“Yes, and that’s not just the Wyr,” she agreed. “Mundane animals are super smart too. Anybody who is a pet owner can vouch for that…” She frowned. “Mundane. Pet owners. Oh no.” Holding Niall firmly, she lunged upright. “Dragos, get dressed. We need to go to Miss Creedy’s house—we have to find out where she lived.”

She spoke quietly so she didn’t wake the baby, but the urgency in her words had him launching into action. Eva, he said telepathically as he yanked on a pair of jeans. We need you now.

Be right there, Eva replied. Even though he had probably woken her up, she sounded completely alert. What’s wrong?

I don’t know yet. He could already hear Eva running through the house toward them, so he switched to verbal speech. “What’s going on, Pia?”

She had already eased Niall onto the bed and was dressing quickly too. “Miss Creedy rescued a dog while Liam was in her class. He adored that dog. Said it was the ugliest thing, but so sweet and smart, and it really loved to learn tricks.” She looked at him, distressed. “She didn’t have any family. What if nobody’s thought about the dog and it’s still at her house? It’s been three days since she died.”

“I’ll find out her address.” As former lord of the Wyr demesne, Dragos still had access to certain databases. He passed Eva in the hallway and jogged down the steps to his office.

“Eva—oh good, there you are,” Pia said. “We need you to watch Niall for a while.”

While Eva and Pia’s voices floated downstairs, he logged into his computer and ran a few quick searches. When Pia’s quick footsteps sounded in the doorway, he had already stood. He angled his way around the desk.

“Got it,” he told her. “She lived on the other side of town. I can shapeshift and fly us there in a few minutes.”

“Okay. Hold on.” She dashed to the kitchen and came back carrying a Tupperware container filled with the bacon she had cooked for breakfast. “I hope somebody already thought to check her house for pets. If they haven’t yet…well, I hope it’s still alive.”

Dragos didn’t understand the need to keep pets. To him, animals were either predator or prey—and since he was the ultimate apex predator, he didn’t concern himself too much with the niceties of those distinctions.

But he did understand the emotions people attached to their pets, and he understood all too well the emotional upset that now darkened Pia’s scent. And the thought of any mundane animal being neglected or abused was distasteful, to say the least.

“It’s going to be all right,” he told her, resting a hand on her slender back. “If it’s still there and alive, we’ll help it.”