soon.” She smiled and stroked her belly. “Mommy loves you, baby boy. She wants to hold you.”
Kenji tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and the question, it just came out. “So it’s really serious between Garnet and Rev?” He had no right to ask that, but he could no more stop himself than he could stop loving Garnet.
“Revel’s not your competition.” Ruby’s expression softened. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you: Garnet might think you’re cute, but she also thinks you’re a player.” She drew out the last word. “My smart, sexy sister has no need to date players—she’s looking for a long-term thing, not a quick you-know-what.”
Yeah, he knew. He’d always known. Had intended to be her long-term guy since the day he’d first realized his best friend’s younger sister was no longer the pigtailed kid he’d chased in countless games of tag. “Garnet’s special, Ruby,” he said, unable to bear that she might believe he didn’t know that truth.
“Yeah, well, you might’ve missed the boat, Kenny.” Patting him on the cheek again, Ruby started to walk past. “My bladder is the size of a peanut.”
Turning, Kenji watched her to make sure her balance was okay. She was tiny and the belly was huge. Garnet would be the same way when she became pregnant.
Kenji rubbed a fist over his heart. “Shut it down,” he ordered himself. “You let her be happy. If you love her, you goddamn let her be happy.”
With that quiet, raw order to himself, he turned on his heel and jogged the rest of the way to the meeting, figuring he must be the last to arrive. He’d had to leave later than expected because of a situation in his den, and then the heavy rain had slowed him down even further. However, when he entered the small break room he’d been told was the location of the meeting, he found only Garnet within.
Dressed in faded blue jeans that hugged her legs before disappearing into knee-high boots of dark brown, topped with a simple white sweater with a wide but high neck, her hair up in a rough knot at the back of her head and held in place by a hair stick, she looked young and beautiful. But the power in her, it hummed against his skin, made his wolf’s fur stir.
This woman, the wolf knew, was its match in every way.
“Riaz and Indigo?” he asked, bracing his hands on either side of the doorway to keep from lunging at her.
“Delayed by a major accident that’s caused gridlock.” Garnet poured herself a coffee from the carafe set on a warmer on the counter, then scowled and poured him one, too.
It did something to him when she automatically added one sugar to his.
“A car’s automatic nav system shorted out, owner didn’t react in time,” she said as she stirred the sugar in. “He went into the back of a truck. No fatalities, thankfully, but the truck was carrying hazardous material that the authorities are scrambling to contain.”
“Damn, the rain can’t be helping,” he said and, having somehow wrenched his body under control, walked inside to take his coffee from her. “We have anyone in the cleanup team?” Given SnowDancer’s power in the California region, they also took a lot of responsibility for it—including helping with incidents that could affect the ecosystem.
Garnet nodded. “One of our people is leading the containment effort, with backup from a mixed team, all trained to SnowDancer specifications.” She took a sip of coffee. “Weather forecast is also saying the rain might turn into a storm. If that happens, Indigo and Riaz will have to stay put until it’s safe to drive up here.”
“Yeah, the winds were picking up the final half hour of my drive up.” Kenji drew in the scent of the coffee in a vain attempt to drown out the far more delicious scent that was Garnet. “I was in one of our gruntiest all-wheel drives and, with the mud and wind, it was having trouble gripping the road.”
The sheer amount of precipitation hitting the mountains meant the land was struggling to handle it. It didn’t matter how far civilization advanced, Mother Nature still packed a punch—and that was exactly how changelings liked it. Wolf or leopard, deer or swan, it was about living in harmony with the world rather than beating it into submission.
So, once you left the cities, the roads up to their dens were less roads and more tracks. It meant occasional delays