He laid back and scratched behind an ear, feeling himself settle in as he wondered how many others knew. Then he wondered how many backed off because of it. It was the latter that helped him decide that, yep, this wasn't a big deal at all. She liked the pets, and he was going to give the pets.

All the shivering he'd been doing had turned out to be a drain on his energy, and he hadn't realized it until he was too warm to do so. As he relaxed every muscle, his ears filled with nothing but the quiet and the occasional thump from the wolf's tail, he found that he was drifting off pretty quickly in the very last place he figured he ever would.

"...'s no wonder you work here," he said, voice tinged with grogginess.