He must have sensed how incredibly done with this discussion I was, since he said, “I worry about you, is all.”
“I know.”
“And I don’t want you to think this is me telling you you’re not good at what you do. You know I don’t think there’s anyone better out there.”
“I did hear the part where you called me tough, smart, and capable. That was nice.” The barista brought my latte over with a friendly smile and didn’t linger. There was a reason I left big tips here. I leaned my head against the window and was simultaneously warmed by the sun and cooled by the glass. It was lovely.
“See, I can be nice sometimes.”
“You’re nice all the time. That’s why it’s so hard to be mad at you, because then I’m the one who looks like an asshole. It’s like, look at Secret, she has a perfect husband and she’s so mean to him.”
Desmond laughed. “No one says that.”
“You’re right, no one thinks you’re perfect.”
“Oh everyone thinks I’m perfect, don’t kid yourself.”
I smiled and felt better just hearing his voice, which had been precisely what I’d needed out of this conversation. I missed him fiercely and couldn’t wait to be back in his arms a few days from now.
“I made a new friend,” I told him proudly.
“Lady friend or dude friend?”
“I guess dude friend?”
“You…guess? Is this individual gender fluid? I believe you’re supposed to ask their preferred pronouns in that instance.”
I chuckled. “Look at you, being so woke.”
“One of our new wolves is nonbinary. It’s a bit of a learning curve, but I’m trying.”
This was the thing I loved most about Desmond as a pack leader. Some alphas weren’t exactly welcoming to others if they didn’t conform to a very narrow idea of what a werewolf should be, which made it extra hard for gay wolves if their pack was homophobic. There was a lot of naked bonding time with werewolves—it went with the territory. Lucas and Desmond had never cared. If you were a wolf, you were family.
Hearing that other groups in the LGBTQ community were being embraced by our pack was nice, especially now. With supernaturals being a known element, it had to be extra hard to be both queer and supernatural. I was happy Desmond was trying to make at least one part of that easier.
“Tell me about this friend,” he reminded me.
“He’s… I’ll go with he. I’m not sure how gender dynamics work in the demon world.”
“Secret…”
“Yes, I realize in retrospect all of this sounds really weird.”
“Care to make it less weird?”
“Well, it’s sort of a long story, but I was out hunting a demon the other night, and we ended up becoming friends, and I feel okay saying that now, because he helped save all our lives last night, so he’s a good demon.”
“Your new friend is a good demon,” Desmond repeated back to me.
“Harold.”
“The demon’s name is Harold?”
“The demon won’t tell me his real name. He doesn’t want me to have the power to banish him, so he pretended to be Belphegor, one of the seven princes of Hell, but then the real Belphegor got pissed off Harold was using his name, so he was one of the first ones out when the gate to Hell opened, and now he’s in the wind somewhere, so Harold is staying with us. And we can’t banish the real Belphegor even now that we know his name, since we don’t know where he is.”
Desmond skipped over this last bit of information. “Is Harold staying with you or with the department?”
“He’s in a holding cell. I didn’t think it wise to invite a demon to live in my guestroom, even though he is wearing an incredibly handsome man at the moment.”