“Well, I have better things to do than listen to an Aussie babble about his baby cows,” Darius stated as he rose.
Aaron, ever the puppet, rose with him. But he couldn’t resist a parting shot. “Nice chatting with you, bitch.”
“Don’t call her that.” Matt’s voice was like steel, and his eyes blazed emerald.
Aaron smirked, but I noticed his gaze slid from Matt’s. Darius walked away, content to let his beta fight his own battles.
“C’mon, Aussie,” Aaron sneered as he stepped away. “Bitch ain’t no insult for a wolf.”
Matt growled, but Aaron had already trailed in Darius’s wake.
Into the silence that followed, it was, unexpectedly, Talakai who spoke. “That went well.”
Even though it dripped sarcasm, it was acknowledgment that he’d understood my strategy. The Dragon did, indeed, have a brain beneath that rebel hair.
As Darius and Aaron wove their way through the others, I noticed Amadeus at the staff table along one wall. His yellow eyes focused on me.
I smiled brightly at him, and he frowned and looked away. It wasn’t me who’d walked from this particular team-building exercise. But I had a long way to go before this group could begin to work together.
I transferred my smile to Matt, and his beast eyes gleamed at me. At least with him and Mari, I was halfway there.
Darius was an ass, and Aaron his idiot flunky, but they might not be the biggest issues at this table. When the Dragon rose without a word to us and left, I acknowledged a problem that I might not be able to solve.
If I couldn’t break Talakai’s arrogant indifference, this team could be sunk before it ever gets afloat.
* * *
After supper, Matt, Mari, and I walked around the grounds.
“Think the running path surrounds the lake.” Matt’s long finger traced its route from beneath our feet, between the meadow and the crescent-shaped lake, and then through the trees that hugged the far shore. He looked down at Trix. “D’you keep her on her string all the time?”
“I don’t want her to get lost chasing this realm’s equivalent of a rabbit,” I explained.
He shrugged. “I can track her if she shoots off like a Bondi tram.”
I stared at him. “What?”
His brows lowered. “If she runs off.”
I sighed and leaned down to unsnap the leash. “It’ll be on your head. Better have your nose ready.”
Trix’s first response to being freed wasn’t to bound off into the meadow after theoretical rabbits, but rather to throw herself into the lake.
“I hope there aren’t any sharks.” I moved onto the shore, staring after her. “Come here, Trix!”
“I think if there had been sharks, they would have told us,” Matt said. “But keep her in the shallows, just in case.”
My silly dog found the cool water so refreshing that she bounced out of it and proceeded to run circles around us, going faster with every revolution.
Matt laughed, a wonderful, easy sound that set my heart alight. I grinned up at him. When she started ducking and dodging in figure eights with us in the center, he issued an appreciative grunt.
“Ever herd with her?” he asked.
“Herd? For that, I’d need sheep.”
“Or ducks. Or cattle. We use dogs to muster the cattle.” His gaze followed her lightning progress.
“I’ve been kinda bereft of any suitable critters for her to boss around,” I stated, but I cast a surprised look his way. “You used dogs? Couldn’t you just, you know, crouch and howl?”
