He'd had coffee almost every morning of his adult life, until Randolph Sebastian. He knew that.
But the specifics felt far away, too tiny and fuzzy for him to make them out. Humans drank coffee, hellhounds didn’t.
He asked for cream and sugar both. Calories, he figured. When you were starving, you chose calories.
He managed to answer some questions automatically, at least. Name? Logan Vega. (I practiced that one, he thought with grim amusement.) Yes, he was also a shifter—a hellhound—and he was also with the U.S. Marshals.
No, he couldn’t remember when he had gone missing.
No, he couldn’t remember what office he’d worked out of. Hethoughthe’d spent most of his time on the road, but he couldn’t say for sure.
No, he couldn’t think of anyone they should call now that he’d been found.
Yes, they could pet his winged greyhound.
He was vaguely aware of Iz trying to shield him from some of this, interjecting with gently phrased explanations for his patchy memory and general inability toact like a goddamn person. She stayed close to him ninety percent of the time, grounding him with a touch to his shoulder or his hand. He breathed in more of the fresh scent of her grapefruit shampoo.
He tried to keep a tight lid on the turmoil inside him, but this felt like proof that he really had missed his chance to be the true mate Iz deserved. She had brought his humanity back to life, and she had brought him back to the world, but not even she could make him into the man he used to be.
Once upon a time, he had thrived on pressure. And he’d liked being around people.
Now, stuck in a packed motel room with Iz’s team humming around him like a beehive of activity, Logan just wanted to find a quiet, dark place and retreat to it. Ideally in his hellhound form. He was practically having to hold himself in his chair, his knuckles turning white.
Too many people. It wasn’t safe.
Except heknewit was safe. These were Iz’s friends, herteam, people she’d told him about. They were people who cared enough about her to spend weeks camped out at a rundown motel. He had no reason not to trust them.
His body didn’t believe that, though. He could still feel panic jittering along his nerve endings, and it took everything he had to stay put and let the hurricane of movement go on around him.
They were setting up more search parties to comb through the forest, from what he could tell, and they were calling Iz’s mother and cousin and arranging for them to come tomorrow.
It was all fine. It made sense.
He just had to ignore the way his instincts were screaming at him to get the hell out of here and take her with him.
“Logan?”
He saw a swinging curtain of platinum blonde hair.Iz. He made himself focus on her.
“I’m here.” He rubbed his eyes, like he’d been falling asleep instead of having a covert panic attack.
There were a lot of problems that could be solved by a good night’s sleep. Somehow, he didn’t think this was one of them.
It couldn’t be solved by a picnic dinner from the all-night convenience store Iz’s team appeared to have cleaned out on their behalf, either, but that didn’t stop him from reaching for another package of nuclear-orange crackers slathered with peanut butter. He offered Iz a candy bar. It was dark chocolate and probably the closest thing the food pile had to a classy option.
“Sustenance?”
She took it with a faint smile.
He had seen her lit by firelight and then by dusk and the portal’s sunlight, and now he was seeing her by regular electric light. No matter how he looked at her—by whatever light and from whatever angle—she was still, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
She deserved so much more than the broken shell he had to offer her.
She began breaking pieces of chocolate off with her fingers. They could both keep their dignity eating a little more slowly now, since they had taken the sharp, aching edge off their hunger, but every bite still felt incredible to him. He bet it did to her too.
“It almost feels strange to be eating something that isn’t meat,” she said.
It did. He couldn’t remember the last time variety in his diet had been something other than raw meat vs. cooked meat.