Bear the Burn(38)

Rory half-stood, eyes wide and worried, but Cody gave her a quick peck on the lips and said, “I’m gonna take him out in the woods for a while. We’ll be back soon.” Absently, he scratched the place behind Aaron’s shoulder blades where a huge hump would grow someday when he was a grown grizzly.

“Is he okay?” Quinn asked Rory.

“Yeah, he’s fine. He is still getting used to controlling his shifts, though. If you’d believe it, he’s actually doing a hundred times better than he was a few weeks ago before I brought him to Cody.”

Rory began to explain how she’d raised Aaron on her own for the first part of his life, and Dade swung his attention to Gage’s kids. “All right, young ’uns. Time for bed.”

“Uncle Daaaade,” they whined in unison.

“Uncle Dade is right,” Gage said from the couch where he’d been sitting for the better part of an hour trying to fix Ma’s ancient landline phone. Gage had already offered to buy her a new one three times tonight, but Ma was the type of lady that grew attached to the things she was used to. She didn’t much like change, so Gage had fiddled, and from the curses he muttered under his breath, had failed to fix it.

“Can we stay at grandma’s all night?” Arie asked in a pipsqueak voice. Damn, she was a cute kid.

“Up to your mom and dad.”

“Can we?” Tate asked, his blue eyes going wide like he already knew how squeeze his parents for what he wanted.

“Fine with me,” Ma called from the kitchen. “I’ve got some banana pancake mix I need those kids to help me make in the morning.” She gave Leah a wink.

“I’ll bet they are more trouble than help in the kitchen, but its fine with me if they stay. We can pick them up first thing in the morning.” Leah flipped open a new photo album and frowned. “Ma, I didn’t know you made one of these for Bruiser.”

Ma rinsed a plate, set it on the drying rack, dried her hands on a towel, and sauntered into the dining area to look. “Of course I have an album for him. I made one for all my boys.”

Dade stood and lifted Gage’s twins with him, tickling them with his facial scruff. “Night, baby bears.”

Arie cupped his face and looked somber as she gave him a slow-motion blink. “Goodnight, Uncle Dade.”

He tried to hide the dumb smile splitting his face at how friggin’ adorable his niece and nephew were. Setting them down, he patted them on the rumps and sent them scampering into the bed Ma had set up for her grandkids to spend the night, yelling their goodbyes to the rest of the crew as they went.

Curiosity never killed a bear as far as he knew, so he ambled on into the dining room and leaned on locked arms against the table beside his mate. She rested her head against his elbow, just about bringing him to his knees with how damned cute she was.

Maybe she was right. Perhaps he really was going soft.

Kissing the top of her head, he squinted at the pictures.

“Who’s Bruiser?” Quinn asked.

“He’s my half-brother.”

Quinn lifted a surprised glance to Ma. “Oh, I didn’t realize there were more in the crew.”

“Oh, he’s not in our crew. Not anymore. He had a calling somewhere else and joined up with the Ashe Crew in Montana.” Ma swung a dreamy look to a black and white photo of Bruiser sitting in a poppy field next to an old hound dog that used to run wild around the property. “I talked to him this morning on the phone, and he asked if we needed him here. Said he would bring Diem and come up here to support us going public if we wanted. I told him to hold off getting those plane tickets until things settle down, though. It’s one thing if he comes out with us, but his mate is a different kind of shifter. I don’t think she should be anywhere around this situation, and I bet her daddy would agree.”

“Good call,” Boone rumbled, settling into a chair across the table. “Finding out bear shifters exist is one thing. Finding out a dragon shifter exists is a whole different can of worms.”

“Dragon shifter?” Quinn asked, petal pink lips opening slightly with shock. Damn, he wanted to kiss the surprise from her mouth.

“Yeah,” Leah said with a knowing look. “I freaked out when I heard that, too. I had no idea they still existed, and Bruiser married one.”

“Is she scary?”

“Woman,” Boone said with a frown at Quinn, “you had a water gun fight with a bunch of fully mature grizzly shifters, and you haven’t batted an eyelash all night. I know you aren’t a scaredy bear.”

“Yeah, but it’s easy to forget you have a bear in you. I almost forget I have a bear in me sometimes. But dragons?”