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“Ican’t believe that they’ve made it impossible for us to buy a ticket. What are tourists supposed to do? What do you do if you already have a ticket, but you need to top up your card?”

Tahnee sighed good-naturedly. Clearly, Robb just wasn’t going to let this go.

Granted, she also thought it was pretty stupid that there was nowhere to buy a ticket once you were on board the tram, or even to top up your credit… but she also didn’t particularly care, either. She wasn’t about to have a conniption over being forced into a choice between partaking in a spot of fare evasion or getting mauled to death by a giant shark.

Robb, on the other hand…

She watched, amused, as Robb peered out the tram window with an almost paranoid vigilance. She was pretty sure he was more scared of ticket inspectors than he’d been of the shark shifter woman.

Ladies and gentlemen: my mate, the square.

My mate.

It was an incredibly weird thing to think about. For years she’d known he was out there, doing his Agency work, being a somewhat mysterious but also weirdly strait-laced forbidden fruit… and now he was sitting here next to her on a Melbourne tram, years older, glistening from the rain, and worrying about ticket inspectors like it was their biggest concern right now.

Older… and hotter.

Part of her knew that some of that was just her tastes changing as she herself got older – if she met Robb as he had been back then, with her at the age she was now, he’d probably seem comically young to her, mate bond or no mate bond.

But also, he had aged really well. Like how George Clooney had looked better once he hit his forties. He was obviously moving towards silver fox territory, and Tahnee couldn’t say that she was complaining.

Robb had seemed like a grumpy old stick-in-the-mud stuck in a young man’s body when they’d first met, and now his appearance finally matched his personality. The fact that he was hot as hell as an older man was just the icing on the cake. And the way he’d pushed his damp hair back was somehow making him look even better. Just a little mussed-up. A bit rugged and outdoorsy.

He was gorgeous. He was sitting right here next to her. He was her mate.

So why do I feel like a schoolgirl trying to work up the nerve to ask out her crush?!

Outwardly, she was projecting an air of calm, but inwardly, her thoughts – and other parts of her – were whirling.

This was not what she had expected out of this trip, and while she considered herself a pretty adaptable person, she felt distinctly on the back foot in this situation. She’d spent so much time putting Robb out of her mind that she’d never thought about what might happen if they actually ran into each other again. What were the odds that they’d both be in the same Melbourne laneway at the same time?!

Well, obviously, we were set up.

Somebody out there knew about both of them – and, whether or not they knew the two of them were mates, they knew that they were big enough players in their respective fields that they could pose a threat to… whoever it was.

Hargreaves, the brolga hissed, and Tahnee couldn’t help but agree.

Other adversaries weren’t completely out of the question, but this whole thing had Hargreaves’ grubby little fingerprints all over it.

She almost hoped it was Hargreaves, because the last thing anyone needed was another evil corporation running around using anti-shifter weapons on those who were trying to do the right thing.

As much as she disagreed with a lot of what Robb did and how he did it, she knew that, in the end, the two of them had a lot of the same ideals, and were working towards the same goals. Even though she worked in a more passive way than he did, providing a safe haven for rare shifters, she knew how much danger a rare shifter would be in if they were captured by Hargreaves. The security at the sanctuary was second to none, and she kept up with Hargreaves’ obscene technological advances as much as possible so that her security team could organize their own defenses against them.

She shot a quick, somewhat covert glance at Robb as he looked out the window, clearly still on high alert. He’d already told her that there was a safehouse nearby that they could go to, and for now they were stuck on this tram with very little else they could do except enjoy the ride – or, if you were Robb, also type secret messages on your work phone before shoving it back into your pocket.

While she hadn’t been quite so rude as to read the contents of his top-secret communications over his shoulder – though he really should have been a bit more careful about it, even if she was his mate – the glimpse she’d caught was enough to see that he’d been punctuating and capitalizing each sentence with alarming accuracy.

She grinned as he pulled the phone out again, clearly going to check if he’d gotten an answer to his high school English A+ perfect text message.

Time to ruffle some feathers.

Nudging him in the ribs, she pointed out the window. “Hey, aren’t those ticket inspectors?”

Tahnee had never seen a grown man move so fast in all his life without going anywhere at all – he very nearly flung his phone across the tram in horror, his long legs scrambling to get up while his butt stayed firmly planted on the seat. He stared out the window for a long moment, until the tram breezed past the empty tram stop – and then turned to Tahnee, accusation burning in his eyes.

“Relax, Robbo,” she laughed, more at ease with this kind of teasing than with actually discussing messy things like I’ve been trying not to think about you for the past quarter of a century. “I’m not going to let you get a fine, don’t worry.”

His eyes narrowed. “I hope you’re not implying that you’re going to take out people who are just trying to do their jobs.”