voice was measured, her cadence steady, as if she were opening a public lecture. "Most animal attacks actually happen because humans approach with fear. If your legs are shaking when you walk up to it, your energy is already telling it you're a threat."

A few murmurs of agreement drifted up from the back seat.

Curt chewed on a cracker and frowned at me. "You hear that? The more scared you are, the more tense it gets. The more tense it gets, the more likely something goes wrong. The real danger isn't the bear. It's whatever you're putting out there when you're afraid of it."

"Fear projection." Petra fed him the term.

Curt pointed the bag of crackers at me and grinned like a kid who had just learned a new word.

Petra changed tack, and the warmth in her voice disappeared. "Fine, don't get out. But tens of thousands of people are watching my live stream right now. If you stay in this car, you're admitting in front of all of them that you're scared."

She paused.

"From now on, whenever anyone in the research community mentions your name, they'll know you as the guy who was too afraid to step out of the car in the Greyridge range."

Curt jabbed the cracker bag toward me. "And when the bear runs off and all of Petra's work goes to waste, that'll be on you. Just you."

Travis Holt gave Curt a thumbs-up.

"A wild bear doesn't need trust from humans." My voice was flat. "It just needs distance."

The car went quiet for two seconds.