Drew, Pauline’s foster son, was following behind her. “I don’t do that,” he objected. “I mean. Not anymore.”
Eva turned back to him, the critical expression dropping off of her face. “You’re different,” she said.
“Yes, yes, young people are infinitely superior to old people,” Lynn said. “We get it.”
“Aunt Lynn, that’s not what I meant—”
Lynn was laughing, and Eva turned up her nose, trying to hide the smile tugging at her own lips. “You know that’s not what I meant,” she insisted.
Drew, meanwhile, had made his way over to Misty’s side. “Um,” he said.
Misty turned to him. “Yes? What’s up?” She wondered if he’d had any more trouble with the wolves lately. Maybe Zeke and Ryder were giving him a hard time?
“I just wanted to say thanks, too,” he said quietly. “You could’ve put me in jail this summer if you wanted to. I’m really glad you didn’t. Really...really glad. If there’s anything I can do...?”
Misty felt like her whole body softened in response to his words. Why couldn’t all teenagers be earnest like Drew? “I don’t want you thinking I went above and beyond the call of duty,” she told him. “I felt bad for you, but also, it didn’t make any sense to arrest you when getting information on the gang you’d met was so much more important. And you can help me out by staying out of my professional eye from now on. Maybe get yourself a college education.”
Drew nodded vigorously. “I promise. My lawbreaking days are in the past.” He cracked a tiny smile. “And I applied to a bunch of colleges already.”
“Good,” Misty said. She looked over his shoulder at Eva, who was hovering just behind.
“Don’t worry, Sheriff Dale,” Eva said firmly. “He’s telling you the truth.”
“I never doubted it,” she told Drew. He blushed.
“Thanks,” he repeated, and backed away to fade into the crowd.
Ty, meanwhile, had turned away from his crowd of friends and was looking back at her. “Misty,” he said, “come on. Meet everyone.”
“I do know everyone already,” she reminded him, coming forward anyway. “Colonel Hanes, good to see you again. Carlos, hello. Nate, Ken.”
“Good to see you, too, Sheriff,” the Colonel said, shaking her hand firmly. “Call me Wilson, I’m retired anyway.”
“Well, I’m not retiring anytime soon, but you’re still welcome to call me Misty,” Misty said, which got her a hearty laugh.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he told her. “Misty. You’re a force for justice in the town. My men and their mates would’ve had a much more difficult time these last few months, if there’d been a sheriff who was less committed to her job, or more partisan about local concerns.”
“You can be sure that I’ll work hard to avoid that,” she said fervently. “My father, who was sheriff when I was a kid, was very firm about not allowing pack bonds to affect adherence to the law. We are humans, after all, as well as animals.”
“We are indeed,” the Colonel said approvingly. “He sounds like he was a good man.”
“The best,” she said quietly.
The Colonel—she was going to have to start trying to call him Wilson, now that he’d asked her to; he was just so imposing that it was difficult to think of him that way—clapped her on the shoulder. “And you’re following in his footsteps, from what I’ve seen.”
“She’s sure doing a good job at keeping the peace,” Ken put in next to them. “I’ve never seen anyone whip five crazed wolf shifters into shape, and into handcuffs, as fast as you did that one time.”
Misty had not anticipated the evening becoming some kind of...paean to her skills as a law enforcement officer. “If I recall correctly, Carlos had fought them to a standstill all by himself already,” she pointed out. “All I had to do was hand out the cuffs and point to where they needed to go.”
“You did a little more than that,” Carlos objected. “If you hadn’t arrived when you did, things could’ve gone very, very badly.”
“Because they thought they were facing only one other shifter,” Misty said. “Just the presence of a show of force—”
“All right, all right!” Ty interrupted, laughing. “Can we just agree that we’re all heroes and leave it at that? Everyone did a fantastic job.” A beat. “Especially Misty.”
“You weren’t even there,” Misty objected, and then everyone started to laugh, and she couldn’t be heard over it, and had to give up.
“Are you guys giving Misty a hard time?” Stella asked, coming up behind them, and the laughter erupted again.