My alphas never let me go. They kiss me sweetly, roll me onto my back or my front, and fuck me until my body is no longer burning.
And they take care of me, clean the mess from my skin, feed me small bites of food from their hands, and let me sip from cool glasses of water.
When I open my eyes five days later, it’s with a smile to fresh sheets, sunlight streaming in through the window, and my alphas sleeping tucked up close beside me.
Epilogue
Archer
Three weeks later…
Callum has spent the last five minutes sniffing each container of Chinese food.
We’re all dressed in sweats on a cold, rainy afternoon, relaxing in our home theater, ready to enjoy some food and watch a couple of movies.
“Quit sniffing the Kung Pao chicken; it smells fine.” June snags the white takeout container from Callum and pops a piece of chicken in her mouth, chewing happily. “Lucia recommended this place, and she said she never got sick.”
Callum watches her with a furrowed brow. “What happened to the last place?”
“Lucia said it closed down. It had a bunch of health code violations. It was even in the news,” June says.
From the intensity that Callum eyes the container, he’s considering snatching it out of her hand to protect her, but she’s enjoying it and he doesn’t want to take away something that’s making her so happy.
She leans over and kisses him. “This is good. Quit worrying. It won’t make me sick.”
When he extends the quick kiss into a deeper, hungrier one, I share an amused look with Torin and wonder if kissing our mate like that wasn’t his priority. It absolutely would have been mine.
I wait until Callum stops kissing June to ask her, “Are you sure you don’t want to invite your sister? I can swing by and pick her up.”
Callum snags the beef and broccoli and starts eating after it passes his sniff test inspection.
“Not this time,” June says with a grateful smile. “I want this first time to just be us.”
She’s not the only one.
We’d have done the movie and Chinese food that June requested a while ago, but time got away from us. June’s heat meant we barely left her bed for a week, then we were busy rebuilding her nest. Then the news distracted all of us when the last members of Asylum were jailed. Tonight is as much about creating a new happy memory for June as it is about celebrating.
“What about Lucia?” Torin asks, snagging the orange chicken. “We could invite a bunch of people and make a party of it. Like a second, more fun mate-bonding party.”
June grins. “That sounds like a great idea.” She scrunches her nose. “Gia would not thank us though if Simon gets into that bowl of candy. He’d dive into it and wouldn’t sleep for a week; the sugar high would beintense.”
“We’ll do it on a Friday or Saturday,” Callum suggests.
June smiles. “Okay. I’ll ask Gia the next time I go to see my sister.”
We’ve kept up the biweekly food delivery to June’s old home. Now, instead of a few bags of groceries, we have a couple of boxes delivered, and everyone can help themselves. It’s something we would have done anyway, but June’s tearful smile made it all the sweeter.
The people in her building became her family, and she still visits them a couple of times a week, as well as to see her sister, who took over her apartment when she moved in with us.
June also started helping out at the local community center. Jack told her about the place he donated most of the money I gave him after closing the hardware store and paying all its debts, and she was interested enough to visit it herself.
When Jack isn’t busy writing his book, he goes with June to help out at the community center.
And at least one of us always goes with her. Not just to make sure she’s safe, though we’re not expecting anyone to hurt her. Everyone who would want to hurt her is dead or in jail. We’re all trying to be better, too.
“You have the smile of a happy idiot,” Torin says, prodding my right leg. “You know that, right?”
While I wasn’t paying attention, he snuggled alongside June. From the orange sauce on his mouth, she’s been feeding him Kung Pao chicken.
