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“I invited him to dinner,” Brandy blurted then swiveled in her seat to face Dylan. “You know, to thank him.”
Meredith let out a little snicker while Dylan nodded.
“Good. I want him to meet Alator so he can see what I meant about their eyes being the same.” He settled back in his seat and took out the tire toy. “Maybe he’ll want to play with us.”
“Of course he’ll want to play with you.” Meredith glanced at him in her rearview mirror. “Who wouldn’t want to play with a cool kid like you and a wild wolf?”
Dylan grinned and returned the toy to the bag as Brandy turned back to look out the front window.
“And when he’s done playing with the kid and his wolf,” Meredith whispered, “he can give someone his own age a try.” She elbowed Brandy then said, “Hey, Dylan, how about if you camp out in my cabin tonight? It is the first official day of summer and Mom got to take you out to breakfast. Now it’s my turn to celebrate with you.”
“Okay! We still have twoX-Menmovies left in our marathon too.”
“That we do.” She raised an eyebrow at Brandy. “So we’ll be very busy tonight. Very busy.”
Brandy’s cheeks blazed. Her mother was greenlighting her to seduce a complete stranger. Granted, he was a hot complete stranger, but she didn’t know the first thing about seduction. She hung out with wolves all day for Christ’s sake. She only knew about getting wolves to like her.
Would the same strategies work on a man like Reardon?
****
Reardon walked at a brisk pace, knowing he had to get away from town, shift, and return to the sanctuary before Brandy, Dylan, and Meredith got there. He’d planned to run into Brandy in town, but he hadn’t planned on needing to save her life or Dylan’s.
I know it was you, Flidae.
“Do you now?”
Reardon jumped when a beautiful, raven-haired woman appeared in front of him. Her form was transparent, so he knew she wasn’t really there, but her ghostly presence still unsettled him.
“It is one thing to punish me for what I’ve done,” he said through clenched teeth. “It is something else entirely to endanger innocent people.”
“Innocent people who mean something to you, wolf.” Flidae pointed to him. “I wanted to see how far you were willing to go for them. You scored high marks on my little test.”
“You could have just asked me. I would have told you how much Brandy and Dylan mean to me. They’ve taken me in. They’ve cared for me. Made me part of their family.”
“Which is a great deal better than how some of your men have fared.” Flidae ran her slender fingers through her dark hair, fiddling with the ends. The smirk on her face let him know she enjoyed toying with him.
Reardon took a step closer, his fists clenching, which hurt his still healing knuckles. “What does that mean? Are my men in trouble?”
“Some of them are. Not everyone landed upon such fortunate circumstances as you, wolf.”
“But trying to kill Brandy and Dylan is not a fair way to get back at me, Flidae. Leave them out of this. They have nothing to do with what I did to my men or how I disrespected you.”
Flidae clapped her hands. “At least you now recognize what you did to deserve my banishment. You make progress, wolf. There is hope for you yet. And tests like this one entertain me. Being an eternal goddess does get tiresome. I must find ways to amuse myself.”
Before Reardon could remind her again to stay away from Brandy and Dylan, something flickered in Flidae’s violet eyes. Something like loneliness.
Reardon opened his mouth to question her, but her apparition dissipated into a mist that coiled around him then disappeared altogether.
What if she hurt Brandy and Dylan again with hertests? What if he wasn’t around to offer protection?
“I’ll be around.” He wouldn’t leave their sides. Starting right now.
After purchasing more clothes for this evening, a bottle of wine to take to dinner, and the tennis ball launcher he’d seen Dylan pick up in the pet store, Reardon darted into the woods that bordered town. Sprinting toward the sanctuary, he toted the goods with him, wishing he could shift and move faster. He had to make it back to Silver Moon before the Wendons did, but he also needed to stow these purchases close by so he could get to them for tonight.
When he was at the perimeter of the sanctuary, he navigated through the woods—carefully so as to avoid any traps—until he found a rocky outcropping. He hid his wares then peeled off the clothes he wore and stuffed them under the rocks too. Completely naked, he approached the entrance gates, unlatched them, and slipped back inside. He shifted back to wolf form and heard the crunch of tires on gravel only moments later.
Meredith’s car pulled up to the gates, and Dylan hopped out of the back seat to unlatch them. The car rolled in, and the boy closed and latched the gates again.
