Paige snapped her fingers. “Eyes up here, Conleth.”
With an effort, he returned his attention to her face. In terms of maintaining his own professional appearance, this did not actually help much. While Paige was neat enough to pass casual inspection, her eyes were still a little hazy with pleasure, her lower lip plump and rosy. His jeans were starting to get rather uncomfortable.
He muttered a curse, trying to picture anything other than Paige on her back, spread out before him like a banquet. “This is going to be harder than I thought.”
Paige sounded distinctly amused. “It looks like it already is.”
“Give me a second.” Setting his jaw, he drew on his power, speeding until his body lost hope and settled down. “There. Please try not to do anything sexy. Like bend over. Or breathe.”
“Remember, we have to be discreet in front of the kids.” Paige put a hand on the dining hall door. “This is just another day at work.”
She pushed open the door.
“SURPRISE!”
Conleth lunged, instinctively shielding Paige from what turned out to be a deadly shower of confetti. A storm of applause and wolf-whistles filled the hall, kids from every pack whooping and hollering from their tables. Their own campers converged on them in a riot of beaming smiles and overlapping voices:
“What took you so long? We’ve been waitingforever!”
“Are you really truly mated now?”
“Are you gonna have a wedding, too? Can I carry the rings?”
“Congratulations!”
Shaking heart-shaped confetti out of his hair, Conleth looked around. The entire hall had been decorated with strings of handmade paper hearts, dangling from the rafters. The table where their pack usually sat was covered in a pink tablecloth, with two chairs set side-by-side at one end. Above them, a construction paper banner proudly proclaimed in crooked, slightly dripping poster-paint letters:
JUST MATED - CONLETH & PAIGE
Paige was clearly lost for words. She looked up at him, expression torn between horror and hilarity.
“So much for discretion,” he murmured into her ear. “I think we just have to go with it. They’ve worked hard on this.”
“We got Buck and Honey to bring us back early so we could get everything ready,” Beth said, beaming ear-to-ear. “We wanted to surprise you.”
Paige cleared her throat. “Well, we’re…certainly surprised.”
“We made you a card!” Estelle thrust an oversized envelope made from folded construction paper into Paige’s hands. “Igdrew the picture, but we all helped to color it in. It’s you riding Conleth on your mating night!”
“Bareback,” Nancy supplied helpfully.
Paige, who had been halfway through pulling the card out of the envelope, froze.
“Onhis back,” Ignatius said. “With Conleth in, and I cannot stress this enough, his pegasus form.”
Conleth contemplated the illustration. Ignatius had really captured his wings, though someone had been rather too enthusiastic with the glitter.
“I shall treasure this forever,” he said solemnly. “I may have to get it framed.”
Ignatius gave him a suspicious look before turning to Rufus. “Is he being sarcastic?”
Grinning, Rufus shook his head.
“Come and sit down.” Beth seized their hands, dragging them toward the pack table. “We got the kitchen staff to make special pink sugar cookies with your initials iced on the top. And all the other campers and counselors helped with the decorations. The entire camp pitched in!”
He suspected this was not entirely true. One member of their pack had not rushed to greet them at the door. Archie hunched on a bench in bear form, fur bristling from the stretched collar of his camp t-shirt.
Paige hurried over to her brother. Conleth didn’t catch what she murmured to him, but Archie flicked an ear in the bear equivalent of a shrug. He didn’t look at Conleth.
