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“I thought you broke your arm.”
“I did,” she said.
“I thought you couldn’t heal yourself anymore.”
“I can’t.” Wilder had quietly insisted on taking her bag, and she finally relented, handing it over to him. “Like I said on the phone, Tyler is working on something, and I played guinea pig for him.”
“He’s working on something that can heal broken bones?”
“It’s a long story, and it’s legit top secret government stuff I can’t talk about. Besides which there are still some kinks to work out. It’s not broken anymore, but I’ll probably be able to feel storms coming from now on.” She shrugged. I couldn’t help but notice she hadn’t mentioned Lucas yet, though her gaze kept drifting away from me and searching the nearby crowds.
“He’s at my house,” I told her.
Her eyes cut back to me guiltily, then she nodded. “How… I mean, how is he?”
“He seems fine. Just as confused as the rest of us, but he knows who he is, he remembers dying, he doesn’t know how he got here. And he’s been asking about you.”
We left the terminal and headed to the car. Dawn was breaking and I was seriously ready to get some sleep, but I foresaw a long and restless day ahead.
“Did you tell him about Desmond?”
“We told him about the pack, and we told him you were married.”
She let out a sigh of relief so loud it made me feel less stressed. “Honestly, that was the one thing I didn’t really know how to say to him. Like, how do you tell your ex, ‘hey I know you died so I shouldn’t feel bad, but FYI I married your best friend.’”
“I think we might have finally found the one thing Hallmark doesn’t have a card for,” Wilder announced. Up until then he’d let Secret and I do all the talking, and only now did I realize how insanely rude I’d been. Secret had never actually met Wilder.
“Secret, this is Wilder Shaw. Wilder, Secret.”
“So this is the boyfriend?” she asked me. “Boyfriend-slash-bodyguard? Took that watching her body thing a bit too seriously, hey?” She winked at him.
“Oh my god,” I groaned.
“Are you two soul-bonded?” she asked me.
“No.”
“Ugh, consider yourself lucky, it’s a nightmare.” Soul-bonding was an age-old werewolf connection that helped mates recognize each other. It was more common among the royal classes. When you found your mate you could taste them, like a sudden rush of flavor in your mouth. From what Secret had explained to me, Desmond tasted like lime to her, and she tasted like cotton candy to him. It was weird.
It also wasn’t a requirement, or even that common anymore.
Which made it all the weirder that she’d been bonded to not just Desmond, but also Lucas.
Hence her opinions about how nightmarish it was.
“We may not be soul-bonded,” Wilder said. “But do I love the hell out of her.”
“Good man.” Secret patted him on the back. “Is your brother still an asshole?”
“An asshole, yes, but he seems to have curbed his more homicidal habits.” Wilder kept his eyes on the road. I should have assumed, given her history with Hank, this topic might come up, but I was sort of surprised she would just jump right to it.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been. Subtlety was never really Secret’s strongest trait.
We pulled into my driveway, where all the lights inside were gleaming. I could see Magnolia in the kitchen as we got out of the car, fiddling with something on the stove. The sun was almost all the way up now, so I hoped whatever she was making also included a big old pot of coffee.
I was greeted by the familiar, welcoming scent of fresh ground beans when we got through the front door, and three full cups of coffee were set out on the kitchen table.
Secret and I both gratefully scooped up our mugs and I gave Magnolia a grateful nod. The whole place smelled of bacon and eggs, and she was busily mixing cheese into the golden-yellow mix on the stovetop. There was enough food here to feed an army, so it might be enough for four hungry werewolves and a human woman who had spent twenty-two years unable to enjoy real food.
