We hadn’t told Dev yet that Asher wanted to apologize to him, too. There hadn’t been time, and now didn’t seem to be the time either. I was feeling calmer than I’d ever been on a plane. Talking about Asher would upset me, and talking to Dev about Asher would probably upset me more, so fuck it. I’d keep this strange new calm as long as I could. There’d be time to discuss the vampire who broke Dev’s heart and then tap-danced on the pieces later, when we were safe on the ground. Just thinking that much started the fear bubbling up again.
Damian said, “Anita.”
His saying my name made me look at him and into those impossibly green eyes. The fear receded again like waves pulling back from the sea, and I was back to walking on that calm metaphorical beach. It was better than any meditation I’d ever managed to do.
Socrates asked, “Anita, how do you feel?”
It made me turn and look at him sitting across the aisle from Damian. Socrates’ newly short hair was almost shaved so that the tight curl of his hair was completely gone. His face seemed bare, shorn, which would have robbed most men of some of their beauty; I was a big one for nice hair, but his face could carry it. It made his brown eyes look larger, and the dark planes of his face seemed more prominent so that an attractive face had become handsome. Which meant he’d always been handsome. I just hadn’t noticed.
“Anita, can you hear me?” he asked.
I nodded. “I hear you.”
“Okay, how do you feel?”
“I feel . . . fine, good, though every time I think that part I know I shouldn’t be fine on an airplane, and that makes me poke at it and realize that it’s not me.”
Magda spoke from the seat behind him. “Please leave well enough alone, Socrates. Anita is happy enough, aren’t you?”
I nodded.
“Fine. I’ll leave it alone while we’re in the air, but I have some questions when we land.”
“When we land,” she said.
Socrates looked back at her. “You’re okay with this?”
“Have you ever flown with Anita before?” Dev asked.
“No.”
“I have; trust me, this is good.”
Nathaniel said, “She’s fine, Socrates, I promise.”
“Please don’t make me overthink this,” I said.
Socrates held his hands up as if to say okay, and settled back in his chair. Domino was sitting beside him, watching me with his red-and-yellow fire-colored eyes. They were so much more exotic than the golden tigers’ eyes, even Dev’s blue-brown ones. The black clan could never pass for human with those blaze-colored eyes.
Ethan, sitting just behind Domino, looked at me with soft gray eyes. They were tiger eyes in a human face, too, but the color, like the golden tigers, helped him pass for human. Though I’d learned that they looked like tiger eyes, all the clan tigers’ eyes that they had from birth functioned more like human eyes for seeing. It meant they didn’t need prescription glasses to read, or see far off the way that Micah did with his permanent cat eyes. They looked like tiger eyes, but they functioned more like exotic human ones. Until Micah had admitted his need for glasses, I’d never asked the clan tigers how it worked. Unless you ask, you never know. Ethan’s hair was white-blond with gray highlights, or I guess gray lowlights, but there was a streak of dark red that ran from the curls at the front to the back of his head. It wasn’t a talented dye job, just natural coloring. He was part white tiger, which gave him the white-blond hair and the paler skin tone, but blue tiger had mixed with the white to make gray in his hair, and the red streak was red tiger clan. What didn’t show physically was that he also had gold tiger inside him. He’d gained that as a form after he met me, but he’d always been able to change into three forms; now he had four. If he’d been black tiger clan he’d have been a clean sweep of all of them. His mother had been red tiger clan, his father white, but where the blue and gold had snuck in no one knew. Both parents were supposed to be pure red clan and white clan, respectively. Guess not.
Ethan looked back at me. “Anita, is there something you wanted?”
I blinked at him and said, very calmly, “A lot of the clan tigers were pushing me to date you more seriously because you have most of the bloodlines.”
Damian’s hand tightened a little around my and Nathaniel’s hands as if he were afraid I’d say the wrong thing. I didn’t plan on it. Nicky’s hand stayed neutral on my leg as if he knew better, or didn’t care about Ethan’s feelings; it could go either way with him.
Ethan nodded. “I remember; it was a way for you to not choose among the clans but marry most of them. My mixed heritage that had made none of the red clan want to mate with me was suddenly an asset.”
“I know the clan that raised you treated you like shit,” I said.
“You rescued me,” he said with a smile.
“I’m sorry that after I rescued you my dance card was too full for the romance you wanted, but I saw Nilda kissing you good-bye in the parking lot. I didn’t know she had that kind of happiness in her. I really thought she was too crazy to date. I’m glad I was wrong and that you found each other,” I said.
Ethan smiled that smile you get when you’re first in love. “All the ancient werebears are a little crazy, but Nilda just needed love and couples therapy.”
“You went to couples therapy when you’d just started dating each other?” Socrates asked, turning in his seat to look at the other man.