Page 51 of The Coyote's Veterinarian Omega

Wyatt jangled his car keys, breaking me from my reverie. “Uh, so … does this count as a … date?”

I blinked, like the idea was novel. Then I grinned. “It absolutely does,” I replied, sliding into the passenger seat of the car.

We were mates, but I hadn’t even taken Wyatt on adateyet. Fuck, I was doing this whole alpha thing entirely ass-backwards.

Doesn’t matter, I told myself. We’d bonded; we were fated mates. I’d have the rest of forever to tour Wyatt around what little Coyote Creek had to offer and show him my favorite spots.

First up: Sally’s diner.

There weren’t too many restaurants in Coyote Creek; town was small, and the population was mostly rural farmers and rednecks spread out over who knew how many miles, into the mountains. If people did come to town, they weren’t expecting much—solid homestyle cooking, a greasy spoon, and maybesomewhere to grab a cup of coffee. There was a grocery store, a few clothing shops that seemed to change with the seasons, and a rundown cinema that had been operating since the 1940s, at least, and that was about it.

When we were kids, our parents had taken us about half an hour north, maybe longer, to the giant shopping mall for clothes, maybe twice a year. Cal and I did most of our shopping online now, since we could get almost anything shipped to the house or the post office.

Despite how dinky our little town was, I was suddenly proud of it as I instructed Wyatt on where to park. I paid the meter, then led him to Sally’s.

Sally’s was an institution. I had no idea how long it had been here; it just alwayshadbeen. We hadn’t come often when we were kids—it had been a challenge for our parents to get all of us herded into two cars and drive us into town. We usually went further afield. I remembered stopping in a few times when I was a child, maybe when I’d been running errands with Mom or Dad on the weekend. Usually with Dad, when we hit the local hardware store.

Anyway, the place had been there forever—probably as long as the Carlyle clan had been, if I wanted to think about it. I’d learned a little bit about the history of our town in school, but most of my knowledge came from stories our parents had told us, from my grandparents.

The eponymous Sally no longer ran the place, being long dead and all, but her daughter had been Sally, and her daughter after her. Now, though, the place was run by Jess, whose mother had, for some reason, opted not to name her Sally, even though she was the heir apparent to the restaurant dynasty.

Jess was in her mid-forties, with close-cropped, curly hair, and a habit of wearing too much makeup. Even if she wasn’t named Sally, I was pretty sure she’d inherited her fashion sense fromgenerations of diner operators.

She quirked a brow when we walked in, the little bell above the door tinkling. The diner was already hopping, even though it wasn’t quite noon. Jess pointed to a booth at the far corner of the wraparound window, before the hostess, a girl I’d gone to school with named Melissa, could get back to the station.

Wyatt followed me, sliding into the booth across from me. “You’re pretty well-known around here, huh?”

“Hey Cam,” Melissa said as she slid menus across the tabletop. “Been a bit, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, and she glanced at Wyatt.

“Hey,” she said. “Haven’t seen you before—you new in town?”

“Er, yeah.”

“This is Wyatt. He’s the new vet, helping Vern.”

“Oh,” Melissa said, eyes lighting up in a way that made my hackles rise. “The new vet, huh? How’s working with that old crab apple, Vern?”

“He’s not so bad,” Wyatt said, then turned crimson.

Melissa quirked a brow, then shot me a look. I had the stupidest urge to bare my teeth at her. She was a shifter too—a cougar, perhaps fittingly enough.

She gave me a half-shrug, then looked down at the pad of paper in her hands, snapping her chewing gum as she did so. “You wanna order?”

“I haven’t—” Wyatt started, but I put a hand over his. I barely resisted the urge to twine our fingers.

“Two strawberry shakes to start,” I told her.

“Got it,” she said, then sashayed away.

Wyatt was giving me a skeptical look. “Seriously?” he asked. “Ordering for me?”

“You’re new,” I told him. “You don’t know what’s good—you have to have a strawberry shake at Sally’s at least once.”

“Hn.”

“If you hate it, you can at least say you tried it,” I explained.