The drive was peaceful, scenic, and everything you could want from a late autumn trek into the wilderness. We got caught up in the morning commute for a few minutes before Gabe whipped us out of the city on some side trek that had far fewer people trying to swim upstream toward us. The clientele would complain about our early morning absence. They could wait. I'd gone to the shareholders meeting, been blessed over and over again by our investors, and then gone home early yesterday.
Fontaine Feeds did not need me to sit in my office every waking moment of every workday. We'd been beyond that for a while now. Yet, taking Gabe with me was a lot to ask. Leo could handle everything that Xavion couldn't. Not accounting for my pack, the rest of the staff were good humans with good heads on their shoulders. The building would still be standing when I got back to it.
"Nothing's fucking labeled this far out," Gabe snarled, poking his cell phone as it told him to turn around, again.
I leaned my head back against the headrest and tried to compose myself. "Try the alternate address."
"I've tried every damned address."
"Have you tried the rescue's name?"
Gabe stopped on the dirt road and looked over at me with the flattest expression. He picked up the phone, entered Paulineville Animal Sanctuary one letter at a time, and clicked a button. The phone happily informed us that we were at our destination. I frowned at it and got out of the car, cast a furtive glance in either direction, and lifted my nose to the wind.
Springtime, touched with cinnamon sugar and berries. There were dogs, so many dogs. They were our kin at some level and I recognized them immediately. I walked a short distance back and found an old dirt path half-hidden by trees, just about the size of a vehicle. There were recent tire tracks in the soft earth.
"Ah, hidden driveway," I muttered. "No postal service this far out, I suppose." I lifted my head and waved my arm in the air. "It's back here."
My cousin stuck his head out the window and stared at me, as if I were asking him for the world. I waited and, eventually, that head withdrew and he backed up the few hundred feet and a little past me. I slid into the passenger seat once again and we made our purposeful advance onto the property of PAS.
It was more than I'd expected. Clean, happy dogs ran in a yard full of obstacles and play equipment. An old Great Dane danced around a Cocker Spaniel carrying a stick that was half the size of the smaller dog's body. I stepped out of the car and the play stopped.
Cats yowled, birds shrieked, the dogs threw themselves at the fence and roared as one. I took another step backward, blinking. These were not the typical idiots I ran into along the sidewalks of the city. These beasts knew what I was, the missing link between wolf and man, and they weren't having it.
Well, they would need to learn to.
I walked, silent, up to the fence. The elderly Dane snapped her jaws at me and I smelled it upon her, the reek of imminent decay. She was not long for this world and though she knew it, she was ready to take me with her. I had to hand it to her that it was a brave thought, a powerful one. She wanted nothing more than to protect her caregiver and the rest of the dogs.
My hand reached out, ignoring those big teeth, and came to rest on her head. "Easy, girl. I know. I don't blame you."
The dog fell silent, staring at me with a confused notion on her face. She didn't understand, didn't gather why she wanted to tear me apart; only that she did. In her youth, she had been much more frightening. No one had dared cross her. Yet now she was losing her place among the dogs and the fact that I had taken control so easily wouldn't help that-
"Are you here for the puppy, sir?"
Gabe let out a low whistle. I didn't notice him join me, but I damned sure noticed her.
The woman stood there with her head cocked to one side, her dark hair up and out of the way. She wore a simple sweater tucked carefully over a pair of corduroy pants the same dark blue as her eyes. In her hands, she held a coffee mug that steamed in the morning cold.
And when she smiled, my whole world stopped.
My son frolicked around her ankles, like a cat who'd found a new best friend. I looked around at the dogs, who had fallen mysteriously silent at her appearance, and hopped the fence; magnificent suit and all. Tommy came running to me, his tongue falling out of his mouth. I picked him up and held him, not caring that his paws were muddy or that the dry cleaner would never get the dirt off.
He smelled like springtime just after a rainstorm, the first promise of flowers and fawns in the meadows; exactly as he should. I rubbed my lower jaw over his head, protective and reassuring. But there was another scent that caught my attention, too. It was that cinnamon sugar and berries, touched with cream so close up, the release of heat from a summer storm brewing overhead. There were fallen leaves and the warm, familiar scent that I only knew as
