The smell of bacon drew me from the shower and down the stairs. Gilbert was busy in the kitchen, utensils floating in the air as he prepared breakfast. Leaving him to it, I headed to the lounge. The hound met me at the doorway; his huge jaws, closed now, were level with my chest.

“Morning. You hungry?”

He stared at me and slow-blinked.

“I’ll take that as a yes. I hope you like bacon.”

He cocked his head.

“Follow me.” I pushed the sliding doors open all the way to allow his huge bulk to slide through, but the kitchen was another story. The door was regular-sized and there was no way the hound was getting in here. He was way too wide. “Oh, shit.”

The hound studied me for a long beat and then began to shrink. Not much but enough to fit through the door.

“Well, ain’t that a neat trick?”

He followed me into the kitchen and parked his butt beside the table. A plate of bacon floated across the room and landed in front of him.

“You saved my Wila,” Gilbert said. “You get as much bacon as you want.”

The hound didn’t flinch or seem surprised by Gilbert’s presence. He simply lowered his head and snarfed the bacon. It was gone in less than two seconds, and then he raised his head to lock eyes with me. There was calm intelligence in those amber eyes.

I parked my butt on the nearest chair. “Why have you been saving me?”

The hound offered me another slow blink.

I raised a hand, fingers hovering by his head, eager to pet him but not wanting to be presumptuous. This was no ordinary animal. This was something new, something astute. He nudged my hand with his head, giving me permission, and then closed his eyes as I ran my fingers through his silken fur.

“Where did you come from, eh?” Of course he couldn’t answer me, but a warm, safe feeling shot through me.

“Oh, fuck!” Trevor said from the doorway. His tiny body was frozen in horror.

The hound opened its eyes and slowly turned its huge head in Trevor’s direction. My leg muscles contracted, ready for action if needed, but the hound merely chuffed and turned away again, nudging my hand for another petting.

I chuckled. “I think you’re safe, Trev. I don’t think he sees you as a threat.”

“Well, that’s one way to kick a guy in the balls.” Trevor warily entered the room, giving the hound a wide berth. He hopped into his seat on the opposite side of the table, side-eyeing the beast. “This is the creature that saved you?”

“Yep.” I continued to stroke the hound, and he laid his head on my lap and closed his eyes.

“Trust me, he looked a lot more ferocious when he was scaring off the Lupin and ripping the shit out of the Lost underground.” I examined the hound’s side, probing gently with my fingers, and sure enough there was scar tissue from the spear a Shedim had jammed into its side under the mausoleum. “He’s saved me too many times.” I looked up. “I’m not going to kick him out if he wants to stick around.”

Trevor sighed. “I guess you can’t. And as long as he keeps his chompers to himself, we’re good.”

The hound opened one eye to glare at Trevor, then closed it again with a harrumph.

I chuckled. “I think you have an agreement.”

“Good, because I’m fucking starving.”

Gilbert placed a plate of bacon in front of Trevor and a cup of tea and a bacon sandwich in front of me.

“Thanks, Gilbert. I don’t know what we’d do without you.”

“Starve,” Trevor said around a mouthful of food. “Or die of food poisoning, because you can’t cook for shit.”

“Hey, I can cook just fine. I just need a mobile phone and a takeout menu to do it.”

Trevor snorted. “Speaking of mobile phones, where’s the video of razor mouth doing the fandango?”

“Azren was dancing?” Gilbert sounded amused.

“Yeah, but not the fandango.” I whipped out my phone and loaded up the video. “Check it out.” Music filtered from my phone, covered by hoots of encouragement, and there was Azren, snake-hipping his way all over the table.

Trevor choked and then spat out a gob of masticated bacon. Gilbert let out a guffaw.

“Ahem.”

Azren stood in the doorway, hair still damp from the shower, still slightly pale but upright and coherent. “You will delete that.”

I tucked my phone into my bra. “Not happening, dude.”

He stalked toward me, but the hound reared its head and speared Azren with amber eyes and a chest-rumbling growl.

“Ha!” I stuck out my tongue.

Azren exhaled, composed his features, and then looked down at the hound. “He knows I don’t mean to hurt you. Merely remove unauthorized content featuring me from your mobile device.”

The hound stopped growling and backed up, and heck, was that a glint of amusement in its fiery eyes? But Azren was making a move at me, and there was no way he was getting that video. Chair scraping on tile, I stumbled up and tried to dodge, but his powerful frame had me pinned to the counter, groin to groin.

I tilted my chin in challenge. “You wouldn’t dare.”

His hand dove down the front of my top.

My pulse spiked at all the contact. “Hey!”

His fingers grazed my breast, calloused and deft, and my sexy dream surged to the surface of my mind’s eye. Heat surged through me, staining my neck and spreading along my collarbones in an unwelcome flush that had a gasp tumbling from my lips. Azren froze, his hand still inappropriately placed. His jade gaze fell to my parted mouth, and a new pressure exerted itself against my groin. My eyes widened, but Azren didn’t seem fazed. In fact, his attention was still on my mouth, hungry and wanton. Oh, God. Was he reading my mind? Because, of course, he could do that. He’d promised not to, but ... My stomach flipped and clenched. Pancakes, think about pancakes.

“Wila?” Tay said from the doorway.

Azren slowly released me and stepped back, both hands in the air as if in surrender. My phone was still safe. Still tucked in my bra, but my breasts tingled from the brush of his fingers, and it took everything I had to tear my gaze from him and focus on Taylem. And fuck did the troll blood look pissed.

“Problem?” His tone was even, but I knew from experience things could go from even to unstable in a matter of seconds if Tay lost it.

“We’re cool.” I adjusted my top. “Azren just wanted me to delete the video of him dancing off my phone. I declined, and he decided to take matters into his own hands.”

“It looked like he was taking more than matters into his own hand,” Tay said dryly.

Azren pulled out a chair, grabbed a fistful of bacon off the plate Gilbert had placed in the center of the table, and began to eat. “You’ll delete that video,” he said with his mouth full.

I snorted. “Like hell.”

“You have to sleep sometime.”

“Trust me,” Trevor said. “You do not want to enter her room, not unless you’re colorblind.”

Gilbert chuckled.

“Shut it, the lot of you. There is nothing wrong with the color pink.”

Taylem’s brows shot up. “Your bedroom is pink?”

“Wouldn’t you know that,” Azren said snidely.

Taylem went very still, and then he pulled out a chair and parked his butt. “No, I wouldn’t.”

Azren looked up in surprise. The two guys did that weird silent communication thing they’d done the first time they’d met, and then Azren reached across the table and pushed the plate of bacon toward Taylem. Taylem took a rasher and popped it in his mouth, chewing slowly.

Seriously? What had just happened?

“Wila? Listen,” Gilbert prompted.

The radio turned up, and Missy’s voice echoed around the room.

“...strange sightings of feral creatures at the edge of town by the old water mill. Howls and screams. What has found its way into Arcana City now, and will the institute give a fuck?”

Gilbert turned down the volume. “It sounds like a Lost sighting to me.”

It sure did. “How the heck does she get all this information?”

“The hobo network,” Trevor said absently while scanning the Daily Vine.

“I think my ears are broken, because I thought I heard you say hobo network.”

He looked up from his paper. “Oh, come on. You must have heard of the hobo network.” He looked to Taylem. “You know, right?”

Taylem nodded slowly. “The homeless see and hear it all,” he explained. “People walk past them, pay them no mind. They’re invisible. It’s a common theory that’s where Missy gets her intel and updates.”

Well, that was pure genius and made perfect sense. The homeless population was high in Southside. They had their own network, their own little world, and the Arcana acted as if they didn’t exist.

“So, we hit the mill tonight,” Tay said. He dropped his gaze to the hound. Anywhere but on me, it seemed.

Shit. This was what I’d been afraid of, this discomfort. It wasn’t how it was meant to be.

“It seems that your hunch was correct. He’s not going to hurt you,” Tay said.

The hound stood up and padded out of the room. The vibe in the kitchen was getting increasingly weird, and there was way too much testosterone floating about, so I followed. It headed back into the lounge, lay down in the patch of sunlight streaming in through the French windows, and closed its eyes.

Well, that was anticlimactic. Urgh. So many questions and no way of getting any answers. “Hey? You got a name?”

He cracked one eye open.

“I can’t just call you hound ... Or can I? Hound. Yeah. Okay, Hound, I’m gonna go run some errands. Catch you later.”

Back in the hallway, I bumped into Tay headed for the door.

“Are you off now?” Stupid question. Of course he was.

He kept his gaze on the exit. “I need to run to the warehouse and stock up on booze. I’ll be back tonight. Six p.m.”

Hell, no. We weren’t going to start down the weird-vibe route. “Tay, come on. What? You can’t even look at me now?”

As if with great effort, he transferred his gaze to my face. His pupils dilated and my breath caught in my throat as his pain hit me. My lungs felt tight and it was my turn to drop my gaze.

“Now who’s not looking?” he asked softly.

“Tay. I just want things to go back to the way they used to be.”

“I know you do. And they will, in time.” He lifted my chin with the crook of his index finger. The corner of his mouth lifted. “Love’s like that, Wila. It can take many forms, and if I can’t have you the way I want, then I’ll find another way to love you. I just need time.”

I nodded stiffly, my lips aching to say the words that would end this awkward phase, that would allow us to be together. But it would be a lie, and I’d end up hurting him tenfold. If I couldn’t offer him my heart and soul and my fidelity, then I didn’t deserve him.

The door closed softly behind him, and I turned away to come face to face with Azren.

“He’s in love with you,” Azren said shortly. “But you know that.”

“Yeah.”

His eyes narrowed. “And you love him.”

I flinched. “Not in the way he wants. I’m not wired that way.”

He gave me a pitying smile. “Like the Draconi females. They have many lovers at the same time. They are free and yet they are bound. Maybe that is what you need?” His gaze was intense, probing.

I held up a warning finger. “Don’t you dare go poking about in my head.”

He balked. “I gave you my word I wouldn’t.”

“Not unless your liege asked you to, right?” Agitation brought my bitch out to play. “I’m sorry, that was uncalled for.”

He pressed his lips together and last night’s not so sexy dream came to mind. Valance’s face filled my mind’s eye, his lips twisting mockingly as he addressed his mother. There’d been a whip in my hand, ready to hurt him. No. Not my hand, Azren’s. And Elora’s voice had been issuing the commands. I shook my head. What the fuck was wrong with me?

I cleared my throat, shoving the dream out of my mind. “Although having several lovers at the same time sounds utterly liberating, I’m not Draconi. And on this side of the border, men may be able to take a bunch of lovers, but for a woman to do the same would label her as a whore. Not to mention the fact that most nephs don’t like to share.”

Azren arched a brow. “Well, I suppose in that regard, the Westside is more advanced and the males more mature.” He ambled up the stairs, leaving me to ponder his words. Words which echoed what the voice had said.

But wishing things were different didn’t make them so. This was my world, and I’d have to live in it. Tay deserved to be loved the way he needed to. He needed a mate for life, and as much as I ached for him, and as much as he filled my heart, I knew he wouldn’t be enough for me. I was a cavern, an empty chasm always wanting more, needing more. Better not to claim anything. Better to remain apart, to play but never get involved. Best to keep things light.

Time to forget matters of the heart and get to work. People to see, places to go, and later, some Lost arse to kick. But first, I needed to see a man about some armor-piercing bolts that hadn’t worked worth a damn on a metal monster.