35. Nari
THIRTY-FIVE
NARI
Her brain was doing the thing it did during complex performances—processing too many inputs, sorting them by urgency, discarding the irrelevant.
Except nothing was irrelevant. Everything was relevant.
Everything was rearranging itself into a new configuration that explained every confusing detail of the last two months with terrible, perfect clarity.
He was kneeling on the concrete. Naked. Bleeding. His body was shaking—fine tremors running through muscle that was still adjusting to being human-shaped. His skin was flushed, damp with sweat, and every inch of him was on display in the fluorescent light of a Chelsea parking structure.
He’s a bear. I know he’s a bear. He’s a BEAR.
She needed to hear it in her own voice to confirm the words made sense in a sentence.
He looked up. Blood ran from his shoulder in a line that followed the contour of muscle she was absolutely not going to acknowledge noticing while processing a species revelation.
He’s bleeding and naked and I’m noticing his shoulder definition. Priorities, Wixx. You have them. Find them.
“Nari—”
“I know. I’ve been told, but seeing it is…is….The honey.” It came out fast. Her brain had finished sorting and the dots were linking faster than her mouth could shape them. “The bees. The rooftop garden. The feeding. You brought me a bento box on our THIRD DAY.”
“Not technic—”
“The rumbling. The chest vibration. That sound you make when I’m close—the one you keep insisting is ‘a bear response’ like that’s a casual explanation for your rib cage humming at me.
” She paced. Short, sharp circuits in the narrow lane, stepping over broken glass, her heels clicking on concrete.
Her hands were moving—conducting the aria of her own realization.
“The way you position yourself between me and every door. EVERY door. You growled at a delivery guy last week.”
“He was standing too close.”
“He was handing me a PACKAGE.”
Dojin opened his mouth. Closed it. He had the decency to look sheepish. Sheepish was an extraordinary expression on a face that had, thirty seconds ago, belonged to a Kodiak.
She stopped pacing. Pointed at him. “Your MOTHER. On the phone with mine. ‘Quelle co?ncidence’ about the duck dinner. The duck wasn’t a coincidence. The duck was a MATING NEGOTIATION.”
“Maman is—”
“Entirely aware that her son is a bear. Yes. Thank you. I’ve connected those dots.
” She dragged her hands through her hair.
Her heart was hammering—she could hear it, which was disconcerting for a woman who prided herself on controlling the sounds her body made.
“Reo. Reo’s a bear. Hana’s a bear. Your whole—”
“Sleuth. The term is sleuth.”
“A SLEUTH. Of course, it is. A group of bears is a sleuth. I knew that. I watch nature documentaries. I’m a well-rounded person.
” Her voice was climbing in volume. The parking structure’s acoustics were doing unreasonable things with it—her words bouncing off concrete, echoing back, layering on themselves.
She filled the space like she filled every space: completely.
“Your entire security team. The operatives at my parents’ brownstone. Bears. All of them.”
“All of them.”
She stopped. Stared at him. He was still kneeling—patient, still, bleeding and naked and waiting for her to finish processing. He understood that Nari Wixx handled shock at full volume and any attempt to interrupt the process would add fuel.
He knows me. He’s kneeling on concrete with a bullet wound and broken glass in his knees and he’s waiting because he knows I need to talk through it before I can feel it.
The thought cracked the performance. Her voice dropped.
“You’re hurt.”
“It’s a graze.”
“You were SHOT.”
“The bullet barely—”
“Dojin Keiser, you shifted into an eight-hundred-pound bear, threw a man through a car door, got shot, and your response is ‘it’s a graze.’” She crossed the distance between them.
Knelt in front of him on the concrete, glass be damned, and grabbed his face with both hands.
His jaw was rough with stubble. His skin was hot—running several degrees above normal, which she now understood was because he’d been a damn BEAR sixty seconds ago. “Let me see.”
She turned his head. The wound was on his left shoulder—a furrow, shallow, bleeding steadily but not gushing. She’d seen worse in action movies. She’d never seen it on skin she’d kissed.
Skin I’ve kissed. This shoulder. This exact shoulder. My mouth was on this shoulder in a hallway three weeks ago and now there’s a bullet wound on it and I’m going to need a minute.
She didn’t take a minute. She pulled her jacket off. Her jacket. She pressed it against his shoulder. Hard.
He winced. Once. The only sign of pain he’d given all night.
“Hold that.”
He held it. His hand covered hers on the jacket—warm, enormous, his fingers wrapping around her knuckles.
She looked down at their hands. Looked up at his face.
The amber was fading slowly back to brown, and he was looking at her with an expression so open and undefended that it knocked the sarcasm clean out of her lungs.
“You shifted for me.”
“Yes.”
“You turned into a bear. In a parking garage. Because a man reached for my arm.”
“He was reaching for you.” Basic. Simple. As if the sentence explained everything, because for him, it did.
She exhaled. Long, shaky, a breath that carried the remnants of adrenaline and fear and the new, enormous understanding that the man kneeling in front of her was not entirely a man and had never been entirely a man and had been hiding this from her for weeks while feeding her honey from his rooftop and holding her hand on an East Village sidewalk.
“Also—” She pressed the jacket harder. Kept her voice level. Failed. “Watching you shift was unreasonably attractive, and I need to never think about it again immediately.”
His eyebrows rose. “Attractive.”
“Don’t.”
“You said—”
“I said what I said and I’m going to pretend I didn’t. The human-to-bear transition is a deeply alarming visual experience and I am not going to examine why my body responded to it with interest instead of terror. That’s a conversation for my therapist.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. She caught it. Pointed at his face with her free hand.
“Don’t you dare smile. You’re naked and bleeding.”
“You’re kneeling in broken glass.”
She looked down. She was. Two small cuts on her left knee, blood beading through her jeans. She hadn’t noticed.
“Great. We’re both bleeding. This is the worst date we’ve been on.”
“Is this a date?”
“You walked me to my car and defended my honor with eight hundred pounds of bear. If that’s not a date in whatever culture you’re from, your species needs better courtship standards.”
He laughed. Low, surprised, pained—the wound pulling—but real. And the sound broke the last lock between her brain and her body, the one that had been holding the fear at arm’s length while she processed and performed.
Her eyes burned. She blinked hard. Once. Twice. Her jaw tightened against the tremor building behind it.
“Hey.” His free hand came up. Cupped the side of her face. His thumb swept under her eye, catching the tear she hadn’t authorized. “I’m okay. Look at me. I’m okay.”
“You got shot.”
“A graze.”
“Stop saying graze like it’s a paper cut.
You were SHOT. With a GUN. While being a BEAR.
In a PARKING GARAGE.” Each emphasized word landed louder than the last. The acoustics amplified them.
Her voice filled the hard space, echoing off pillars and ceilings, and she didn’t care.
She was a voice actress and she was shaking and the man she was falling for had been shot and she was going to be as loud about it as she wanted.
His thumb moved against her cheek. Gentle. Patient. He understood that her volume was her processing speed and the louder she got, the closer she was to the center of what she was feeling.
“You crumpled a car door.” Her voice dropped. The volume spent, replaced by a rawness that made her throat ache. “With one paw.”
“It was a Honda.”
“THAT DOESN’T MAKE IT LESS IMPRESSIVE.”
He smiled. Full. Warm. The smile that had been undoing her since the first studio session, except now she understood what powered it—not politeness, not CEO charm, but the deep, settled contentment of a bear whose mate was safe and close and yelling at him about car brands.
His mate. Is that what I am? Is that what this is?
She filed the question. Later. Right now: bleeding man, concrete, broken glass, two unconscious operatives, a destroyed Honda, and the sound of approaching sirens because, of course, someone had called the police. Car alarms on three levels tended to attract attention.
“You need clothes.”
He looked down at himself. Naked, kneeling, her jacket pressed to his shoulder—a denim jacket designed for a five-foot-six woman, currently doing the work of a bandage on a six-foot-four man. The visual was absurd and she was going to remember it for the rest of her life.