Page 94 of Junkyard Dog

Setting his fumbled words aside to think about later, she pressed on. “If you got him, why are you still here? I thought you were supposed to be gone once you got your target.”

“Miscalculation.”

She leveled him with a dead glare.

“Ryan and I believed we had the last one,” he continued, lifting his hands in surrender. “Bo had been insisting the Pirithous in Albany thirty years ago had a kid, but nothing came up in our preliminary hunt, so we walked away.” When she remained silent, he sighed. “With the last one, we’ll return to our duties in the underworld. Prowling the grounds. Scaring the residents. Getting belly rubs.” He patted his toned stomach. “Speaking of, I’m starving.”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Alex stayed tightto Charlotte’s little coupe, following her to the empty lot of a restaurant off the main road.

We can eat, but I still have questions.

Of course she did.

The calculating dark eyes, the pursing lips, the way she tilted her head while she thought through his words.

Wary as it made him, her intelligence drew him in as much now as ever.

Pulling in beside her, he took his time getting out of the SUV. With the shock of her arrival at his door waning and the apprehension of her grilling wearing off, he was coming to terms with a truth he wasn’t ready or equipped to deal with.

He missed her.

Missed her enough to recognize he’d been functioning through little more than routine for the past month. That the persistent apathy in his mind since he’d walked out of her apartment drew directly from her absence.

Missed her enough to expose everything he was.

Missed her and needed her.

“The dry ribs here are incredible, but stay away from the wings.”

He grabbed his phone and got out, tightening his grip on it when his hand instinctively reached for hers as he scanned the deserted lot. “Are you sure this is the place?”

She led him to the unwelcoming metal door and heaved it open. “We have two hours before it fills. And I have a lot of questions.”

“I don’t know how much more you could want to know,” he stated, following her to a small booth at the back of the restaurant. “I pretty well summed it all up.”

She lifted a brow as she sat, accepting the menus from the waiter with a sweet smile and waiting until he walked away with their drink orders. “Are you still you in there? Like, do you think in words or, I don’t know, barks?”

“You’re kidding, right?” He snickered, schooling his expression when she folded her hands on the table. “Words. The physical change doesn’t affect my head at all.” He paused. “I’m more interested in rabbits, though. Lizards, too. Pretty much anything I can hunt and eat.”

Her eyes widened as she unclasped her hands and lay them palms down. “Do you have any cool powers?”

“Aside from realm jumping?” he asked drily, grinning at her when she rolled her eyes and ignoring the guilt creeping through his mind over Hades’s decree. “My senses are more refined, for sure. Faster, stronger. But no, no lasers shooting from my eyes or telekinetic powers or anything cool.”

A hint of disappointment crossed her face.

And for a brief moment, he wished he was a hellhound with laser eyes.

He leaned back as the waiter placed their drinks down and took their order, resting his elbows on the table once they were alone again. “Anything else?”

“How old are you?”

He bit his lip as he did the math. “Three? Four thousand? Time was kind of irrelevant for most of my life, and I spent all but a few hundred years as a dog, so are we counting that differently?”

“I…” She shook her head. “Moving on. Where were you during the month you were gone?”

“Hades.”

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