Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

C onleth was not entirely sure he was a shifter at the moment. His pegasus had retreated so far in disgust, it felt like his animal spirit had left his body entirely. He only wished he could do the same.

“Conleth?” Paige came into view around the corner of the shower block, a laundry basket in her arms. “Are you out here? I’ve brought you some towels and?—”

She stopped dead, mouth dropping open.

He grimaced. Normally, he would have welcomed an opportunity to be dripping wet and mostly naked in front of his mate. At the moment, however, the last thing he wanted was for her to come any closer.

“Stay downwind.” He switched off the hose, water running down his bare chest. At least he’d left his boxers on in case any campers wandered past—not that there was much chance of anyone voluntarily coming within fifty yards of him for the foreseeable future. “Leonie took one whiff and banned me from setting foot in the showers until the worst was off, so I’ve been trying to decontaminate myself outside. Just leave the towels over there.”

Paige didn’t move, still staring at him. Though it didn’t seem to be his exposed body that had captured her attention. Instead, her gaze seemed riveted to his…head?

“Conleth,” she gasped, and not in a good way. “Your hair!”

Like an utter idiot, he looked up, as though this was going to help him inspect the top of his own head. “What about it?”

“It’s…” Paige appeared to grasp for words. “Orange.”

“Of course it’s orange. It’s always been orange. I’m a natural redhead, as should currently be obvious.”

“No, I mean…” She jerked her chin at the tin bucket at his feet. “ Really orange.”

Conleth looked down at his reflection. She was not wrong. If anything, ‘really’ orange was an understatement. He would have gone for a different adjective. Violently , perhaps. Or hideously.

He sighed. “Well, Callum will be delighted, at least. No one’s going to be able to get us confused now.”

Paige set down her laundry basket, still goggling at his hair in fascinated horror. “What happened?”

“I did.” He flipped his washcloth at the bucket. “Buck mixed up a concoction that’s supposed to neutralize the chemicals in skunk spray. I was so fixated on dunking myself as fast as possible, I didn’t stop to consider what was in it.”

“Which is?”

“Dishwashing soap and baking soda, in part.” He ran a hand through his bleached hair, wincing at the dry, crisp texture. “But mostly, rather a lot of hydrogen peroxide.”

“Yeah, you probably shouldn’t have put that on your hair.” Paige handed him a towel. “How long did you leave it on?”

“I have absolutely no idea. How bad is it?”

From the way Paige hesitated, she was trying to think of a tactful way of phrasing You look like a walking traffic cone. “Well, if anyone can pull off that color, it’s you.”

“No, I mean the stink. I can’t tell. My sense of smell shut down an hour ago, much to my relief.” He ducked to offer her the back of his neck, which had taken the worst of the blast. “Here, smell me.”

Too late, it occurred to him that this was not a good idea for more than one reason. Paige’s cheeks flushed, but she stepped closer. Stretching up on her toes, she inhaled deeply.

Conleth had entertained multiple private fantasies about his mate’s lips hovering over his bare skin. None of them had involved her immediately jerking away, nose wrinkling.

“Um.” Paige coughed. “It’s…better?”

“If you can still smell it, I’m going to asphyxiate any shifter within fifty feet.” He just wanted to lie down and pass out, but he made himself dip the cloth back into the bucket. “I’ll scrub myself again. Sorry, I’m not going to be able to come back to work for a while.”

“It’s no problem. Leonie’s arranged for some other counselors to cover for us.” Paige studied him, her forehead wrinkling. “You look exhausted.”

“Meds crash,” he mumbled, scrubbing at the back of his neck. “Downside of taking stimulants. I get hit with a kind of rebound effect when a dose wears off. And when I speed, my metabolism goes into overdrive. Burns through my medication in seconds rather than hours. The faster I go, the harder the drop at the end.”

“That sounds awful.”

His brain felt like it was being pressed between bricks. “It’s moderately unpleasant, yes.”

“I’ll tell Leonie you’re taking the rest of the day off.” Paige gestured at his back. “You keep missing a spot. Right there, between your shoulder blades.”

It was far too late to worry about appearing undignified. He contorted, one elbow sticking up into the air. “Better?”

“No, I don’t think you can reach it.” She held out a hand. “Let me help.”

He passed her the washcloth, too exhausted to make even a token attempt at arguing. “Try not to get too much of this stuff on your hands. It’ll dry out your skin.”

“You’re rubbing it all over your body.”

“That’s how I know it’ll dry out your skin.”

“I’ve got some body lotion I can lend you.” Paige gingerly dunked the washcloth into the bucket. “As long as you don’t mind smelling like strawberries.”

“I wouldn’t mind if it smelled like pickled herring. It would still be a distinct improvement.”

“No argument here.” Paige tapped his shoulder. “You’re too tall. Kneel down so I can reach.”

Conleth sank obediently to his knees, leaning his head forward. Cold, damp cloth pressed against the nape of his neck. She began to wash his back with firm, impersonal strokes, as though cleaning a particularly ugly car.

Under any other circumstances, this would still have been wildly erotic. Fortunately, in his current state—exhausted, strung out from the post-speed medication crash, and smelling like a mix of bleach and death—the most he could muster was a sort of abstract appreciation.

“Conleth?” The washcloth moved down his spine. “Can I ask you something?”

“You’re likely to get an unfiltered and somewhat incoherent answer. I’m not exactly at my best. But go ahead.”

“Why didn’t you want to work as a counselor before this summer?”

He shot her an incredulous look over his shoulder. “You’re asking me this now? ”

She motioned him to turn around again. “It just doesn’t make sense. You’re completely dedicated to the campers, even when they’re driving you up the wall. Yet from what I’ve heard, you used to lock yourself in the office all summer and refuse to have anything to do with the kids. Other people assume that’s because you’re an uptight control freak who’s only at camp because of that so-called prophecy, but I know that’s not true. So what was the real reason?”

“Ah.” He was too tired to give her anything other than the unvarnished truth. “That’s because I’m not a nice person.”

She slapped the washcloth against his shoulder. “I’m being serious.”

“So am I.” He tipped his head back, closing his eyes. “A nice person wouldn’t be so consumed with bitter longing he couldn’t hide his true emotions. I couldn’t work with the campers. Not when I knew that in all probability, I’d never be a father.”

The washcloth stopped dead.

Conleth cursed himself. “So much for my plan. Assuming you accepted me at all, I intended to wait at least three years before delicately sounding you out on your feelings about starting a family. Sorry, I’m not thinking very clearly right now.”

“It’s all right. I did ask.” She started scrubbing his back again, though more slowly. “I had no idea you wanted kids that badly.”

“Then I’ve been doing one thing right, at least. This is another of those things I’d appreciate you keeping to yourself, by the way.”

“Why? There’s nothing wrong with having feelings.”

“Maybe not for other people.” He waved a hand, trying to make light of it. “But I have an image to maintain. I’d much rather everyone thought of me as an omnicompetent evil mastermind than a giant mess of hopeless yearning.”

“If you were so keen to be a father, you could have done something about it. Hired a surrogate, or adopted.”

“True.” His mouth twisted in an ironic smile, even though she couldn’t see his face. “But that’s not all I wanted. I’d seen my brother meet his mate, have children, get the full happy-ever-after. I couldn’t settle for anything less. See? Not a nice person.”

From Paige’s huff, she didn’t agree. “You really didn’t believe you’d ever meet your own mate?”

“Why would I? It was so vanishingly unlikely that Joe would have had a true vision about our meeting, the thought that it might not have been faking never even crossed my mind. Apparently, fate has an even worse sense of humor than he does.”

“That’s not what I meant. The odds of bumping into your one true match in all the world must be pretty small too, yet I’ve met a lot of mated shifters. Your brother’s whole firefighter crew found their mates, and Zephyr, and Buck as well. That seems more than random chance.”

He shrugged. “There’s a reason they’re called fated mates. A lot of shifters believe that some mystical force will bring destined partners together at the right time.”

“But not you?”

“I have a hard time sitting back and leaving things to fate.” Conleth rubbed his aching forehead. “I don’t like not being in control of things. You may have noticed.”

“I had, yes.” Paige’s tone was dry, but her touch was gentle. “And if you were anything like Archie as a kid, I can understand why.”

He snorted. “Imagine your brother with substantially less common sense, superspeed, and an enthusiastic identical sidekick. Let’s just say I had many pointed life lessons in the importance of self-control. Not that they did any good until my doctors finally found a stimulant without horrible side-effects.”

“Your current medication side-effects seem pretty horrible.”

“You should have seen the other ones. Adjusting human-tested medicines to shifters isn’t easy. I’ll take a few headaches for not being a walking disaster.”

He couldn’t see her, but somehow he had an impression of a thoughtful gaze resting on the back of his head. “And now you always have to be in control. Of everything, not just yourself. That’s why you panicked at our first meeting, when Archie yelled out the truth about us being mates.”

“You really do know me too well.” His mind jumped tracks, following tangential connections. “My turn. Can I ask you something?”

“If it’s whether I want kids, I’ll have to get back to you on that one. It’s not something I’ve ever been able to think about, what with my mom and Archie.”

“Not that. It’s about when we first met, before Archie interrupted. At that point, you had no idea your little brother didn’t like me, or that I might cause problems for your family. Yet you looked like you wanted to bolt for the horizon.”

Paige didn’t answer for a moment. “I guess I was scared, too.”

Conleth turned around at that, surprised. “Really? Why?”

She wrung out the cloth, avoiding his eyes. “The moment I saw you, I felt this…overwhelming pull. I’ve never had that kind of reaction to anyone before.”

“Humans can experience the mate instinct too, I’m told. Nowhere like as strongly as a shifter, but to some extent, at least.”

Paige wrinkled her nose. “Then I’m impressed you were able to form a coherent sentence. I certainly couldn’t. I wanted to rip off all your clothes on the spot.”

He was starting to understand her better now, too. “And when you want something, your first impulse is to retreat from it.”

“I guess I’ve learned that it’s safest not to want things,” she said softly. Letting out a sigh, she dropped the washcloth into the bucket. “Conleth, what are we going to do about Archie?”

He reclaimed the cloth, starting to clean the rest of his body. “If you still want to try to keep him in the dark, I’ll do my best to act as though nothing has changed. But as I recall, the last time I tried to mislead him, it turned out to be a spectacularly bad idea. If you want my honest opinion, I think you should tell him the truth. He may not like me, but I’m sure he wants you to be happy. Maybe he won’t take it as badly as you fear.”

“You really have lost your sense of smell, if you can be that optimistic,” Paige said. “But I suppose there’s no point trying to pretend anymore. He’s clearly figured out something’s changed between us.”

He rubbed the washcloth thoughtfully across his hair. “If you’re basing that on the skunk, I think you’re jumping to conclusions.”

“I know my brother. And I already got him to confess to blackmailing Hetta into helping him with this stunt. He maintains he didn’t tell her to put a skunk under my bed, but she certainly didn’t come up with that idea on her own.”

He shook his head. “Hetta had nothing to do with it. And Archie’s telling the truth.”

Paige gave him a skeptical look. “How can you be so sure?”

“Partly because he wouldn’t have put a skunk under your bed.” He raised his eyebrows at her, his pegasus sense tracking two small, hangdog figures trudging in their direction. “But mostly because it seems the actual culprits have come to confess.”