My spoon stilled. How much did this man see and did she have to worry about it?
He touched the back of my hair, gently pressing my scalp with firm fingers. “Don’t you worry,cher. You’re safe here.”
My fingers trembled, but for some odd reason, I believed him.
The other Lords were at the table, too, but they were engaged in animated discussion.
Animated, meaning everyone was yelling a lot. Everyone except Ben, who kept looking over at me with a peculiar expression on his face. Finally, he got up and sat next to me. Caelan’s brows drew together when he noticed, but he said nothing, only tightening his grip on my knee for a brief second before returning to the fray of circular conversation.
“Your chef is amazing,” I said, caring little for manners as I dug into the bowl for another bite.
“Boudreaux always makes chicken and sausage gumbo during the winter. I can’t imagine the meat he goes through trying to fill a Keep of hungry wolves.”
My brow furrowed at that. “You’re some kind of bird, aren’t you?” I mused, my voice so low only he and I could hear each other. Possibly Caelan, but he was currently yelling something about nosy Lords and taxes. It made sense. He wasn’t a wolf or a bear or anything too predatory. Ben liked open spaces and nature, and I used to catch him staring up at the sky sometimes with a shimmer in his eye.
“I will neither confirm nor deny,” he said with a grin. “And no, you can’t take Boudreaux with you. Mostly because I’m convinced he’d go if you asked him to.”
I snorted. “No, he wouldn’t. Feeding one starving woman is far different than feeding all the shifters around here. He’d grow bored in a week.”
Ben laughed, the sound free and wild. I’d never heard him laugh like that. He wiped his eyes. “No one is ever bored around you. Boudreaux would be in love in a week.”
“If he cooked like this every night, I might do the same.”
Caelan’s grip tightened, and I hid my smile. So he was listening.
“We’ve been friends for years now, but Caelan had his own chef, so he took work a couple of hours away from Joy Springs.When I became a Lord, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring him with me.”
“How do you like Michigan?”
“All the nature suits me. The Keep has several hundred acres, and there are parks and lakes everywhere.”
“But you don’t like the Keep.” His shoulders were tense, and he hadn’t relaxed since he’d walked into the building.
Ben gave me a sharp look. “Why do you say that?”
I lifted a shoulder in a shrug. “You don’t seem happy here, and you have another home a few miles down the road. A home with only a single house. I smelled you outside. You spend a lot of time there.”
His jaw tightened. “I forgot how observant you are.”
Ben sighed and took a hunk of bread. I had to stifle the urge to smack him with the back of my spoon and hoard all the bread. “I’m not used to being a Lord. Coveting power never sat right with me. I’d rather be free, but my power levels preclude me from ever being a lone wolf.”
“You aren’t allowed to?”
Damn this gumbo was amazing. I was slowing down, but if Boudreaux came back, I would not turn down another bowl.
“I could, I suppose, but someone like me, as much as I want to be alone, I crave being with other shifters.”
“What about a…mate? Isn’t that what the shifters call them? Have you ever looked for one of those?”
Caelan’s fingers tightened again.
Ben grinned. “It’s not quite so simple. Mating is complex and animalistic in a way.”
“Would you know your mate if you saw her?”
Ben speared me with a look so intense, I stopped chewing. Power rose in the air, tingling the back of my neck and making the hair rise on my arms. “Ben?”
Caelan’s hand slipped from my knee. He turned toward us and leaned forward. “Ben,” he said slowly. “Don’t you even think about it.”
