Chapter 15 By Ursa, what have you done?
by ursa, what have you done?
BELL
I’d just emerged from the ensuite bathroom of the downstairs bedroom I’d been given when I heard muffled voices.
As determined as I’d been before entering the bathroom, I froze in place at the sound of not one, not two, but three guys who would all be upset with me when they saw the results of my impromptu guy-repelling makeover.
“We talked about this, Belly! You can’t just go around making drastic changes without consulting me first! What will my constituents think?”
I’d laughed at Dennis’s reaction to me deciding to get my hair lightened to blonde. The first step to getting to the vibrant teal blue I was aiming for without significant damage.
The truth was, I hadn’t consulted him because I knew he’d talk me out of it, just like he’d convinced me to get shoulder-length extensions and wear dresses that made me feel like I was cosplaying a fifties housewife.
I needed something to make me feel like myself again after Noelle’s birth, and I thought he was being silly since he’d already been elected.
That was the first time he’d hit me.
When he’d stopped pretending to be my Prince Husband Charming with strong preferences and became my master with rules I wasn’t allowed to break or question without consequences.
I knew the three guys outside would feel the same way as Dennis about my love of altering my look on a whim. But I braced myself… not just for the pain they might inflict for daring to go against them. But also for the disappointment.
I thought of how I’d clung to Boone last night. I don’t know when I went from rightfully wary to turning to him in my moment of need. But for some reason, I’d trusted him completely while I was at my most vulnerable.
When I debuted my new look, he’d show his true colors, and whatever trust I’d developed over the last few days would pop like a balloon.
Good, the embittered part of my brain piped up to remind me. You’re not some dumb girl in your twenties anymore. You need these guys to show you their true colors so you can stop relying on them and figure out how to get on with your life. Alone.
That thought unfroze me and sent me forward on my mission.
This time, it was dead quiet when I exited the bedroom, and no one came running when I got to the stairs.
However, I found all three guys standing on opposite sides of the counter and looking in the direction of the hallway entrance, as if they’d just been silently waiting for my arrival.
All three of their faces fell with shock when they saw my new look. The urge to flee rose sharp and primal, like something biological.
But I forced myself to stand my ground, waiting for the criticism, the anger, the disappointment.
The shocked silence stretched. Then Zion said, “By Ursa, what have you done to your hair!”
I cringed inwardly as they took in the decidedly way more punk rock look I’d been planning for the new year—before Dennis showed up.
I still had dreadlocks on top of my head, but I’d pulled them into a top bun to highlight that I’d shaved both sides and the entire undercarriage down to the shortest length I could with Zion’s electric razor.
I’d already been warned by Jada, the Black Heritage Museum director, who’d told me what a cesspool the over-50 dating scene was these days.
“Don’t do it, girl. I’m telling you, that edgy look won’t fly with any het guy outside the art world,” she’d warned me after I told her my plan for my dreadlocks.
“I’m still regretting cutting off all my hair after Roderick died.
I wouldn’t be getting any swipes if I didn’t get a weave put in, but it’s destroying my edges… .”
Jada and Dennis had made it clear that this style wouldn’t be most guys’ cup of tea.
So I wasn't surprised when Zion rushed toward me to get a closer look at my now partially shaved head.
His clippers had revealed the gray underbelly of the dreads I'd dyed black every six months.
I forced myself to stay still with my chin raised while he tilted his head back and forth, examining the style with an arched eyebrow.
He had on a forest green turtleneck today underneath a tweed jacket with actual elbow patches. Even while waiting for his harsh rebuke, I couldn’t help but notice how well he wore the stereotypically academic look on his lean frame.
“Is this why you borrowed my clippers?” he demanded, narrowing his eyes.
“Sorry.” My defiant brace turned into an apologetic wince. “I was hoping to return them before you noticed.”
“I noticed,” he informed me with a severe look. “The bathroom still has a lingering scent of sugar cookies. It made it incredibly hard for me to concentrate while I brushed my teeth after my quick lunch.”
“Sorry?” I tried again, unsure how to respond to the fact that he could scent me in their bathroom.
But then a smile spread across Zion’s face. “The only thing you have to be sorry about is that edge line. But I’ll remedy it once I return home. Other than that, B-plus work. This style suits you, and I imagine it will match your orange coat quite well.”
I blinked. “You like it?”
“No,” he answered emphatically. “We all love it. Ravik’s even considering taking a leaf from your book and letting his hair grow longer so he’ll look cooler and not so uptight. And Boone—as he prefers to be called now—is concerned that his severe lack of grooming might become a problem.”
“I wouldn’t call it severe,” I said, though I wasn’t exactly sure why I felt the need to defend Boone’s messy white hair and unkempt beard.
But behind Zion, Ravik leaned across the counter to tell Boone, “I’ll get a pair of clippers for you on the next Barrington’s run.”
Then, he held up a to-go tumbler that said World’s Best Teacher Dad. “Z, you’ll be late getting back to the schoolhouse if you don’t go now.”
“Alas, my lunch break is done,” Zion told me with an apologetic bow of his salt-and-pepper head. “I must away, but I look forward to our line-up date.”
I scrunched my forehead. “It’s not a…”
“Thank you, my good maul,” Zion said to Ravik. Then he took the tumbler and was out the door before I could finish correcting his notion that we would be having anything resembling a date.
Leaving me alone with the other two bears. Both of whom were openly staring at me…with nothing but approval in their eyes.
My throat tightened. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. They were supposed to see me as damaged, difficult, not worth the trouble. Instead, they looked at me like a sparkly supermodel had just entered the room.
Should I shave my head completely? But what if they just accepted that hairstyle, too? I wasn’t sure what to do, and I felt completely thrown off balance.
“So, Zion’s a teacher?” I asked after a few excruciating seconds ticked by, awkwardly changing the subject from my failed hair reveal.
“Yep, he was just on his lunch break,” Boone answered. “Glad he got to see you before he had to leave, though. Job’s got him stressed out. He was real cranky before you came in with that hot new hairstyle.”
He patted the stool beside him. “Take a seat, sugar. Vik’s dying to know what you want on your sandwich.”
I gingerly sat on the stool, deeply aware of how Ravik’s eyes tracked me. Dressed in a simple navy blue polo and crisp dark-wash jeans, he wasn’t lean like Zion or huge like Boone. The polo hugged his shoulders and chest, outlining a solid build—strong, but not showy.
Just right….
The two words whispered across my mind before I could stop them.
I cleared my throat and quickly averted my eyes to the counter.
“Oh, I can make my own sandwich,” I offered when I saw that all the fixings were already set out, including mayonnaise, pickles, Havarti cheese, lettuce, and sliced tomatoes.
Ravik’s eyes slit, and Boone chuckled. “Not in this house, you can’t. Maybe when you get your own place. But for now, I’d just tell Vik if you prefer ham, turkey, or roast beef on your sandwich.”
“Oh, turkey’s fine,” I answered. “And I just want hummus.”
I began to rise from my seat. “I saw there was some in the fridge earlier. I can get—”
Ravik tensed, and Boone warned, “If you still don’t want anyone touching you, I suggest sitting back down so Vik doesn’t have to body check you when you try to go for that fridge." His voice was half-amused, half-gravely serious.
I sat back down.
Only then did Ravik’s expression relax. He finally took his eyes off of me to turn around and put two slices of multigrain bread in a toaster sitting on the back counter.
Which left me to sit in awkward silence with the man—the polar bear—I’d clung to last night.
He was back in the black shirt he’d been wearing this morning.
It clung to his heavy muscles, and I couldn’t help but trail my eyes down his heavily veined forearms—only to stop.
My heart stuttered when I saw that he no longer had just the one weird mark on his left arm that I’d noticed before.
Now there was another bite mark on his right arm. And it looked fresh.
“Were you hurt?” I asked. My pulse spiked with fear on his behalf. “Did some animal bite you?”
Ravik stilled after pulling the hummus out of the refrigerator, and Boone rubbed a hand over the back of his thick neck.
“Yeah, guess you could say that.” Boone tilted his head to the side. “Got bit by an animal that went by the name of Ravik, but don’t worry…”
His mouth hitched into half a smile. “He had my full consent.”
Boone seemed to think this was funny, but I was truly alarmed.
“Why—why would he do that?” Before Boone could answer, I turned to Ravik to demand, “Why would you bite him like that?”
“Because it is our way.” Ravik came back to the counter with the hummus and toasted bread on a saucer, which he put down to show me both his forearms.
He had two bites, too. One faded, and one that looked particularly gnarly—like a large animal had bit him, then done it again.
I could only shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
“When three males decide to form a maul, we seal that decision with what’s called a maul bite,” Ravik spoke in a quiet near-monotone that was, nevertheless, laced with steel. “This ritual bite binds us together in both heart and mind.”
Boone once again raised his hand to the back of his neck.
“You asked me last night why I told Zion about what all you’d been through.
I know it must have felt like a betrayal, but this is what I meant when I said I couldn’t not share.
When three males become a maul, that means we don’t just share a female, we share our thoughts and feelings. ”
“What?” My eyes dropped back down to the original mark on Boone’s left arm. The bite, I noticed, no longer looked like a mottled scar. More like a henna tattoo of a bite that almost appeared to pulse—like it was somehow alive.
“The bond bite allows us to communicate without the need to talk,” Ravik explained as he put together my sandwich. “Zion would’ve told you about that this morning, if you had stuck around.”
“This is exactly why I didn’t stick around!” I flared my eyes at him, then at Boone. “So, you’re bears, you mate in threes, and now you’re telling me you can also read each other’s minds? Through a bond bite—like, some kind of a hive mind?”
“Like three shifters who are bonded,” Ravik corrected in that quiet steel monotone. “We are three individuals bonded to each other and one mate.”
He set a plate with the turkey sandwich down in front of me. “You will understand when you bond with us.”
He held my gaze as he said this. His dark stare was so intense, it should have been creepy.
I mean, it was creepy to be stared down like that. It definitely was…
But for some reason, instead of discomfort, a weird, foreign thrill shot through me, made me squirm, even as I reminded him, “I’m not bonding with you. I’m not your mate. Like I said earlier, you need to get that notion out of your head.”
Ravik’s nose flared in that strange way again, and the spotlight of his eyes suddenly came off of me.
This time to switchblade to Boone.
They were talking, I realized. Silently. Through that bond bite thingy.
Not quite sure what to do, I awkwardly ate my sandwich in the extended, yet somehow very noisy silence.
As soon as I was done, Ravik snatched away my plate. He turned his back on me like washing the singular dish was some sort of essential mission.
From the stiff set of his shoulders underneath his polo he was definitely mad at me.
“Ravik’s going to need you to stop staring at him like that, sugar. He can’t take it.”
I didn’t realize I was now the one staring at Ravik like a creep until Boone said that.
What was wrong with me?
Another flush of embarrassment heated my entire face as I turned to Boone on the stool.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make him uncomfortable. I just… I just can’t be what you guys want. I’m not going to sleep with any of you—not because I’m judging your lifestyle or anything, but because I just don’t have it in me.”
This wasn’t something I was used to. It felt so scary to speak my truth. But I made myself be brave and forced the words out. “I’m never going to sleep with you. And if that affects how you treat me—like, if all these nice things you’re doing for me stop when sex is off the table, then I guess…”
I swallowed, but lifted my chin. “Now’s your chance to kick me out.”
“I…” Boone started to talk, then stopped again, his gaze sliding over to Ravik, even though he still had his back to us.
Another long, long silence.
Then Boone rubbed the back of his neck again.
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” he said with a chagrined look. “We’re going to have to kick you out of here. Today.”