Page 81 of There's a Way

“I go to my place at least once a week and sleep in the woods. I feed her good food, both in bear form and when I’m human.” I sighed. “Sometimes it’s hard to remember to eat when I’m at work. I finally set an alarm on my phone to remind me, because I get lost in projects sometimes. I’m working on that. She gets grumbly at me when I just eat protein bars all day.”

“Does she get to spend time with your men?”

I shook my head. “I can’t reallychangeat Will’s place because of the risk of someone having a drone up, watching us from outside the property, and I guess I hadn’t thought about inviting them to maybe spend the night with me when I’m the bear. I wouldn’t want to sleep with them. Bran said it isn’t safe, with humans. It isn’t likely I could turn them with a scratch, but it’s possible, and I won’t risk that.”

“You’re the bear inside in your home, though. Right?”

“Yeah, but I have lever doorknobs, so I can go outside if I need to.”

“I know a werewolf plumber who can come put a toilet in that your bear can use. I mean, it’s the same size as a human toilet, but it’ll be able to handle your weight. Talk to Will about which bathroom you’re mostly likely to use as the bear at his place, and then we can put a toilet into it. Maybe have Will put a bigcushion down in a couple of rooms for you, so your bear can chill in his house. Everyone who lives there knows about you, right?”

“Yes. The cleaning crew doesn’t, but his house manager is a lioness, so she knows. Those are the only people who can come and go. His manager and producer can get onto the property, through the gate, but they don’t have access into the house. We know when the cleaning crew is due to arrive, though, so that should be workable.”

Horse has a huge underground house with plenty of acreage, and he invited me to come spend a day and night as our bears, exploring his property and having general bear-fun. My bear doesn’t often have an opportunity to play in an actual creek during the day, so I was looking forward to it.

Eventually, we went back to the party, and he went to stand around the grill with the men. I noted that Will shook Horse’s hand, and I tuned in to hear what was said. “Micca’s smiling. She wasn’t before. I don’t understand the connection the two of you have, but thanks for being there for her.”

“She’s important to Matty, and Matty is important to Razor, who’s my brother. You’re important to us as well because of your connection to Ghost and Hailey. No thanks needed.”

Matty considers himself an ol’lady in the social structure, which means he was sitting at a picnic table with the women, and Davy was with him. My boy motioned for me to sit between him and Matty, and I greeted the rest of the ol’ladies at the table.

Davy never drinks enough to get drunk, and now that I’m a shifter, I can’t get drunk unless I do a dozen or more shots of serious alcohol one after another without pause, but we had a fun evening just hanging out and talking.

Eventually, there were paintball wars, but I just watched and didn’t join in. I stood with my men and cheered the women’s team while they cheered the men’s team. Today, the men’s team won, but it was close, down to Harmony and Brain being the lasttwo. I kind of figured they’d call it eventually, but they didn’t, and Brain finally managed to get behind Harmony and make a big blue paintball splat between her shoulder blades.

“OH! Shoot me in the back!” She lifted her gun and shot him a half-dozen times, so his entire chest was pink, but he only walked to her, leaned her back, and kissed her like she was oxygen and he’d been underwater for days.

When he let her up, she turned to us and shrugged. “I mean, if he wasn’t better than me, I’d have escaped his ass and we wouldn’t be together. So, I guess there’s that.”

Most everyone laughed, but I had no idea what she was talking about. I made a mental note to ask Matty about it later, and then I went with the group to put together another plate of food. My bear loves these get-togethers. The bikers always cook a whole pig, and they have people who excel at the process.

We left about an hour after the paintball games concluded, and Davy asked me almost right off the bat, “What did Harmony mean about escaping Brain?”

“I have no idea. We should invite Razor and Matty over one night this week and ask them.” While we were talking about invitations, I said, “I’d planned on going home Sunday night. Why don’t the two of you come over Sunday afternoon, and I can fix dinner for all of us, and once my food settles, maybe the two of you can spend the evening with my bear? Ya’ll can have my bed, and I’ll spend the night in the woods, then we can have breakfast the next morning before Davy and I have to go to work?”

“Oh, I’d love to see your bear again, Sir!” Davy said. “How do you know when to wake up and come inside when you have to be at work early?”

“Outdoor speaker, so if I set an alarm on the kitchen clock, it goes to the speaker. Razor set it up for me, and Matty made it playThe Bear Went Over the Mountainthe first time, and Iguess it kind of stuck. When Matty wants Razor’s attention, he playsWhen Doves Cry. Razor often flies too far away to hear it, but when he gets back and hears it, he goes straight to Matty to see what he needs.”

“I’d like to see Razor turn into a raven,” Davy said. “He’s so big, it’s hard for me to imagine.”

“You should talk to Matty or Razor about that,” I told him. “Because I’m not going to have that conversation with Razor.”

“It’s just, I mean, you’re kind of small and you turn into this thousand-pound grizzly bear, and he’s huge and he turns into a little bird.”

“Bran weighed my bear and she was four hundred and seventy pounds, far from a thousand, but I get your point.”

And yes, that’s about a hundred pounds heavier than most grizzly females, but I was bitten by a fucking huge grizzly who happens to be possibly the most powerful grizzly on the planet. The bears don’t have an official king or queen, nor are there battles to figure out the hierarchy, but Horse attends this big supernatural meeting because he’s the assumed top of the…

And that’s when it hit me. Horse had to know about the Senatus, and that meant the bikers knew.

But they all had to keep it a secret, probably. It made me wonder how much of the supernatural world might know, and how much keeping it a secret actually mattered, at this point?

I assumed Marco knew everyone who knew. At least the locals, anyway. Likely, each Master Vampire was keeping track of it, and they’d release the news when they were sure the entire supernatural world was ready to hear it.

How would the European shapeshifters react when the news officially went out to the shifters, I wondered? Also, the lower level European vampires? In the past, vampires had mostly traveled the world at will, when deciding where to live for their next identity, but I assumed that would change now. Whatwould happen if most of the vampires came to the Americas for their next identity? Or maybe the other way around? The Concilio might have to start playing a little nicer, if they wanted to keep people.

“Davy seems to have answered for us,” Will said, “but I’ll confirm that we’d love to spend time with your bear tomorrow evening. Tonight, however, I’m thinking I want you to myself. The question is whether we put Davy in the pillory to watch, or whether we bind him on the cross and blindfold him, so he can’t see what we’re doing.”

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