The room was filled with happiness, cheer, and love. It was the kind of day which made Doc's eyes want to tear up, because who could be untouched by all of the positivity and hope for the future currently filling the air?

Well... 

There was one person.

Despite today being Brock Bunson's older brother's mating ceremony, Brock looked as grumpy and stone-faced as he always did. He had smiled once. Briefly. At his new sister-in-law, Jesse, when she'd hugged him. So Doc knew he had it in him, even if it was literally the only time she'd ever seen him smile.

Not that she spent that much time around him outside of treatment. He might be her patient, but none of the Bunson family had started off particularly comfortable around doctors and Brock's attitude was the chilliest of the bunch. The rest of them had warmed up to her over time, especially if she wasn't wearing one of her white coats. And it helped that she’d become friends with Jesse, who was now mated into their family.

After being held prisoner and experimented on by a mad scientist who turned them from human into some seriously weird shifter-hybrids, only to be rescued and find out that The Company which had been funding him had also killed their parents, it wasn't that surprising the Bunsons weren't too trusting of anyone in a lab coat. Doc didn't take it personally. At least she tried not to. Some days she succeeded better than others.

It might help if she went by her real name, rather than enforcing the rule that everyone call her Doc, but she hated her real name. She didn’t even like her middle name. Only certain people were allowed to call her by her middle name and no one was allowed to use her first name.

At the beginning she'd been pretty patient, understanding what they had gone through. Now... well, they all were cool with her except Brock. 

And considering she had to spend an hour a day with him doing physical therapy for his shoulder—which he'd severely injured during a battle and then pushed too hard when he was doing PT on his own and ended up re-injuring it—that kinda sucked. A lot. 

Privately she had to admit to herself she might not be quite so butthurt over it if she also wasn't attracted to him like crazy, but she sure as hell wasn't going to be admitting that to anyone. 

Still, it bugged her that he was so obviously out-of-sorts and showing it when his brother had just been mated.

Grumpy bunny, her puma observed as Doc headed for him. Anytime Brock was around, her puma perked up with interest. For some reason, her animal found Brock fascinating, although not for the same reasons Doc did. Her puma didn't care about his broad shoulders, amber-hazel eyes, or bristles of dark blond hair that looked like they'd be soft to the touch.

Nope, her puma was interested because he didn't like her.

Doc assumed it was a cat thing. 

And just like her puma, she was drawn to Brock's side, even knowing she probably wouldn't be welcome. 

******

Brock was in hell. 

Granted, it was better than when he and his siblings had been held captive by The Company so Dr. Montgomery could experiment on them, but just barely. It was also slightly better than when he and his squad had been betrayed by one of their own during an attack on Cryus Peak and he’d been severely injured and taken prisoner.

Surrounded by people when he hated crowds, his shoulder aching abominably because he'd pushed too hard during rehab and managed to re-injure himself, and now trapped by Strawberry Shortcake herself... yeah this was hell. His only escape was to retreat, but he refused to run away from her.

Show no fear.

Inside his head, the bugaboo snorted at the thought because, as far as the creature was concerned, there was no need to be afraid of the pretty kitty. 

Yeah he knew bugaboo was a weird word. But it was how Brock thought of his shifter side. He'd always liked scary bedtime stories and his mom had told him several about a fantastical monster called the bugaboo who came out at night and hunted down evil people. After they'd been rescued he'd looked up the term on the internet and found out she'd been pretty liberal in her interpretation of the word, but he still liked it. So did his bugaboo. He didn't tell anyone that's what he called his creature though, not even his siblings. 

Even though he knew how silly it sounded, somehow during his time in the lab he’d found a lot of comfort in naming the monstrous creature something so ridiculous. Although he’d been sixteen, the idea of hunting down the bad guys using the bugaboo inside of him had really appealed. Especially since, at the time, he’d been surrounded by the bad guys.

Unfortunately there was no using his unnatural other half to scare away the woman who had been sitting next to him, chattering his ear off about the most ridiculous inanities for the past twenty minutes. 

The worst part was that part of him kind of liked her there. She looked stunning in a floaty purple dress that made the light red hair curling around her shoulders somehow look even redder and her hazel eyes were huge in her face. The eyeshadow she was wearing was also purple and her lashes looked unusually long.

Brock was far too aware of the way her skirt shifted over her legs every time she crossed and re-crossed them. Normally she wore jeans and Disney t-shirts underneath a lab coat. Normally her hair was pulled back, not spilling over her shoulders. Normally her features were attractive, but her eyes didn't usually look like two shiny, topaz jewels and her lips weren't normally that shade of tempting red. 

Normally, Brock found his unwelcome attraction to the doctor to be fairly easy to ignore or dismiss. Today he was struggling more with it. 

Maybe it was the champagne or maybe it was seeing her not as a doctor, just as a regular, attractive woman.

Either way, Brock didn't like it. Because at the end of the day, she was still a doctor. Plus, he had no idea what to say to her. She was all sunshine and positivity. She'd probably never had a bad day in her life. Brock was not a silver linings kind of person. Even before he and his siblings had been kidnapped and experimented on he'd been more of a glass-half-empty kind of guy. 

Now he couldn't help but wonder about everyone's motivations. Especially overly-sunny doctors who insisted on talking to him when she obviously wasn't welcome company. 

"—and Jesse and Brady are more like Sleeping Beauty and Prince Phillip," Doc said, continuing her enthusiastic comparison of his family members to Disney characters. The woman was obsessed. Part of him found it cute, but he pushed that part away because Disney movies were stupid.

Prince Charming didn't exist and happily-ever-afters weren't guaranteed. He hoped Brady and Jesse made it. He hoped Steele and Bethany's mating didn't turn sour. But hoping didn't make things real, or he and his siblings wouldn't have spent seven years as science experiments—and their parents would still have been alive when they'd been rescued. 

Hope was a bitch and he was too smart to believe in her anymore.

Karma, on the other hand, was his kind of lady, right along with Justice and Vengeance. Those didn't really go well with Disney themes though.

"Don't you think so?" she asked brightly. 

"I wasn't really listening," he said bluntly. Which was true, but he also said it to get under her skin.

It drove him nuts that she was always smiling, always positive, always looking for the good side of things. Did she even know what being sad felt like? Terror? Hopelessness? 

He got a perverse pleasure out of hearing her grit her teeth in annoyance. 

"Do you always have to be a jerk?" she asked, making him blink in surprise. The question also got his attention in a way she hadn't been able to before, mostly because she wasn't normally so outspoken.

Her eyes were sparkling with some kind of emotion, her cheeks bright with color, and the empty champagne glass in her hand gave him some idea of where her blunt statement might have come from. While she'd called him rude before, she'd never actually insulted him. 

"What's there to be nice about?" Brock could be nice if he wanted. He was nice to his siblings and their mates. He was nice to the ladies who wanted to console him and help him make up for his time as a prisoner of The Company. But he was enjoying being able to get under Strawberry Shortcake's skin, for the first time ever. 

When she wasn't being Strawberry Shortcake, she was a no-nonsense doctor. He'd never seen her pissed off before, no matter what he said during PT. 

"Um, your brother was just mated? He's found his happily-ever-after, just like Bethany did? That doesn't make you feel like being nice?" The exasperation in her voice only encouraged him, despite the fact that his bugaboo was disapproving. It liked Doc and didn't understand why he was enjoying antagonizing her. 

Brock shrugged. "Hopefully they won't regret it."

He really did hope that, but he made his tone of voice a lot more casual about it than he actually felt. 

Visibly agitated, Doc huffed and Brock couldn't help but feel a small bit of glee. Part of him recognized he was kind of like a kid on a playground, pulling on a cute little girl's pigtail, but he had to admit, he was having fun. Seeing her all dressed up was one thing, seeing her actually getting riled up was way better. He'd actually started thinking it wasn't even possible, but obviously he'd been wrong. 

"They have their happily-ever-after, and all you can say is you hope they don't regret it?!"

Oh yeah. He'd hit the jackpot. Not too surprising, actually, considering her Disney obsession. The champagne she'd been drinking probably helped too. He scowled, hiding his elation under a grumpy demeanor, so she wouldn't know how much he was enjoying this.

"There's no such thing as happily-ever-after."

He might as well have just announced he was the anti-Christ. 

"Of course there is!"

"Then where's yours?" 

Doc slammed her palm down on the table, making both him and his bugaboo jump. The creature whined at him unhappily and even Brock felt a touch of unease as he looked at her infuriated expression. Had he gone too far?

Standing up, she glared at him.

"You. Are. Hopeless. And not worth trying to talk to. Go to hell, Brock."

Spinning on her heel, she stomped off, leaving him sitting there. 

Which was what he'd wanted in the first place, right? 

Mean. The bugaboo's disapproving judgment was not directed toward Doc at all. 

Doing his best to push away the unsettling feeling of guilt and a missed opportunity, Brock poked at his cake.

******

Stomping down the hallway, Doc dashed away the moisture from her eyes, telling herself the tears were from being so angry. Not because he'd hurt her feelings.

The soothing, sympathetic purr of her puma helped a little bit. Her cat snuggled her. Metaphorically.

It wasn't Doc's fault she hadn't had her happily-ever-after yet. She tried, she really did. 

Well, she used to anyway. Before she'd joined Steele's pack she'd been putting herself out there on a regular basis. Almost all the guys she'd attracted were major losers.

Like the guy who had wanted to make her wait while he did a few lines of coke before leaving his place. Big nope. Doc had immediately left and he'd had his coke all to himself. 

Or the one who'd taken her out to dinner and the date had been going well until halfway through he'd told her that he was actually engaged. He and his fiancé had never been with anyone but each other, so they were trying to get a little more 'experience' before the wedding. She'd noped right out of there as well. 

There had been a few good guys, but those hadn't worked out either. One she'd really liked. They'd gone out to dinner, headed to the movies... but halfway through the movie his Mexican meal apparently hadn't agreed with him and he'd gone to the restroom. After missing almost the entire second half of the movie and making her wonder if she'd need to call a taxi at the end of it, he'd finally returned but sat two seats away from her. It had pretty much ruined the mood of the night, but Doc had still tried calling him a few days later when he didn't call her. He'd never called her back. Apparently extreme embarrassment could kill all future dates too.

It was probably for the best. She really loved Mexican food. 

Still. She had pretty much stopped trying when she'd joined Steele's pack... oh golly, was it really almost three years ago now?... to take over for Dr. Phil. Thinking about it, she kind of couldn't believe how much time had passed. Yeah she'd been busy and kind of burned out on dating at that point, but she hadn't meant to totally neglect her dating life. She hadn't even had a one-night stand in... yeesh, close to six months now. 

Scowling, Doc gave herself a little shake, picking up her pace again. Her steps had started to slow as she'd realized how pathetic her social life had become.

Tonight she was going to go wallow a bit, feel sorry for herself... maybe watch some Hercules (honey, you mean HUNK-ules!), and then tomorrow she was going to start putting herself back out there.

Because she did want her own happily-ever-after, and unlike some kill-joys, she did believe in them. 

I do believe in them. I do! I do!

Her puma sighed. Sometimes they didn't always have the same taste in movies.

Maybe Doc would watch Lion King instead of Hercules. Then both of them would be happy.