“Yeah, but that sounds ridiculous. Lads means men. Well, boys.”
Aoife laughed. “You’re just not used to it. Wait until you find out what we mean by guards.”
She struck off down the street with Elliott hurrying after her. “Wait, what? What does that mean? What do you think guards are? Guards, you know, guard things. What do they do here?”
“Guards here are the police.” Aoife threw a smile over her shoulder at him.
“Oh, come on.”
“Seriously! An Garda Síochána. It means ‘Guardians of the Peace,’ in fact.”
“An ga...what?”
“Ahn. Garda. Shee oh kahna,” Aoife repeated slowly, with Elliott echoing her. “The guards.”
“Well...that’s kind of cool, actually.”
“It is. Oh no!” The Shandon Bells, across the river and up a calf-straining hill, rang out the quarter hour. “We’d better run to get back to the train station. The last train is in fifteen minutes!"
Elliott immediately jolted into a run, and stopped again just as quickly. "Wait. You don't live out there, do you?"
"What? No, I live over there." Aoife waved toward the other side of the river, where her shared house lay.
"ThenIshould run, and you should go home and get some sleep," Elliott said firmly. "Do you need someone to walk you home?"
"No, it's ten minutes. I'll text you when I'm safe home, if you want."
Elliott beamed. "I'll need your number."
"Right!" They exchanged numbers, then a kiss, and Elliott sprinted off into the night, leaving Aoife to walk home with a grin.
CHAPTER 14
Elliott's second day as the lion on loan wasmuchless eventful than the first. The most exciting moment was early on when Dr. Kelly came by the enclosure, glared ferociously at him, and said, "I expect to see you after work," in a tone that he would ignore only if he didn't value his own life.
Otherwise, Aoife came by several times, but always leading a tour group, so she couldn't do more than smile at him through the glass-fronted enclosure. Elliott got up and paced around obligingly for her tour groups, although his lion complained about having to put so mucheffortin, and refused to engage with other visitors. On the other hand, itwaswilling to sleep in public, so at least people were getting their viewing of the lion on loan, even if said lion wasn't doing much.
Shortly before the park closed, he went into the den, shifted to human, and let himself out through the people door. It only took a few minutes to walk through the park to its business offices, and he met Aoife just before them, her expression nervous as she headed that way herself. Most of her worry fled, though, when she saw him, and to his joy, she came in for a hugand seemed to be reassured by it. "Ah, it’s both of us getting given out to then, is it?"
Elliott hesitated. "I have no idea what ‘given out to’ is, but I think so? Dr. Kelly made sure to stop by first thing in the morning so I could fret about it all day."
Aoife gave a grimacing laugh. "Me too, basically. Ah, well, it was nice working here while I did." She put her hand in Elliott's, and they climbed the short metal staircase into Dr. Kelly's office together.
The park director said, "Come in," sharply when they knocked, and scowled at them, jaw set, when they did. "You may sit."
It wasn't so much an invitation as an order, Elliott thought. There were separate chairs, or he never would have let go of Aoife's hand at all, but he had to as they sat. His lion, with great, calm confidence, said,We'll eat her if she's mean to our mate.
Elliott didn't know what kind of shifter Dr. Kelly was, but her human persona made him think she'd put up quite a fight.Hopefully it won't come to that.
"Bison-surfing?" Dr. Kelly put ice into those two words.
Elliott's stomach sank. "Ah, you ah, you heard about that, huh?"
"What were youthinking?" Dr. Kelly hissed. "Never mind that you could have been killed. You might have needed to shift in public, Elliott! We can't afford that kind of publicity!"
Aoife, audibly offended, said, "You'd rather he got killed than shifted in public? That would shut us down!"
"I'd rather none of it happened at all! I cannot tell you how lucky we are that therewasno public there, except Aoife's tour group, who were apparently so involved in that child's tantrum that no one seems to have seen anything! The only people who can verify Elliott's indiscretion are the two employees who saw youriding a bison,Elliott!"
