Page 38 of Wolf Found

Gavin’s head dropped even lower, and he nodded.

“You’re not there yet, and you keep tapping the breaks before you get there.”

Another nod.

Ash went over to Gavin and put an arm around him. “You’re allowed to be bothered, you know. You and Dez being turned, that was a gift, but it also came with some heavy baggage. You’re allowed to see that there’s both good and bad in it.”

“I feel ungrateful.”

“You’re not.”

Gavin sighed deeply and leaned into him. “I need to make a decision. Miles is too good a guy for me to keep jerking around. Even if he does drink all that tea with milk in it.”

They both laughed, and the melancholy of the moment was broken.

Gavin gave him a hug before they parted ways after closing the store. “Thanks for listening to me complain. I know I’m supposed to be the alpha—”

“Youarethe alpha. You’ve just got to remember that alpha doesn’t mean perfect. You’re still human. We screw up, we make mistakes, and some of us lie. What matters is how we handle things after the screw up. You know that.”

Gavin nodded, and they each got in their cars to head for their boyfriends. Ash hoped Miles and Gavin figured it out. Miles was a good guy, and he’d make a great pack member, human or wolf.

But Ash had a baker to get home to and some tacos to devour.

21

bad guy

The chocolate part of chocolate croissants was the easy bit. He could have just rolled some plain old chocolate chips in them, and even though the potential for messiness increased that way, it would have worked fine.

No, it was the croissant dough that required a painstaking process of turning, rolling, folding, and repeated refrigeration to make sure the block stayed very cold throughout the process. He wondered if maybe he should keep a half dozen batches of dough in various stages of doneness, so he could have one ready every morning.

Sawyer had dropped him off and headed out for the movies with Dez. It was sweet that they were meeting for a date night, and Graham was a little jealous.

That was baseless, since Ash would be home in a few hours, and they would have dinner and play some silly video game and then hopefully have a lot more sex. All the sex.

He couldn’t help smiling at that. He’d always thought if he had sex, it would be a perfunctory sort of thing, required to try to make a baby. Fortunately, no one at the enclave had ever been interested. It didn’t matter that Ash’s mother had been an omega, everyone at the enclave associated omega with weakness, so they didn’t want the chance of an omega baby.

The door opened, and it took him a moment to realize it had been the back door. Joseph, then.

He and Graham had hardly said two words to each other since his arrival, and as unfortunate as that was, Graham couldn’t make it important to him. Joseph was fine without being Graham’s friend, and the opposite was definitely true.

Graham kept rolling out his dough as Joseph came into the kitchen, took a glass from the cupboard next to the fridge, and poured himself a drink.

When the man spoke, he almost jumped out of his skin despite being aware of him. “What are you making?”

“Um, croissants. With chocolate.” He stretched his shoulders out a little and went back to gently flattening the dough.

“You’ve learned a lot of new things since you left the enclave,” Joseph said, and something about him mentioning the enclave made Graham shiver.

“Yes. I have a recipe book.” Saying it like that made it sound like nothing when really, Ash buying him a book about cooking, completely unasked, had been one of the high points in Graham’s life so far. It had been the first time someone considered what he liked and gotten him a gift related to it.

Joseph wandered by him, looking his dough over, and settled himself into a chair across from Graham, a glass of water in his hands. Odd, he’d thought he heard him pour something from the fridge, like juice or milk.

“How are things going with Ash?”

The question made him freeze and stare at the other man. “What?”

“What?”

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