Seeing the way everyone was leaning toward Dora, he cracked a quick, sharp smile and pulled her out of AJ's arms.
"We are thanking you, da?"
Dora nodded. "It appears so."
Anton bent down to Dora, his face only inches from AJ's shocked, open mouth, and took Dora's mouth in an incredibly friendly kiss. One that would have blown the roof off Dora's head had she not been kissing Danil for the last few weeks. At Danil's growl, Anton unleashed Dora and stepped back from her, holding her shoulders. "We get them, no? Together, we take down Navuka?"
"Uh. Yeah," Dora said, her head still a little fuzzy from all the Malashovik kissing she'd just been subjected to.
Danil batted Anton's hands away from Dora and shoved his brother back. "Hands away from my woman."
"She's not yours until you're married," Maxim called across the table as everyone sat down to dinner.
"Then she'll be mine in the morning," Danil growled, eyeing his brothers grumpily, because he knew what was going to happen next.
A cheer went up around the table and the Malashovik brothers all stood, swooping in to kiss the blushing bride again. Dora laughed, smiling into each kiss.
Later that night, Dora ran back up the stairs toward the bedroom she'd slept in. She'd left her coat up there and she wanted to grab it before Danil took her home. To their home. She nearly hugged herself in joy.
They'd be married tomorrow. He'd promised her that if he couldn't get the license in time, he'd fly them to Vegas to get it done. She didn't care what kind of wedding they had. Although she thought her dad would have gotten a kick out of a Vegas wedding. He had kind of had a thing for Elvis.
Dora grabbed her coat from the dark room and turned, running smack into Emin. He flipped the light on and paced over to sit on the armchair in the corner.
"I have question," he said, his dark eyes reserved.
"Okay," Dora said, leaning against the door jamb. "Shoot."
Emin rubbed a hand over his dark crop of hair. "When you investigated, and you realized that shifters were real, you believed it?"
Dora nodded slowly. "Maybe not at first. But the evidence I found in the abandoned labs was all pretty irrefutable."
"And you found evidence of other bear shifter families?”
“Well,” she shrugged, thinking hard. “Nothing that suggested families. But yeah, the evidence suggests that there are lots of other bear shifters in the world besides the Malashoviks if that’s what you’re asking.”
Emin nodded, thinking hard. His eyes flashed up to hers and Dora realized that he was nervous to ask what came next. “And there are other kinds of shifters as well?”
A small smile caught at Dora but she swallowed it down. “Harder to say. The labs have all seemed to deal mostly with bear shifters.”
Emin nodded again, looking down.
“But-” Dora said and had Emin’s head snapping back up. “I saw something outside of the last lab, the one that I got arrested at, that made me think otherwise.”
“What did you see?”
“You’re not going to believe me,” she said, remembering the night that she’d fled the lab, scared of the animal she thought she’d seen in the woods.
“I already do,” he replied, his eyes intense.
“I thought I saw a tiger in the woods. Like a real deal orange and black and white tiger. And the way it was hanging around the lab. It was like it maybe had a tie to it. I didn’t get the sense that it was wild.”
Emin rose, and paced to the window. “I knew it,” he muttered.
He would shift again tonight. Scour the woods. Search again for the creature that had been haunting his dreams. The flashing tiger that had left her scent all over his forest. The one who he knew was more woman than tiger. He would find her if it killed him.
When he turned back around, it was to see Dora studying him with eyes like ice blue lasers.
“You see too much, sister,” he said with a smile designed to scramble a woman’s brains.
It wasn’t the smile that had her standing up straight. It was the endearment. “Sister?” she echoed.
“Ah, yes. You have not thought of this yet?” he said, charmed by her dumbfounded look. “You wed tomorrow. And get yourself three brothers along with husband.”
Dora’s mouth fell flat open. She hadn’t thought of it. She turned at Danil’s hand on her shoulder.
Her head found his chest instantly and she’d never know the way the simple movement constricted his heart.
“You gave me a family,” she whispered up to him.
Danil reached up and slammed the bedroom door closed on Emin, giving them a bit of privacy in the hallway. “If you let me, I’ll give you all the family you can handle.”