CHAPTER SEVEN

Soren pulled Marcella’s chair closer to his, chuckled at her long sigh, and then leaned in to whisper, “The Bear is the woman.”

“Pardon?”

“The woman. I couldn’t immediately tell whom I was smelling because there are too many scents here from the food and people. The Bear isn’t in the dining room, but back in the kitchen.”

Marcella started to turn.

“Don’t look,” he said in a rush.

Stopping mid-movement, she growled quietly.

So cute.

“She’s behind the window passing dishes out,” he whispered.

“If you can smell her—”

“No.” Knowing what she was getting at, he shook his head. “That doesn’t always work both ways.” He leaned in a little closer. The conversation wasn’t the sort that was appropriate to be overheard by people who weren’t in the know. “Made-Bears can’t smell born-Bears unless they’ve encountered them before and memorized their unique scents. The born-Bear nose is far more sensitive.”

“I see.”

“Come get these ribs,” the cook shouted to the waitress.

The Bear was older, perhaps late forties. A handsome, heavyset woman with dirty blond hair and a tattoo on her forearm that said KIMMY inside a pink heart. She probably made a reasonably formidable beast when she shifted. She was certainly formidable enough on two legs. Soren sure as shit didn’t want to get on her bad side.

Marcella whispered, “And the other?”

“I still don’t know. Given time, I could probably puzzle out what they both creatures are, but I’m not so sure they’re important.”

“Why not?”

“Not everyone who hits my radar needs to be pursued. Some people who don’t know they’re a little weird will go to their graves never finding out. I don’t want to be the one to inform them of something they didn’t need to know.”

“Smart.”

“Of course I am. I’m an Ursu. I’m not only pretty; I’m intelligent.”

She rolled her eyes and leaned away from him.

He picked up her untouched sandwich half and took a big bite. “We could come back later.”

“Didn’t get enough meat and sugar water?”

“Yes. Precisely.”

“I will pray for you, Soren Ursu.”

“Pray for both of us. While you’re at it, pray that there won’t be rain on our wedding day.”

She opened her mouth to rebut, then probably thought better of bothering. Arguing with Soren was pointless.

The server squeezed between their table and the next with a rag in hand.

“Excuse me, Miss?” Soren called after her.

The lady barked with laughter. “Ain’t nobody called me miss in ten or fifteen years. Whatcha need?”

“What time do you close?”

“Owner usually comes by to send folks home and lock up at around eight. You still hungry?”

“No, but maybe I will be hungry again then.”

“Lawd, and you ain’t got a speck of fat nowhere on you, do you? You must exercise a lot.”

“Some. The rest is good genes.”

Marcella snorted quietly beside him.

“If you’re looking for more ribs, you’d better get your order in now because I think they’re down to one slab back there,” the server said.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

She moved on and swiped her rag across the sticky red sauce splatters on the neighboring table.

Soren checked the time on his phone and then stuffed the device into his shirt pocket. He grabbed a couple of wet wipes from the container on the table, pushed his seat back, and cocked his head toward the door.

“Are we leaving?” Marcella asked.

“Mm-hmm. Have some things to do.”

“Oh?”

He nudged her toward the door, tearing the tops off the hand wipe packs with his teeth as they walked.

He didn’t say anything else until they were in the SUV, his fingers were reasonably clean, and all the scents he’d inhaled inside the restaurant had cleared out of his nostrils.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Communicating.”

“Excuse me?”

“I gave you some information. I’m curious about what you might do with it.”

“You’re giving me a pop quiz here in the parking lot? I’ve barely had a chance to think.”

“You don’t make a habit of thinking on the fly?”

“Of course I do, but this situation requires careful thought.”

“Because the job is important to you.”

“Yes.”

“But don’t let worries about your performance get in the way of your instincts. What are they telling you?”

“Obviously, to go talk to the woman. That’s why we left, right? So we could regroup and speak to her after the restaurant closes.”

“Yes.” He put his foot on the brake and started the engine.

“And obviously we’re not going to sit here in the parking lot looking suspicious, so we’re going to…”

“What makes sense?”

“I’ve got to say, this isn’t generally how my mind works. I use different methods to find leads.”

“Magic ones?”

“Of course. I use the skills I have.”

“That’s what you were doing in your room when I picked you up, right? Working some kind of magic?”

She didn’t respond, but she didn’t have to. He was starting to get a better handle on Marcella. Often, her silences seemed to stand in for yeses she didn’t want to give him.

“Magic can be too slow,” he said. “Sometimes, plain old investigative work is faster.” He backed out of the space and then pointed to the glove compartment. “There’s a map in there.”

She took it out.

“My father taught Peter and me that we should always know the lay of the land. If there’s a shifter group in a town, see where they might roam.”

“You mean, in their beast forms.”

“Yes. The full moon isn’t imminent. That means we can probably snoop without much interference.”

“Short of using magic or having a Were-bear’s nose, I’m not certain how you expect me to determine where on this map a group of shifters might congregate.”

“Male black Bears tend to have a roaming territory no larger than sixty square miles, but a minimum of ten. Bear shifters share territories, wild bears, so we don’t need to worry too much about whether or not we’ve picked the right place. When bear shifters congregate, they leave plenty of evidence.”

“You keep little factoids stored in your memory to spit out whenever convenient?”

“Yes.” He pulled his stare from the road and briefly studied the map she wasn’t looking at. He needed to be farther south. “In my line of business, I have to know.”

“And the Shrews know all that?”

“No. The Shrews know who to ask when they need to know something. Drea is very good at fielding queries and directing them to the right parties. You don’t need to know everything. You need to know what you don’t need to know.”

“You just said a whole lot of nothing.”

“My mother tells me that all the time.”

Marcella shifted down a bit lower in her seat, looking as relaxed as he’d ever seen her. She looked out the window to the right, still gripping the edges of the map.

“What are you thinking?” He wanted her to talk some more. As long as she was talking and asking questions, she couldn’t possibly remember how unreasonably invested she was in pushing him away. Deterring him would, at best, be a regrettable waste of her energy. She was still going to get him. She may as well have started considering him one of her limbs.

“I’m thinking of the little bit I know about Bears and wondering what questions I need to ask.”

“Remember what I said. You don’t need to be an expert. You’re sitting next to one. You only need to be an expert in Marcella things.”

“I’m not sure those are helpful in your style of work. My intuition is useless without me having more training about the circumstances.”

“You don’t always need intuition. A wild-ass guess can do fine. From there, you can start eliminating options.”

“Seriously?”

He shrugged. “Don’t tell the Shrews I said that. For the most part, they’re far more methodical than the Bears on staff tend to be, the exception being Sarah because of her psychic shit.”

“She finds people.”

“Yep.”

“So, this would be easier if we were looking for a missing Bear rather than a missing place.” She looked down at the map, sputtered her lips, and then drew an invisible circle around a small forested area. “I suppose my wild-ass guess would be around here.”

His, too, but because he wanted to hear her logic, he kept quiet.

“Far enough from major populated areas and highways that people probably don’t accidentally stumble into the grounds. The place doesn’t look particularly friendly to recreational hikers or campers because there are no facilities or services available anywhere around, as far as I can tell. The size is about right for a Bear clan that probably only meets a couple of nights per month, and the trees provide good cover.”

“That’s where we’re going, then,” he said.

“Even when we’re there, I still won’t know what we’re looking for. Pinpointing would be so much easier if I could work up a tracking spell or two.”

“You’re in the learning curve. Like the rest of the Shrews, you’ll develop your own methods for efficiency in time. You can’t really believe they started off knowing exactly what to do.”

“They’re so good at what they do that I suppose I forget.”

“Remember, Dana was a police detective. She knows how to establish and enforce procedures.”

“All the Shrews did in their own ways, but I’m sure Dana helped them refine their methods. I don’t have the backgrounds they do. I think being a witch who’s used to working off signs and signals sets me at a real disadvantage when pitted against people born as plain-old humans.”

“You really believe that?”

“Lately, I do. I believe I was made to bypass part of my education because I was gifted in certain things, but I… I lack common sense in others.” Her voice trailed off at the end, and she looked out her window again.

He didn’t know the right words to tell her—didn’t know what to say to make her feel better about what she was. He’d never been adept at providing sympathy and comfort. Alpha Bears tended to rely on their mates to dispense those softer things.

But what if our mates are the ones who need it?

Where his mate was concerned, his mind automatically offered plenty of salacious tidbits, but nothing sweet or encouraging.

Try harder.

Eric would know what to say. He was good at comforting his Shrew, and patient, too. Soren needed to be more like Eric.

“I…”

She looked up at him, her dark, almond eyes wary.

He put his gaze back on the road and squeezed the steering wheel a little harder. “We can be…checks and balances for each other.”

“What do you mean?”

“I tell you when you’re thinking too rigidly, and you tell me when I’m being too reckless. Thinking plans through has never been my forte. Peter is usually my conscience. We haven’t worked together much lately.”

“Because of Drea?”

And you.

He didn’t add that aloud, though. He nodded and kept his gaze fixed on the road ahead.

The Ursu brothers had never talked about what would happen when one of them found a mate. Perhaps they’d both believed that the chance of either finding a suitable match was so small that they needn’t have been bothered with wasting the mental energy.

But then there’d been Drea. Peter had been waiting for the timid Bear to be ready for almost two years. In the time he waited, he changed. His priorities shifted. He was less likely to take the far-flung jobs Father sent to them. He wanted to be near his would-be mate, and Soren had resented his brother’s distractedness because he’d had to take up the slack.

When Marcella came onto the scene, Soren suddenly understood why his brother would turn his back on familial obligations. His priorities had changed, too. Sating his inner beast was no longer about coming hard and often, but in pulling his mate into his territory and in keeping her safe there.

He didn’t have a territory, though. Like Marcella, he was a wanderer. Sorry-ass alpha Bear that he was, he had nothing to give her, but he still had to have her because there was no one else for him.

“Soren?”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah. I guess Drea had a little bit to do with it. He had a very hard time ignoring her.”

“I can see how that would be the case. He’s very protective of her. I sometimes find that tendency of dominant males to be off-putting, but somehow with those two, it’s sweet.”

“All I can say is as much as she needs someone like him keeping watch over her, he needs a woman like her to give him a purpose. One less aimless Bear on the prowl.”

Marcella turned toward him a bit, but didn’t say anything. She looked at him.

He didn’t know what else to say, so he drove in silence. He seemed to come out ahead when he said less, and when it came to Marcella, Soren needed to exploit every advantage he had.