“Who’d been where?” Niamh asked as she returned from the bathroom. “Ah, bejaysus, what are you doing here, you filthy bugger?”
I turned back to find Sasquatch approaching the empty seat to my right. He hated me, I hated him, yet he always sat near me. Why, I had no idea. To make us both miserable, I guessed.
He didn’t say a word as he took his seat.
Austin nodded at him, his way of asking Sasquatch what he wanted to drink.
“Usual,” Sasquatch said.
Austin’s shoulder flexed as he pushed open the door of the cooler that held some of the bottled beer. His bicep flexed as he reached in and took out a brown bottle with a silver label. His large and gloriously muscled back flared as he turned away from me to pop the top. When he turned back, his pecs popped under his shirt.
“What in the hell?” Sasquatch mumbled, catching the show.
“He’s doing that for you,” I told him as Austin set the bottle down. “He likes you.”
Sasquatch scowled at me, but he knew better than to insult me in front of Austin. At this point in his existence, he was clearly tired of being punched and thrown off his barstool.
Yet he still kept sitting next to me. It made absolutely no sense.
“Those mages had been staying a town over basically since I accepted the magic,” I told Niamh, running my fingers down the stem of my glass. “They’d been watching me the whole time. Probably most of the mages we encountered were doing the same.”
“We’re good now, though.” Austin resumed his lean. “I’m setting up defensive measures and lookouts. There’s a lot of work to be done before this town becomes a well-oiled machine, but that was obviously step one.”
There hadn’t been any sort of ceremony by which Austin had officially taken the alpha role. He didn’t tell anyone or say anything about his change in status, but he had stopped correcting people when they used the title. Niamh said there had been a few other minor adjustments in the way he acted, but they were apparently too subtle for me to notice.
“What kind of work?” I asked.
He reached up to rub the back of his neck, his bicep flaring and torso hardening. Sasquatch jerked, leaned back, and scowled before shooting me an accusing look, clearly not liking the muscle show and blaming me for it.
“You chose to sit here. This isn’t my fault,” I said, chuckling.
“It’s nice to look at, but aye, it is a bit strange, all right,” Niamh mumbled.
“Just trying to get even,” Austin said, his smile wide, showing his straight, even teeth, boosting his handsomeness tenfold. My stomach fluttered and I pulled my gaze away. “Just trying to prove that I’m not the only one who looks.”
My face heated as I remembered his reaction to seeing me naked in that cave. Remembered the hard heat pressed against me.
I shivered even as heat pooled in my pounding core. “Little do you know, you’re just making a fool of yourself,” I said, and took a sip of my wine.
“That right?” He turned to help someone down the way, his muscular butt flexing.
Sasquatch flinched again and yanked his head the other way, catching me looking. He rolled his eyes and directed his gaze straight ahead. “You’re the cause of it.”
“You are as sharp as a tack, boy. Nothing gets past you, does it?” Niamh said to him.
“Austin means to replace the local Dick government with magical people, bring in magical people to buy out the shops and wineries,” Niamh said, “and work a lot more closely with the local police. As the alpha, he needs to run the town, and to do that, he needs more magical blood in it.”
“He can do all that?” I asked, awestruck. “The government and wineries and everything?”
“Ah.” She tapped the bar with her finger. “That’s the question, isn’t it? We shall see.”
“Yeah, he can.” Sasquatch lifted his bottle in a salute. “Won’t be a problem for the likes of him. You just wait. We’ll be the most prosperous territory in the southwest. Maybe all of the west. Maybe—”
“Whoa, whoa, there, lad, yer startin’ to sound absurd.” Niamh leaned around me to shoot Sasquatch a look. “Go back to being friendless and mindin’ yer own business. It makes the atmosphere nicer for everyone.”
“What brought on the change, though, alpha?” Sasquatch asked as Austin worked his way back, more interested in hanging out with us than working.
Austin’s gaze delved into mine. “Someone showed me what it’s like to reach for the stars. She showed me that a new adventure is right around the corner—all you have to do is have the courage to answer its call. We can’t be afraid of change, not when there are so many rewards from embracing it.”
“Sounds like something you might read in one of them coffee table books or somethin’,” Niamh said. “The ones you get on sale because no one wants ’em.”