“Nice job,” she said. “Big hero. How did you find me?”
Cole brightened and said, “I…I… um.” He frowned. “I don’t quite remember? I went back to your house and you were gone and then… I was running here with the other shifters, we’d found each other… That’s strange.”
“Must be magic,” Penny said.
“I really don’t care,” Cole said, punctuating each word with a kiss. “As long as you’re safe in my arms.”
“I wish I’d been able to be more heroic,” Penny said, pouting.
“Penny,” Cole said, narrowing his eyes “if you hadn’t stolen the potion sample and brought it to me, we never would’ve stopped this. And we never would have met.”
“I guess that’s true.”
He growled, playful now, and swept her up, carrying her bridal style. She rested her head on his chest. “And now I think it’s time for us both to rest,” he said. “Now we’re done talking to the cops. I hope you’re hungry because I’m famished. But I know this must be hard for you, with your brother and all.”
“Looking back, the fact that he’s ending up in prison for what will probably be cited as terrorism isn’t so surprising! It’s kinda surprising that he’s a literal monster though. We weren’t ever close, you know,” she said softly. “He always scared me. And yes, I’m starving. Except…I don’t want to go home.” She frowned up at him. “It’s too strange there right now, with his room… And the cops are going to be all over it still.”
“Hotel, my love,” Cole said, and kissed the tip of her nose. “Something nice. I’m paying. Room service, comfy sheets.”
She kissed his neck. “Oh, that sounds wonderful,” she said. “Though as romantic as it is for you to carry me, I feel ridiculous. I can walk.”
Cole snorted at that and let her down. “Are you sure you’re alright though?” He held her hands in his. The cuffs and rope had chafed at her wrists and they’d been lightly dressed and bandaged by paramedics. “Poor baby.”
“I’m fine,” she said, rolling her eyes. “C’mon. Let’s go find a hotel.”
With that, she took his hand in hers and they went traipsing back through the park and into the wilds of Manhattan.
The hot spray of the shower rained on Penny and she smiled as Cole’s hands slid around her waist from behind, enfolding her. The hotel was the most luxurious one she’d ever bothered to stay in and she got the sense that Cole was happy to spoil her, both because of the ordeal she’d been through and because he simply wanted to.
“Are you feeling better, sweetheart?” Cole cooed in her ear.
“You bet I am,” she replied, and smiled slyly as she leaned back into him. She turned around and pointed her chin up, requesting a kiss. He leaned down and they kissed deeply before he picked her up and she wrapped her legs around his back. “Right now, Cole,” she whispered. “Right now.”
He found leverage against the wall and she kissed him, smiling against his lips when she glanced down to see the enthusiastic erection that pressed against her stomach. He slid one big finger inside her, teasing. She turned her head, exposing her neck, and he licked and sucked his way up from her breasts to her throat, nibbling on her ear as he circled her clit.
“Coooole,” Penny whined, and he laughed against her neck. He guided himself inside her and she grinned, biting her lip as he thrust, pressing her to the shower wall. “What am I?” Penny breathed, and looked him in the eye.
He looked back at her, his gaze helpless with love, his lips parted as he thrust in and out of her. “You’re my mate,” he said.
“Baby, say it again,” she said, bucking her hips.
“You’re my mate,” he said, and sank his teeth into her shoulder, just enough for it to sting. “My mate. Mine.”
“I’m yours, baby.”
“Forever mine.”
“Yes, Cole,” she said, crying out as her pleasure peaked. “Yes, my love!”
Cole grunted and growled and his grip was firm as he came inside her. They kissed, slow and hot and steady, and Penny stumbled to her feet, weak in the knees. They rinsed off and Cole helped her out of the shower and wrapped her in a thick, terrycloth robe with the hotel’s name embroidered on it.
“I’ve always wanted one of these robes,” Penny said, as she dried her hair.
“I’ll buy you one.” Cole kissed her temple, and wrapped a towel around his waist.
She followed him out to their hotel room and laughed. “You want to buy me everything. I know you’re not rich. College professors aren’t rich, are they?”
“I’ve got a little money put away,” Cole said. They’d brought some emergency clothes on their way to the hotel that looked out on the city, and he changed into boxers and a clean t-shirt. “Enough to spoil my girl if I feel like it, once in a while.”
“Hmm.” She smirked at that. She was thinking about her own money and she wanted to tell Cole what she was thinking, but she thought she’d save it for dessert. She sat up against the pillows on the bed, grabbing the room service menu from the nightstand. “Ooh, fish. Do you want to see if they make it to bear shifter standards here?”
“I feel like steak actually,” Cole said. “I mean, I do love fish and all that but in human form, I like all the same kind of foods you do.”
“I have so much to learn about bears!” Penny said and tackled him atop the bed. He laughed into her neck and they lazily kissed before she sat up again. “Do you like yogurt?” She asked, and tapped his nose, grinning down at him.
He scrunched up his nose and said, “Gross.”
She giggled at that and said, “Got it. No yogurt.”
They ordered steaks, a fancy kind of fry that involved truffle oil, wedge salads and oysters just for fun. It was all utterly over the top to Penny’s mind, but then again it had already been a surreal day. They ate and talked and laughed and when they were down to their crème brûlée, Penny thought she’d give him her own dessert and see how he liked it.
“Cole…” Penny bit her lip and tapped on the hard shell of her creme brulee. “I’ve been thinking.”
“When did you even have time to think?” Cole said, looking almost impressed.
Penny laughed at that and said, “In the Lyft ride to the hotel I had a couple minutes to think.”
“Ah.” He nodded and pointed his spoon at her. “Nice time management. What have you been thinking?”
“I’ve been thinking of selling the Brooklyn house,” Penny said, raising her eyes to meet his. The implication, she thought, was pretty clear. Only she wasn’t sure exactly what he might think about it. “I’d like to get out of the city.”
Cole nodded. “Well, you sell that house and you’re definitely going to have some money to play with. What are you going to do with it?”
“Take some time,” she said, shrugging a little. “Paint and…and um…”
“You interested in living near some nice woods?” Cole said, a smile creeping up on his face. “I hear they’re very inspiring for artists such as yourself.”
Penny breathed in and said, “I am. I just didn’t know…it seems so crazy, but-“
“You’re my mate,” Cole said, and reached across the nice white tablecloth to take her hand in his. “Nothing crazy about that.”
“I can’t wait to paint you in the nude,” Penny said, waggling her eyebrows. “Bear and man. Oh! Maybe I’ll do a portrait of both bear and man! That could be really interesting!”
“Get over here, “ Cole said. Penny stood to go to him and he grabbed her around the waist, pulling her into his lap. He kissed each cheek and nuzzled her nose. “I can’t wait. I can’t wait to see everything you’re gonna do. I can’t wait to get to know every little thing about you.”
“Such a romantic bear,” Penny whispered, and kissed him as their crème brûlée turned cold on the table.
Cole
Six months later…
The cabin had three bedrooms and it sat back in the forest, just far enough away from the roa
d that Cole and Penny could feel as if they lived deep in the woods. The place had been a bit of a fixer-upper, but Penny had taken it upon herself to become a home improvement expert. She’d refinished the floors and repainted, laid tiles and fixed holes in the roof, though Cole had been forced a few times to convince his mate that she was not herself a plumber or an electrician and that they needed to call in professionals once in a while. Yet now that the place was fixed up, Cole sort of missed coming home to find Penny hard at work. She always wore cut off shorts and one of his old shirts when she worked on the house and sometimes, if he was very lucky, she’d wear a tool belt.
In the time they’d spent together so far, Cole and Penny had learned a lot about each other. He knew that she liked to do a lot of things herself and that she loved to learn. When she was done fixing up the house, she turned one of the bedrooms into an art studio. She spent a lot of time painting and was particularly transfixed by North American bears, but when she needed a break and Cole was home from the university, she liked to pester him to teach her about potions, shifters, and anything else magical that he knew. Cole was only too happy to teach her. He still made time for academia and his periodic investigations into discovered potions and work for the wizard archivists. But it was difficult when he was combing through some old tome, plopped down in his favorite chair by the window that looked out on the woods, and Penny walked in wearing paint-splattered overalls, her hair in a messy ponytail. She usually ended up in his lap and whatever he’d been doing was forgotten for a while.
“Why doesn’t mine look like his?” Cole said now. He was painting at a little easel that Penny had set up next to hers. They were watching Bob Ross on YouTube. “I made the happy birds like he said. But his looks perfect and mine’s a mess. Yours looks even better than his.”
“That’s okay, baby,” Penny said, rubbing his back. “Yours is just different and you’re learning. I like your happy birds!”
Cole snorted a laugh at that and said, “So patronizing.”
“I am not!” She dabbed his nose with her paintbrush, leaving a deep green mark there.
That sparked an entire paint war that nearly ruined their brilliant works of art. Bob Ross was forgotten as they ended up entwined with each other and sank to the floor. Penny rolled over onto Cole and pinned him down. He sat up and kissed her and she stroked his cheek with her paint splatter hand, leaving a streak of brown to go with the green.
“I have a yoga class in an hour,” Penny said, murmuring half into his mouth. “I need to shower and eat something.
Forest Yoga had been Penny’s idea - partially inspired by Cole. A yoga novice herself, and not knowing any teachers, she’d shrugged her shoulders and started a meet-up once a week for anyone nearby who felt like doing yoga and meditating in the middle of the forest. It had become surprisingly popular.
“And I have papers to grade,” Cole said. But she straddled him anyway and he wrapped his arms around her. She ended up running late to the class she’d invented herself.
“Meet me by the creek after,” Cole whispered in her ear before she walked out to meet her yoga partners.
Cole spent the time grading papers and nibbling on bread and honey before he took off his shirt and wandered into the woods. He knew just where the yoga class took place. He also knew exactly where hikers and anyone else was likely to be walking around in the woods at this time of day. They took note of any activity in the woods so that Cole could shift and know exactly where and when it was safe to be at any given time.
Sometimes Cole shifted at home, just to stretch his muscles a little. Penny seemed to love that, even though it startled her at times, in the beginning, to walk in the door and find Cole’s Kodiak curled up on their big shaggy rug in front of the fireplace. Now she just as quickly curled up next to him and they’d snooze for a while until Cole shifted back and they made love right there on the floor.
Now, Cole stretched and sighed as he made his way out, walking in the opposite direction of the yoga class towards the creek where he was sometimes likely to find a fish if he was very lucky, though for proper fishing he would follow it deeper where the creek became a river. He just had to be careful to avoid human types who went fishing there on weekends.
Cole shifted and laughed as much as a bear could laugh as he loped along, thinking about Penny and the quirky little life they’d now built together and everything that had come before.
Following the confrontation with Henry and their one-night getaway afterward, Cole had hurried back upstate to complete the antidote. His shifter buddies had gone with him and very reluctantly he’d left Penny in the city to get her house straightened out and let her tie up the ends she was eager to tie up. With some trial and error, the antidote had proven successful. Cole had sent one dosage to the jail where Henry was being held and another was sent to the cops to cure anyone who might accidentally have gotten infected by the ongoing clean-up. He told the cops it was biochemical warfare and did not use the word “potion.” It wasn’t even really a lie. He heard later from Penny that red tape had kept his antidote from Henry for months before his trial, during which time he remained a giant, tranquilized slug. For this, they were not very sorry. And even after he was turned back, Penny said he was not quite the same and probably never would be. She visited him once in jail and never again.
Cole trotted out to the creek. The fish there were small and he wasn’t very hungry but for fun he pounced and pawed, playfully attempting to catch one as he waited for Penny to meet him.
“Are there shifter fish?” Penny came running up to the creek and crouched down beside him. He gave her a look, intending to be sardonic and nearly forgetting that it wouldn’t necessarily translate while he was a bear. He shook his head.
“Don’t give me that look,” she said, scratching behind his ears. He grunted in appreciation. “How should I know?” She nuzzled his nose and he sat back on his haunches. They remained there for a little while in the quiet, enjoying the peacefulness of the creek and the firs and the cool breeze.
Finally, Penny said, “I have something tell you, actually. I’ve just known for a couple days. I wasn’t sure but…” Cole ducked his huge head and gave her a little lick to encourage her and she took a deep breath. “We’re gonna have a little cub, Cole.” She beamed at him and without intending to, Cole shifted back into human form, the sudden intensity of his emotions pushing the transformation.
He gaped at her and said, “A cub? As in a baby?”
“Yes,” Penny said, the breeze blowing her hair around. “My question is, do storks also bring bears to-“
Her joke was cut off by his embrace and she went tumbling into the grass as he covered her with kisses. “I take it you’re happy then!” She said.
“You make me happy,” Cole whispered, kissing the tip of her nose. “My beautiful mate.”
Epilogue
In the angelic dimension, there was a kind of city with the sort of places that might make somebody who’d once been alive on earth and was homesick feel a little more adjusted. It was still fairly unlike earth in that it was too clean and too pleasant and there was no crime or people needing money or any of the other things that made life on earth messy. Which meant it did not do a whole lot for Delilah, who felt a bit restored when she was sent on a mission to earth and got to hang out with the stupid humans (of which she’d technically been one) and smell dirt and listen to questionable music. But it was maybe just a little bit comforting to go down into “the metropolis” as they called it, because it was not properly named, and spend a little time in the closest thing they had to a dive bar. The dive bar had a name. It was called The Duke’s because it was run by a 14th-century Duke who had given so much of his wealth away that he’d made himself poor and then become a monk only to eventually get executed for blasphemy (Delilah could not remember the reason). But the Duke had been rewarded in the afterlife with the heaven of his choosing and apparently decided to stay in the metropolis and serve drinks in a bar
for eternity. Delilah thought this was a shabby heaven to choose but he could change it whenever he liked and after five centuries, the Duke was still choosing to pour cocktails for the residents of the angelic dimension, be they angel or unredeemed human.
Delilah plopped down at the bar and the Duke came sidling up to her. He’d recently become fascinated with late 20th-century earth fashions and was given to wearing old band t-shirts. This one was a faded Van Halen tee but he still had his Musketeers-like mustache that curled up and a pointy little beard on his chin. The effect struck Delilah as…odd. But he was a good bartender and not terrible to talk to.
“Delilah!” The Duke said, raising his arms. “My favorite customer!”
“You say that to literally everybody,” Delilah said wryly.
“I always mean it!” He grinned at her and started wiping down the already gleaming bar. “What’ll it be?”
Delilah leaned on her hand and said, “I knew a troll once who made this shot out of absinthe and baby snake blood and just a whiff of human soul. Can you do that?”
“Ugh.” The Duke shrugged, apologetic. “No baby snake blood and I’m not allowed to toy with human souls. You know how it is. How about something fruity? Like an Appletini?”
“I’ll just take your best bourbon straight up,” Delilah said, her lip curling at the very idea of an Appletini in her mouth.
“Comin’ right up!” The Duke said, even as he poured the drink. He poured it and slid it down the bar right into her hand and Delilah gave him a nod before taking a sip. “Smooth.”
The bar doors blew open and Katz appeared, grinning when he saw her. “Delilah! My favorite matchmaking agent on the long road to redemption. How goes it?” He plopped down next to her and she rolled her eyes, pretending to be more annoyed than she was.
“It goes just fine, Katz.” Even now she found herself whipping out her Oracle. She had the option of checking in on her old missions and now she glanced in on Cole and Penny snuggled up on their couch in their cozy cabin in the woods, watching nature documentaries. “First mission went great. Got those stupid idiots making out and the rest was gravy. Humans are so easy to manipulate.” She tittered and took another sip of her bourbon.
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