Chaos Tryst Read Free

gotten her man and her slipper back.
    “Somebody’s been rummaging through my den.”
    Ari spun around so quickly the satiny coils of her golden dreadlocks hit her in the face. Ow. The combination of her Japanese and West African heritages made for a solid grade of hair. That stung. Not as badly as getting nabbed by the Medveds would but still, Ow.
    The dark-haired man facing her seemed amused; suppressed laughter sparkled within his aquamarine eyes. Oh good, amused worked for her. Of course, whenever her mother had greeted Ari’s childhood antics with a smile, Ari had known to cower behind her father’s legs, all eight of them.
    The man, a Medved brother if she had to guess, stepped into the room and stopped with the kitchen archway as his backdrop. Neither of them moved further.
    It wasn’t being caught that gave Ari pause. She’d wriggled out of similar situations. What made her hesitate was how much the man resembled another—the Eastern European bone structure tempered by the exotic, the swarthy olive skin, and most of all the bearing. But this man’s hair was much too long, his features too refined, almost pretty.
    Her shoulders relaxed in relief and she arched an eyebrow at him now her thoughts were back on solid ground. He mimicked the expression with his own brow. Ari shrugged, grinned sheepishly and bolted for the alternate doorway leading back to the foyer. Halfway there a freakin’ ginormous figure filled the passageway. Another Medved. Another fleeting blink of, almost , recognition.
    What to do? Well, she’d seen a maneuver in a movie she might as well try out now. If she timed it just right she could drop to her knees, use the forward momentum to slide between the big man’s legs and escape into the foyer.
    Ready, steady, slide! Everything went swimmingly on the approach but she’d forgotten what a tall woman she was. Forgot it all the way up until her forehead slammed into the poor guy’s ’nads.
    Oooh cushy, she thought as the collision knocked her backward. The big guy yelped, fell forward and smashed into the floor. Ari scrambled from between his legs and kept trucking toward the door. A smattering of what sounded like a Russian prayer followed her.
    “Dude! So sorry,” she shot back over one shoulder. Turning back toward the exit, she nearly bashed into a huge brown bear. She blinked at the animal for a nanosecond, dumbstruck.
    “I think I hate you guys,” she said, loud enough for all to hear. Executing a back handspring she gave herself some thinking room and pulled her staff from her bag. The enchanted wooden weapon elongated to fighting length the moment it made contact with her skin.
    Jeez, the Medveds were nuttier than a cashew dipped in peanut butter. Everything was big, huge, ginormous and monstrous. She felt guilty of adjective abuse and…and forget about that. The brothers were impressive enough. They didn’t need the—well, she couldn’t call the animal anything else, adjective ahead—mammoth attack bear. Jeezy winkies. And also…why in all of the ten kingdoms did her nose itch?
    A thought fought for attention at the edge of her consciousness; no time to coax it forward, though.
    She blocked a vicious swipe of the bear’s claw with her staff, twirling it to slap the creature across the snout. The bear roared but she knew she hadn’t really hurt it. She checked her surroundings against the two brothers’ approach. The smaller one was too busy helping the injured one off the floor to bother with her.
    The bear growled. She swiped her itchy nose with a forearm and turned back to face it. Intelligence gleamed within the depths of its turquoise eyes. What amazing eyes he had. What was she missing? Realization crystallized. This wasn’t strictly an animal, but a Faeble who also happened to be a bear—likely one of the descendants of Nikolai, Snow White’s second husband. Snow’s first husband, Charming, was a dic— Oh, of course. She’d read it in the dossier. The three