Santa Soldier Bear - Meg Ripley Page 0,29

naughty housecat. “I don’t think we really have much to talk about.”

There was no response, and when she still didn’t hear anything from him after she finished washing out Ruby’s bottle, she turned and expected him to be gone. Instead, he stood there leaning against the pantry, his uneaten granola bar still in his hand as he looked at her. She couldn’t quite read his eyes. Was he pissed? Apologetic? Hoping to wait her out until she started talking first? That last one only made her angrier, and she cared even less about what his motives were. “What?” she demanded.

“I just…I just don’t think you quite understand what happened last night.”

Her lashes fluttered as she blinked several times, shocked at what he was saying. “Really, Roman? You’ve already insulted me once. Are you calling me stupid now?”

“Outside?” Lucas asked, pointing at the back door.

Leave it to him to de-escalate the situation. “Yes, we can go outside. Let’s get our jackets on.” Good, this would be the perfect chance for her to avoid any further encounters with Roman.

But Lucas had other ideas. “You play?” he asked Roman. “Outside?”

Shit. Lucas was a sweet little thing. He’d already been thinking of Roman as just another part of the family, and the trip to the zoo had only reinforced that.

“Oh, you want me to play?” Roman asked Lucas.

“Yeah! Play!” Lucas flung his hands in the air and waved them around.

Roman lifted his gaze to meet hers. “Only if it’s all right with Melody.”

It wasn’t as though she could say no. What kind of example would that set for Lucas? It was bad enough she was already arguing in front of him. “If you’d like,” she said as coldly as possible.

With jackets on, they headed into the back yard. As soon as Lucas’s little feet touched the grass, he shifted into the grizzly bear form he’d inherited from his father.

“That was quick,” Roman remarked.

Melody spread out a blanket and set Ruby on it. “He was a slow start, and he didn’t show any signs of his animal form until his first birthday. Once he figured it out, though, he wanted to do it all the time. We had to work with him a lot just to get him to understand that there are only certain times when it’s acceptable.”

Roman gestured to the tall fences that surrounded the backyard. They were mostly covered in ivy, making them even better barriers against private eyes. “Was all this already here?”

Melody flicked the tip of her tongue against the back of her teeth. She didn’t want to explain anything to him. Nothing that happened there at headquarters was his business, especially if he thought he could butt in and just take over whenever he wanted. Still, they had an adorable little cub wandering around the yard, listening whether he meant to or not with the acute hearing of a wild animal. “There was a fence, but we decided to put in something that would keep us a little more secluded from the rest of the world.”

The young cub stomped up to Roman and nudged him on the leg before taking off across the yard.

“What’s that about?”

One of these days, when Lucas was much older, she would tell him the story of how he picked the one person she was absolutely furious with and begged him to play. “He wants you to play tag with him. He likes to do it in his bear form so he can run on all four legs instead of just two. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to, though.”

Roman gave her a challenging look before a shiver ran up his back and racked his shoulders. His skin exploded in white fur as he bent forward, his spine lengthening. His fingers thickened as his hands and feet turned to four huge paws. His face had stretched and molded to accommodate his animal form, and Melody soon found herself staring at a polar bear.

She’d known what he was, but it was entirely different to see his arctic beast standing in their Southern California backyard. Melody lived in a house full of shifters of all kinds. She should be used to seeing their animal forms emerge. Why did it feel so different to see Roman?

He was huge, first of all. His muscles rippled under that thick coat of fur, and even though his natural insulation had to be suffocatingly hot in this environment, he romped off across the yard after Lucas. Melody put