If he truly wasn’t using me to provide a dam for his Pride, then I would damn well decide for myself whether or not to reciprocate any hypothetical interest from the world’s first stray Alpha.

I would not let my private life be scheduled or restricted by committee.

“Whoa, those aren’t paper plates!” I stopped in the entryway to the dining room, stunned by the display laid out before me.

Titus’s dining room table—a massive slab of wood shaped like a vaguely oval leaf, with copper veins running through it—was set for eight. Each place setting included a bowl nested inside a broader, shallower bowl, set on top of a large matching plate with fancy scalloped edges. There were four forks, two spoons, two knives—one laid across a small plate set to the left—and stemmed, gold-rimmed glasses for three kinds of wine, as well as a water goblet.

“It’s Titus’s mother’s china,” Brandt said as he rounded the table, setting the smallest wine glasses in place. “He said he’d skin me alive if I dropped anything.”

I ventured closer, studying the beautiful, complex scrolling pattern on the edge of the shallower bowls. “What’s the occasion?”

“I believe you’re the occasion,” Lochlan said from behind me, and I jumped, startled by his sudden appearance. Evidently, I would never get used to how quietly shifters moved around.

“Me?” My heart thudded harder, and when he smiled, I realized he could hear it.

“Don’t take it personally. He’s been looking for an excuse to use them. His mom broke them out for every holiday before she died.”

“Oh.” Yet my pulse remained elevated. The pendulum swing from paper plates to heirloom china was extreme, no matter what Loch said.

“It’s a lot of dishes, huh?” Brandt ran one finger over the gold-rimmed plate on the bottom of the nearest place setting. “This one’s called the service plate. You don’t put food on it. It stays there because there isn’t supposed to be an empty place on the table until dessert is served. So all your other plates and bowls sit on top of the service plate.”

Wow. I was way out of my league. “What’s that glass for?” I nodded at the last one, as Brandt set it carefully on the table.

“It’s the dessert wine glass.”

“Don’t look too impressed,” Loch said. “He had to look up ‘how to set a formal table’ online.”

“I had to look it up because no one else knew either,” Brandt said with a scowl.

“True,” Lochlan conceded. “We’ve never used the full set before.” He turned to Brandt. “Knox says we’ll be ready to eat in ten, and we’ll be forgoing formal dress, since our guest of honor has no luggage.” He glanced at me with a grin, and I laughed. “We got sidetracked today by the new arrival, but tomorrow, someone will take you shopping.”

“Wait, there was going to be formal dress?” Brandt appeared suddenly worried. “The most formal thing I own is my good T-shirt.”

Lochlan smoothed a loose strand of blond hair toward his bun. “Well, save it for another day. You’re off the hook.” Loch somehow looked well-put-together yet casual in a navy wool cardigan with leather elbow patches, over his black enforcer’s tee. “I have to get to the kitchen before Knox starts yelling.”

I followed Loch—and the sounds and scents of a serious culinary undertaking—to find the rest of the enforcers at work in various stations around the huge gourmet kitchen, chopping, stirring, and blending under the supervision of our illustrious chef. Knox’s tattoos were temporarily covered by an honest-to-goodness white chef’s coat with a double row of dark buttons, accented by a knee-length black apron. He definitely looked the part, and the speed and skill with which he was toasting the tops of a series of small custard-filled dishes with a tiny blowtorch said that his former restaurant’s loss was our gain.

“Wow! You’ve got your own little sweatshop in here!” I said as my gaze wandered over the meal courses, in varying stages of near-completion.

“Out!” Knox ordered, pointing toward the hallway with one finger. He never even looked up from his torch. “The guest of honor isn’t supposed to see the preparation.”

“You’re thinking of the groom seeing the bride before the wedding,” I said as I backed away from the kitchen, a smile taking up most of my face. The food smelled amazing…

“Ten minutes!” Knox called after me.

I wandered from room to room on the first floor of Titus’s home, through the theater, a formal living room centered around an enormous marble fireplace, a sunroom with huge sliding glass doors, a room with no clear purpose, other than playing video games on the massive television and mixing drinks at a full-scale bar, then into the glass-walled wine cellar nestled beneath the curving marble staircase in the foyer.

But my favorite space was an informal den, one wall of which held a collection of framed photographs of what could only be Titus’s family. Two boys, several years apart, grew in age over the course of the display. With them in most of the shots were a mother with long dark curls and a father with piercing gray eyes and a thick head of prematurely white hair.

Their clothes were nice and obviously expensive. The locations were often tropical or historical. But the family itself could have been anyone, at any time. They looked so…normal.

As I studied the pictures, the whisper of a shoe against the hardwood floor at my back warned me that I was no longer alone.

I turned to face Titus with a triumphant smile. “I heard you coming that time,” I said, and his soft laugh made me frown, even as the sound sent delicious little shivers up my spine. “You made noise on purpose, didn’t you?”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t feel fair to sneak up on you, when you’ve had so little practice listening for us.”

“I was infected four months ago. This should be coming easier for me by now, shouldn’t it?”

Titus ran one hand over his short scruff of beard, and my gaze caught there as I wondered, not for the first time, what his stubble would feel like against my palm. This time, instead of squelching the dirty fantasy that thought inspired, I let it play out a little.

Cold night. Warm bed. Bare bodies. Titus’s hands sliding over my—