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“Why don’t you head inside and put together your shopping list? I’ll spend a little more time with the pups while you’re getting organized, and we’ll head out as soon as you’ve made your preparations. Sound cool?”
Gary gazed up at him, and the look in those dark, liquid eyes…Oh. Finn was pinned in place, helpless, but not the least sorry for it.
“Sounds perfect,” Gary murmured. “I’ll give you a call when I’m ready.”
He headed for the house, glancing over his shoulder to smile at Finn every few steps.
“Look out!” Finn called, just in time to keep Gary from planting a foot in the herb garden.
Gary stumbled sideways, laughing. “Thanks.” He gestured to the sliding glass door. “Since I’ve clearly surrendered any claim I ever had of being smooth, I’ll have to settle for being marginally efficient.”
Finn waited until Gary slid the door shut and vanished into the shadows inside the house before he turned to glare down at the dogs.
“We have things to do, guys. Important things. I can’t spend all day throwing balls for you.”
The three of them glanced at each other and then very deliberately—and totally in synch—placed their left front paw over their ball.
When they’d charged at him before, although Finn hadn’t had time to shift, he’d freed his alpha potential. His father had never allowed it at home, but Finn had learned to control and respect the power when he was in Idaho for his Howling.
So he’d lowered his head, bared his teeth, growling low, eyes burning with the amber flare of alpha authority.
The dogs had been so astonished that they’d frozen in their tracks. After glancing at each other in bemusement, they’d uttered excited yips and rolled over, showing him their bellies and tilting their heads back to expose their throats.
Now, though, bright eyes fixed on him, they vibrated with barely contained energy. Gary’s comment was right on the money, even though he’d been referring to something else.
Theyknew.
They knew precisely what he was, and they wanted to play, not with a human, but with their alpha. With theircanidalpha.
“Fine, but only for a few minutes. Gary needs me, and not as a wolf.”
Finn sighed as he stripped off his shirt and tossed it over a nearby tree branch.I just hope I don’t disappoint him.
Shielded from the house and the neighbors by the birch trees, he let his shift take him, to the bouncing glee of the three pups, and hoped he hadn’t just inadvertently formed a pack. Because not only was that a complication he didn’tneedright now.
It was a complication he couldn’t afford.
Gany couldn’t help doing a little jig on his way to the kitchen. Those kisses…swoon. Finn wasdelicious. If Gany could capture that flavor, thisfeelingof lightness and brightness and rightness the flavor sparked? If he could distill it all somehow, infuse it in a pastry? People would be lined up around the block—twice—outside Nectar & Ambrosia every day.
If I didn’t snabble them all first.
His steps slowed and he came to a stop in front of the fridge, his reflection blurred and distorted in the stainless steel.
Just as shadowy and indistinct as he was himself.
Gany wasn’t even surewhathe was anymore. Was he even still human? He was nearly four thousand years old. He ought to have been dust on a sheep-dotted hillside millennia ago. Now that he wasn’t existing solely on nectar and ambrosia, the food that granted perfect health and eternal youth and immortality to the gods, would he begin aging normally?
If not, what did that mean to his friends? Melina, of course, knew who he was. But Peyton didn’t. What would they think when Gany—ifGary—stayed looking the same, year after year, decade after decade?
Or worse, what if all his years started to catch up with him and he agedfasterthan everyone around him? Would he evenbe ableto die? Or would he turn into a withered, dithering husk like Tithonus after Eos forgot the little matter of youth when she petitioned Zeus to give her lover immortality?
“Hades, I could be nothing but a cricket or cicada or some other irritating, noisy insect by the next solstice,” he muttered.
The recipes for nectar and ambrosia were seared into his brain—that happened when you prepared the freaking stuff every day, century after century. Should he make more, keep it on hand just in case his joints started to creak or his vision go dim?
“I should have asked for more details before the Fates set us free,” he grumbled as he yanked open the junk drawer and pulled out a pad and pen.
He took a deep breath and exhaled, closing his eyes to center himself. Whatever he was, whatever was going to happen down the road, next month, next year, nextcentury, in two days—no, a day and a half—he had to havetheperfect wedding cake ready to go.
