Callon choked on his words as the image of her crawling entered his mind.
“Please don’t,” Gage’s rumbling voice came from around the corner in the kitchen. “Callon would go all berserker and kill the panthers. I’d have to put him down and then you’d cry. I really don’t like crying females, and I seriously don’t want to have panther entrails all over my living room.”
“That’s oddly descriptive,” Lola said as she leaned against the counter. “I feel like you’ve put some thought into this.”
Gage bared his teeth at her. “Having other males in my home is making me testy. I don’t need crawling females too.”
Gage tried not to growl at Callon’s mate, but it was a serious effort in self-control. He never thought the apocalypse would smell like burnt coffee, wet panther, and lion fur. His house, once a haven of Dire wolf solitude, was now a zoo with no closing hours and no boundaries. The panthers had overtaken the back porch—Rafe, Drystan, Wyatt, and Kian stretched out on every available surface; if they’d been able to shift, they’d no doubt have thick tails flicking in their sleep. As it was, only Bane could shift, and he was too proud to flick his tail like a “typical” cat. Callon and Lola had claimed the guest room, though Gage suspected the lion prince would have preferred the master suite if Gage hadn’t threatened to shift and mark every inch of the bed. And now they’d escaped said guest room and were invading the momentary peace he’d found in his kitchen.Thiswas why he didn’t have people over. Katy was the only other being he wanted in his space, and Otto, but only because he knew the little psycho lizard would keep his mate safe.
It was barely past midnight, and Gage was already on his fourth cup of too-weak coffee, standing inhis ownkitchen in nothing but flannel pants and a scowl. Katy, hair wild and eyes sharper than usual, was perched on the counter eating the last of his cereal straight from the box. As soon as Callon entered the room, Gage turned and looked at his mate. She wore a tank top and a pair of shorts much too small to be considered decent.
She grinned at him, mouth full. “Don’t say it.”
Gage shook his head. “Sorry, babe. But there’s no part of me that would ever be okay with you sitting there looking sexy as hell, even with a mouth full of cereal, while other males are around.”
“A mouth full of anything would be a deal breaker for me,” Wyatt said as the front door shut behind him. “Obey your mate, female, and put on a turtle neck and lose jeans before the dire wolf rips our eyes out.”
Callon leaned against the counter, muscles, arrogance, and that infuriating kind of calm that Gage envied and despised in equal measure. He stopped just inside the kitchen, arms folded, gaze sweeping the room like he owned the place. Lola handed him a cup of coffee and her mate sipped it. He looked like he might spit it out.
“Coffee’s weak,” Callon said, voice low and unimpressed.
Gage’s jaw ticked. “I don’t make my coffee to please you.”
“Don’t mind him,” Lola said as she pressed her side to Callon’s. “He’s just pissy because he didn’t get any sleep. There were a pair of wild animals going at it all night, shrieking like a bunch of cats in heat.”
“You’re jealousy is showing, Lo,” Katy said, a smirk on her cute face.
Gage glared at her. Why the hell was she still sitting there? “Katy,” he barked. “Clothes. Now.”
Katy narrowed her eyes on him as she slammed the box of cereal down on the counter. She hopped down, and bloody hell she wasn’t wearing a bra. Gage snarled, bearing his teeth at the female that both fascinated him and drove him insane. If she didn’t have his scent all over her, he’d probably have thrown her over his shoulder to makethathappen.
“Okay, I’m out. Let us know when Gage isn’t on the verge of murdering everyone,” Wyatt said as he turned on his heel and headed right back for the door.
“I want to point out that you’re standing there shirtless with my best friend in the room, and I’m not acting like I need to pee on you to make sure she doesn’t attempt to seduce you, do you know why?”
Gage didn’t answer, he simply continued to frown at her, his wolf wondering why she was still talking and not leaving the room.
Apparently she didn’t care, because she just kept right on growling at him. “Because I’m not a psycho, possessive, alien who needs to mark my territory.”
He folded his arms across his chest and raised an eyebrow at her. “I’m a wolf, not an alien.”
“You’re not of the human world, andthatmakes you an alien.” She walked by him–actually, it was more of a stomp–but before she passed him, she reached out and grabbed his nipple and twisted ithard.
Gage growled, a completely inhuman sound, and lunged for her, but she jumped away and ran down the hall, laughing like a damn hyena.
He looked at Lola. “Has she always been this obstinate?”
Lola grinned, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “Oh, you have no idea what you’ve signed up for, Gage. You might want to get on some sort of medicine to help calm your nerves. Or start drinking. On second thought, she’ll probablydriveyou to drinking. It’s inevitable.”
“I can hear you, you know,” Katy hollered from their room.
“We know,” Lola hollered back, “and we don’t care.”
Gage glanced towards the hall and then looked at Lola. “Can’t you talk to her or something?”
Lola laughed again, only louder this time. “Right. As if we haven’t tried that already.”
Gage growled at her before he could stop himself.
