Page 58 of License to Kill

“So you could save on your electric bill?”

“Give the man a prize for basic common sense,” I muttered.

Glaring at the empty interior of my refrigerator didn’t make food appear, much to my disappointment.

“If you want something to eat, we’ll have to go out. I’m also either going to have to bribe your landlord or find someplace suitably nearby.”

“You have a house in Baltimore.”

“No, we have a house in Baltimore. You’re not there, so I don’t really enjoy living in it. I asked someone to keep the place clean and watch it while I’m here.”

“And whose fault is that?” I snapped.

“Mine.”

His answer took the wind out of my sails. “What do you want?”

“I thought it was obvious.”

“Humor me.”

“I want you to come home.”

I’d heard that story before, and I hadn’t believed it then. I still didn’t believe it. “Why should I put myself through that again? We already know how this story ends. We’ve been there before. Your parents are going to pressure you into getting rid of me so you can mate with a proper bitch, and I’ll be tossed to the curb. I’m a secretary at a law firm now, the only person outside of the technical department who isn’t a paralegal or better. I have nothing anyone in the FBI wants, and I like it that way. I have no desire to return to the FBI in any capacity, and really, I have no desire to do much of anything at all. That is my reality now, and that’s how it will be for the foreseeable future. You had your chance. You threw it away.”

I had thrown it away, too, but I kept a firm hold of the little pride I had left.

“I have definitive proof you’re my mate, which means no matter how much they may have wanted that, it’s not even an option. They can whine and cry all they want, but it won’t change anything. I know the truth now.”

I regretted my lack of a coffee maker. A little bit of coffee and a lot of whisky would have made the conversation easier to bear. The truth he believed wouldn’t save us. There was nothing left of us to save. I’d already given up, and I saw no need to change my mind about that.

I’d been discarded because I hadn’t been good enough, and I wouldn’t forget that. I wouldn’t be walked on again, nor would I allow myself to be brought back into an unwanted half-life. All being with him would do was remind me I wanted what he had, and I wanted something I could never have.

Sighing didn’t ease the building pressure in my chest. “All right. Explain, and do so with the understanding I probably won’t believe you. Explain knowing that it doesn’t matter what you say at this point. It’s not going to change anything.”

“I didn’t rut at all this winter. That’s definitive proof.”

“You’re not a buck.” It also didn’t explain anything, especially the significance of his claim. “That tells me nothing, Jake.”

“I told you Fenerec have a winter mating season. We rut. Mated pairs have two styles of rut. In a healthy relationship, it’s an extremely intense time, especially around the full moon.”

Anything dealing with Jake and a bed classified as intense, a memory that did absolutely nothing to help control my awareness of him without his shirt. “And when the pair has a failed relationship? And don’t misunderstand me, Jake. We are a failed relationship. This isn’t a ‘where do we go from here’ talk. I’m only having this conversation so maybe you can have some closure.”

“Males with a pregnant bitch and males separated from their mate fall into the same category. Zip, zilch, nada. You could’ve dropped me in a strip club during an orgy, and I wouldn’t have been interested.”

I tried to imagine Jake in a strip club during an orgy and failed. Were orgies even done at strip clubs? If so, had I just never been lucky enough to be part of that sort of bust? An orgy at a strip club would make for some interesting break room conversation.

No, I wasn’t supposed to think about the past at all—or miss things like the break room chats. “So?”

“You weren’t in the area, so I never went into rut. That’s considered definitive evidence, especially when the rutting, unmated females ignored me. I wasn’t interested in them, either. On an instinctual level, they understood I’m claimed property. It doesn’t get more definitive as that.”

“So what? What does that matter?”

“No rut, no puppies. That’s how it works. Fenerec are infertile outside of the rut. Now, there are rare circumstances where a rut out of season can be induced, but it essentially involves an epic sex marathon lasting several days to a week, where the couple does nothing but eat and keep each other company in bed. There have been couples who have tried to do it on purpose without success.”

A half-naked Jake sprawled on my couch talking about a week-long sex binge tested me far more than I liked. “And just how did you get this information?”

“That’s how I was born. Apparently, my parents took a two-week vacation and thought they wouldn’t have to worry about children since it was outside of the rut. It turns out they were wrong. Fortunately for me, Dad figured out how to stop Mom from transforming, so I made it into the world alive, which began a yearly draw for the lucky couple to have the next puppy in the pack. Dad can only handle preventing one transformation at a time, but it’s better than any of the other packs in the area. Mom has figured it out, too, which is making things easier on the pack.”