Austin handed a Bud across the bar, and Sir Stares-a-Lot leaned forward to grab it. Next up, he finished pouring what was left in my bottle of beer, and backed me up with another. Niamh got two bottles of cider. For himself he poured a whiskey.

Austin came back around the bar, stopping behind me and reaching over me to put his drink next to mine. His smell stole over me—clean cotton, sweet spice, and a little sweat mixed in. Masculine. He pulled a chair over and settled onto it, his knee rubbing against mine. “Let them in, Jess.”

I tugged away the spells and opened the bar door. “I didn’t know it would’ve been okay to let them stay.”

“No, you did good. Kace submitted quickly. It calmed things down.”

Speaking of whom, Kace didn’t leave the bar. He took a seat at the other end, ripped shirt and all, quickly joined by two others. I hoped he wasn’t embarrassed.

“He’s fine,” Austin said softly, pushing my hair off my shoulder before grabbing his drink. “This isn’t like the Dick and Jane world. We’re all good now.”

“Hey, Miss Jessie, are you okay?” Ulric hustled over to us, his eyes lingering on Sir Stares-a-Lot for a moment before landing on Austin. “Alpha, everything okay?”

“Yes. Just a misunderstanding,” Austin said, transferring his glass to the other hand and resting his arm over the back of my chair.

Ulric pointed at me, needing the final say-so, and I gave him a thumbs-up. “You guys can go, if you want. Or…whatever you want to do.”

Ulric swung the finger to Sir Stares-a-Lot, a silent question for Austin, wondering about the danger level.

“Jess, Ulric, Niamh,” Austin said, “meet Kingsley, my brother.”

Nineteen

“Any fool could’ve seen that coming,” Niamh said, her ice cubes chasing each other around the glass.

I raised my hand. “Not this fool.”

Ulric stepped back, behind Sir Brother-Who-Stares-a-Lot, and gave me a sympathetic grimace before heading off to talk to the woman he’d called dibs on earlier.

“Kingsley, this is Jess, a good friend of mine,” Austin said. “And Niamh, part of the Ivy House crew.”

“Good to meet you both,” Kingsley said, but instead of shaking my hand, he kept up that unwavering stare. “This Ivy House—you mentioned it on the phone. We are helping you defend the heir. That is…”

I raised my hand.

“And you were…a Jane before all this, is that right? But somehow you’re now a female gargoyle?”

His expression didn’t change, but his tone conveyed his utter confusion.

Fair enough.

“Where did Ulric go? He likes telling stories,” I said.

Austin pulled his arm away from my chair and stood. “I’ll send him over. There’s some stuff I need to take care of, but I’ll head back in time to answer questions. Yes?”

“I can’t say this isn’t going to end badly for you,” I told him.

His smile was slight, but it was there. That was twice tonight. Maybe he’d bought another bit of time with his last outburst.

“Hey, real quick…” I hopped up and put a hand on his hard bicep, directing him away a little and reducing my voice. Shifters had excellent hearing, but he dipped his head closer anyway. “The flying-off-the-handle thing… How can we compromise on that? I don’t like when you lose yourself to the shadows. I also don’t like trying to come up with ways to let guys down gently. So maybe you can lean on them a little, use just a smidge of rage, I don’t have to be the bad guy, and we all win. Doesn’t that sound nice?”

He ran his thumb across the edge of my lower lip, over my chin, and down the front of my throat. Something about that touch, and his liquid cobalt eyes, made me shiver, and also turned my body to flame.

“We’ll talk about it, okay? I promise you. Now’s not the time, though.”

“Totally. I’m good with using a place marker.”

He nodded and dropped his hand. “Talk to you soon. Don’t stress my brother out too much.”

“Stress him out?” I murmured, making my way back to my seat. “He stresses me out.”

“You don’t like when he opens up to his beast?” Kingsley asked me after I’d sat down.

“Now who is eavesdropping on private conversations?”

“It isn’t so private when it’s in a bar.”

“So then why’d you say it in the first place?”

He studied me for a while, and I knew his visit was going to feel really long. Then it occurred to me that he was still waiting for an answer.

“Oh, uh…” I shrugged. “You know his past, so I don’t have to tell you about that. Not that I would—it’s not my place. He doesn’t want any recurrences, and I don’t like seeing him…out of sorts.”

“Troubled,” Niamh said.

“Right. I didn’t know if I could describe a shifter as troubled.” I took another sip of my beer.

“You know nothing about shifters?” Kingsley asked.

“I only learned shifters existed less than a year ago.” I paused for a moment. “I sure wish you’d allow in some emotion. It’s like speaking to a cyborg.”

Niamh laughed. “He is practically yelling his confusion at you right now. He does it in body positioning. Don’t tell the mage, though. He’s much too interested in shifters, if you ask me.”

“Yes, the mage. I’d like to hear why you have one hanging around,” Kingsley said, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Ah.” I nodded and pointed. “An action. That’s better. I can work with that.”

“She still doesn’t know what it means.” Niamh laughed harder, bending over her cider. I figured she wasn’t talking about the crossed arms—that message seemed obvious—but about whatever Austin had mentioned to Kace.

“What a stupid end to a crappy day,” I mumbled. “Anyway, it’s very helpful when Austin gets super violent in a battle, but when it happens in the bar, because someone has disrespected me or whatever, then no, I don’t like it. The mage is here to help train me. I’m new to everything, including my magic.”

“That maggot the other day had it coming.” Niamh shook her head. “Talking about that sorry excuse for an alpha taking you and being quick about knocking you up? You should’ve let Austin finish him.”

Kingsley stiffened. “Tell the story.”

“Say please,” Niamh replied.

He didn’t, and she didn’t push.

After she was done, he reverted to staring at me. “You pulled him back?”

“Yes,” I said. “He doesn’t want to go to that place. I caused it, so I figured I should fix it.”

“But you did. You did.”

“Well, yeah. I made everyone else leave the bar.”

“You forced everyone out like you did today?” Kingsley asked.

I nodded.

“And you were obviously the one who trapped me in.” The growl riding his words was evident. He was not amused.

“Yes. I didn’t know whether it was okay for everyone to see Austin…do his thing. The last time he was glad people hadn’t witnessed him lose control.”

“Tell me about Ivy House,” Kingsley said, and I didn’t even mind that it was a command. I was not an accomplished storyteller, which meant I had a ready excuse to get up and grab Ulric, since Austin hadn’t made it to him yet. Within seconds, Ulric had Kingsley captivated with what hopefully would be a long and drawn-out version of Ivy House history.

I turned back toward the bar, hoping to catch Austin as he walked past, but he was already down at the opposite end, speaking to Kace and the others.

“Is this how it’s going to be going forward?” I asked Niamh, doing a quick check of all the magical links, re-muting all of them but my connection to Austin. “All this drama?”

“Nah.” Niamh poured cider into her glass, the sparkling liquid rushing through the ice. “After the territory is in full swing, it’ll be mostly like before, just with more powerful people who hopefully talk a little less.”

“Kingsley originally said mage magic wasn’t allowed in here.”

Just for kicks, I tried to completely cut off the link between Austin and me, both the input and output.

His head snapped toward me, his eyes hard. Reinstating the link, I felt his confusion and wariness.

“Ack.” Niamh leaned her elbow against the bar. “He was trying to get a rise outta ya. See what you’d do. Yer not supposed to use magic in a social place like this, where people are trying to let off a little steam, but it doesn’t need to be said. He was just throwing his weight around to see if you’d push back.”

“I did. I threatened him.”

“Good girl, yerself. Right bold of ’im to walk into someone else’s home and start barking orders.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Also, I’m just in a piss-poor mood.”

“Yeah. These shifters are laying it on a little thick, so they are, with all the brooding and strutting around. Bunch o’ donkeys.”

I amplified the sensitivity of my link with Austin now, experimenting with him because I could see him, and also because he wouldn’t get annoyed and give me a box, as Niamh would say (and do). It wasn’t just his emotions I could feel now, but his senses—the whiffs of identifying scents, the cool glass under his fingers, the dried sweat clinging to his body from hard work earlier.

His eyes drifted back toward me, having looked away after I’d reinstated the link. Arousal licked up my middle, and I couldn’t tell if that was from him or me. Memories of our late-night activities crowded my mind. We still hadn’t talked about our new…pastime, but we also hadn’t stopped it. I wondered if he’d be around tonight, or if he’d be too busy with pack business.