Page 52 of Savage Surrender

“Freddie.” I shift the cone to accept them. “You don’t have to keep buying me things.”

He tries to straighten one of the bent stems. It tips right back. Then he shrugs lightly. “I’ve always wanted to be able to buy you flowers.” His dimples deepen. “And these reminded me of you.”

I tuck them against my chest and kiss his cheek. The contact is quick because we are standing in public, but his hand slides around my waist and keeps me there for one extra breath.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

A sharp, tiny bark sounds behind me, and I turn before I can stop myself.

A dog rescue has set up beside the music with a folding table, a hand-painted adoption sign, and a low pen full of puppies tumbling over one another. One chews on a rope toy. Another is asleep in the water bowl. A fluffy little golden retriever has front paws on the wire and one ear folded inside out.

She looks directly at me and loses her mind.

The flowers end up in Tristan’s hands. My ice cream goes to Owen. Then I’m kneeling beside the pen while the puppy scrambles into my arms and covers my chin in wet kisses.

“Oh my God.” I laugh and try to turn my face away, which only gives her access to my ear. “You’re disgusting. I love you.”

Her whole body wiggles. She smells like warm fur, grass, and puppy breath. Her paws are too big for the rest of her, with soft pink pads and tiny claws that catch in the crochet swimsuit. I sit back on my heels and let her climb me while she licks every inch of skin she can reach.

Freddie crouches beside us. The puppy abandons my chin long enough to bite at one of his loose curls, and he laughs so hard he nearly tips into the pen.

“She likes me.”

“She thinks you’re a chew toy.”

Owen kneels on my other side with the melting cone held awkwardly away from his shirt. The puppy tries to launch herself toward it, then changes her mind when he puts a hand against her chest. She licks his knuckles.

“I want her,” I say softly. Almost too soft to hear.

The rescue volunteer smiles from behind the table. “She’s almost four months old. We found her and the rest of her litter after a bad storm, and she’s the last one still waiting to find a home.”

The last one.

Well, fuck.

I gather her closer, pressing my nose into the warm spot between her ears. The puppy wriggles onto her back in my arms and gnaws on my cover-up, completely confident I belong to her now.

“What would she need?” Freddie asks the woman, who quickly starts giving him a rundown of her vet records and basic puppy necessities.

Tristan and Weller have been quiet behind us. I feel Weller before he steps closer, the pause in the pack’s excitement pulling across my skin. He looks at the puppy, then at me, and I already know.

“Bianca.”

“Don’t say it.”

He presses his lips together.

I flip the puppy’s folded ear back into place. She tilts her head and it flops over again immediately. She attacks my thumb, growling with so much confidence that I laugh, and the sound comes out lighter than anything has in a long time.

The alphas tense.

That makes it worse.

Weller crouches until we are eye level, careful not to crowd me. “She’s a baby. She needs full-time care. She needs food, a veterinarian, which means paperwork. We don’t know what tonight looks like yet, let alone next week.” His gaze flicks toward the people moving around us before returning to mine. “And if your heat breaks before we find what you need, a puppy cannot be in the middle of that.”

The puppy catches my finger between her tiny teeth. I let her chew while I look at the rescue form clipped to the table, the line asking for an address, another for a phone number...

“Okay.”