Page 68 of Bearly Out Loud

The left-side operative fired. The bullet hit Dojin’s shoulder. A hot sting, nothing more. Adrenaline swallowed the pain before it landed. His bear didn’t care about bullets. His bear cared about the man who had fired a weapon ten feet from Nari.

He charged. The operative tried to run. Bears are fast—faster than any human, faster than people expect from a creature thissize. Dojin closed the distance in a few strides, rose onto his hind legs, and brought both forepaws down on the hood of the car the man was trying to use as cover. The hood caved. The engine block groaned. The operative dropped his weapon and bolted for the stairwell, and Dojin let him go because the threat was retreating and his bear’s priority had already shifted.

Nari.

He turned. She was against the concrete pillar where he’d left her. Back flat against the surface. Eyes enormous. Hands pressed to the pillar behind her. Not screaming—she hadn’t screamed. Hadn’t moved. Had stood exactly where she was and watched a man become a bear and destroy two professionals and two vehicles in under thirty seconds.

Her mouth was open. No sound coming out.

Nari Wixx was silent.

His bear quieted. The rage drained. The red edge pulled back. He was in a parking garage, bleeding from his left shoulder, surrounded by shattered glass and crumpled metal and shrieking car alarms, and the woman he loved was silent and staring at him with an expression he couldn’t read.

He lowered himself. Slowly. From full height—over ten feet on hind legs—to all fours. Made himself as small as eight hundred pounds of Kodiak could be. Lowered his massive head. Met her eyes.

Gold-flecked amber, in bear form. The same eyes. His eyes.

She stared at him. Five seconds. Ten.

Then she blinked. Swallowed. And her mouth closed.

The shift back was faster. Less violent. The adrenaline was fading, and his body knew the path between forms—the cracking, the reshaping, the raw-nerve sensitivity of new skin meeting cold air. He knelt on the concrete, naked, breathing hard, blood running from the bullet graze on his left shoulder. His clothes were confetti scattered across the lane.

The car alarms kept screaming. Nari kept staring.

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, butseeingit 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 coïncidence’ about the duck dinner. The duck wasn’t a coincidence. The duck was a MATING NEGOTIATION.”

“Maman is?—”