Just Right

The forest had always known the three bears as gentle things.

Bran, broad-shouldered and slow to anger.

Mira, soft-eyed and clever.

And little Alder, whose laugh used to startle birds into flight.

Their cabin sat deep beneath a cathedral of pines, far from human roads, built with patient paws and quiet love. They grew honey in hollowed logs. They warmed porridge on the hearth. They left no bones in the woods that did not belong there.

They were not afraid of anything.

Until the day they came home and the door was open.

The smell hit Bran first.

Human.

Not the distant tang carried by wind from hiking trails. Not the metallic ghost of hunters passing through.

This scent was inside.

Mira stepped ahead of him, nose low, her heart stuttering. The cabin was still, too still. The fire had burned out. The three bowls of porridge sat on the table.

Papa’s bowl had been stirred, once.

Mama’s bowl was overturned.

Alder’s bowl was empty.

“Bran,” Mira whispered.

Alder padded forward, confused. “Maybe they were hungry?”

Then they saw the chairs.

Bran’s carved oak seat had been hacked apart with something sharp. Mira’s woven rocker was shredded, stuffing pulled free like snow.

Alder’s little chair was missing entirely.

From above, a creak.

The three bears froze.

Slowly, deliberately, something shifted on the second floor.

Bran’s lips peeled back from his teeth. “Stay behind me.”

They climbed the stairs together.

Their bedroom door stood ajar.

The bedframes had been tested, Bran’s cracked, Mira’s clawed through. But Alder’s small bed…

On it lay a girl.

Bare feet muddy. Hospital bracelet still dangling from her wrist. Golden hair matted with leaves and something darker.

She was awake.

And smiling.

“You’re back,” she said softly.

Her eyes were wrong. They were too bright, too intent, like a starving thing watching a rabbit burrow.

Mira stepped back instinctively. “You’re in our home.”

The girl tilted her head. “I know.”

She sat up slowly, as though savoring their tension. “I’ve been looking for the right family.”

Alder whimpered.

Bran growled, low and thunderous. “Leave.”

The girl’s smile widened.

“I tried the wolves. Too cold.” She tapped Bran’s broken bed with her heel. “Tried the deer. Too fragile.” She slid off Alder’s bed and stood barefoot on the wooden floor. “You smell warm. Safe. Strong.” Her gaze lingered on Mira. On Alder.

“Just right.”

Bran lunged.

But she was fast.

Too fast.

She slipped between them like smoke, a knife flashing from somewhere beneath her hospital gown. The blade skimmed Bran’s shoulder, deep enough to burn, shallow enough to promise worse.

She didn’t run out the door.

She ran deeper into the house.

The lights died.

Darkness swallowed them.

They found the first trap in the kitchen.

Wire strung low between counters.

Alder almost ran into it.

Mira caught him in time.

From somewhere in the walls, the girl’s voice echoed.

“I had lots of time to think where I was staying,” she sang. “They said I had…delusions. That families weren’t things you could choose.”

A crash, something heavy falling behind them.

Bran shoved a cabinet aside to reveal claw marks in the wood.

No. Not claw marks.

Carvings.

Three tally marks.

“Three tries,” she whispered from the ceiling.

Mira’s breath came fast. “She studied us.”

Another sound, the back door slamming shut.

Locked.

They were inside with her.

Night fell quickly in the forest.

Inside the cabin, it felt endless.

She separated them first.

Alder vanished in the smoke from the hearth when she relit it with shaking, delighted hands. Mira lunged after him, but something cracked against her skull, wood splintering, stars bursting behind her eyes.

When she woke, she was tied to a beam in the cellar.

Above her, footsteps paced slowly.

“You’re the heart,” Goldilocks murmured somewhere close. “The warm one. I thought maybe you’d fight harder.”

Mira strained against the rope. “He’s a cub.”

“So was I,” the girl replied, and for a flicker of a second her voice lost its sing-song edge. “Once.”

Then the brightness snapped back into place.

“I had a family. They weren’t right.”

A scream ripped through the floorboards.

Bran.

Mira roared, the sound shaking dust from the beams.

Goldilocks crouched in front of her, face inches away. There were scratches along the girl’s cheek now, defensive wounds. Blood trickled from her hairline.

She looked exhilarated.

“They break too easy,” she breathed. “Or they don’t break at all. It’s very hard to tell.”

Mira’s eyes burned with hatred.

“You don’t want a family,” she said hoarsely. “You want prey.”

Goldilocks considered that.

Then smiled.

“Same difference.”

Bran found Alder first.

The girl had strung tin cups along the hallway to hear movement. She’d smeared honey on the walls to track paw prints. She’d taken Bran’s axe and buried it in the door, handle jutting out like bait.

But she’d underestimated one thing.

They were bears.

Bran tore through the hallway, ripping wire free, ignoring the sting of blades hidden in the floorboards. He followed the copper scent of fear, Alder’s scent, and smashed through the pantry door.

Alder huddled inside.

Alive.

Above them, a floorboard creaked.

“Found him,” Goldilocks whispered from the dark.

She dropped from the ceiling beam with a shriek, knife arcing downward.

Bran reared up, taking the blade deep in his side instead of his son’s throat.

The impact drove them both to the ground.

The knife clattered away.

For a moment, they were face-to-face.

Up close, she looked so young.

And so very broken.

“You were almost perfect,” she breathed, as Bran’s massive paw closed around her wrist.

“Almost.”

She smiled again.

Then bit down on something hidden in her cheek.

A crunch.

A hiss.

The room filled with the sharp, choking burn of chemicals.

She’d planned even this.

Bran grabbed Alder and crashed through the nearest wall, splinters exploding outward into the cold night air.

Behind them, the cabin began to burn.

By dawn, only blackened beams remained.

Mira limped from the smoke, eyes scanning the tree line.

No body.

No golden hair among the ashes.

Just three sets of paw prints leading away.

And a fourth set of bare human footprints circling them in the soot—close enough to touch.

Watching.

Waiting.

From deep within the forest, a soft voice drifted on the wind.

“Too hot,” it sang thoughtfully.

A pause.

“Too cold.”

Then, closer.

“Maybe the next one will be just right.”