I just hoped like hell her grandmother didn’t kill me first.

The woman was a trip.

Hannah shot me one last smile and waved before she left, and I watched her go for a minute.

“You’ve got it bad,” Jo, today’s receptionist, said.

“Oh, be quiet.”

***

I hated shelters.

I hated the animals left here with nobody to love them. I hated that none of them had a home to go to, that the only time they were really let out of their crates was for necessary exercise or to meet potential adopters.

I hated that some of these animals would die needlessly.

Everything about obtaining a pet sucked. There were people on both sides of the fence—those who believed it was their right to choose a pet from a breeder and those who believed breeders were the devil incarnate.

I stood firmly in the middle.

I believed everyone had their place in society and the animal world, even breeders. Some people didn’t have a choice—maybe they were allergic and needed hypoallergenic breeds. Maybe some people had special needs or their children did and they had to be mindful of the breeds they chose to get.

Then? Breeders were vital. It was important that everyone was able to get the pet they needed that would fit into their lifestyle, because that was how it worked. Unless you were buying a farm.

There was no chance you were fitting a pig into your lifestyle. You were changing yours.

The bottom line was that the manner of obtaining a pet didn’t matter. Whether a puppy or a kitten came from a shelter or a breeder, there was one point that so many people seemed to miss: they all needed a home regardless.

Take my grandma, for example. She’d never once rescued any animal unless it was a hedgehog—then she rehabilitated those for the winter before letting them go. She’d also saved an owl once.

All right, I’ll rephrase.

She’d never rescued a pet before.

She worked on a farm. She needed purebred working dogs to herd the sheep and cattle, and then she always had a terrier around to be her ratter.

All purebred. All perfect. All needing a home just as much as the others.

Her needs were different.

My aunt, however, refused to buy from breeders. The woman had four cats and three dogs and every single one had been rescued from various shelters back home in England, but she never judged her mom, my grandma, for her purebred babies.

Because it didn’t bloody well matter.

Just like me and Hannah. She’d mentioned last night that if she had been in a position to choose to get a pet, she would have gone to a breeder for a pedigree puppy. A smaller breed that would be easy for her to look after, one that she really loved.

It made sense.

Sure, she’d ended up with a stray kitten, but life was funny like that. I wanted to believe that Lucifer had found her for a reason—and maybe that reason was us.