Did high school ever really end? “I know. Irony, right? Theodora/Teddy equals ha-ha-ha.”
Nina’s head fell back, revealing her slender throat. “Buwhahahhaha! Oh, Christ on a cracker, that’s the best shit I’ve heard in forever!”
“Wait, you’re a bear, too?” Wanda gasped out at Cormac. “Are you sure you’re the Cormac Vitali who has a sister from Jersey about yeah-high, gorgeous red hair, feisty as a coon who’s been cornered in a crawl space, with the heart of a warrior?”
Teddy noted his eyes were less narrow now, more contemplative. “I’m sure.”
“So does someone want to explain to me why Toni wouldn’t tell us you were a bear? We spent a solid month with her in Shamalot—”
“What the hell is Shamalot?” Cormac asked, once more crossing his arms over his wide chest.
“It’s a very, very long story. One we’d be happy to share with you. Privately,” Wanda added with a direct gaze in Teddy’s vicinity. “But that still doesn’t answer the question. Why would Toni purposely not tell us you’re a bear? Why isn’t she a bear, too?”
His answer was stiff as he rose and moved to his computers, turning each screen off. “Because she didn’t know. It happened after we…”
After what?
Teddy wanted to ask, but he wasn’t at all approachable at this point. She needed to get a call in to her brothers and figure out where everything had gone so wrong.
“Can we speak somewhere privately, Cormac? We have a lot to discuss,” Wanda reminded him again, pointing to a door just beside the small kitchen.
Cormac eyed her with suspicion as he pulled off his knit cap and lobbed it on the makeshift plywood he used as a desk. “And her?”
Teddy fought an angry retort, opting to remain silent. Her was just fine, thank you very much.
“I’ll stay with her,” Marty offered, rolling up her sleeves as though she were preparing to babysit a T-Rex. “She can tell me all about this life mate thing while you two talk.”
Like she needed a babysitter. But there was no getting out of this now. She was in for the duration. At least until she could get a phone call to her brothers.
And until she could figure out what to do about this call her heart had made.
Because whether Cormac Vitali liked it or not, he was destined to be hers.
*
Cormac sat on a hard chair opposite Wanda, who’d taken a spot on the bed, crossing her legs as she explained to him this completely whacked tale of wormholes, knights and princes and ogres and Toni, who was, if he’d heard correctly, planning to marry a prince and would thus be a princess, and living in an entirely different realm.
He calmly stroked his cat, Lenny Kravitz’s ears while he listened, and Lenny purred with contentment.
“Are you hearing everything I’m saying, Cormac? Did you hear me tell you I’m a hybrid, or as my dear friend calls me, a halfsie?”
Yep. Half vampire, half werewolf. He’d heard.
“Oh, I hear you talking.”
“But have you absorbed what I’ve said?”
“Like the proverbial sponge.”
She sighed a grating, impatient sound he was meant to hear and shifted her position on the shabby quilt he’d pulled up over his pillow just this morning. She looked almost out of place in a room so sparse and dim compared to her refined sophistication. She belonged with fine crystal, silk drapes and fancy goblets in a mansion somewhere.
Her voice took on a stern teacher’s tone when she said, “I’m not the enemy here, Cormac. So I’d appreciate it if you’d kindly stop treating me as such and pay me the respect I deserve for hauling my butt up this damn mountain just to find you. I came all the way here from New York because we made a promise to your sister—someone we hold quite dear to our hearts after all we’ve been through. If you’re not willing to listen to me, then I’m happy to leave you right here in your frozen tundra of a prison. I do have a family and things that need tending back at home. I also have Nina. A very disgruntled, very lost ex-vampire who, as you’ve seen, is a beast with a food obsession. Clearly you can see my plate is full. Now, either you participate in this conversation, and squish your way onto my full plate, nestled in next to Nina the Crabby, or I leave you here with your alleged life mate and I go home.”
Rolling his head on his neck, he stretched it from side to side, setting Lenny on the floor. Her story was insane.
But was it any more insane than the idea that he’d been bitten and turned into a bear by a Russian mob member? The hair that clogged the drain in that pitiful shower of his after one of those bone-crunching shifts certainly said otherwise.
“You have to admit it’s a lot to wrap your brain around.”
Her face relaxed then and her lips tilted upward in a small smile. “You heard the part about OOPS, our company, right?”
“The paranormal crisis hotline. Yep. I did.” More crazy. Maybe. Then again, maybe not.