“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.”
CHAPTER 4
Alyssa kept her breathing calm. She inhaled and released in slow control and then realized that she wasn’t fooling anyone. Her hands gripped the steering wheel like it was her lifeline on the Titanic. And though her breath was steady, her pace on the accelerator was anything but. She’d already roared past three trucks only to slow down to grandma speed a moment later. She was losing it and all because of the crazy man sitting much too close in her suddenly tiny car.
She stole a glance to the right. He was watching her with the unceasing stare of a predatory cat. She knew he was a bear, but damn it, he was a predator and she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was about to pounce. Or break. Or do something just plain scary while she was driving them to Detroit. But first she had to feed him.
She’d gotten the directions off the flyer and now turned into the large parking lot of a small pizzeria. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw they had a drive-through and immediately headed for that. A moment later, a stunning redheaded woman with large white teeth grinned at her through the window. The name on the apron read Amanda and she winked at Simon. “You up to talking yet?” she asked.
Simon stared hard at her and said one word, “No.”
The woman chuckled and smiled at Alyssa. “He’s all grumbly for a few days, but then it’ll get better.” Then she disappeared.
A moment later, she passed over two thick cheeseburgers and a large pizza loaded down with a half inch of meat. This was Simon’s usual order? He ought to weigh five thousand pounds. Though how would she know how many calories it took to shift into a grizzly? Maybe all shifters ate like bears before hibernation.
Alyssa was about to pull away when Amanda held out her hand. “Hold on, sweetie. Let me bring out the case.”
Sweetie? Case? There was too much in that sentence to unpack, so she threw the car into park and waited. A moment later, Amanda came out with a case of high-end water bottles. She didn’t even know that water could come in glass bottles that looked more like wine than water, but she didn’t stop to ask. Just pointed to her backseat.
