The Bullpen was always crowded, and tonight was no exception. Standing at the doorway, Chase scanned the place for a table big enough to seat all of them. There. Beyond the horseshoe-shaped bar that thrust like a tongue into the enormous room, a party was vacating a six-top.

“Gage, grab that table, will you?”

“Sure.” Gage wound his way through the crowd and plopped down at the table, smiling up at a server who was collecting empties and wiping the top down.

Chase rounded up the rest of the guys and herded them toward their goal. Tanner. Hector. Dakota. Jor— Where was Jordan? He whipped his head around and caught the youngest junior staring in fascination at the taut ass of a passing supe—fox shifter or kitsune by the scent.

“Jordan!” Chase snapped, infusing his voice with alpha authority. “No butt sniffing!”

Jordan straightened up, practically spinning in place. “I wasn’t!” But his eyes slid sideways to track the guy’s ass, and a low whine vibrated in his throat.

“You so were,” Hector muttered.

“Yeah, like you don’t want to do the same.” Jordan scuffed his trainers along the scarred wooden floor as he headed toward the table.

“The whole point of your Howling years is to overcome those urges,” Dakota said, in a fair approximation of Chase’s lecture mode. “We are not slaves to our animal nature. We can learn to function in the Wider World without endangering ourselves or others.” He plopped into a chair next to Gage. “Or violating the Secrecy Pact.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jordan muttered. He patted the chair next to his. “Tanner! Here! Sit next to me!”

Chase’s heart sank a little when Tanner complied. Wait . . . What? Did I just go there? Tanner was undeniably cute—that nearly-black hair, the dark eyes, the cheekbones—gods, the cheekbones. But he was one of Chase’s charges. Chase couldn’t take advantage of his position as RA to hit on him.

But I’m not his RA anymore . . . technically.

Yes, Tanner was still a Doghouse resident, but as a full adult under pack law, he wasn’t subject to Chase’s tutelage anymore. More like a tenant in a building I manage.

He snorted to himself—splitting hairs much?—and resolutely chose the seat farthest from Tanner—and temptation. But he couldn’t help fantasizing a little bit about how their relationship might change in the coming months now that they were peers.

Jordan sat up tall in his chair, gazing around the bar with shining eyes and an eager grin—as opposed to Tanner, who huddled in his seat, a forlorn half smile on his full lips. “This is so cool!” Jordan crowed. “Everyone in here is a shifter?”

“Not everyone. Fae in the house.” Dakota nodded in the direction of the bar. “Mal’s over there, talking to”—his eyes widened—“whoa, the drummer from Hunter’s Moon. Epic!”

Jordan’s head whipped around. “Mal? Mal’s here?” He planted his palms on the table and half rose. “Should we go say hello? We should go say hello. He’d want us to say hello, wouldn’t he?”

“Sit down, Jordan.” Dakota gripped Jordan’s shoulder and pushed him back onto his chair. “Because Dr. MacLeod is here too. You really want to draw his attention? You dug three more holes in the backyard after he warned you about interrupting the ground cover lifecycle.”

“Oh. Um . . .” Jordan slid down in his chair until his chin barely topped the table. “You won’t mention anything to him, will you, Dakota? Please? I’ll fill the holes in again before our next lesson with him. I promise.”

“Weeellll . . . I don’t know . . .” Dakota drew the words out until Jordan was practically vibrating.

“Don’t torture the pup, D,” Gage said. “Tonight’s about— Hector, did you just pick that pretzel up off the floor?”

Hector froze midcrunch. “Maybe?” he mumbled around a mouthful of crumbs.

Gage shook his head. “Honestly. You coders take your junk food way too seriously.”

“At least it’s not fish,” Jordan said, struggling to sit up again. “Hey, we should order some nachos. Or cheesy fries. Or nachos.”

“Don’t forget Tanner’s beer.” Dakota flashed a thumbs-up at Tanner. “This is his twenty-oner party after all.”

Tanner seemed to shrink even more, and Chase regretted not digging a little deeper into Tanner’s opinion about this trip. “Tanner, if you’d rather go back to the house and have a quieter celebration, we can—”

“Did I hear someone’s having a twenty-oner party tonight?” A group of unfamiliar weres stopped next to the table. Chase immediately bristled, his jaw aching as his canines threatened to descend at the challenge to his authority.

But the weres—most of whom wore OSU hoodies—didn’t appear to be much older than Chase himself: twentysomethings, which meant they were probably freshly out of their service commitment years, especially if they’d been cleared to attend a university.

Jordan, naturally, perked right up—or rather perked up even more—at a new set of people to meet. “Yeah! It’s Tanner’s birthday, so we came up here to celebrate. Are you guys celebrating?”

One of the unknown weres laughed and clapped Jordan’s shoulder. “We are, but not a birthday. The Beavs won the game today!”

The group hooted once, then broke into the OSU fight song.

Wonderful. Tanner wasn’t the kind of guy who was comfortable around strangers, probably because his own pack was so small. Chase wondered briefly if he should ask Mal or Dr. MacLeod for help separating the interlopers from his charges. He glanced sidelong at the bar and thought he glimpsed a pale, slender man talking to Dr. MacLeod, but when he turned to look more carefully, the spot next to Dr. MacLeod was empty.

No. This is my responsibility. But maybe I should take the opportunity to order food and drinks. He glanced at the OSU weres, who had snagged chairs from around the room and joined their group, much to Jordan’s delight and Tanner’s noticeable dismay. Chase sighed. Apparently he’d be feeding the OSU were population as well as his own packlet.

Chase caught a flash of dark blond hair out of the corner of his eye, as if somebody had taken the empty spot at the bar, but when he turned, it was still empty. Chase shook his head. The noise and chaos of the bar was seriously messing with his sensory input.

The OSU weres had brought their beers with them to the table, including a pitcher. They’d also attracted the attention of a harassed server, who’d set clean, empty glasses in front of the Doghouse guys. The shaggy redhead who seemed to be their ringleader started to fill the glass in front of Gage, but Chase blocked the glass’s mouth with his hand.

The redhead had good reflexes—he barely slopped a splash onto Chase’s hand before he tipped the pitcher up. “Dude. What the hells?”

“The only two of us who are twenty-one are me and Tanner.”

The guy blinked, his amber eyes wide with alarm. “Shit. Thanks, man. The last thing we need tonight is to invoke the underage drinking spell. That’d get us banned from here for two full moons, which would be a tragedy.”

“Right.” Chase stood up. “I’ll go order some food and soda for everyone, shall I?”

The redhead grinned. “Awesome. We’ll take care of the beer for you and the birthday boy. Am I right?” His compatriots hollered in assent, and he filled Tanner’s glass to the brim. “I’m Magnus, by the way.”

Chase shot Tanner what he hoped was an encouraging smile as Magnus introduced the rest of his crew, then he made his way to the bar. He managed to order a pitcher of Coke and one of Dr Pepper (Gage’s soda of choice). When he ordered nachos and cheesy fries, the bartender glanced over Chase’s shoulder.

“A baker’s dozen weres? You’ll need at least five orders of each.”

Chase sighed for what felt like the seventeenth time that night. Why did I agree to this again? He’d wanted Tanner to have every possible experience a young were should expect once they came of age, but maybe he should have asked Tanner what he wanted to experience. After all, there were some “universal” were rites of passage that weren’t particularly pleasant. Chase suspected Tanner had been exposed to far too many of those. The Wallowa pack was not only small, it was also isolated and, rumor had it, so conservative as to be almost petrified.

The bartender set the pitchers of soda on the bar in front of Chase. “The food’ll be out soon. We’ll bring it to the table for you.”

“Thanks.”

Chase managed to carry the pitchers back to the table without spilling and set them down. “Coke and Dr Pepper.” Jordan and Hector reached for the Coke pitcher at the same time. Hector won.

“Hey!” Jordan scowled at Hector, who hummed as he filled the glass in front of him.

Hector brandished the pitcher. “Anyone else want Coke?” He pretended to ignore Jordan’s wildly waving hand, but then he shot a sheepish grin at Chase and slid the full glass across to Jordan.

After the pitchers were passed around—and Jordan’s glass was refilled because he’d guzzled the first one—Chase raised his own glass, a dark amber ale, courtesy of OSU’s finest. “A toast. To Tanner. Happy birthday, and welcome to the ranks of adult weres.”

Tanner smiled and ducked his chin. Chase’s thermal vision detected the heat rushing up Tanner’s neck, accompanied by pink warming his cheeks. “Th-thanks, everyone. Cheers.”

They all drank—Jordan and Hector both emptied their glasses this time—as the server arrived to deliver the food.

“Nachos!” Jordan crowed, but Dakota snatched the basket out of his reach.

“Tanner first.”

Tanner looked like he wanted to disappear under his chair. “No, really. It’s okay. Everyone dig in.” He raised his glass and took a minuscule sip. “I’m fine with this for now.”

Chase frowned—he’d noticed before that Tanner didn’t eat in front of strangers. Why didn’t I remember that before I ordered a truckload of bar snacks? “Tanner, if you’d rather—”

Tanner caught Chase’s eye and gave his head a tiny shake. Okay, then. He doesn’t want to make a scene.

The food disappeared as if one of Faerie’s brownie cleanup crews had hit it with a SpellOVac. Chase was debating whether he should order more when Jordan’s jaw sagged, his eyes threatening to bug out of his skull. “Dudes,” he breathed, his voice nearly inaudible under the noise of raucous conversation. “Mal and Dr. MacLeod are kissing!”

Almost as one, all the heads at the table turned to face the bar. Sure enough, Mal and Dr. MacLeod were engaging in a little PDA, apparently unconcerned by the goggling crowds. Chase leaned forward. “Don’t stare, guys. You know they’re partners. They’ve been living together since the Faerie Convergence last year.”

“Yeah, but I’ve never seen them do that before.” While everyone else had returned their attention to their drinks—except Hector, who lifted the parchment lining the nacho baskets in case any chip had escaped the initial massacre—Jordan kept staring at the two men at the bar.

Chase focused his attention on Tanner, whose beer hadn’t appreciably diminished.

“Holy crap, guys!” Jordan half stood, his voice rising above the nearby chatter. “That’s a ring. Did they just— Holy crap, holy crap, hoooly crap! They’re engaged!”

Chase glanced over his shoulder in time to see Mal and Dr. MacLeod lock lips in a kiss guaranteed to send every unmated adult were up in flames. He felt himself responding, his cock rising in his pants, and tore his gaze away, only to meet Tanner’s eyes across the table.

Tanner’s eyes blazed with the gold of arousal, his stare full of unmistakable intent.

Trapped like a dragonfly in that amber regard, Chase’s mouth went dry, and his cock hit full extension. He shoved his chair back from the table in a screech of wood. “Excuse me. I’ve got to . . .”

He met Magnus’s knowing—and surprisingly sympathetic—gaze. “I’ve got this,” Magnus said, then slapped the table, drawing everyone’s attention—except Tanner’s. “Hey, guys. Let’s introduce the pups to our favorite drinking game in honor of the birthday boy!”

As Chase stumbled through the crowd toward the restroom, the OSU weres began howling to the theme from Gilligan’s Island. Gods. I don’t want to know.

But what Chase really didn’t want to face was how poorly buried his own desires were. He was an adult, damn it. He was months away from the end of his service commitment, less than a year away from his own matriculation in the pre-law program at Lewis & Clark, where he’d start the long, unwelcome slog toward becoming a litigation attorney—his pack’s version of an enforcer.

Yet judging by his cock, currently being strangled by the seam of his jeans, he had no more emotional control than Jordan in a room full of Frisbees.

He pushed open the heavy door of the restroom. A couple of men stood at the urinals, but the middle stall was open. He stumbled inside and fumbled the latch, leaning against the door as he freed his cock from its denim tourniquet. But as he breathed a sigh of semirelief, he realized the restroom might not have been the best recovery zone, because the sounds rising from the stalls on either side of him—grunts, moans, the slap of flesh against flesh, flesh against tile—weren’t exactly conducive to, er, deflation.

Chase squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his palms against the cold metal door, and thought about torts. Intellectual property law. Civil litigation. The amorous sounds of both couples—or rather one couple and one thruple—fought the normal dick-shriveling response Chase always had to anything related to his destined career.

As he breathed in—through his mouth, because the scent of sex was nearly overwhelming to his were nose—gradually law won out over lust.

It was a near thing, though. And with Tanner still waiting at the table outside . . .

Gods, I’ve been so careful. The perfect RA. Or as perfect as he could manage. Because living in the house with young weres struggling to tame their natures, to fit into the Wider World, to embrace their individuality when so much of pack tradition urged conformity, had been a dream come true. If he had his own wish, he’d stay there forever, his calon—the extra organ every supe possessed—beating in time with his heart whenever one of his charges graduated from the program and returned to their pack, secure in their own identity.

But Tanner had been a challenge to him from the very first day. Chase, a very newly minted RA, had taken one look at Tanner—gods, those cheekbones—and known he needed to lock his instincts down tight.

Although Tanner’s understated beauty was remarkable, it wasn’t his looks that undid Chase in the end. No, that had been the pain lurking behind the hope in Tanner’s eyes as he’d stepped inside the Doghouse. He’d taken a breath, straightened his shoulders like he was shedding a weight, and smiled as if, against his worst fears, he’d awoken in Wonderland.

That smile, directed at Chase, had cut him off right below his heart. Over the last three years, Chase had fought against that smile, reminding himself that he had responsibilities, and they did not include taking an innocent were to bed, no matter how much he wanted to.

But maybe, just maybe, things are about to change.