Oh, yes. She was supposed to be irked by it. That had been the plan. “It’s only ten minutes,” she started. Reasonable. But couldn’t help the follow-up. “Does it happen often?”
He raised both arms a little and let them fall at his sides. “All the time. I could be on my way to hell, and someone would stop me to ask me something, to tell me something...” He shook his head. “I hate being late. My time is not more important than the time of whoever’s waiting for me.”
“Hey, that’s what I’m always saying!” she said, lighting up, genuinely delighted. Someone who understood that.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“I’ll cut you some slack because I assume being Alpha is very time-consuming.”
“You’re very magnanimous.”
“I can be.”
He smiled.
She stopped breathing for a bit. He was... stunning. Not just physically, though that was unfair enough, but in the way he smiled, like it reached all the way into him. It was disarming. Definitely too big a feeling for a Wednesday night.
“Shall we?” He opened the door and went in before her, then stopped when she was in too. “Again, I’m sorry. It’s instinct.”
She didn’t follow that one and frowned. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I should have kept the door open for you to get in first.”
She hadn’t missed the lack of chivalry, but she also wasn’t one to care about it. And he seemed very distressed about it–or, more frustrated with himself, which was not needed. “Okay?”
“The thing is, if you get in first, how can I protect you? I go in, make sure everything is safe, and then you get in. I’m always the first.”
That was so, so sweet, and a little hilarious. “We’re in a pub.”
“It’s instinct. I didn’t stop to think.”
No, he hadn’t. Protection was so much a part of him that it overwrote everything else. Manners, logic, social expectations. The wolf first, the man adjusting after. “Well, I appreciate it.”
“You do?”
“I’ve never been one overly preoccupied with gentleman stuff. I can open my own doors and put my jacket on without help. But knowing the reason why you did it...” she shrugged, struggling to find another word for hot. It always seemed to apply to him. “It’s nice.”
Not even close. Nice was what you said about curtains. Or soup. Not about a man who would walk into danger first without thinking because his wolf kept everyone under his protection safe. But she was not going to start the night by telling him all that, or that he was hot. Absolutely not.
She motioned her hand toward the tables. “Lead on.”
He gave her another thrill by smiling again, then picked a table in the far corner. The pub was dim but not dark, all warm amber lights and old wood that had absorbed decades of spilled beer and stories and evolved around them. A dartboard in the back, two older men nursing local drafts near the bar, low music humming under conversation. The air smelled like fried onions, yeast, and something sweet baking in the kitchen.
Neither Aryon nor Elara was in tonight, not surprisingly. This close to Letha, they were hunkering down for the downpour of energy from nature and from people, riding it out somewhere quieter where they could brace for it.
The waiter, a young boy here for the season, came to take their order of drinks. Lemonade for her, local beer for him.
He leaned back, relaxed. “So, what did you find out about the plants?”
This, talking about work, she could do. All night long. It wasn’t often someone showed interest in the analytical part of her job. Everyone saw the shop, not what was behind it. And okay, he was doing it because he felt responsible for the forest, but he could have come by the shop, asked for the headline, and spared them both the footnotes. Could have settled for, “Do I need to worry?” instead of, “Tell me everything.” And it mattered to her. It mattered more than she wanted to admit. So she leaned in. “Nothing is wrong in the strict sense of the word. The plants are perfectly healthy.”
“But?”
“But, chemical analysis shows the key active compounds, like, for example, medicinal alkaloids, and some of the properties that give them their magical resonance and their health potency, are at unusually low concentration. There are subtle stress marks I missed when we picked them up. Some leaves are fractionally thinner. The flowering is slightly delayed. And when I tested it, the nutrient accumulation in the roots was lower than usual.”
Their drinks were set on the table, but he ignored them and asked her, “What does it mean?”
“It means the plants are healthy, but... tired, and don’t produce the punch they normally would. They are not sick, mind you, but something in their environmental cycle is off.”
