“And her I can’t tell yet because she’s so shy. But I’ll keep you posted.”
Smart girl, Katya thought to herself. The only one who was smarter than her Danishka. This girl saw much. Almost as much as Katya herself saw. And Katya was the one who’d made this family.
“And Danil?” Katya asked, noting the way that Dora’s hands stilled for a moment over the knife.
“Danil is… intelligent.” Dora thought hard. Choosing her words incredibly carefully. This was Danil’s mother, after all. “And, um, very nice.”
“Don’t start to lie now,” Katya said and made Dora laugh. She’d seen right through her.
“Alright, well, if we’re being honest. He’s bossy as hell. And arrogant. And thinks he knows what’s best for everybody.” She was on a roll now, learning about Danil even as she was talking about him, going back through all of her moments with him.
“And he’s fierce. And persistent. And domineering. But all of that is probably because he’s so protective. He cares very much for his family. Home is very important to him,” Dora finished, her cheeks deeply pink for a reason that she desperately hoped Katya could not guess.
So, the woman was in love with her son. Whatever part of herself that she’d been holding back - and it hadn’t been large - Katya let out of the cage. She’d seen women come and go in all of her boys’ lives. But she’d never seen Danil’s eyes as they had been when he’d held her hand in her entryway. And If Dora wasn’t able to see it all yet, what was there, ripe for the picking, between she and Danil, well, love was hard. The beginning especially. But Dora was trying to see him. Katya supposed that was just about the most a mother could hope for in a mate for her child. That she tried to see him. And blushed when she looked at him. Good signs. These were very good signs.
CHAPTER NINE
Twenty minutes later they all sat crammed around his parents’ dinner table. They were sitting so close that Dora’s knee was jammed into Danil’s leg. But he didn’t mind. He reached under the table and rearranged her so that her leg draped over his instead.
She gave him a little glance, like not at your mother’s table, which he heartily ignored. This was not something his mother would mind. Not with a woman like Dora. With one of the bimbos that Maxim or Emin brought around, maybe. But not with Dora.
Food was passed around the cramped table in big, steaming bowls and Ilya filled each person’s glass with a ‘healthy’ dose of beer while Emin lit candles.
The family held hands while Katya said a quick Belarusian prayer over the food. And then the brothers dug in, eating like it was their last meal. As they always had.
“Wow, you boys can eat!” Dora noted as she looked around at the men, Ilya included, all inhaling their food.
“We need much fuel,” Emin said, practically swallowing a slice of babka whole.
“Is that because of the whole bear shifter thing?” Dora asked, effectively freezing everyone at the table.
Each head turned, not to look at Dora. But to stare at Danil. He was the only one looking at Dora, his face absolutely slack with shock.
“What did you say?” he asked her, his voice quiet and strong.
Dora cleared her throat and wiped her mouth with her napkin. “I asked if you all needed to eat so much because you’re all bear shifters. Well, the men at least.”
You could have heard a feather drop in the next county for how quiet the table was. Danil’s mind worked a mile a minute, through what felt like a foot of molasses. How was that possible? How could she have possibly known?
Suddenly, Katya’s laugh rang out around the table. She surveyed all the stunned faces. “You have smart one here, Danishka,” she said, heaping another serving of stew onto her husband’s plate.
“How?” Danil asked, the only word he could seem to form at this particular minute.
Dora waved her hand through the air. “The signs are everywhere. Starting with this one.” Dora pointed her chin toward AJ. “You claimed to have been rescued from a mountain lion by a grizzly bear with a white streak. That’s a matter of public record. It ran in the newspaper and was corroborated by the police report you gave. A bear that’s been seen over ten times in the last decade. And actually, this area has had an unusually large number of bear sightings. For a place with exactly zero bear attacks. Or female bears. Or baby bears. Also, these bears don’t rummage through trash. They don’t hunt the local pets. They never get hit by cars or guard their young. All things that normal bears do. No,” Dora said as she clapped her hands together. “When I came to Spokane, I recognized the signs immediately. I knew I had a family of bear shifters on my hands.”