Where was he?
He was halfway home and all the way pissed off. “Chasing Rowan in my fucking car.”
“What?!”
Jay hears the Land Rover start up and accelerate over the connection.
Finn sounds agitated—and he should, by Jay’s calculations, still have two hours of clinic hours left.
“We were running, yeah? And then we had stopped for a bit of—well,whatever, but then he shifted back and was gone.”
Jay feels his face heat. He’s not prone to exhibitionism, and as much as it’s only the Were community that runs in those woods, they are by no means private.
“Shit, not the point. I don’t know what happened. But when I caught up, he wasn’t at the car. He’s currently running toward home. I don’t know what I did, but I think I’m having a heart attack on top of it.” Jay is so confused. “He’s been weird all week.”
He hears Finn huff, and he’s grateful his mate is holding his tongue about Common Grounds and his otherwisecranky attitude.
“I need you to pull over for a minute.”
Rowan takes a hard left behind a strip mall, causing Jay to lose sight of him until he pops up on the hill behind the building, a hundred yards down the street.
What the fuck is driving him so hard that riding in the SUV is not fast enough to get him home?
“What? No. It’s everything I can do to keep him in sight as it is. Why do I need to pull over?” Jay asks sharply.
It hits him then.
That Finn is driving faster than his new license allows, cursing under his breath when he thinks Jay can’t hear. There’s even an angry honking.
Something is wrong, and Jay’s wolf is at full attention.
“Why. Do. I. Need. To. Pull. Over.”
When Finn doesn’t answer, Jay signals and pulls into the parking lot of a church.
He realizes belatedly that it’s the same church he and Nix had stopped at when Jay had finally figured his shit out, last fall. The instantaneous realization makes his stomach swoop, the hair standing straight up on the back of his neck.
“I’m in a parking lot. Now tell me—what the fuck is going on?”
Just as he asks the question, there’s a repeat of that sharp, aching pain from before.
“Ow… Fuck. I think I’m having a heart attack for fucking real.”
“Nix is in labor, and I didn’t want you to crash the car. Get home and don’t worry about Rowan. He knew before we did.”
What? No. Absolutely not.
Jay is not sitting in a parking lot while his beloved is…
“Now? But he’s got three more weeks at least. You said he’d be late,” Jay whispers, because this can’t be happening.
He bangs his forehead on the steering wheel while he questions his every waking moment for the past seven days.
“He called you first?”
“Fuck no,” Finn scoffs, and Jay hearsWhat’s New Pussycatover his SUV’sspeakers.
“Shit, that’s Gideon finally. I’ll see you at home.”
