36. Nari
THIRTY-SIX
NARI
She shrugged off her bag. Dug through it. Came up with a scarf—silk, Hermès, a birthday gift from Suki that she wore to industry events and was about to sacrifice to the cause of covering a bear shifter’s modesty.
“This costs more than your car insurance deductible.” She handed it to him. “Wrap it around your—” She gestured vaguely at his lower half. “Situation.”
He took the scarf. Their fingers brushed. Even now—bleeding, shaking, kneeling in glass—the contact sent a current up her arm that she was tired of pretending was static electricity.
He wrapped the scarf with a dignity that no man should be able to maintain while tying a Hermès print around his waist in a parking garage.
It covered approximately forty percent of what needed covering.
The rest was muscle and skin and a man whose proportions did not accommodate accessories designed for women of average height.
“That’s the least effective use of Hermès in fashion history.”
“I’ll buy you another one.”
“It’s a limited edition. Suki sourced it from Tokyo.”
“I’ll buy you three.”
“The correct response is ‘thank you for the scarf, Nari, I’m sorry I destroyed my clothes by turning into a bear.’”
“Thank you for the scarf, Nari. I’m sorry I destroyed my clothes by turning into a bear.” Straight. No irony. Looking at her with those open eyes while wearing her silk scarf and her denim jacket and nothing else. “I’m also sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”
The apology landed differently than the rest. Heavier. She held it for a moment. Turned it over.
She waved him off. “I knew, well, didn’t really understand what being a bear meant.
” He looked around. “This parking garage reveal was very efficient. Dramatic, destructive, and impossible to deny.” She looked at the crumpled Honda.
The caved hood of the other car. The unconscious operative on the pavement.
“Also expensive. How much does a Honda Civic run these days?”
“I’ll cover it.”
“You’ll cover the Honda. The other car. The structural assessment for the parking garage. The therapy I’m going to need.” She ticked items off on her fingers. “And three Hermès scarves. One for me, one for Suki, and one for Emi because Takumi will insist the cat deserves reparations.”
His phone—miraculously intact in the shredded remains of his trousers—buzzed from the ground. She picked it up. Cracked screen. Reo’s name.
She answered it.
“Reo. It’s Nari. My boyfriend shifted in a garage and crumpled a Honda. He’s wearing my jacket and a scarf. He’s been shot, but he keeps calling it a graze. I need you here with clothes, a first-aid kit.”
Silence on the line. Two seconds.
Reo: “ETA eight minutes. Clothes and med kit confirmed. You called him your boyfriend.”
“He shifted into a Kodiak to protect me from armed men. I think we’re past the ‘defining the relationship’ stage.”
“Copy.”
She hung up. Handed the phone back. Dojin was looking at her with an expression she was going to need a new word for—past fondness, past attraction, past the careful distance they’d been maintaining.
It was naked and specific, and it said: You answered my phone.
You called me your boyfriend. You’re kneeling in broken glass, holding your jacket to my shoulder and you haven’t run.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I’m the first person who’s ever stayed.”
His jaw tightened. He didn’t deny it.
She moved closer. The glass crunched under her knees.
She put her hand on his chest—flat, palm over his heart, the touch she’d been craving for weeks.
His skin was fever-warm. Under her palm: the heartbeat, rapid and strong, and beneath it, rising like a tide, the vibration.
His bear’s sound. The one he’d been denying from her for two months.
“I hear it.” Her voice was quiet. The quietest she’d been since the shift. “Your bear. This isn’t a response. It’s a language.”
The sound deepened under her hand. Steadied. She’d been hearing it in fragments—in the studio, in the izakaya, in the hallway of her loft—now complete and unfiltered. Low, rolling, warm. A bear’s declaration carried through bone and held in the chest of the person it was meant for.
“Yes.” One word. Rough at the edges. His hand covered hers on his chest. Pressed it harder against his heartbeat. “It’s been saying your name since the first session.”
She breathed. In, out. His heart was beating under her palm, and his bear was humming her name.
Well. That’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me in a parking garage. The bar was low, but still.
“We’re going to talk about this.” She squeezed his hand on her chest. “All of it. The bear. The sleuth. The mating rituals. The fact that you’ve apparently been vibrating at me in bear Morse code for months.”
“It’s not Morse—”
“Bear Morse. I’m coining it. It’s mine now.
” She stood. Pulled him up. He towered over her—barefoot on cold concrete, blood drying on his shoulder, wearing her denim jacket and a silk scarf and nothing else.
She reached up and fixed the collar where it sat absurdly small across his shoulders.
The same jacket he’d draped over her in the recording booth.
Returned to her. Now on him after he’d shifted into a bear to keep her safe.
The symmetry hit her hard enough to sting.
Her phone buzzed. Takumi.
Takumi: Reo called. BEAR DADDY CONFIRMED. Are you okay? Is he okay? Are the CARS okay? I’m getting in a cab. ETA ten minutes. Emi is LIVID he wasn’t there.
Nari: We’re fine. He’s wearing my jacket.
Takumi: AS A SHIRT?
Nari: As the entire outfit.
Takumi: I need a photo. This is non-negotiable. This is going in a frame. This is going on my HEADSTONE.
She pocketed the phone. Looked at Dojin.
He was watching her with the patience she’d learned to recognize as his default setting—the steady, grounded waiting of a man (a bear, she corrected, a real bear) who understood that she processed at high speed and high volume and the best thing anyone could do was stand still and let her arrive at her own conclusions.
Her conclusion: she was terrified and furious and falling in love with a bear shifter who’d gotten shot for her and looked mortifyingly good in her jacket.
She took his hand. The one that wasn’t holding her jacket to his shoulder. Laced her fingers through his. His hand swallowed hers—warm, enormous, built for tending bees and kneading sourdough and, apparently, crumpling a car door with a single blow.
“For the record—” Her voice didn’t shake. “If I’d realized on the first day that you were a bear bear, I would have had follow-up questions about the food thing much sooner.”
“What food thing?”
“The relentless, obsessive, deeply personal food delivery system you’ve been running since week one. The bento boxes. The honeycomb. The matcha you memorized from a conversation you weren’t part of. It’s not hospitality. It’s bear courtship. You’ve been courting me with LUNCH.”
“Also breakfast, occasionally.”
“ALSO brEAKFAST.” She threw her free hand up.
The gesture was enormous, theatrical, pure Nari—a full-body expression of exasperation delivered ten feet from an unconscious man and a destroyed Honda.
“I’ve been the subject of a cross-species courtship ritual conducted entirely through Japanese cuisine and homemade honey and I didn’t NOTICE. ”
“You noticed the food.”
“I noticed the food was EXCEPTIONAL. I did not link ‘exceptional food’ to ‘bear mating behavior’ because that is not a leap normal people make, Dojin.”
He squeezed her hand. “You’re taking this well.”
She laughed. High, bright, cracking at the edges. “I’m taking this at volume. That’s different.”
Headlights swept across the structure. A black SUV, moving fast. Reo. He pulled into the lane, killed the engine, and stepped out carrying a duffel bag and a first-aid kit. He’d done this before. The practiced speed said so.
Reo looked at Dojin—naked under a denim jacket and an Hermès scarf. Looked at the crumpled Honda. The caved hood. The unconscious operative.
His expression didn’t change.
“The Honda’s totaled.”
“The Honda was in the way.” Dojin took the duffel. Started pulling on clothes one-handed, his other shoulder still bound in Nari’s blood-soaked denim.
Reo turned to Nari. Assessed her—the glass cuts on her knees, the adrenaline flush, the tear tracks she hadn’t wiped. His face stayed neutral but his eyes softened a fraction. An inch of the man visible through the operative’s armor.
“You good?”
“Define good.”
“Standing. Talking. Not in shock.”
“Then I’m good.” She crossed her arms. “You’re a bear.”
“Yes.”
“Black bear?”
A flicker in his eyes. Surprise—that she’d guessed, that she cared about the specifics. “Yes.”
“Smaller than his.” She tipped her head toward Dojin.
“Everyone’s smaller than his.”
“Fair point.” She watched Reo open the first-aid kit. Watched his hands—scarred knuckles, steady fingers—clean Dojin’s shoulder wound with iodine and gauze. The practiced speed of someone who’d patched up bears before. “How many times have you done this?”
“Patched him up?” Reo didn’t look up. “This makes four.”
“Four.” She looked at Dojin. He was pulling a shirt over his head—a dark henley from the duffel, one arm through, the other being bandaged by Reo mid-motion. “You’ve been in FOUR fights.”
“Three were territorial disputes. This was the first—” He paused. Met her eyes over Reo’s head. “This was the first time I shifted for someone.”
The words landed in the parking structure’s cold acoustics and sat there, unadorned, true. First time. For someone. For her.
Takumi’s cab screeched into the structure ninety seconds later. He emerged at a run, Emi’s carrier banging against his leg, his face a masterpiece of competing emotions—terror, excitement, vindication.
He took in the scene. Dojin, half-dressed, bandaged. Nari, glass-cut, arms crossed. Reo, first-aid kit open. The destroyed cars. The unconscious operative. The still-screaming alarms.
“Bear Daddy confirmed.” He set the carrier down. Emi’s eyes tracked Dojin through the mesh with the fixed intensity of a cat whose suspicions had been validated.
Nari looked at Dojin. She had questions.
Hundreds. About sleuth politics and shifting biology and whether Gerald the sourdough starter was also a bear thing.
About what “mate” meant and whether she got a say in it, and what happened next.
About the sounds his bear made and whether she’d been hearing a love song or a lullaby or both.
But the questions could wait.
“Take me home.” She squeezed his hand. “We’ll deal with the Honda in the morning.”