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“Unless you want to stay here and let my family send a search party,” he continued.

“What? Right!” She let out a high-pitched laugh and started down the path. He followed, trying not to notice how heavily she smelled of him. If he focused on it, he’d want to obey the bond swirling in his chest and move closer, tuck her against him as they walked. This wasn’t the time. From here, they would only get further away from each other.

Luna made it a heroic forty-five minutes before she declared that her feet were too sore, and they had to stop.

“Not all of us have werewolf endurance,” she complained as she sat down on a hefty rock, squeezing her feet through her boots. She looked up at him hopefully. “Snack break?”

He told himself he wasn’t charmed by her big eyes and sighed, pulling his backpack off. They had enough trail mix to last them several more days, but they were down to their last strip of jerky. More fool him for eating so much of it last night.

He snapped it in half and handed the bigger half over.

“Thanks,” she said distractedly. She placed it on her knee, carefully shimmying out of her boots.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Snack break.”She pulled off her socks next, grimacing at the stale sock smell. Then she started massaging her feet, fingers moving with the clumsiness of someone who had never given a foot massage before.

Oliver swallowed his half of the jerky and sighed audibly.

Luna frowned up at him. “What? Sorry for not having super-speedy regenerating foot muscles.”

Oliver climbed down on his knees silently, taking her foot out of her grip.

Luna resisted, grimacing. “Ew, quit it! My feet are gross!”

“I licked your sweaty neck an hour ago,” he reminded her. “Get over yourself.”

Luna grumbled but stopped trying to pull her foot away. After a moment, she even relaxed into him, letting out a breath of relief as he dug his thumbs into the tender muscles, careful of the blister forming near her big toe.

“You really should offer this at the inn,” she said. She picked up the jerky strip off her knee and paused. “Wait, was that all the jerky you’re eating?”

He nodded at the half-strip in her hand. “That’s the last of it. I have trail mix if I get hungry.”

“Trail mix doesn’t hit the spot like jerky,” Luna said with the confidence of someone who had been forced to sit through too many of Uncle Roy’s speeches about the importance of werewolves eating protein.

She nudged the jerky into Oliver’s cheek. “Here you go. Come on.”

“I’m fine,” he insisted, still working his thumbs against the ball of her foot. “Wasn’t the jerky the onlything you didn’t complain about last night? You even said the oranges were ‘chalky.’”

“Theywerechalky,” Luna said. She nudged the jerky more insistently into his cheek. “Open up.”

“We’re almost home,” he pointed out.

She just kept nudging the jerky harder into his cheek. It did smell good. And hewashungry. He turned his head, and Luna whooped as he let her slot it into his mouth.

“Good boy,” she praised, ruffling his hair.

He rolled his eyes, pretending like the praise didn’t do anything to him. The bond in his chest rejoiced, throwing sparks. But there was also a heat in his stomach that kicked in whenever anyone told him he’d done a good job.

Luna went suspiciously silent. He took her other foot, still chewing. When she still didn’t say anything, sarcastic or otherwise, he looked up.

She had her chin in her hands, looking down at him with a pleased little smile.

He swallowed his jerky, fighting back self-consciousness. “What?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. I just think you’re going to make a really good alpha.”

He ducked his head. If he kept looking at her, he might do something really stupid, like blush.