Emin followed his brother up the stairs of his house, completely at home. Even though Danil was the youngest, he had been the first of the brothers to own his own home and all of them were proud of him. Even though Emil owned his own little cabin up the mountain now, he still liked to spend time at Danil’s.
The neat little two-storey with its matching furniture and photos on the walls was perfectly Danil. Even all the plates matched, Emin thought as he pulled out two and started setting the table. He did the one other thing that he was equipped to do in a kitchen and put the coffee on.
A few minutes later Danil stomped into the kitchen, his hair damp from the shower and his undershirt tucked into his suit pants. He sniffed the air appreciatively as the first drips of coffee wafted through the kitchen.
“You need art in here,” Emin said as he surveyed the kitchen.
Danil dug in the fridge for eggs and bacon, an American breakfast the brothers had all taken to quite fast when they’d first moved from Belarus. “I’ve been telling you this for years. But all your paintings go to Maciaryszki. Or straight to your clients.”
“I’ve got one that I’ll bring over here. None of my clients like it very much. It’s very… tame.”
Danil raised a sardonic eyebrow at his brother’s tone as he cracked eggs into a hot pan. He wasn’t going to dignify that with a response.
“Don’t give me that look,” Emin said, biting back his smile. “You’ll like it very much. The side of you that jogs as a man instead of as bear. Your domesticated side.” He smiled even more when Danil bristled at his choice of words, flipping the eggs. “The painting is of our mountain, behind Papa’s house. All in blues. It’s just your style. Everything is in its right place.”
Danil’s eyebrow raised even further as he flipped the bacon in a second pan. Emin crossed the kitchen, poured them both a cup of coffee before the machine was done and got a small satisfaction out of watching the drips burn as they fell onto the hot tray. He ignored Danil’s annoyed noise and put the coffee pot back into its place, slid Danil’s coffee cup across the counter.
“You might as well just get to your point, Emin,” Danil said, taking an irritated swig of coffee and cursing when it burned his tongue. He could tell that his brother was circling around something here and he just did not have the patience to wait while he landed the plane.
“My point is that I think you sweat up a hill at 5 am because your woman is not in the right place. Not in her life or in yours.”
“Excuse me?” Danil tossed three eggs on a plate for his brother and then for himself. He mounded another plate with the still-sizzling bacon and tossed it all on his kitchen table. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
The men sat and Emin watched Danil with a discerning eye. “It means that she is somewhere sleeping across town in a shitty hotel rather than upstairs in your bed.”
Danil tried to say nothing but his brother was annoying the shit out of him this morning. “It’s not like that, Emin. I’m not trying to bed her.”
Emin nodded, saw something flash on Danil’s face that he’d never seen before. Interesting, he thought. Very interesting.
“Fine, well, that’s your own delusion. But as for her place in her own life, well, she’s not right there either.”
Danil took a huge bite of breakfast, as if to show that he had very little interest in this conversation, but Emin knew better.
“I caught her scent in the woods last night. Back behind Mama and Papa’s house,” Emin said.
Danil stopped chewing. He leaned back in the chair and eyed his brother more like a wolf than a bear. “Was the scent fresh?”
Emin nodded. “She’d been there not twenty minutes before Anton and I came back down the mountain.”
“God damn it,” Danil cursed, tracing a hand through his wet hair. “In the fucking wilderness in the dead of the night again.” He stood. “Finish your breakfast. We’ve got someplace to go before I have to go to work today.”
Half an hour later, the two brothers pulled up to the spot where Danil had tasted heaven a few mornings ago. He parked his car in the same place as before and got out, walked over to where Dora’s car had been parked. Sniffing the air, he growled in frustration and started stripping out of his clothes.
As bear shifters, they all had very attuned senses of smell when in their human forms. But her scent had waned so much over the last few days that he’d need to be in his bear form to be able to track her path now.
Emin followed suit, stripping down and shifting before they ambled into the woods side by side. In their bear forms, the two brothers picked up her scent easily. Their thoughts invaded one another’s in a way they’d become extremely accustomed to over their lives together.