The mate bond, Wade’s polar bear said, perking up.Wedofit together. I like that other people can see it.
So do I. I think I can see theirs, too,Wade thought back, looking at the way Cliff and Susan leaned into each other, still loose-limbed with happiness.They must be true mates too, even though they’re both human.
He liked that despite Cliff’s prediction, Mirawasn’tembarrassed about her stepdad noticing how close they already were. She didn’t seem ruffled at all.
“We do fit,” she agreed. “Wade’s already done a lot for me just by being himself. And—”
Something suddenly clicked in Wade’s brain. He knew how he could help Mira just by being himself.
It was also an absolutely wild plan that the man he used to think he was would never, ever carry out.
But, Wade thought with a grin,good thing Mira’s shown me I’ve always been more than that.
“Wade? What is it?”
“I know how we can save the Christmas Village,” Wade said. “It’ll be a major attraction for guests. And it’ll go perfectly, so they’ll forget all about how the reindeer went wrong.”
Mira’s eyes were shining. “What are you thinking?”
With her parents here, he would have to be a little discreet. That would be good practice for figuring out how they would pitch it to the Arbogasts.
Wade said, “I was thinking about an animatronic polar bear.”
Chapter Twenty
Mira had never devoured her mom’s beef Wellington so quickly.
She had expected dinner to have the same bittersweet tinge she’d been feeling all evening. She would have been thinking about how next year, they would be crammed into her apartment instead, and everything would feel different. This was the end of an era.
And that was no way to eat a meal, honestly: she would’ve meant to savor every last bite, but her feelings would have distracted her.
Wade’s plan had changed everything.
This was better. She may have gulped everything down with unnatural speed, but she enjoyed every second of it. She was caught up in exuberance, not melancholy.
She thought it was the same for her parents. They’d probably been feeling a little torn too. They were overwhelmingly happy to know their safety net had unfurled after all, and that they would soon get all the help they needed, but like her, they were bound to miss this place and all the traditions that had come with it. There was a big change ahead of them.
You know what it was more fun to focus on?
“An animatronic polar bear,” Mira’s mom said.
She’d been repeating those words over and over again since Wade had first said them.
“You have access to an animatronic polar bear.”
“Yes,” Mira said brazenly. She didn’t usually lie to her parents, but she could understand if Wade didn’t want to explain shifters tonight. There was a lot going on, after all. “I do. A remote-controlled one.”
“Voice-activated,” Wade said quickly. “You tell it what to do, and it does it.”
Mira nodded. “Like Siri. Or Alexa. But it’s a polar bear.”
“We do use our Alexa a lot,” Cliff said. “But ... a polar bear?”
She figured they’d have to give the Arbogasts some kind of explanation for theincredibly lifelikemechanical polar bear—maybe that it had originally been built to be part of Disney World or an unbelievably well-funded zoo exhibit? But she didn’t want to try that story out on her parents.
“We can explain more later,” Mira said, trading glances with Wade. He gave her a surreptitious nod. “I know it’s complicated. But to make a long story short, it’ll look just like a real polar bear, but it won’t do anything we don’t want it to do.”
“The kids can even ride on its back if they want to,” Wade said.
