Page 26 of Robb

Don’t get too ahead of yourself, she thought sternly, cutting herself off with a quick shake of her head. You lead completely different lives, and live in completely different places. You both live for your work, which is completely incompatible.

And she also knew that if she kept going down this what if and might have been road, she’d go mad with regrets. And if she was being honest with herself, Robb aside, she regretted nothing about her life.

Not the people she’d helped, even if it was often in extra-legal ways. Not the lives she’d saved. And definitely not the sanctuary she’d built from the ground up, the safe place she’d created for any shifter who needed it, no matter who they were or where they’d come from.

Still. Knowing that she had a mate in the abstract, and seeing how good things could be now that they were together in the flesh while not being involved in a cat-and-mouse chase… it was like night and day. She wasn’t sure that she could ever go back to how things were.

But we’re still very different people. And we’ve never even tried to live together… and if there’s one thing I know about us both, it’s that we’re not great at compromising.

Putting any thoughts of how this thing between them could possibly work firmly out of her mind, Tahnee opened the fridge and looked inside without a whole lot of hope. And, while that pessimistic mindset was more or less found to be justified, she did locate some butter – or at least some sort of butter-adjacent product – and that was good enough for her.

Robb had already gotten out the plates and put the toast down on them, and together the two of them worked seamlessly to finish putting together their meal, simple though it was.

Like we complete each other, Tahnee thought wistfully.

“Ta-da!” she announced, picking up the plates and carrying them to the tiny dining table. Robb followed close behind, carrying some cutlery, the dried chickpeas, and the container of fruit pieces.

“Your anti-scorbutics,” he said seriously, when he caught her eyeing the fruit off.

Whatever expression it was she was making – and honestly, she wasn’t sure what it was herself – he continued, “There are many things people can say about me, but I won’t let it be said that I allowed my mate to die of scurvy.”

Tahnee sighed as she sat down, even as she felt a helpless smile twitching at her lips.

I guess I brought this on myself. Now I have to eat them. But, first things first.

“Tuck in,” she said, noticing that Robb was apparently waiting for her to get started. She had no such compunction – tinned spaghetti on toast was only edible when the spaghetti was hot enough to burn your mouth, and the toast was within the ten-second window before it started turning into a soggy orange pulp.

Taking the first bite, she closed her eyes and sighed with pleasure. It was cheap and crappy, but, she had to admit, it was exactly what she felt like.

It’s amazing how some things can take you right back to when you were a little kid. I guess that’s why they call it comfort food.

She felt herself sinking down into her hard plastic chair, her mind and body – and brolga – apparently having decided that it was one hundred percent safe to relax.

The adrenaline from earlier was finally starting to leave her body, and she had to admit that she was exhausted. It had been a long, long time since she’d had a close call like this.

I’m getting too old for this shit, she thought wryly. Although, to be fair, normally when she’d done this kind of thing, it’d been on her terms. She had been the one to decide to help out shifters who had been led astray. She had been the one to deliberately lead Robb on various merry chases around the streets of Sydney. Someone else was calling the shots here, and she didn’t like it. At all.

Across from her, Robb twisted sideways and bent his legs at ludicrous angles in an obvious attempt to not brush against her underneath the tiny table.

Such a gentleman, she thought with a fond smile. It’ll be so much fun to mess him up.

Sawing at her spaghetti and toast, she let herself just enjoy the simple pleasure of eating. It really had been a long day… and, in many ways, it felt like it was still just getting started.

Tahnee continued to devour the food indiscriminately for a few minutes, vaguely aware of Robb as he ate more slowly, watching her intently as if seeing her eat a cheap tin of spaghetti was the most interesting thing in the world.

“Okay, I have to eat my words. This is really good,” she said around a too-big mouthful. “Do you know how long it’s been since I had anything like this? I need to get a whole slab of this stuff delivered to the sanctuary.”

She stopped suddenly, her mouth still full, and mentally kicked herself. She did not have a habit of talking about the sanctuary to outsiders. The exact opposite, in fact. Its secrecy was the entire foundation of its existence.

Of course, she was sure that Robb knew about the sanctuary – he’d be very bad at his job if he didn’t, and, whatever else could be said about him, being incompetent was not one of his character flaws. Half his team had been to visit the sanctuary, for crying out loud – which wasn’t exactly a surprise, given that the team was composed almost entirely of rare and mythical shifters.

Even dark and broody Euan had showed up unannounced one time, nodded in her direction, and then shifted into his marsupial lion form, spending a couple of days roaming about before shifting back, raising a hand in thanks, and leaving again. She’d only even known who he was because Hector had given her a heads-up before he’d arrived.

Mentioning the sanctuary in front of Robb wasn’t the end of the world, but she could not let herself get complacent just because she was in the company of her mate. The lives of her guests literally depended on it.

Robb looked up from his food, taking a moment to swallow his mouthful slowly before speaking.

“Sorry, I missed that. What did you say?”