Free Everything Carries Me to You (Axton and Leander Book 3) by S.P. Wayne Page B

glory, but everything else was vague, blocked in shapes. Lavender in the wild was not the same scent as the lavender in Leander's fancy hair products, but the association was still there for Axton.
    There were animal studies, too, and Axton found himself drawing caribou and deer and moose most often. The focal point all of the pictures was the featured animal's neck and shoulders. Axton recognized the spot uneasily--it was where he would sink in his teeth to land the kill nine times out of ten. The occasional hunting trip wasn't enough to satisfy the predator that lurked in his bones, and Axton knew it.
    As a rule, Axton did not draw the human figure. It occurred to him that if he was going to try his hand at portraiture, he should do it now, while his memory was still sharp...
    Axton blinked and dropped his pencil. How long had he been staring into space for?
    "What?" he said, looking up.
    Dana leaned in the doorway.
    "I said hey," Dana answered. "That's all."
    Axton looked back down at his desk. He pushed his pencil around aimlessly.
    "Hey," he said eventually. There was nothing else to do. He snapped his sketchpad shut.
    "I just wanted to see what you..." Dana trailed off, then canted his head to the side and crossed his arms over his chest. "I just wanted to see you," he said instead.
    Axton looked down at his desk some more.
    "I know," he said.
    "I know you know," Dana said. "That's why I said it that way."
    Axton got up from desk and rubbed at his face distractedly while he wandered a few paces away.
    "Dana," he said finally. "What do you want?"
    "Why you gotta keep asking?" Dana asked, cocking an eyebrow up. "You thinking of delivering?"
    "Goddamnit, Dana," Axton muttered. "This fucking sucks. Even if I play by your rules I don't want us to be prisoner and jailer forever."
    "Not forever," Dana said, tilting his head. "Just 'til you settle down. Then I take you to my pack."
    "And then what?" Axton asked, throwing his hands up.
    "Then we'll see," Dana said, "how you do, how you integrate back into a pack of wolves."
    "You're not a wildlife rehab center," Axton muttered, rubbing at his temples. "Jesus."
    "Spare me, sweetheart," Dana drawled. "You might wanna have the same conversation over and over, but it's getting pretty tedious from where I'm standing."
    "What do you want?" Axton asked more sharply. "Not what are you trying to accomplish. Not what you think is right. But what do you want ?"
    Dana regarded him quietly for some time before answering gently.
    "It ain't that complicated, sugar."
    "But it is, Dana."
    "I want nothing of yours that you don't wanna give."
    "But you do --"
    "What I'd like between you and me is separate from what I been asking you for," Dana said. "On behalf of our entire kind."
    "'Asking,'" Axton echoed dubiously.
    "I did what I had to do," Dana said, uncrossing and then re-crossing his arms over his chest, "to bring you home, to keep you from forgetting everything you could be. Everything you are. I kept you safe, more ways than you know. I had to."
    Axton pressed the heel of his hand into the center of his chest and looked away.
    "I don't want to talk about that," he said evenly. And he didn't. He really didn't want to talk about leaving Leander. Not with Dana.
    "Then we won't," Dana said. "So ask what you want. Ask what you mean."
    "What would it take?" Axton pressed, looking up. "What do you want from me ? From me . And not for werewolf kind. For yourself. You and me."
    "This here living arrangement ain't about what I want ," Dana said. "Sug. You have got to stop taking it so personal."
    "But you would have it be personal," Axton said, throwing an angry glance at Dana like a burning dart, "if you could. Admit it."
    Dana spread out his hands.
    "If you want to be all offended that I still think you're a good looking son of a bitch, you go right on ahead," Dana said. "You got a lot of people in the world to be pissed at, then, if that bothers you. But this isn't about that."
    "You expect me to