"Wow, am I really that obvious?"
"If you were that obvious, you'd be caught," he retorts with a smirk. "You texted me complaining about some mystery man without sharing the details like usual. Not once did you mention you'd caught an intruder and brag. Then you were gone and Iron Pack lost a prisoner at the same time. I wondered if it was all connected.”
Bane suspected me from the very beginning. Yet he started searching for me instead of turning me in. That’s what makes him my familyandmy best friend.
Now comes the hard part. I steel myself, taking a deep breath. "Okay. Lay it on me."
"What?" Bane looks momentarily confused.
"The lecture," I clarify. "How could I get myself into this? How could I help a fugitive? Haven't I learned my lesson from Ava, Dante, or any of my horrible exes?"
Bane glowers at the names of my former partners. "No one knows your track record better than me."
"So let me have it."
He shrugs. "Nothing to say."
"Really?" I challenge, not quite convinced.
Bane simply nods, taking a swig of his beer.
A timer dings, breaking the silence.
"Are you cooking something?" I didn't pick up on anything. Sniffing the air to be sure, no scent catches my attention.
"The oven is done preheating." Bane retrieves a box of frozen pizza from the freezer and peels off the plastic wrap, revealing frozen slices of red and green peppers, black olives, and mushrooms atop the stiff, cold cheese.
Huh. I make a face at the pizza and Bane laughs.
"Josh's doing," he says with a huff, rolling his eyes. "He noticed that I add meat even on the meat lover's, so he thought it was the perfect opportunity to sneak some veggies in under the 'mountain of meat.' We still load it up with sausage and pepperoni."
"We've been doing that since we were kids," I say. In a house full of werewolves, our definition of 'meat lovers' wasn't quite the same as a regular person.
Bane pulls packages of pre-sliced meat from his fridge. Italian sausage and pepperoni, the spicy aroma hits my nose immediately. My mouth waters at the scent. I grab the pepperoni, he picks up the sausage, and we get to work.
"You take a chance on people," Bane says. "You see something in them."
"I'm wrong a lot," I admit, my gaze fixed on the pepperoni I steadily apply to cover the vegetables.
"Yeah," Bane agrees. "And then you're in my kitchen or my car or we're jogging in the woods, and you're lamenting about how you can't believe you didn't see it sooner. Down on yourself, down on dating, down on everything for a few days. Then you pick yourself up and move on."
"So this is a new low?" I ask, half-joking.
"It's new, alright," Bane says. He seems to take great joy in covering up all the black olives with the sausage slices. Personally, I think it's kinda sweet Josh buys veggie pizzas. As a fellow werewolf, he must like meat as much as us, but he also cares enough to sneak in some healthy things too.
"The thing is," he continues. "Once you take a chance and it doesn't work out, you move on. And here, it would have been so easy to leave this guy in a cell once you doubted him. Even when you weren't sure if you could trust him, you went with your instincts. There had to be a reason."
I grimace."You're not going to like it."
"You're sleeping with him?" He tosses me a smirk as he reaches for his beer bottle. "Figured that."
"No! No, I'm not," I correct him hastily. "It's... it's more than that."
"What are you saying?"
I lay out the details, confessing Marlow might be my mate while his expression morphs from 'supportive best friend' to 'protective, rage filled Alpha.'
"Now are you going to give me the lecture?" I wonder.
