Page 92 of Bearly Out Loud

“Building a collection.”

“That’s either romantic or a laundry problem.”

He laughed. The sound moved through his chest into her cheekbone. She didn’t pull away. Didn’t need to see his face to know the expression—eyes soft, mouth curved, the full and unguarded version of Dojin Keiser that she had earned through trust and proximity and the specific currency of making a controlled man lose control.

Takumi’s voice, from the doorway: “I’m not crying, you’re crying, and I have photographic evidence of this hug that will be used at your wedding.”

Nari lifted one hand from Dojin’s chest. Pointed at Takumi without looking. “Delete it.”

“Absolutely not. Emi will want to see this.”

“Your cat does not need photos of my emotional moments.”

“Emi has a very nuanced emotional life and he would beoffendedby your dismissal.”

Hana appeared behind Takumi. Her eyes were still red. She looked at Nari—still tucked into Dojin’s chest, mascara on his collar, one hand raised in threat toward her best friend—and the smallest, rarest Hana smile surfaced.

“Your grandfather would have loved that performance.”

Nari’s throat closed. She nodded once. Didn’t trust her voice—which was ironic, given that her voice was quite literally the subject of discussion—and pressed her face back into Dojin’s shirt. He pulled her tighter. The rumble in his chest was soft, barely audible, the sound he made when he was at peace and had stopped pretending otherwise.

Priya passed through the hall. Paused. “Take the afternoon. Both of you. Three hours. Then I need my booth back.”

Her loft.Late afternoon light through the tall windows, gold and generous, the Tribeca skyline doing its best impression of a painting she didn’t own.

The energy had shifted on the ride home.

Not the post-recording crash she expected—the hollow quiet that usually followed a session that demanding. This was charged. Specific. The electricity between them had been building since the booth, since she’d walked into his arms, since the mascara joke that made them both laugh when laughing was a mercy.

In the car, his hand had rested on her thigh. Not high. Not suggestive. Present. His thumb drawing slow circles on her knee while he drove one-handed through midtown, and by the time they reached her building, she was vibrating with a need that had nothing to do with Sora Nightwind and everything to do with the man whose touch had become her favorite language.

She turned to face him in the middle of her living room. Still in the clothes she’d worn to the studio. Mascara tracked down her cheeks. Hair falling out of the clip she’d shoved it into that morning. Not beautiful by any magazine’s standards. Beautiful by hers—which meant real, raw, still humming with the echo of her grandfather’s words.

“I meant what I said about choosing you.”

He stood three feet away. Patient. Waiting. His eyes held hers with an attention so absolute, it bordered on gravitational.

“I know.”

“The claiming.” She took a breath. “Tell me what it involves.”

“Nari—”

“All of it. I want to know.”

He told her. His voice was low, careful, but not cautious—he gave her the information without hedging, without softening, because she had asked for all of it and he had learned months ago that Nari Wixx did not tolerate being handled. The bear’s mark. A bite during the bonding moment—the place where shoulder met neck, where it could be hidden or shown by her choice. It would change her scent permanently to other shifters. Not ownership. Recognition.

“Every shifter who meets you will know you chose to be mine.”

“And that you’re mine.”

His breath caught. “Yes.”

“Good. Because I’m territorial about my bear.”

She held his gaze. Didn’t blink. Didn’t soften. Let him see the decision she’d made—not in this room, not today, but slowly, across weeks of bento boxes and rooftop honey and a parking structure where he’d become a Kodiak to keep her safe and a hotel lobby where he’d become one again because she’d bled for his family.

“Keeping my name.”