She yanked on his ears as she jerked his face down until they were nose to nose. “The car. Get in the car.”
Her scent filled his nostrils. That nutty tang that surrounded her. He liked it and he liked the lingering echo of musk that clung to her skin. It competed with the rustle of the trees and the scent of summer pine. And since it was a human scent, his mind latched on to it, using it against the bear.
He inhaled deeply, the choice crystallizing in his mind. A human would go with the human. A bear would go back to the woods. And right now, he was human. He stood upright, he wore clothes, and he carried human things in his hands.
“I will be stronger with food,” he said.
“So get in the car,” she said.
“I need to eat as a man.”
She snorted. “You mean grunt and shove handfuls of pizza into your mouth?”
“With a knife and fork.”
“On pizza?” She was walking as she spoke and tugging on his arm.
He went because she was human. And she smelled nice. “It is the protocol.”
“Of course, it is.” Then her tone dropped and grew somber. “I got you, Simon. You’ll be okay. And then together, we’re going to save Vic.”
He sighed. Just because his mind was split into two pieces—human and bear—didn’t mean he’d forgotten what she wanted. Her wants had been relegated to a different part of his consciousness while he came back to being fully human. But a part of him did remember, and that was the part who answered.
“There is no saving me. Or Vic.”
She clicked the seatbelt around him. He hadn’t even realized he’d climbed into the car. “That’s bullshit, Simon. Pure drama queen bullshit.”
He turned to look her in the eye, his higher consciousness stuttering to a halt in shock. Had she just called him a drama queen? No part of that computed. So he did what he always did when something incomprehensible came at him. He listed the things he did know.
“I was a bear for ten months. You shot me five times. I shifted to human to survive and began my human protocols. You interrupted that. You risk us both by changing what you don’t understand.” He looked her in the eye. “How does that equate to being a drama queen?”
She met his gaze levelly then shrugged. “It’s just pizza and then a quick trip to Detroit.”
He knew the human response to that.
“Bullshit.”
