Nothing that probably needed to be said,Henry thought to himself, silently relieved that their arrival had put a stop to whatever catastrophically stupid thing might have come out of his mouth next. Was hetryingto convince her that he was, infact, a creepy, intimidating stalker who should be given as wide a berth as possible?
She might be my mate, but she’s human –shedoesn’t know about shifters and mates at all,Henry thought as they climbed out of the car.I need to get my head in order. Think about how to approach this. She may be the only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t immediately cringe away in fear, but that hardly means she’s ready to walk down the aisle with me…
“Oh… nothing much,” Henry said, as nonchalantly as he could manage. “Mainly I guess Ishouldbe saying thank you for inviting me back here to get clean.”
“Oh, it’s no problem. It really was all this little rascal’s fault.” Luna laughed a little as she leaned down to scoop Fillmore up in her arms. Thankfully, the tiny dog seemed to be content to just be near Henry – as long as he was in his line of sight, he seemed calm and well-behaved.
I just wish I knew why I was suddenly so irresistibly attractive to him,Henry thought in mild despair.Him, and every other animal I encounter.
That was, in fact, the opposite of how hellhounds were supposed to work.
And if the whole thing had been inconvenient before, it was about a thousand times worse now.
How am I supposed to court my mate if there’s squirrels bringing me nuts and beavers making eyes at me every five minutes?!
Fillmore having taken a shine to him might actually be an advantage to him in impressing Luna. It wasdefinitelybetter than her dog deciding he hated Henry on sight and refusing to have anything more to do with him. But all the wild animals of the forest? Every pigeon in the city? Every rat in the sewer?!
That, Henry could imagine, Luna would find less impressive.
It just means I’ll have to figure out what’s happening and how to stop it all the more quickly,Henry decided grimly. He couldn’t let whatever was going on stand in the way of him being with his mate.
He really shouldn’t even be here now, Henry thought as he glanced around nervously. When Luna had said she was staying in a B&B, he’d envisioned something pretty close to the town – not that that was any guarantee of safety from enamored animals – but this place was deep in the forest, halfway up one of the mountains he’d been planning on roaming around on in his hellhound form. There were only about a million bears, deer, cougars, bobcats, squirrels, snakes and whatever else lived out here that could be watching from the trees right now, waiting for the right moment to make their move.
For whatever reason, however, it seemed for the moment that the coast was clear.
Henry knew he had to take advantage of this temporary lull to try to impress Luna, and see if he could – somehow – check if she was at all interested in being the mate of an unemployed nightclub bouncer. Who also happened to be a hellhound.
And you can’t cook,the hellhound broke in, sniffing.Don’t forget that.
Henry did his best to ignore it. It was clearly still sulking.
“Anyway, here we are!” Luna said cheerfully, as they walked around a small bend in the driveway, and Henry suddenly found himself catching his breath.
“Wow,” he breathed, blinking. “That’s… that’s some B&B.”
And it truly was – it had clearly once been a stately home, a huge, Edwardian-style mansion with timber paneling, a massive porch that wrapped around the whole of the building, soaring turrets reaching up toward the forest canopy, and circular porthole windows peeping out from the upper floors. It was surrounded by garden beds filled with colorful flowers and lushgreen ferns, drooping red maples, and about a hundred other plants Henry couldn’t have identified if he tried. What hedidknow was that he’d never seen anywhere quite as beautiful as this.
“Oh – no, I’m not renting out the whole place,” Luna said quickly. “I wish! But I’m afraid my editor wouldn’t spring for that, so I just have a room. It’s still more than spacious enough for me, though – it’s pretty obvious the owners put a ton of time and care into doing this place up. You should see the photos from before they restored it – it was kind of a wreck.”
“Well, you definitely can’t tell that now,” Henry said, gazing up at the iron weathervane, in the shape of… a griffin? Maybe?... on the highest turret of the house. It was probably just for show, given the fact the house was sheltered from the wind on all sides by the thick forest, but Henry had to admit itdidlook cool.
“Oh yeah – I’ll definitely be giving them a write-up as part of my article,” Luna enthused. “Actually, this place was part of the reason I really wanted to come to Girdwood Springs. The owners… uhh, Natalie? No, Natasha – and her husband made a blog about the process of renovating it and now running it as a B&B. It was really clever marketing. They got lots of people invested in the process before they’d even opened, so they had a flood of bookings from the moment they were ready for them. Pretty genius, if you ask me.”
Henry could only nod – he really didn’t know much about that world at all. At one stage, he’d kind of had some vague dreams of becoming a carpenter or something like that, since he’d always enjoyed working with his hands. But, just like with everything else, he’d had to put those dreams aside – even big, burly builders had found him just too scary and had always been dropping their wrenches or hammering their thumbs when he’d walked by.
It was lucky that the B&B appeared to be more or less deserted right now – he supposed that everyone was in town enjoying the festival. His footsteps echoed lightly as he stepped through the front door of the building, and…
“Oh,wow.”
He wasn’t exactly the type of person to go to fancy restaurants or stay in expensive hotels – being a terrifying hellhound shifter who lived off a bouncer’s wage tended to keep him from indulging in the finer things in life. He was used to living in run-down one-bedroom apartments and cooking himself pasta with sauce that came from a jar. He’d always been happy living a fairly simple life.
But, this…
I could get used to this.
He stepped into the sitting room just inside the front entrance and looked around, taking it all in.
The ceiling soared above him, much higher than he was used to in his cramped apartment. The floorboards beneath his feet were old and worn in a way that obviously screamedclassyrather thanshabby, the enormous velvet couches beckoned at him invitingly, and a plush rug in a deep burgundy color covered the floor in the middle of the room. He was half-tempted to bend down and touch it, just to see if it reallywasas soft as it looked.
