Emberwood [m] But if you get me out, you get a show

Him.

The coywolf didn't call her out. It was easy enough to believe that he was the topic of her distracted thoughts even if it was him those thoughts were distracting her from.

"They don't really do surnames, where I'm from," he admitted, stretching languorously to give her a larger surface to preen. "It's a joke — des Peres is. It means of the fathers in some other language. And, y'know, I got two. So my brother, Roamer — that's what he named himself. Slow West des Peres. And we all thought that was funny, so I took it, too."

He rolled toward her, hooking a long foreleg over her ribcage to trap her close against him.

"I wasn't Dusty Rose anything back then, though," he told her. "I didn't have a name. Dad called me baby-darlin' but that's what he called the rest of 'em, too."

He gave his father's words his father's twangy, sing-song accent. It was not unlike his own accent, shaved down and warped though it was.

His eyes glittered in the dark, half-lidded. He had questions of his own.