17

"HE likes you,” Charles said, folding up the map.

“How do you know that?” she asked.

“People he doesn’t like, he doesn’t talk to.” He started to say something else but lifted his head and stared at the door with a frown instead. “I wonder what he wants?”

Once he drew her attention to it, she heard the car drive up, too.

“Who?” she asked, but he didn’t answer, just stalked out to the living room, leaving her to follow hesitantly.

Charles jerked open the door, revealing the wolf from the funeral. Asil. He had one hand raised to knock on the door. In the other he had a bouquet of flowers, mostly yellow roses, but there were a few purple daisy-looking things, too.

Asil adjusted to the reordering of his entrance smoothly, gifting Anna with a smile while avoiding Charles’s gaze. It might have been the proper and right response to an obviously irritated wolf who was more dominant—except that his eyes were boldly locked on Anna’s.