Bear started. "I am not."
"Dude." Lucas slid a beer his way. "You're letting her organize the office. Your office. I mean, with all the papers and files. Organize. It's crazy."
Bear flipped the cap off the beer and drank half of it. "Organization won't hurt us." Hell, it sounded lame even to his ears. "Okay. She's pretty, and she wants to help. You've done a lot stupider things for a woman." There had been a woman in the fifties that Lucas had even dyed his hair for. Geez.
Lucas took a drink of his beer. "Yeah, I know." He settled back, his gaze on the bounty hunters on screen one. "It's been you and me and the club for so long."
Bear took another drink. "Yeah?"
"You now have a sister and a brother. Family." Lucas held up his beer. "I'm happy for you."
Bear clinked and then paused. Was there a hint of melancholy in his old buddy's tone? Man, he'd chosen the wrong time to disappear for a while. "Luke? You're my family. You and this club. Have been for thirty years."
Lucas's eyes softened. "Yeah, I know. It's just, I used to imagine finding out my parents were alive. Or that I had a sibling somewhere. I'm glad it happened for you."
"We're brothers." Bear said the words, and it was a vow. "That means that Simone and Flynn are yours now, too." He could share all his siblings, and frankly, he could use some help with them both. They were wild and dangerous . . . and they both thought they were invincible. Nobody was. "I promise."
Lucas took a long drag of his beer. "Simone seems like a pain in the neck as a sibling." He grinned. "Maybe Flynn the dragon and I could bond over a couple of tequila shots. I wouldn't mind seeing him spit fire."
Bear chuckled. "Simone is not a pain-she's just dangerous. Period." His sister was awesome. Lucas wasn't any more of a talker than was Bear, but maybe it was time to work through some shit. "You never talk about your folks."
"Didn't know them." Lucas shrugged. "They were supposedly part of a smuggling ring in between wars. They got caught, and they fought to the death."
Bear had known they'd died, but Lucas had never wanted to talk about it before. Were the two of them mellowing? No. No way. But the story did make sense. Shifters had often turned to smuggling back in the day. "What did they smuggle?"
"I've heard it was gold, but who knows. Enough talking about my dismal past." Lucas leaned back. "Does this thing between you and Nessa have legs?"
"She's a witch," Bear said automatically. His hand shook, so he put it under the table. Damn it. Just when he'd thought he was healed, the symptoms were coming back. Maybe he'd really screwed himself by shifting into a dragon. He'd never admit it, but he'd tried to do it again just a month ago. To see if he could. He could not. That talent, or trick, or whatever, was now gone.
Lucas just watched him, waiting for an answer about Nessa.
"A. Witch." Bear could still smell roses. "We've never been close to the witch nation. Never wanted to be."
"Your sister is a witch, and she's back in your life now," Lucas reminded him. "There's no turning from that."
Didn't mean he had to mate a witch. His stomach ached in the center. He sighed. Maybe he'd messed himself up too badly with that dragon shift and was gonna die anyway. But he'd saved Simone, so what the hell. "What about you? Who's the woman?"
"I've just been playing around. Nothing serious," Lucas said, finishing his beer.
"I thought you said-"
Lucas reached for another beer in the fridge. "Was just messing with you. I am nowhere near ready to settle down with one woman." He shuddered. "Forever." Then he paused and gestured toward the screen. "The boys have caught a scent." He grinned. "That's why we're still here, right? We want to watch those boys in action."
"Exactly." Bear wanted to see how Kayrs and Kyllwood would handle things. See if he could trust them to stay alive in the Seattle underground. He took another drink of his beer, his gaze on the screen.
The bounty hunters were moving smoothly between trees, navigating through the snow and barely leaving any trace of their presence.
Garrett and Logan circled around them, moving as gracefully as any shifters. Not a branch stirred.
"They move well together," Lucas mused.
Yeah, they did. "They also move like they've been hunting prey for centuries," Bear noted. They hadn't.