vegetables as the sides. Then I added a dessert for myself, looking at him to see if he wanted something specific. He shook his head, so I finished the order with drinks.
“Want to hit the hotel bar later tonight?” He sat on my desk chair, ignoring my laptop. I sat on the bed once I hung up and sighed.
“Yeah. Alcohol might soothe my aching nerves. It’s not easy being so far from home.”
“I can’t imagine being so connected to the land you live on, then having to leave it. I hate being away from Carey and Landon like this, but I promised to help.”
“And now you’re roped into the local pack’s problems. How long do you think this is going to take? I’m praying less than a week, but who knows?”
“It could take a month,” he whispered. “Landon was upset I offered myself for the job of investigating the missing wolves. His words were something along the lines of how bad the Alpha here must be if he can’t do it himself.”
“Really?” I raised an eyebrow. “I do remember a wolf or two needing help in Dallas with a certain half-witch.”
“You were there to help Carey. I could have handled Emma, Dean, and Richard on my own with my own wolves. I didn’t have you track my people down.”
“Touché.” I couldn’t argue with that. “I hate this waiting shit. I don’t want to be out at night, and it’s swiftly approaching, but fuck, waiting until tomorrow to talk to more people sucks.”
“And it’s only going to get worse for you if you’re going to wait on your brother to come out of those woods.” He leaned back and kicked his bare feet out. Catching me looking at them, he laughed. “Don’t tell me those are nice to look at too.”
“Oh. Ew. That’s disgusting.” I gagged. “No, I just noticed them. And can you please stay serious? You always do this. You always find some way to…” I waved a hand at him. “You did while we were in Dallas, too, when someone was trying to kill you and had kidnapped your daughter. What is with you?”
“I’ve lived long enough to remember I need to laugh sometimes,” he countered, the pleasure of teasing falling from his face. “I’ve seen enough people die at what felt like random times. I know what it means to take a chance to smile with a friend when there might not be many chances left.”
The words hit me like a wrecking ball. I stared into his grey-blue eyes, wondering what was torturing him at that moment.
“Who didn’t you smile enough with?” I asked softly.
“Everyone, so far,” he answered, taking a deep breath. “You?”
“Same.” The word didn’t come out of me without a fight, but I knew it was the truth. “There’s never a good time to lose them, is there?”
“No, there isn’t. So, I take my chances and try to have good moments during the bad ones. I’m sorry if it gets frustrating.”
“No…I’m sorry,” I murmured, looking down at my hands. “You wanted to play twenty questions?”
“Why don’t you tell me about you? I know…a lot already.” He sheepishly smiled at me.
“Well, I told you about Hasan and the family. My family…I guess. There’s something. I have a hard time thinking of them as my family. My human family is still alive out there, and it just feels wrong sometimes to think of others as my family. I can see why werecats do it, though. Why they make these attachments…” I sighed. “There’s no one else. We can’t go home. We can’t…meet new people very well or anything like that, so we treat those we can as a family. I understand that, it’s just hard to do sometimes.”
“It’s a hard world to join,” Heath agreed. “It’s the same for a lot of wolves. Many walk away from their human families entirely because it’s easier in the end. You don’t watch them grow old and die. You don’t have to watch them try to Change and die in the effort. Before we went public, it was the life of many wolves. We learned to make bonds away from the human family we built and walk away from the mortal life.”
“I rejected my new family for a long time,” I admitted. “I still do, in some ways. Some core piece of me fights it while other parts of me…really want it. You know, I’ve gotten into so much trouble with the werecats out there, I was convinced my