Something tickled at the side of his neck, a whuffle of air and short whiskers, and Neal snapped around to find that the gazelle had come closer to him than he had ever seen her, big eyes and mobile ears all focused on him. Familiar tension ran in every muscle along her neck. He saw that same tension in the mirror every day.
“There was a time you wouldn't have been able to get within a hundred yards without me noticing you,” he told it dryly, letting his fists fall open with effort.
The gazelle only blinked in reply. There was a time she wouldn't have come within a hundred yards at all.
“I'm pretty awful at being a human being anymore,” he continued conversationally. “Maybe I should have stayed in Beehag's zoo.”
The gazelle snorted and Neal swore she actually rolled her eyes.
Even suggesting it sarcastically gave Neal chills and sweats. He could still remember the cold feeling of the bars as he pressed against them, and the hot electric shocks that had been applied when he had tried to stubbornly remain in human form. He groaned and rolled his shoulders back.
“She's better off without me,” he said firmly. “She doesn't need the mess that is me in her life.”
Ears twitching, the gazelle dropped her nose to the hand that Neal had made into a fist again and touched it tentatively.
As far as Neal was aware, it was the first touch that she had tolerated since her release, and the honor of that penetrated his shell of self-pity.
He held his breath, not wanting to startle her away again.
“Neal.”
The moment was broken by a completely unwelcome voice, and the gazelle was bounding away before he could even move to reassure her.
He was all prickles and anger and fury as he turned to face Scarlet.
/>
The resort owner was dressed in a pressed khaki suit with a skirt to her knees, and her hair, redder even than his own, was pulled in a tidy bun at the back of her head.
“You missed another staff meeting,” she said, not sitting.
He stood up, not comfortable being shorter than her, but towering over her by half a foot did not seem to intimidate her in the least. She only gave him a flinty emerald gaze, her chin uplifted as she waited for his explanation.
“I'm sorry,” he ground out, knowing he sounded anything but.
Unexpectedly, her face softened to pity, and she gestured him to sit as she did the same, with all the confidence of a queen. Neal stubbornly remained standing, not wanting her pity.
“Neal,” Scarlet said more gently. “You came to us under unusual circumstances, and you've worked hard to make yourself a place here.”
Until this last week, Neal would have agreed with her. He didn't give her the satisfaction of a response.
“You've also been invaluable with the other refugees from Beehag's estate,” Scarlet observed, which wasn't something that Neal had realized she knew about.
He continued to offer only the stoniest of faces.
“Most of them have been reunited with family and returned home now,” Scarlet went on, unfazed by his lack of response. “And I'm not blind to the fact that you've played a large role in preparing them for that transition.” She gestured across the lawn, and Neal noticed that the gazelle had not fled far, and was still standing in earshot, head upright.
“There's a limit, though.” Scarlet's voice took on an edge. “To my patience, and to yours.”
Neal braced himself.
“Shifting Sands is not your home,” she said, like ice.
Neal almost had to sit. She was... firing him? Kicking him out? His first reaction was anger, followed by a drifting uncertainty and mournful feeling that she was right to. He buried it all behind an unwavering scowl, as deeply as he was burying his own wolf.
“You cannot make yourself whole here,” she said, with a lofty matter-of-fact-ness. “And I don't have the resources to pander to your cowardice forever.”
Cowardice? No one had ever accused him of that – no one had ever dared, and Neal was not sure how to take it from the manicured woman who sat before him with her hands folded easily in her lap.