Page 41 of Wolf Reborn

Miles turned and smiled at him, and he was... strangely animated. Miles wasn’t exactly laid back most of the time, but something nearing that. This night, his smile was too wide, and his foot was bobbing up and down where he had the ball of it planted on the crossbar of the chair he was perched on.

When Gavin took his seat, Miles leaned in, and both the bond between them and his scent swelled in Gavin’s awareness. He brushed their lips together, soft, but nothing even passingly resembling sweet.

When he pulled away, he licked his lower lip and stared into Gavin’s eyes, his pupils blown wide.

Across the room, Sawyer cleared his throat. “So, I don’t know how well we’ve warned you about this, Miles, but the full moon has a tendency to bring out a person’s, ah, wilder side.”

“I assumed,” Miles agreed, not breaking eye contact with Gavin. “I remember the last full moon well enough.”

Gavin’s breath caught in his chest. He wondered if anyone would mind if he and Miles skipped dinner.

“Nope,” Sawyer said, reaching in and prying their faces away from each other. “Eat first. Run second. Fuck last. And no fucking in the kitchen.”

Gavin sighed but let Sawyer push him back. As much as he wanted to drag Miles right upstairs and spend the whole night showing him just how energetic he could be on the full moon, it would be rude to change the whole pack’s full moon ritual. They always had dinner, then the run.

Gavin took a long drink of his wine, and not for the first time—or the hundred and first—wished that his metabolism hadn’t sped so much that alcohol didn’t much affect him anymore.

Last time, he’d gone through an entire half-gallon bottle of vodka, and the main reaction had been what would happen to anyone who drank a whole bottle of vodka. Well, no, he hadn’t died. He’d just thrown up. A lot.

Better to avoid that, so he just sat there, sipped his wine, and waited for his lasagne—Graham’s lasagne—which was always amazing.

He could wait to drag Miles to his room like a caveman. He glanced at Miles out of the corner of his eye, and it was easy to see Miles was doing the same.

It was going to be an interesting night.

21

Dreams

Gavin was unhappy.

That stuck in Miles’s mind the moment he walked into the house. The problem was that his mind seemed to have become a sieve that morning. The sheriff had actually sent him home early that afternoon because he kept finding him staring off into space.

“It’s the same thing my wife always does when she’s, er, coming down with something,” he’d told Miles, and then insisted he go home and “take care of yourself.”

Miles didn’t recall a lot of stories about the sheriff’s wife being sick, but he was having such a hard time focusing, there was no way to be sure of anything.

Well, anything that wasn’t Gavin.

He’d smelled him the moment he’d walked in the door, all earthy and masculine andGavin. He was the only man in the pack who used anything resembling cologne—some sandalwood-and-tobacco-scented aftershave—and it was subtle stuff, but it made him unique among all the other masculine scents in the house.

Everything about Gavin made him unique. Miles wondered if he was a bigger wolf than Dez. Maybe an enormous gray with his own bright green eyes. That would be beautiful. Not that he could think of a wolf that wasn’t, especially if it hid Gavin behind its fur.

He could be one of those tiny desert foxes with the giant ears, and Miles would still think he was beautiful. Maybe not majestic, but beautiful. And also, if that were the case, Miles would learn how to fight as a wolf to protect his adorable little fox-wolf.

All afternoon, his mind had been uncontrollably hopping from one thing to the next. He probably shouldn’t have driven himself home. Maybe on the next full moon, he would ask for the day off.

It was no wonder Gavin had been so wild that night a month earlier.

Miles gave a sly smile at the memory and reached over with his still-socked foot to slide his ankle around Gavin’s. Gavin hardly reacted outwardly—just a tiny, almost imperceptible smile—but he also leaned into the touch.

Oh yeah. Maybe Gavin was hiding it better than Miles, but he was just as affected by the moon. He wanted to run upstairs and get to the fucking too.

“Okay,” Ash said as soon as he’d eaten his second plate of lasagne. “Dishes, then run?”

Everyone agreed, and with military efficiency, the dishes were washed and put away just a few moments after the last plate was cleared.

Everyone headed for the back deck except for Gavin, who went to the fridge and pulled out the wine bottle. He poured himself another glass.

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