Explicit, start to finish. One couple, one heat, and the plain words the main books keep off the page.
Rowan MacLeod has been on a suppressant since he was thirteen. In January he takes the last pill Mara ever counted out for him and doesn't refill it, and he doesn't tell Caleb, because this one has to have his name on it alone. Caleb knows anyway. The bear read it on the wind, and a man who has spent eighteen years not letting himself want anything starts buying blankets. He says nine words about it. Rowan counts every one.
By Monday they are in a sealed cottage in the Burrillville woods with the door shut and three days ahead of them. A fox's first heat. An already-bonded pair. A bear who doesn't need a knot to stay.
Latent Heat is Book One of Tidal Heat, the explicit companion line to Common Ground. Same world, same couples, same bonds. Nothing fades out. A novella, and still a character piece. It stands on its own. If you've read Slack Tide you'll get more out of it; if you haven't, nothing here needs it. Complete story. No cliffhanger. Guaranteed HEA.
Content notes: explicit sex throughout; grief, and a character's past sex work, referenced; a conversation about children. Nobody is pregnant.
