Chapter 13 #2
She placed a few apples into a bag, remembered she needed to feed Briggs, too, and added another two. She turned back to the cart, staring in surprise at the plums, nectarines, oranges, and containers of berries that sat in it. Briggs added a cantaloupe before raising an eyebrow at her. “What?”
“That’s a lot of fruit,” she said.
“I eat a lot,” he said with a shrug. He took the end of the shopping cart and pulled it toward the vegetables. She watched him load the cart with a variety of fresh veggies, mentally calculating how much it would cost as he tossed stuff in willy-nilly.
A man with thinning white hair and a cane in his hand thumped to a stop beside her. He smiled at her, but before she could return it, Briggs stood beside her. He glared at the man. “Back the fuck up.”
“Excuse me?” the man said.
“You’re standing too close to her,” Briggs growled.
“Briggs, stop,” she said.
He ignored her as the man gave them a huffy look. “I have every right to be in this grocery store, and if you think growling at me will scare me, you have something to learn, bear shifter. I might be old, but my lion can still teach you a lesson.”
He bared thick yellow fangs at Briggs, who growled again. “I said move back, old man. I won’t ask again.”
“I need potatoes, and she’s standing in my way!” The lion shifter was puffing up a bit and, oh shit, golden brown fur was starting to fill in the bald spot on the top of his head.
“I’m so sorry,” Cece said, moving away from the potatoes.
Briggs was still scowling at the man, and Cece tapped his shin with her boot. “Briggs, knock it off.”
“You need to learn better control,” the lion shifter said with a growl before he grabbed his potatoes and limped away.
“What the hell was that about?” Cece asked.
“He could have been a danger,” Briggs snapped. “And you let him walk right up to you.”
“He was an eighty-year-old man,” she said. “I think I can handle an eighty-year-old.”
“He was a shifter, and he could have torn your throat out with his fangs in less than five seconds,” Briggs said heatedly. “You have to be more careful, little witch.”
She took a good look at him. His blue eyes had turned a dark brown, and white hair was mixed with the usual dark scruff on his jaw. He looked even bigger than normal, and a woman with a toddler in her arms gave him an uneasy look before hurrying out of the produce section.
Holy shit, he was about to shift.
A tiny part of her, okay, a pretty big part of her, wanted to step back and watch it happen. But she had an idea that shifting in public like this would humiliate Briggs, and wanting to save him from that easily outweighed her desire to see him in his polar bear form.
“Briggs, hey, I’m good,” Cece said softly. She reached toward his chest, stopping just short of touching him. “I’m fine. You’re here, right? You’ll keep me safe.”
He growled again, and she made circular motions over his chest without actually making contact with him. “Shh, I’m okay.”
“You have to be more careful, little witch,” he said heatedly as his eyes returned to blue and the hair faded away on his jaw.
“I will be. I promise,” she said.
“Stay right beside me,” he demanded, reaching for her hand.
He growled when she stepped back, and she said, “I will, but you can’t touch me.”
He blinked, his gaze clearing a little before he looked around them. “Fuck. Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” she said.
“I overreacted again, but my bear, he…”
He trailed off, and she gave him an encouraging look, but he just shook his head. “C’mon, let’s finish up.”
She pushed the cart through the store, acutely aware of Briggs’s big body behind her. It was busy in the store, but she had a clear path to everything she wanted to look at. People just naturally got out of Briggs’s way. She could get used to this, she thought with a small smile.
“Mommy, why’s that man so tall?”
“Shh, honey.” A woman with long pink locs and a kid of about seven clinging to one hand gave Briggs a nervous look before herding her kid down another aisle.
Cece studied the others around them. They might have been giving them a wide berth, but most were also openly gawking at Briggs, and more than one was snapping photos of him with their phones.
She frowned at a white woman who, her mouth wide open, was actually taking a video, her phone tracking Briggs’s every move.
“Do you mind?” Cece snapped at her.
Embarrassed, the woman tucked her phone away before ducking into the nearest aisle. Cece turned to Briggs. His face was stoic, and he didn’t appear to be bothered by the people staring at them, but their conversation from last night replayed on a loop in her head.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
He shrugged. “I’m used to it.”
“Are you?”
“For the most part,” he said. “Wellington is nearly all polar bear shifters living there, so it’s a bit of an adjustment being here with so many humans and different shifters not used to seeing a polar bear shifter.”
She wanted to ask him why he’d moved here, but he grabbed the end of the cart and pulled it toward the meat section, his face already closed off again.
She stood next to him and didn’t say anything when he tossed two whole fish into the cart, but when he reached for a package of steaks that cost more than her entire grocery budget, she said, “Hey, wait.”
“What?” he asked. “You don’t like steak?”
“I do,” she said, “but I don’t need steak.”
“You have barely any food in the house and no meat at all,” he said.
“I’m aware,” she said. “I, uh, usually only eat meat once a week or so.”
He snorted in disbelief and, with defensiveness in her voice, she said, “I make some really delicious meals with beans and -”
“I’m a bear shifter. I eat meat,” Briggs said.
She flushed. “Okay, I get that, but can we look at some different options? Ground beef or -”