He swept his hands in a shooing motion. “Off with you both now. Fresh sheets and warm blankets are on your beds in the basement, as well as clean nightwear. Pleasant dreams,” he said with that twinkling smile, escorting them out of the TV room and toward the basement door.
She turned at the head of the steps and impulsively hugged Archibald, letting the scent of fresh vanilla and cookies on his pristine jacket soothe her. “Thank you, Archibald. You’ve been very kind to us on such short notice.”
“’Tis nothing, Theodora. You’re always welcome wherever I go. Sleep well, lovely lady.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek and nodded to Cormac. “You as well, Master Cormac. Tomorrow, we slay the dragon!” he shouted as he took his leave.
As they made their way down the stairs, a warm glow of light shining from a small lamp, she had to admit, the bed did look pretty inviting.
They were silent as they took turns changing behind the princess privacy screen with knights on horses and princesses with long, flowing hair, waving from castle turrets.
They each finally sat at the edge of their respective beds and sipped the warm brew Archibald gave them.
Both silent.
Both lost in their own thoughts.
“Wow. Wow. Wow,” Cormac murmured sleepily, the rustle of the sheets as he repositioned himself meeting her ears.
Teddy giggled from her bed. Yeah. Wow. She felt great. Better than she had in well over a year. “What the heck was in that special brew?”
“I dunno, but unicorn sighting at three o’ clock.”
“You think that looks like a unicorn? I was leaning more toward Clydesdale.”
“We’re sharing hallucinations?”
“It’s what life mates do.”
Cormac barked a weak laugh. “Whatever’s in that tea, I want a permanent port put in my arm filled with it. I haven’t been this relaxed in forever.”
She nodded, tucking the comforter under her chin as she drifted on a fluffy cloud. “It’s pretty great.”
“You feel better now?”
“As good as any murder suspect feels, I suppose.”
“Let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about something else.”
“You wanna name your unicorn?”
Cormac chuckled. “How about we get to know each other?”
“You mean like whether I want the top or bottom bunk in our cell? What our prison pet names should be? That kind of intimate detail sharing?”
“Aw, c’mon, Teddy Bear, play nice. No talk of prison or dirty cops or murder. Deal?”
She closed her eyes and a cornucopia of colors rushed past her eyelids; she smiled. “Hmmm-mmm. Deal.”
“So tell me everything about Teddy.”
“Bra-size everything or favorite-color everything?”
“How about we start with favorite color?”
“Yellow.”
“I’m green.”
“Green is nice.”
“Okay, scratch favorite colors. It’s superficial and boring and the only time I’ll need to know what your favorite color is will be when we pick out paint for our house. Let’s go deeper. Ask me something you’ve been wondering about since we met and I’ll do the same.”
“Okay, in the interest of going deeper, how did you deal with becoming a bear? I mean, how did you learn to shift and…I dunno, the million and one things that come with such an enormous life change? I’ve been going over how crazy that must have been and I can’t wrap my head around the idea.”
“Romance novels,” he said, deadpan.
“Come again?”
“I read romance novels, and I’ll have you know, this tea makes my lips loose.”
“Romance novels? Please, please, pleeease explain.”
“Promise you won’t laugh?”
“Nope.”
“Fine. You were bound to find out anyway. So when this all went down, there wasn’t like a guide on how to become a bear or anything. So I Googled all sorts of crazy phrases like ‘going from human to bear’ and ‘shape shifting’ etcetera. That led me to romance novels. Just an FYI, we’re huge in romance.”
She knew she should be alarmed by the idea that everything he knew about being a bear shifter he’d learned in a romance novel, but he was still standing. That said something for romance novels and vivid imaginations.
“Bears are?”
“Last year we were all the rage. Right up there with vampires.”
“Okay, so you read romance novels and that taught you about the shift?”
“Yep. I read a bunch of Eve Langlais and some other folks with catchy titles like Bearly There. Billionaire bears, alpha bears. You name it, I read it. That’s where I started and it went from there. Tons of reading material, tons of different takes on bear shifting. Some not so far off the mark, if what you say is true.”
Now she really laughed. “Promise me something?”
“What’s that?”
“Never ever tell a single soul how you learned how to shift. Ever.”
“Will they laugh me out of the clan?”
“You could lose your man cred. And it’s the sleuth. We have sleuths they’ll laugh you out of, not clans.”
“Oh, right. A group of us are called sleuths. Don’t think I ever came across that term.”
“It’s kinda old school. So the first shift—how horrible was that?”