Chapter 3 #2
He was looking at the paper, so he didn’t see the change in her expression. Not until she touched his cheek and forced his gaze up to hers. Her brown eyes were serious as she spoke, the tone without nuances, and for that he was grateful.
“I can help. I can read it for you.”
“No.” Didn’t she understand? He needed to come back to human. She couldn’t do that for him. It was a path he had to walk by himself or be trapped as neither one nor the other. Not a bear, and definitely not a whole man.
He glared back down at the paper. Suddenly, one of the symbols made sense. “Two!” He pointed to the printed digit. “That’s the number two. Seven. Nine.” He was reading. The numbers at least.
“Yes. That’s part of the phone number.”
He looked up to the smaller metal thing on his dresser. “My phone.”
She grabbed it and handed it to him. “Do you want me to dial?”
“No.” He understood what he was doing. He could match the numbers on the paper and on his phone now. His fingers fumbled, but he managed it, and soon a thin female voice came through the device, barely heard because the phone remained in his palm in his lap.
“Simon! You’re back! Want your usual?”
He swallowed and nodded. Then he remembered to use his voice. “Yes.”
“I’ll be out there in a half hour,” the voice answered.
“No!” Alyssa said loudly. “We’ll pick it up.”
A pause and then a chuckle. “Got a girl this time? That’s new.”
It wasn’t protocol and he didn’t like it.
But he didn’t have the wherewithal to argue.
He never understood why communication was so easy early after a shift back to human but then seemed to abandon him as he brought other functions online.
Like reading and manipulating an iPhone.
Eventually it would all settle into place.
The process usually took anywhere from a day to a week.
But right now, he was swimming upstream.
“I want meat,” he said.
“Yeah, I know. Fifteen minutes.”
He thumbed off the phone. What was next on the list? His gaze rose to the device on his dresser. He pushed Alyssa aside as he stood up to grab it. She moved easily, her expression in the mirror somber.
“Laptop is the next step in this protocol?” she asked.
“Yes. To help with the reading.”
“Got it. You can do it in the car.”
He turned to look at her and saw that she arched a brow at him.
That look was a challenge, clear as day and the bear in him bristled, wanting to fight because that’s what his bear did.
But he was shifting back to human, so he did the opposite.
He nodded and echoed her words, “I can do it in the car.”
“Great. Where’s your go bag?”
He frowned, taking a moment to process her words. And in that time, she rolled her eyes.
“Don’t blank stare me. I know you have one, and I’ll bet it’s…” She snapped her fingers. “Front door closet.”
She turned and tripped lightly down the stairs.
He followed, his laptop in one hand, his phone in the other.
She was ahead of him, pulling out a black duffel from his closet.
She grinned at him, the look triumphant as she slung the pack over one shoulder.
Then she pulled open the front door and gestured to her car.
“Come on. Food is waiting.”
He took a step, but stopped. “The protocol keeps everyone safe,” he said. “I am not at my best now and that is not safe.”
She frowned and he was pleased to see that she took his words seriously.
Good. It was dangerous to upset a grizzly bear, and he was only 51 percent human right then.
Though his higher thought processes were coming on strong, it would take a couple hours at least before he could reliably control his primal instincts.
The animal still had a strong grip on his body and it was aiming his feet toward the woods. Go back out to the woods and—
“Oh no, you don’t. We’re getting in the car.”
This was why he got delivery. Because once the scent and sight of the woods hit his body, the grizzly surged forward. It wanted to be back out there. It wanted—
An arm gripped him tight and hauled him around. He was already snarling, showing his teeth at the woman before her.
“Damn it! Get it together!” she snapped.
He was trying. But she had interrupted his protocol. This wasn’t going to work—
She yanked on his ears as she jerked his face down until they were nose to nose. “The car. Get in the car.”
Her scent filled his nostrils. That nutty tang that surrounded her.
He liked it and he liked the lingering echo of musk that clung to her skin.
It competed with the rustle of the trees and the scent of summer pine.
And since it was a human scent, his mind latched on to it, using it against the bear.
He inhaled deeply, the choice crystallizing in his mind. A human would go with the human. A bear would go back to the woods. And right now, he was human. He stood upright, he wore clothes, and he carried human things in his hands.
“I will be stronger with food,” he said.
“So get in the car,” she said.
“I need to eat as a man.”
She snorted. “You mean grunt and shove handfuls of pizza into your mouth?”
“With a knife and fork.”
“On pizza?” She was walking as she spoke and tugging on his arm.
He went because she was human. And she smelled nice. “It is the protocol.”
“Of course, it is.” Then her tone dropped and grew somber. “I got you, Simon. You’ll be okay. And then together, we’re going to save Vic.”
He sighed. Just because his mind was split into two pieces—human and bear—didn’t mean he’d forgotten what she wanted. Her wants had been relegated to a different part of his consciousness while he came back to being fully human. But a part of him did remember, and that was the part who answered.
“There is no saving me. Or Vic.”
She clicked the seatbelt around him. He hadn’t even realized he’d climbed into the car. “That’s bullshit, Simon. Pure drama queen bullshit.”
He turned to look her in the eye, his higher consciousness stuttering to a halt in shock. Had she just called him a drama queen? No part of that computed. So he did what he always did when something incomprehensible came at him. He listed the things he did know.
“I was a bear for ten months. You shot me five times. I shifted to human to survive and began my human protocols. You interrupted that. You risk us both by changing what you don’t understand.” He looked her in the eye. “How does that equate to being a drama queen?”
She met his gaze levelly then shrugged. “It’s just pizza and then a quick trip to Detroit.”
He knew the human response to that.
“Bullshit.”