The conference table was covered with books that looked older than Amberford itself. Some of them had titles I couldn’t read. Others had titles I wished I hadn’t read. And a few had no titles at all, just cracked leather bindings and pages that smelled like dust and secrets.
Didi was parked in a chair at the far end, head deep in a tome. Dark circles shadowed the witch’s eyes.
She looked like she’d been up all night.
“You’re ten minutes late,” she said without looking up.
I sighed. Bo trotted over to the table, sniffed one of the books, and sneezed.
There was movement behind me. The way the mate bond hummed told me it wasn’t Gavin even before I turned.
Samuel’s expression grew guarded as he looked past my shoulder. “That’s a lot of magic books.”
I did my best not to drool at how good he smelled this morning and cleared my throat.
“You’re attending this meeting too?” I asked nonchalantly.
“Didi sent an email.” My alpha stiffened a little when he caught my eye. He gave me a wide berth and made a beeline for a chair next to the window like his wolfy tail was on fire.
I bit my lip guiltily.
I’d had a lot of nervous energy to burn through last night and he’d proven to be the perfect antidote. Which meant he hadn’t gotten much sleep.
Bo sidled up to me. “You should buy him stamina pills,” he suggested in a stage-loud whisper. “You know, like the ones Pearl was looking at on the internet the other day. They’re wolf-friendly, apparently.”
I pondered his proposal for a heartbeat before hastily discarding it in the face of Samuel’s narrow-eyed stare.
“So, you and Pearl are back to being bestiesagain?” I asked Bo.
The Husky curled a lip like I’d suggested he become vegetarian.
“Besties is pushing it. Let’s just say we’ve declared a truce over the sunbeam situation.”
There was also the ‘fireplace’ situation, the ‘dining chair’ situation, and the ‘greeting visitors at the door’ situation but I decided not to mention those for now. It was best to deal with one ridiculous territorial war at a time.
Gavin returned with cups. His eyes glazed over when he got a whiff of the coffee I poured out.
“Whoa. What’s in that?”
“Nora brewed it.”
Smoke curled nervously out of Gavin’s nostrils. “Your new ghoul housekeeper?”
“Yeah.” I looked hesitantly at the coffee. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
Didi accepted her cup, took a sip, and froze.
“Or maybe not,” I mumbled, eyeing the door in case I needed to make a hasty escape.
Didi blinked. “This is good coffee.” The color was returning to her face.
Samuel, Gavin, Bo, and I breathed a collective sigh of relief.
“You said you found something,” Samuel said while Gavin and I took our seats.
I’d already updated him about our disturbing findings last night.
The witch took another sip of her coffee before answering.
