“Oh my god,” Bobbi whispered.
I looked down at Liam. This should have been ridiculous. Itwasridiculous. A giant wolf shifter was rubbing against me like an affectionate, overgrown pet.
He nudged my palm again, and I let my hand slide over the side of his neck. He shamelessly leaned into my touch. When I scratched lightly behind one ear, his whole body loosened, like I had found the right button, and he was not remotely embarrassed about it.
I should have hated how much I liked that.
Something in me melted with horrifying speed.
“There it is,” Bobbi said softly. “He wants pets.”
“I can see that,” I muttered.
Liam answered by pressing his nose briefly against my stomach, then angling his head back into my hand with deliberate insistence. Apparently, the wolf version of him had given up on restraint entirely and decided this was happening.
A soft sigh, which I was completely embarrassed by, fell from my lips.
His tail wagged again.
Ugh.
Still, I kept stroking him, moving my hand down the strong line of his back and up to his neck again, to the spot he seemed to like best. He stayed pressed to my side, huge and solid and weirdly pleased with himself.
Markie leaned forward on his perch. “DOG!”
Liam’s head snapped toward the cage.
Bobbi’s eyes widened. I stared at my bird.
In an instant, Liam shifted back, his bones reassembling into the tall, solid man I had been trying not to fall for all day.
“I’m not a dog,” he said evenly.
Bobbi blinked. “You’re a wolf.”
“Yes.”
“That’s a kind of dog.”
“It is not.”
Markie tilted his head, unbothered. “DOG.”
Huffing, Liam crossed his arms over his chest, which didn’t help me to take him seriously. “I outrank dogs.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
Markie clicked. “STAY.”
Liam clenched his jaw. The silence that followed stretched thin and ceremonial, as though some ancient ruling had just been handed down by a very small, feathered monarch.
Bobbi leaned forward, eyes bright. “You have to. He said it.”
“I absolutely do not,” Liam said.
Markie didn’t blink, but he did lean forward slightly and said, very clearly, “STAY BITCH.”
