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After the battle at Lyle Castle, Robb had stuck with the Agency for six months or so – after taking an entire week off to relax after the whole ordeal – directing the cleanup of everything that had happened with Hargreaves and the dragon, ensuring the rescue of all shifters and humans being held by Hargreaves, and helping to flush out a number of Hargreaves operatives.

There had been a number of defections – or at least of instances of Hargreaves people turning themselves in, with Anne and James’s antics being a bridge too far for some of them.

Others, of course, were far more entrenched in the Hargreaves mindset, and they were going to prove more difficult to deal with.

Neither Tahnee nor Robb was under any illusions that every single person affiliated with Hargreaves had been captured, and vigilance was going to be required. After all, Hargreaves Incorporated was a vast company that had its tentacles in all sorts of things.

But the part of the organization that dealt specifically in using shifters to commit crime had been dealt a critical blow, and that had had a knock-on effect on its other services. Not a lot of people wanted to work for a company that would gladly feed its contractors to a giant dragon in order to bring about world destruction. Hargreaves’s promises that Anne was out of the picture didn’t seem to have done a whole lot to restore investor confidence, from what Tahnee had heard.

Robb had worked some long hours during that time, and Tahnee hadn’t begrudged him for it at all, even as she’d yearned to spend every moment with him. His work was important to him, after all – and important in general – and she’d known that it needed to be done.

But once things had calmed down, Robb had come to the decision on his own. Tahnee hadn’t forced him – she hadn’t even been the one to bring it up.

They’d been here at the sanctuary on a stinking hot evening, the stars aglow in the darkening sky as they sat on her shack’s verandah, and Robb had turned to her.

I handed in my resignation today, was all he’d said, and it had been with both a lack of surprise and a sense of complete and utter shock that she had simply nodded.

She’d felt it coming for a long time… and yet, she hadn’t been sure he would ever pull the trigger.

When she’d asked about it, he’d shrugged and looked out at the twilit landscape, with its nocturnal rustlings.

The Agency is literally all I’ve ever known, he’d said. As much as it’ll always be a part of me, it’s time to move on and try something different. The reduced threat level is the perfect opportunity for me to step down, and let the next generation step up. They’re up to the challenge.

Turning to her, he’d looked her directly in the eyes.

And I want to be here with you. I’ve had enough of being by myself in an apartment that I never even cared about enough to make feel like a home. When the alternative is to live out here in the bush with my mate… well, it seems like it’s not really much of a choice at all.

It wasn’t the most romantic phrasing she’d ever heard, but coming from Robb, it was really saying something. For him to choose her over his job… well, it was more than she had ever dared hope for.

She’d been so speechless that his face had started to fall.

I mean… he’d said. Not that I’m going to invite myself in and start living in your house, or anything. Your space is your own.

Invite yourself in! she’d practically yelled, her fear that she’d put him off after he’d bared his soul making her frantic. I mean, you’re already invited! Of course you can live here with me, you dickhead. I mean…

The brolga had honked its contempt at her, and Tahnee had buried her face in her hands, her cheeks burning.

But when she’d managed to bring herself to peek out from between her fingers, she’d seen Robb smiling. An open, easy smile, the likes of which she had rarely seen from him.

Okay, he’d said. Since you put it so nicely, this dickhead will move in with you. As long as you’re happy to be Mrs. Dickhead.

She’d groaned in embarrassment and buried her face against his shoulder, but she’d been smiling as well.

That had been a year ago.

And ever since then…

Well, she wouldn’t say that there hadn’t been hitches here and there. They were both very different people who were very set in their ways, and the sanctuary was her baby.

But he was willing to work with her – wanted to work with her – and she wanted to learn how to compromise with him as well.

While her team had already been pretty damn great, if she did say so herself, it was good to get someone in with a different perspective. And she had to admit that her own management style could politely be described as not bound by red tape… with the less polite description being something more along the lines of lawless wasteland.

Not that she didn’t make sure to tick more or less all of the major boxes – the sanctuary’s success was a testament to her skills, after all – but she had to admit that she’d always been someone who didn’t fuss too much with the details.

She could acknowledge now that it was good to have someone who was not only ridiculously organized, but who was willing to put their foot down about the importance of structure. As great as her own team were, they had a tendency to not push back too hard against her when it came to dealing with the boring day-to-day details.

Now, loath as she was to admit it, she could see that sometimes the mundane stuff did help. Having all workplace procedures across all departments uniformly documented and saved in a carefully arranged file structure was, she had to say, not a bad thing. He’d thrown around words like ‘optimization’ and ‘compliance’, and she’d mostly been happy to just let him do his thing, not wanting to know any more about it than she absolutely had to.