Chapter Nine
Evan took the long way around to the safari tour, skipping the queue lines and going through an employee access gate. He found two Jeeps waiting, the second one with Silvanus behind the wheel.
“Hey, man,” Silvanus said. He held out his fist, and Evan bumped it. “How’re you doing?”
“Good. You?”
“Meh. I had a date last night. She told me she’s a cat person. Like what the hell am I supposed to do about that?”
Evan snorted and then laughed. “That sucks.”
“She was a cutie, but whatever. I’ll find my soulmate when the time is right.”
“I hear you.”
Evan walked around the back of the Jeep and froze as a light breeze brought a captivating scent to him.
His wolf awakened, howling in his mind. The scent was amazing, a mixture of sweet and spicy, like his favorite snickerdoodle cookies.
“You okay?” Silvanus asked.
“Do you smell that?”
Silvanus sniffed and shook his head. “I don’t smell anything out of the ordinary. What do you smell?”
“I think...shit.” He reached for his bugged phone and looked at it. He was afraid to lose the scent because it felt important, but he didn’t want to give anything away to Alphonse in case he had some kind of epiphany sort of conversation with whoever smelled so good. “I’ll be right back.” He set the phone on the seat and hurried down the path, ignoring the human females in line.
He scented as he moved, finding the scent heaviest at the information desk.
“Who was just here?” he demanded.
Jasper raised a brow. “What?”
“Who was just here?”
“Hey, shit, watch the tone, man.” Jasper leaned forward and said with a low voice, “Your eyes are amber. What’s got you riled up?”
“I smell...I think I smell my soulmate. Who was just here?”
“Are you serious?” Benjamin asked. “There was a human female here with her niece. She wanted to take her niece on the tour, but we said no since it’s VIP tours now and we’re all booked up.”
“Where did she go?”
“Back that way,” Benjamin said, pointing down the path that led to the park.
Evan wasted no time, racing down the dirt path.
He saw her from behind, a petite brunette holding the hand of a little blonde girl.
“Wait!” he shouted as he closed the distance to them. “Wait, come back!”
The female stopped and turned slowly. She didn’t say anything, just watched as he jogged to them.
The first thing he noticed was how beautiful she was. Petite and curved, with forest green eyes and perfectly kissable lips. She tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “What’s up?”
Evan froze. He’d been so caught up on getting to her that he hadn’t thought any further than seeing her. His wolf was howling happily as Evan inhaled silently and found himself saturated in her sweet scent.
The scent of his soulmate.
He couldn’t believe his luck.
“I’m sorry you were turned away from the tour. If you come back to the desk with me, I’ll take you on a personal tour myself.” He looked down at the little girl and said, “I’m Evan. What’s your name?”
“Rayanne.”
“Nice to meet you. What’s your eagle’s name?”
“He doesn’t have one yet. I wanted to see the eagle in the aviary so I could find out what his name is, but it’s closed.”
“Ah, right. I heard an injured bird came in last night and they’re dealing with him today. They needed to keep things closed up so they didn’t stress him out more as he recovers.”
“That’s too bad,” his female said.
“They’ll take good care of him.” He extended his hand to his soulmate. “I’m Evan.”
When her hand touched his, electricity shot up his arm. “Lark. Are you sure you can take us on a tour? The information guys said it’s VIPs only.”
“I think you’re VIPs, don’t you?” he asked Rayanne with a smile.
“Sure!” she said excitedly. “Can we, Lark, please?”
“If Evan says it’s okay, sure,” Lark said.
“Come on back to the desk. I’ll get everything arranged.”
He walked the two back to the desk and pulled Jasper aside, keeping his voice low so it didn’t carry. “She’s my soulmate.”
“That’s great, man, congrats.”
“I want to take her and her niece on a tour.”
“Dude, we’re fully booked.”
“I know, but they were already disappointed about the aviary being closed. Let me take them myself. I can use one of the other Jeeps and slip in between one of the scheduled tours. It would only bump the others by a few minutes since I don’t have to worry about her finding her soulmate. Since she already has.”
“I’ll need to check with Joss.”
“Of course.”
Jasper took a few steps from him and called Joss. The conversation was quick, and then Jasper handed the phone to Evan.
“Tell me you don’t have your phone on you,” Joss said.
“I don’t. I left it in the Jeep with Silvanus.”
“Smart. Okay, keep your phone with him. Jasper is going to run the tour with him in your place so it will seem as if you’re going about the workday. Then you can speak freely with your soulmate without worrying about Alphonse overhearing anything that might clue him in to you not wanting to mate Tris.”
“All right.”
“I’ll have Jasper pull up one of the other Jeeps. Give Silvanus five minutes, then take your soulmate and her niece on the tour. Just be sure you give him plenty of space and don’t linger too long at any of the paddocks; we don’t want to hold up the other tours too much.”
“Okay, thanks, Joss.”
“You’re welcome and congratulations. I’ll speak to you later about things. Just keep me posted on your plans and remember our rules.”
“I will.”
He ended the call and gave the phone to Jasper, who talked to Joss for a moment and then hung up. “I’ll go grab a Jeep for you. It’ll be a couple minutes, but you can wait in the staging area.”
“Thanks, Jasper.”
“Hey, we all wish this scenario would happen to us. Congrats. And good luck. You need anything, call me on the Jeep’s walkie.”
“Got it.”
Evan returned to the desk where Lark and Rayanne were waiting and said, “We’re all set. We just have to wait for a Jeep, and as soon as the other two have gone ahead of us, we can go.”
“Oh, we can? We can go on the tour?” Rayanne asked, her eyes alight with happiness.
“You bet,” Evan said.
“Thank you,” Lark said quietly.
“No problem.”
“I think it was kind of a problem, but you’re very sweet.”
He led them to the staging area, which was off to the side from where the VIP guests waited. He waved at Silvanus, who pointed to the back seat where Evan’s phone was, then gave him a thumbs-up.
“Are you having a conversation with him?” Lark asked.
“Sort of,” Evan said with a chuckle. “I was going to do a tour with him as the guide, but someone is taking my place so I can take you two out personally.”
“Really?” Lark asked.
“Yep.”
“So you did pull some strings, I guess.”
“It’s not a big deal. We used to only do the group safari tours, but we’ve been doing VIP tours for a while now, and the group tours aren’t the focus for the park anymore. Did you ever get a ticket in the mail for a VIP tour? The park has sent them out twice to everyone in the tri-state area.”
“I don’t think so. But if it looked like junk mail, I might have just tossed it without reading.”
He rocked back on his heels, unsure of what to say to her. His wolf was so excited he was practically doing cartwheels in his head. It was a relief when a Jeep appeared a few minutes later. They walked to it, and Evan held open the passenger door. “You can both sit in the back if you’d like, or one of you can sit up front with me.”
“We’ll sit together in the back,” Lark said.
“Sure thing,” Evan said, a little disappointed he wasn’t going to get to sit next to her, but really thankful he was able to take her on a tour.
“Once Silvanus leaves, we’ll pull up to the gate and then he’ll radio when it’s our turn. We give the VIP guests a little extra time at the paddocks.”
“What are paddocks?” Lark asked as she settled in the back seat next to Rayanne.
“The enclosures for the animals.”
“Ah, okay.” Lark smiled.
Damn, he loved to see her smile.
The other Jeeps headed out one after the other, and Evan took his place at the gate.
“Do you have a favorite animal that’s not a bird?” he asked Rayanne.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“What about the moose, Tank? He’s pretty neat,” Lark said.
“Oh, right, I like him! Is he here?”
“His paddock is toward the end,” Evan said.
The radio crackled, and a voice said, “All clear.”
“Thanks,” Evan answered, then hung up the walkie on the dashboard holder. “Hold on, ladies, the Jeep lurches a bit.”
The gate creaked open, and he did his best not to give them too much of a lurch as he moved forward. Once they were through the gate, he took them on the tour, taking a picture of them at each paddock and enjoying sharing the park with his soulmate and her young niece. Rayanne asked a million questions about the animals, and Evan was thankful to know quite a bit about them from being a tour guide before he’d left to go to the other pack.
When the tour was over, he parked the spare Jeep in the staging area and turned off the engine.
Rayanne hopped from the Jeep and bounced around, flapping the stuffed eagle’s wings and shouting, “I’m an eeeeaglllle,” followed by a fit of giggles.
“She’s a trip,” Evan said with a chuckle.
“She sure is,” Lark said. She leaned forward and put her forearms on the front seat’s headrest. “I can’t thank you enough for the tour. Rayanne was so sad about the aviary and then the tour was a no-go. I really thought I was going to have to buy her a pony or something to make up for it.”
“Do you need to leave?”
“Um, what?”
He cleared his throat. “I mean, do you have to get her home or something? I have an idea if you’re free, but I need to make a call.”
“What kind of idea?”
“The kind that maybe could get a certain niece and her beautiful aunt into the aviary.”
Lark’s mouth fell open. “Are you serious?”
“About the aviary or you being beautiful?”
Her cheeks pinked, and she giggled and then cleared her throat. “The aviary.”
“Yes. My brother runs it with his wife.”
Rayanne raced over. “Your brother is Auden? And Jess?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Yep.”
“Wow, you can see the cutie-patootie,” Rayanne said to Lark, giving a tug on her arm.
“Who’s a what now?” Evan asked.
“Nothing, it’s nothing,” Lark said.
“No, Lark said Auden was a cutie-patootie.”
Evan stared at Lark in surprise. She...thought his brother was cute? He wasn’t sure how to take that. His wolf wanted to stalk his brother and give him a good beating just for breathing at the moment, but that was hardly fair.
“It was just a passing remark,” Lark said. She nudged Evan with her elbow. “And cute’s for puppies and kittens, not for serious things. If I were talking about someone I really liked, I might say something like, ‘Wow, Evan is really handsome.’“
Evan grinned. She thought he was good-looking! And she thought his brother was cute like a puppy. That was fucking hilarious.
“I can’t wait to tell him you think he’s like a puppy.”
“Oh, please don’t,” she said. “I’ll be mortified!”
“I promise. Or you could give me your number. That might make me less likely to tease him.”
“Well, I was going to ask for yours anyway, so...win-win.”
He opened a text and she recited her number, then he sent her a text with a smiley face followed by “this is Evan”.
Her phone buzzed and she lifted it to look at the screen.
“Got it.” She gave him a thousand-watt smile that made his whole body go warm.
“I’ll be right back,” he said. Hurrying away from his soulmate and her niece, he called Auden and arranged for a private tour of the aviary. Auden was thrilled for him.
“I told you it would be good to wait for your soulmate,” Auden said.
Evan grinned. “I don’t need a brotherly lecture right now.”
“I’ll save it for later. Meet you in a few.”
“Thanks, man.” Evan ended the call and turned to Benjamin. “Does Silvanus still have my phone?”
“Yep,” Benjamin said. “He’s going to keep it until you’re done with your soulmate. How was the tour?”
“Awesome.” He rapped his knuckles on the desk. “Thanks for helping me work this out.”
“You bet. You can repay the favor when I meet my soulmate.”
“You got it.”
He hustled back to Lark and Rayanne and said, “Ready to go meet some birds?”
“Yes, yes!” Rayanne squealed. She took Lark’s hand and said, “Let’s go, let’s go!”
He smiled at Lark, who smiled back, her cheeks dimpling with the motion. “Thanks, Evan.”
“My pleasure.”