No. He’d have to figure this out on his own.
The shower shut off. A few moments later, Christian padded out, towel slung low around his hips, wet hair dripping onto his shoulders.
Dave smiled at him. “Good fight.”
Christian quirked a brow. “Nowyou say it like you mean it.”
“You know I hate watching you get hit,” Dave said, voice low. “Even when I know you’re going to win.”
Christian crossed the room and stopped in front of him, gaze steady. “You watched the whole thing, though.”
“Yeah,” Dave said. “Of course I did.”
Christian’s fingers brushed through Dave’s hair, gentle, deliberate. Then he leaned in, pressed a kiss to his temple, and murmured, “You always do.” He paused a second longer than he needed to, then added, rough and low, “Not sure I deserve that.”
Dave’s chest ached. He loved Christian so much, it hurt.
“You do,” he said, quiet but certain.
Christian huffed out a soft breath. It wasn’t quite a laugh, but it was something close. Then he dipped his head, resting his forehead against Dave’s.
They didn’t always see the world the same way. But they loved one another.
Chapter Twelve
CHRISTIAN
“Does that look like eggs to you?” Christian stuck his fork into the pile of yellow, leathery stuff and watched as it stayed standing stubbornly upright.
Dave’s nose wrinkled slightly. “Dinosaur eggs, maybe,” he confessed, just as their server showed up with a fresh pot of coffee.
“Honey, if you’re expecting Michelin stars, you’re about five hundred miles too hopeful,” she said, topping off Christian’s mug. Then she gave Dave a wink. “And you’d eat better if you stopped pretending grapefruit counts as breakfast.”
Dave grinned. “Grapefruit kickstarts the metabolism. This way, I can eat enough lunch for two.”
She laughed as she walked away. Dave took a quick picture of Christian’s plate to appall the pack WhatsApp. “I wish Jason was here. Not that I’d want to inflict these on him, but I miss his cooking.”
Christian snorted and jabbed his fork at the mess again. He missed Jason’s cooking too, but what he didn’t say—what he couldn’t say—was that he’d eat five plates of this leathery crap if it meant more mornings like this one. Just him and Dave, talking quietly like this.
Jason’s food was the only thing he was sorry to leave behind in Elk Ridge. Something had started to worry at him there, like a burr under a saddle, and if Matt hadn’t sent him and Dave here when he had, he couldn’t answer for what might have happened. The place that had once been his home now felt claustrophobic and wrong on every level. Being away was letting him breathe again.
“We should go back to the cliffs and have another look around,” Dave said as he looked dubiously at his grapefruit before he pushed it away. “I got absolutely nowhere last night, and we don’t have any other leads.”
Christian nodded, chewing determinedly at another forkful of those damned eggs before he gave up. He might be hungry, but he wasn’tthathungry.
Once they were out on the cliffs, shifted and loping beside one another, he forgot about hunger. He forgot about everything except the gray wolf at his side, matching him stride for stride the way he always did.
They searched again around the buildings they’d found, but there was nothing left. No scent of wolves or people, and no indication that anything except the wild had been here for years. The earth was slowly taking back its own. Christian shook his head slightly to clear it, because that was the sort of thing Dave would say. Dave, who was sitting on his haunches in the middle of the clearing, head cocked to one side as if listening, and breathing deeply. The way he’d been for the past ten minutes while Christian had been fruitlessly pacing around.
Sometimes, Dave could justbewith the world in a way Christian didn’t understand. It unnerved him, maybe even scared him a little. But deep down, it also made him fall in love all over again.
He walked over and nudged him with his muzzle. It took a moment for Dave to lose the distant look in his eyes andseehim. Christian hated it when Dave did that. He hated that there was ever a time when Dave didn’t see him, and he hated even more the fear that he might one day lose Dave to wherever it was he went in his head.
He nipped at his ear, determined to bring Dave all the way back, and Dave stood up and shook himself, a silent announcement that he didn’t appreciate Christian’s roughness.
They went back through the tunnel and up the path to the top of the bluff, following the line of the cliff farther than they’d gone the previous day.
They found another cave entrance about a mile away, which led into a whole mass of caves. Once more, it felt dead and silent, but for the strangest instant Christian got an impression of how it had been when Jesse as a pup had played hide-and-seek here, pouncing out onto older wolves who indulgently let him wrestle with them. Just a pup and his family, playing together.
