Micah’s eyes widened, and he whistled softly. “Wow. What did you learn about us?”
“I have great hearing, and you know why. I’d picked up pieces of your conversations at the Grizzly and put them together enough to find out that you guys weren’t running any kind of regular research facility, and your team is black ops of some sort. And that you’re wolves, and Kalen is a panther.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
“Your commander won’t be happy when he finds out.”
Micah laughed, and the reason soon became clear. “He might know already. He’s not just a born wolf. He’s a rare white breed, and a PreCog.”
She gaped at him. “You’re kidding.”
“No. His white coat signifies his status among his kind as a Seer. So, basically, he knows stuff. Sometimes stuff we don’t want him to know.”
That made her laugh. The waiter brought their drinks and took their order. Jacee went for a filet mignon and Micah asked for a big ribeye, both with salads and baked potatoes. Her stomach rumbled just thinking about the meal, but the real feast was right in front of her eyes.
Micah told her some about growing up, and she was surprised to find out that he was actually two years younger than his sister, Rowan. Jacee had trouble thinking of him as the “little” brother when the fine specimen of a man with her was anything but small. As he related tales of him and Rowan getting into trouble in the barrio as teens, she enjoyed observing his expression and his mannerisms when he spoke. He was so animated and funny.
“Rowan was always much more of a hellion than me,” he asserted smugly. “It’s a wonder she turned out to be a cop. Mama was sure she’d end up in juvie, especially after she stole twenty packages of hot dogs from the grocery store.”
“But you were the perfect child?”
“Of course!”
“I’ll bet. What the heck did she do with that many packages of hot dogs?”
“Did you know you can draw on a hot dog with a Sharpie?”
“Um, no,” she said with a giggle.
“Well, you can. Rowan had me help her draw googly faces on all the wieners, and then we stuck them in all the neighbors’ mailboxes and on their front porches.”
“Oh, my God! Didn’t you get in trouble, too?”
“Sure, I did. But I didn’t know she’d stolen them, even though Mama smacked me in the head and yelled at me to use my brain, and where the hell did I think she’d gotten two hundred wieners?”
Jacee snickered. The image was pretty humorous. “How did she get them out of the store?”
“She didn’t. She pinched them off the delivery truck in the alley behind the store after the guy ducked inside for a few minutes. Mama was so pissed, she marched us down there and made Rowan confess, and me, too, for my part in the escapade. We had to scrub floors and stock shelves for a week to pay for the defiled dogs.”
Jacee couldn’t help but laugh out loud, and the waiter arrived at that moment with their food. He gave them an indulgent smile, served up, and after seeing if they needed anything else, disappeared. They ate companionably, and she basked in being near Micah. At one point she noticed he didn’t seem to be eating as much as he should, but she didn’t think more of it because he seemed fine.
They chatted for the rest of their meal, and if Micah had noticed that she hadn’t divulged any history about her family, he didn’t mention it. She was grateful. She loved her family still, but talking about them was hard. Emotional. And she didn’t want anything to spoil this lovely dinner.
They each had another drink and sipped for a while, but declined dessert, being too full. After they were done, he paid the tab, as promised, refusing to allow her to even get the tip. Even Jax, as nice a man as he was, had never bought her a meal. Never paid her much attention. She was beginning to adore Micah.
Outside, he helped her into the car again, and they were soon on their way. He drove in silence for a few minutes, and she noted they were headed out of town, in the direction of his compound. Night had fallen, and the sky was clear, twinkling with stars.
“You still up for that run? Or, if you’re too full, we can just walk.”
“A run sounds great, actually.” Her coyote yipped in agreement. “I need to burn off all that energy from that great food.”
“I know the perfect place. We won’t go all the way to the compound, but we’ll go for our run in an area not too far from it. There’re other places we can go, but for miles around our facility, the land is warded.”
She peered at his profile in the darkness. “Warded?”
“By a protection spell. Kalen is a Sorcerer and Necromancer. He’s quite powerful, and he placed a ward around the grounds a while back when we were having trouble with an Unseelie King and his Sluagh. And before you ask, the Sluagh are fallen Seelie who went over to the dark side, so to speak. They used to be beautiful Fae, then chose to ‘fall’ and serve the evil
Unseelie, and so their beauty was taken from them. They become mindless drones, their only purpose to do what the Unseelie king says—which is usually to maim and kill.”