83. Valek
Valek
The pet store is, frankly, disgusting.
Plague looks like he wants to burn it to the ground.
I push the cart. He refuses to touch it, and I've learned I can herd him with it by driving too close. I find this deeply amusing, but I don't dare tell him, because telling Plague a thing amuses me is the fastest way to make him stop doing it.
IVY
Get the good litter not the cheap clay one it tracks EVERYWHERE
And a scratching post. tall one. she seems like a climber
We're about halfway there, btw!
I send off a black heart emoji and turn my phone screen toward Plague. "You heard the lady."
"She's right." He plucks a bag of litter off the shelf without breaking stride, looks carefully at the ingredients, and puts it back with a slight grimace. He selects a different one that's three times the price.
Perhaps the pack should have named the cat Lucky instead of Shadow. She's about to live better than most humans.
"Are they getting closer to Cedarbrook?" he asks.
"Yes. Whiskey sent a photo a few minutes ago."
I pull it up.
Ivy on the back of Wraith's SUV's tailgate, boots dangling, holding up a giant bag of gas station gummies. Wraith's massive shadow looming nearby with an energy drink in hand, hood up, part of his scarred face still visible. He's eyeing the camera warily, but not hiding from it.
Someone needs to tell the shy alpha his hoodies cover everything but the part he's worried about.
Behind them, Hogzilla.
And Whiskey's thumb over half the lens as he grins at the camera, photobombing the entire bottom left corner of it, throwing a middle finger with the other hand.
"They look happy," Plague murmurs with a rare, soft smile. He drifts to the cat toys and begins evaluating them.
"They do," I agree, leaning on the cart and watching him.
This is new, for me.
Watching another alpha, and doing it for fun.
I have spent my whole life watching other alphas for weaknesses.
With Plague, I catch myself watching the way his hair slips loose over one ear when he leans forward, the flare of irritation and embarrassment and how his ears redden when a toy squeaks unexpectedly in his hand and he nearly drops it in his haste to put it back on the shelf.
Useless information.
I keep every last bit of it anyway.
"Why are you staring at me?" he asks without looking up.
I shrug, even though he can't see it. "You're worth staring at."
His ears go redder than they did when he announced his presence with a squeaky toy. It's cute, how often this alpha blushes. I let myself continue observing him, watching him practically crawl under my gaze.
My phone buzzes again. So does Plague's.
A reprieve for him. How lucky.
He takes it, looking down at his screen. I check mine as well. Ivy's texting the group chat.
IVY
oh! how's my villain baby doing at the vet??
btw, if I don't reply, it's because I'm about to lose signal in the mountains
VALEK
Still in her exam. The paw is likely a minor abscess, not a break.
THANE
That's great news. When is she coming home?
VALEK
We're picking her up tomorrow. They're keeping her for observation, just in case.
IVY
Ok thank gods!
take care of plague
he gets weird in pet stores
VALEK
When on earth did you have the opportunity to go to a pet store?
IVY
Whiskey likes to look at the fish
PLAGUE
I do not get weird at pet stores.
IVY
Okay
I snort at her always creative ways of calling him a liar.
Plague mutters something under his breath and pockets his phone, marching down another aisle.
I steer the cart after him, picking up a few steel bowls that won't harbor bacteria. And a bed shaped like a sofa that both Ivy and Whiskey are sure to lose their minds over. The tallest scratching post they have, too, of course. One with a tree house at the top.
Plague reads every label. I put everything he likes in the cart. We have never done a normal pack thing together, and we are, somehow, unnervingly good at it.
Somehow, this domestic bullshit is closer to a life than anything I have let myself have. That I keep waiting for the floor to fall out, and it keeps… not falling.
Unnerving.
Truly.
He keeps eyeing me, too, and I wonder if it's because he's thinking about what happened at the game. When I found a creative way to distract him. The minty taste of his mouth on my tongue is certainly stuck in my head.
His eyes drop to my mouth.
Only for a second. Then they snap back up to the shelf of cat toys he's pretending to read, and his ears go pink again.
"Perhaps we should send Ivy a new picture for her lock screen," I muse, continuing to watch him.
He picks up a feather wand, examines it, and sets it down. "Like a selfie?" he asks in that posh, innocent lilt of his, as if he has no idea what I'm talking about.
If he looked up at me, he would surely see the grin spreading across my face.
"Of course. What else?" I ask pleasantly.
I've learned that with Plague, silence works better than pressure. Push him and he retreats behind endless walls of detachment. Wait, and sometimes he comes to you.
Like a cat.