Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138217 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
“Here they come,” he warned her.
Chapter 19
Dear Aunt Rita,
I’ve read your previous advice on being wary of bears who come with delicious edible gifts, and I have to disagree. My sweet bear friend Sally-mae has been baking me fruit pies for the past six months, and she has no designs on my body or heart whatsoever.
Why, the other week, she even offered to iron my shirt for my date with another woman. It wasn’t her fault the iron malfunctioned and she burned a hole in my shirt.
~Just a Friend
Dear Just a Friend,
Oh, you sweet summer child. Do write to me once you two are mated so I can say “I told you so” while eating my favorite peach pie.
~Aunt Rita
—From the February 2073 issue of Wild Woman magazine: “Skin Privileges, Style & Primal Sophistication”
HAVING BENT TO examine a plant beside the gate, Theo now moved back to stand nearer the car.
Nearer Yakov.
He tried not to take that personally. Of course she trusted him more than the others. After all, he’d spent hours with her without doing her harm. It was a choice made out of logic. And still his bear grinned inside him, urging him to wrap her closer.
His damn bear was drunk.
“Yasha!” Elbek raised his arm as he walked into view, a small pack on his back and his rangy body covered in mud-splattered outdoor gear.
Slender and long-legged Moon was in much the same condition, though she also had mud in the curly black of her hair.
“Bird-watching?” he said dryly.
They both grinned.
“Energetic, those marsh birds,” Moon said without any shame, before nodding at Theo. “Zdravstvuyte. I’m Moonbeam, but you can call me Moon. And yes, my name really is Moonbeam.” Sparkling dark eyes in a face as delicate as a mythical nymph’s, her skin as pale a hue as her namesake satellite. “This mud bear here is Elbek.”
Elbek, all dramatic bones in a face that was just a touch too long for conventional notions of handsome—but that worked on him to the extent that the man was one of the clan’s resident Romeos—gave a jaunty salute. His skin glowed a burnished brown under the fading light.
“Theo,” Theo responded. “Thank you for stepping in on such short notice.”
Moon waved off the thanks. “Sounds like an interesting place. You want us to stay outside?” A question directed at both of them.
“I think you should be fine camping inside if you stay right by the front doorway,” Yakov said. “Not much to disturb there. Water’s been shut off and I didn’t manage to locate where, so you’ll be mud bears overnight unless you can find running water.”
“Already did.” Elbek held up his phone, on which was a topographic map. “Map’s old, but says there’s a stream out back. We’ll go one at a time, make sure the place isn’t left unattended.”
“Spasibo.” Yakov bumped fists with first one then the other. “I’ll bring you croissants and coffee tomorrow morning from the bakery.” Because there was only one bakery in the city that mattered.
“Good deal,” Moon said. “That lock for us?”
“Yeah. Only Theo can open the current gate lock.”
“Got it. See you tomorrow.”
“We’ll be early,” Yakov promised, knowing Theo wouldn’t want it otherwise. “Hope the ghosts in that place don’t keep you up too late.”
Elbek gave him the finger. “I love ghosts. I have a ghost detector I’m working on. So joke’s on you, Pashmina’s less handsome brother, also known as Yashmina.”
Laughing at the ridiculous set of names his and Pavel’s teenage friends had found hysterical—and still did even now they were all grown—Yakov waved his hand in another good-bye before he got in his vehicle, with Theo doing the same, and they drove out.
He waited outside the gates until the others had successfully installed the lock and given him the thumbs-up in the rearview mirror. Sticking one hand out the window to indicate he’d seen, he drove away.
Theo, however, twisted in her seat to look over her shoulder. “Are you sure they’ll be all right? That place . . .”
“They’ll be fine. If they don’t like it inside, they’ll camp outside—worse comes to worst, they’ll shift into bear form. Proper bears. Not fluffy koalas.”
A sudden silence before she turned back to look out the windshield. “Bears. Right.”
He realized she’d forgotten he had another form, was probably now imagining what he and the others looked like when they shifted. Well, even if he didn’t talk her into petting him in bear form, she’d get a look at plenty of bears strutting about if she hung out in Moscow long enough. Bears had a tendency to be bears and walk into shops while wearing their credit chips on necklaces custom made for their thick beary necks.
A bear had to shop, after all.
He almost laughed aloud at the memory associated with the thought—of the time he’d dared his twin to walk into a women’s lingerie shop that had a small stand of novelty men’s boxers for women to buy for their guys. Yakov had challenged Pavel to buy a pair of boxers in the correct size for his human form while in full bear form.