~oOo~
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The Haddon house waspretty typical on the inside, too. Cluttered and comfortable, the furniture worn without being threadbare and sort of mismatched without being chaotic. Like a family lived there. Didn’t look much different from his own house, honestly. His mom’s occasional attempts to redecorate or remodel had usually been overwhelmed by the men and dogs stampeding every direction through it. When Zach and Jay had demolished a third coffee table while wrestling in the living room, she’d simply given up on coffee tables.
As the Bulls piled inside, Ben introduced them to the younger man, his son, Reed. Reed was tall and built strong. He looked a lot like his dad, with wavier hair and a readier smile. Reed shook hands with them all and got their names, then ushered all the Bulls but Eight through the house, out the sliding glass door in the kitchen—also comfy and cluttered—and into their back yard.
Like the front, the back was pea gravel instead of grass, but this area looked more like part of the house. Just off the house was a wide slab patio, covered with a retractable awning. On the patio was a big gas grill in a small patio-kitchen setup—not the kind a contractor built, but one of those things you could buy at Lowe’s with your grill. A glass-topped oblong table with six spinning, padded chairs sat on the patio as well. A few clusters of brightly painted clay pots held succulents and other desert-friendly plants.
Beyond the patio, the varicolored gravel rolled out to cover the large space, enclosed with cedar fencing. Under a strange, leafy tree that seemed to have a cluster of thin trunks rather than one thick one, eight Adirondack chairs circled a fire pit.
Reed hit a switch somewhere, and the whole yard lit up. Besides the two lights on the house, white mini-lights were draped in the tree, and larger, ball-shaped lights were strung all along the fence.
“This is cool!” Jay enthused, strolling into the yard. “There’s a doghouse back here. A big one. You guys got a dog?” he asked Reed.
Reed grinned. “Yeah. Brutus. He needs a careful introduction. I’ll bring him out if you want, but I mean it, you gotta be cool until he’s figured out you’re cool.”
That got Zach’s interest piqued. His family had always had big dogs, usually pitties, the kind people were afraid of. Marv and Rose, their current babies, had been rescued from a fighting ring and werereallyanxious around unfamiliar ... everything. A dog trained to fight was aggressive when anxious. They had a precise routine for introducing new things, and it had to be followed to the letter or they had two 100+-pound murder machines on their hands.
He loved dogs other people feared. There was no such thing as a bad dog, but there were phenomenally shitty humans. He saw Jay looking eager for the same reason, and saw that Dex’s interest was piqued as well. Dex had a side gig as a dog hero, saving every lost cause he came upon.
Actually, he did that for more than dogs. He had a side gig as a hero, full stop.
“We know tough dogs,” Dex said.
“Okay. Hold up. Everybody want a beer? I’ll bring those out, too.”
Of course they all wanted beer. Reed went in, and Zach went to the fence and looked out at the landscape. The house was on a corner, so it didn’t take much for him to see toward the front and that miles-long view. There was still a shred of daylight brushing a faint glow on the distant mountains.
A light breeze kicked up and raised gooseflesh on Zach’s arms. It had been broiling hot all day, but with the end of the sun, the temperature was dropping noticeably.
Gargo came up and stood at his side. He took in the view for a moment before he said, “Every time I look over, you’re staring at the horizon. You like it out here.”
“Yeah.”
“Leaving family doesn’t really get hard till you’ve already done it.”
“What?”
With nothing more than a shrug, Gargo turned away. What a weird fuck.
The door slid open, and Eight and Ben came out. Ben was carrying a big blue Igloo cooler. He set that down on the patio and lifted the lid on the grill.
As Zach followed Gargo to the beer, Reed slid the door open. Before he came out, he said, “Everybody cool?”
“Like ice,” Jay answered, pulling a bottle from the Igloo.
Reed came through, leading quite literally the largest dog Zach had ever seen. A full, dense coat of black fur, tipped with grey. A long black snout. Tall black ears. And bright gold eyes that seemed to emit actual light from the darkness of that head.
That beast was not a dog. That was a wolf. Like a fuckingdire wolf. The hell?
Jay obviously had the same thought. “Holy shit!” he exclaimed. “Winter is fucking coming!”
Reed grinned. He brushed his hand along the beast’s long, tall back—to be clear, Reed was tall, like mid six feet range, but he did not have to bend at all to stroke his dog’s back—and the dog sat. “This is Brutus. He’s about sixty percent grey wolf. The rest is shepherd, Akita, and a bunch of other stuff. He’s a goof unless you cross him. The asshole who bred him wanted him mean, so he has some trust issues.”
“How do I not cross him?” Jay asked, about to take a step toward the dog.
Dex caught his arm and held him in place. “Let him answer before you go in, JJ. You know better.”