The third book of the series follows Ged Taverner, mysterious bear shifter who goes around rescuing shifters from bad situations, but also manages the rock band, Beast. His past catches up with him as Lidi, a bear shifter from his home kingdom, finds him and begs him to come back home. Turns out, Ged is an exiled prince from a secret bear-shifter kingdom, Callistoya. Years ago, there was a coup and Ged's stepbrother took control of the kingdom. Somehow, Ged ended up outside Callistoya and unable to get back in (because of a spell) and had also lost his brother. He chose to bide his time and atone for his inability to help his people by helping other shifters. Now, Lidi, a noble from outside the 5 ruling families, is asking him to come back before she is forced to marry Ged's stepbrother. Ged agrees to help and accompanies Lidi back to Callistoya. The two both realize that they are fated mates and try to fight the attraction, knowing that they cannot have a future since Callistoya law dictates that Ged must marry among the 5 ruling families. They don't succeed in resisting, but fall in love. They, with some help from Beast and a magical, enchanted guide dog, must take back the kingdom and find their HEA.
Better than the second one for sure, but still not as exciting as it probably sounds. Just as in the last one, I put this down in the middle of the book and came back to it days later. I didn't feel like I'd lost a connection to the characters this time, but I still didn't feel the need to finish in one sitting as I typically do. The story itself was pretty good - Ged and Lidi were both interesting characters, as was the brother. I liked the revealing of background as we gradually find out what actually happened the night that Ged got ousted from his kingdom. Ged and Lidi also had some pretty good chemisry, which got drawn out much further in this book than in previous ones (we don't get love scenes until 50% in, as opposed to 20% in the last two). The UST was definitely a positive here - it helped create a feeling of angst for the characters, although I don't know that their reasons for not being able to "be together" were all that convincing. Ged is a king and his kingdom has a law that he can't marry Lidi...so he has to suffer with that policy forever and can never change it, right? Nope, he does exactly as I would expect and goes ahead and changes it. But all that mental anguish over not having a future with Lidi ended up being for nothing. Also, I found myself wondering where the magical dog came from. That never really got explained. Nor did their seem to be a solid purpose for making Lidi more emotional than other bear-shifters. I guess maybe it was to make her different or something, but I had wondered whether she was going to lead the way towards allowing emotions among bears or something. That didn't really play out further.
Nevertheless, I feel like this was an improvement over the 2nd installment and I did enjoy the story on the whole. I'd probably pick something up about Dev or Diablo or Finglas if the author chose to write about them.