His hands tightened infinitesimally on her shoulders. And then he was standing, pulling away from her. She could see his dark silhouette, silver in the moonlight.
“We shift now,” he said, his voice gruff. “Come.”
And with that he was walking out to the front porch. Glory scrambled up. By the time she made it out to him, he was already in his bear form, standing on his back two legs, scenting the air.
She tugged off her shirt and followed suit, the shift to her tiger form a welcome distraction from the buzzing, tugging electricity under her skin. Her muscles stretched and bunched as she galloped along beside him. The two of them set off through the woods together, keeping easy pace and following the moon through the leaves.
He brought the two of them up the mountain, to a place that Glory hadn’t explored yet. It was a craggy cliff decorated with scrappy pines and mountain grass. Glory could smell a hawk in a tree, eyeing them warily. The air held its breath, dry and tense.
Emin’s bear walked right out onto the edge of the cliff. He shifted gracefully, sitting and letting his legs dangle down over the edge. Glory followed suit and sat next to him, both of them comfortable with their nakedness in a way they hadn’t yet been. There was nothing sexual about it now. They were just two creatures staring out at the night. At the valley spread out before them. The crimson trees below were turned a romantic, bloody red in the night. Bats swooped after one another in an endless dance.
Glory looked down at their feet, dangling into darkness. How different they looked from one another. Her slim, pale feet were like two dolphins in the water. His long, wide toes were golden and dusted with hair. Much like his face, his shoulders, and hands, his feet just looked… confident.
She looked up and absorbed the view. Funny that it could look so similar to where she’d been born and still so different. She’d never been here before. Her mother wasn’t out there. Her mother was back home. Wherever that was.
“You are lonely for your mother,” Emin said, finally. “The world is confusing for you. I know this.” He tracked a frustrated hand through her hair. “I will try to make it less confusing.”
“What do you mean?” her voice was small even to her own ears.
“My family will be your family,” he said simply. “You will eat with us and be with us. We will help you find your mother. And in the meantime, we will be like family.”
Glory considered that. The thought of having Emin’s family as her own warmed her, almost enough to ease the ache of the ice in her stomach when she thought of her mother. But something about treating Emin that way didn’t stick right with her. She didn’t want Emin as her family.
“You will be my family, too?”
“Yes,” he answered after a beat, one of his feet swinging back and forth in the darkness.
“You won’t be my mate?”
He paused even longer this time. “You aren’t ready for mate.”
“Oh.” She looked out at the view again and thought she’d detected just the barest hint of the sunrise at the edge of the sky. She didn’t know if she was ready for a mate or not. She just knew that she wanted Emin to do to her in real life what he’d just done in her dream. And she was pretty sure that mates did that kind of thing with each other. Well, she’d have to think about it. “If I am part of the family, then can I have the last name? I’ve never had a last name before.”
He said nothing for a long time. “If you wish.”
“Glory Malashovik,” she said, and her voice winged out over the valley. She didn’t know that it also arrowed directly into Emin’s chest.
She rose and shifted easily, yawning big in her tiger form. She trotted off the way they came. He waited for a moment. Just one more moment, feeling like his feet weren’t the only things swinging into the dark.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next week was filled with land mines for Emin and happiness for Glory.
“Can you help me with the clasp on my, what do you call this thing?” she’d asked him one morning as she got dressed for the day in clothes that Dora had helped her pick out.
“Bra,” Emin had hissed grumpily. “It is called bra.” He’d strapped her into it, firmly realizing how much less fun it was to put them on than it was to take them off.
She’d needed help braiding her hair, reaching salt on the top shelf, even tying her shoes. She was a fast learner, but there was a hell of a lot for her to learn. And somehow Emin was the one who was teaching it all.
He found her incredibly alluring. And fascinating. And so frustrating he wanted to scream. How did one being have so much child and so much woman all at once? How was she so much tiger and so much human? She was a perfect split of two things, always. And it maddened him how well the combinations worked.