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“Fine,” he said. “I’ll give you a damn massage. Can we go now?”

She blinked, hand pausing in her hair. She’d been expecting him to turn her down, she realized. But before he could take it back, her pouty mouth curved into a surprised smile.

“I look forward to it,” she said, bending to grab her handbag from beside her bed. “You have taken a course, right?”

“I have a certificate.”

“What, really?”

“No,” he said flatly. “Let’s go.”

After an argument over how long it would take to put on makeup that led to Luna muttering under her breath as she applied foundation in the car andanotherargument over how spindly Luna’s arms were, Luna got to push the cart around the hardware store. Oliver didn’teven know how that last one turned into a fight. Hedidn’tcare who pushed the cart. But suddenly, he was yell-whispering outside of the hardware store.

Luna was such a sore winner about it, too. Humming all happy as she pushed the cart, pretending not to strain under the weight with each addition.

“Are you going to get Jackson to help?” she asked, doing a terrible job of looking unaffected as she pushed the heavy cart down the aisle. “Hereally seemed to know what he was doing.”

Oliver thought hard about wrestling the damn cart off her.

“He’s already told me what to do,” he said. “I can handle it myself.”

“Right, sure. Totally get a novice to do it when there’s a professional right there,” Luna said. Then she frowned. “Wait. I thought you couldn’t work on it until the snow thaws?”

“I can’t work on it until it’s stopped snowing,” Oliver corrected her, scanning the aisle for the type of nails that Jackson told him about. “Just need to get the snow out of the way.”

“Still sounds slippery.”

Oliver squinted at the rows and rows of nails. Why were there so many? How many different types of nails could people possibly need?

Aha. He grabbed a packet of the correct nails and started, “I heal?—”

“Fast. No, I remember.” Luna grimaced as she pulled the cart over, then pretended she didn’t when she noticedOliver looking. She even draped herself appealingly against the cart, resting her chin in her hand like she wasn’t panting at all.

“If you get hurt…” she said. “Do I feel it? Because I think I felt a lil’ something when you passed out.”

Oliver’s fingers twitched around the packet of nails. His family was going to shove that in his face for the rest of his life. Then he processed the last part of that sentence.

“You what? What did it feel like?”

Luna shrugged. She scratched the corner of her mouth, which was sticky with gloss yet again. He wished it didn’t look so appealing.

“It didn’t feel likepassing out,” Luna said. “I just… knew that something happened. Is it more intense for you since you’re a wolf?”

Yes, he thought. He hadn’t been so lost to the whims of his wolf since he was a teenager. He was attuned to her scent, keeping an ear out for where she was in the inn and having to stop himself from burying his nose in her neck when she passed. And that wasn’t even counting the bond, which dialed everything up to eleven. He could sense where she was and feel her emotions if he focused, and sometimes even when he didn’t. There had been so many moments during sex where they’d leaked through, her passion blurring into his so easily that he hadn’t been able to tell the difference.

“Not if I don’t focus on it,” he said, dropping the packet of nails into the cart.Then, when she raised her brows expectantly, he added, “Like I said,it depends on the bond. Ben and Sabine know what each other is feeling and where the other is most of the time. Grandmother and Grandfather could read each other’s minds without even trying. Uncle Roy and his wife, too. They had to block it out. Even when they severed the bond, they could still hear echoes for years.”

“He wasmarried?” Luna laughed, then covered it up badly with a cough. “What was she like? Long-suffering?”

He bit his cheek to stop his smile. “She was sweet. Funny. Didn’t put up with his crap.”

“Wolf?”

“Human,” he corrected. “She still visits sometimes.”

Luna opened her mouth to ask something else. She was so busy watching Oliver that she didn’t notice the elderly fairy she was about to run into, and Oliver had to grab the front of the cart and yank it to a stop.

“What are—oh!” Luna’s irritation slid quickly into awkwardness. “Hi! Oh my god, sorry!”