“Yeah?”
“Hold you as I’ve wanted to do from the moment I laid eyes on you.”
Lola dropped her forehead to his shoulder as he wrapped both arms around her.“I really want to claw your eyes out right now.”
“I promise you, this is hurting me way more than it’s hurting you,” he muttered as he carried her to the bed and set her down.“There are pajamas for you in the closet.I’ll get ready in the other bathroom.Take your time,Sazzi.”He leaned down and pressed his lips to her forehead and then turned away, moving in that weirdly fast way.
“Where are you going?”she called out when the door to the bedroom closed.
“Cold shower.”
She couldn’t help but laugh.
“Not funny, Lo.”
“Kinda is,” she muttered.
Twenty minutes later, Callon crawled into bed beside her, and she didn’t have time to make it weird because he just wrapped his massive body around her.
“Comfortable?”
“You have no idea.”He groaned, making her laugh.“You?”
“Actually, yeah.”He felt good.Safe.Warm.Like home.
“My father sent me a text.”He’d switched the lights off when he’d come in the room, and the only light now was the moon light from the window.“The information he got from Riker, he also confirmed with Nox, he’s the Alpha of the Kingdom of Fangs.He’s sent a single wolf into the Kingdom of Venom territory.”
“Really?”Lola’s voice was louder than she intended.“What happened to, ‘The entire pack will descend, and hell will follow?’”
“Nox must have realized what a bad idea that would have been.”Callon ran his fingers through Lola’s hair.
“Did he say who the wolf is?A lone wolf?Is that a thing?I mean, wolves, at least the human-realm version, typically hunt in packs.So a lone wolf hunting would normally be a weird thing.”
“Yeah,” Callon said, slowly.
“Yeah?”Lola tried to push up, but he held her close to him.“I don’t like the sound of that ‘yeah.’That’s one of those ‘You’re not really going to like what I have to say,’ yeahs.”
“Is that really a thing?”
“Don’t try to change the subject,” Lola warned and poked his chest.“Who’s the lone wolf, and why is he not good, because your ‘yeah’”—she mimicked his slow, deep voice—“made it clear you aren’t too keen on this guy.”
“If it’s who I think it is, his name is Gage.”
“Gage.”Lola enunciated the name.“I already don’t like him.What kind of name is Gage?Were his parents into tires or something?”
“Whoa, I’m seeing a whole new side of you already,Sazzi,” he teased.“Judgy, Lola.”
She felt her skin heat.Shewastotally being judgy.For all she knew, Gage was a perfectly nice guy who’d just had a rough life.
“But Gage is an ass, so you can be judgy.”
“I knew it.”She pounded her fist on Callon’s chest, causing him to laugh.
He grabbed her hand and held it against him.“We’ll talk to my father about it tomorrow.And he and my mother would like to talk to you about an official ceremony.”The last two words came out kind of garbled as he cleared his throat.
“Did you say office cereal?Because if you have a cereal addiction, then you and Katy are going to be fast friends.”
“Official ceremony,” he said much more slowly.“It’s like a, well, to make a proper comparison, it would be what humans would call a marriage ceremony.”
