"We have food," Silas protests, setting his bag on the counter. "There's... stuff."
"There's condiments and three-day-old pizza," Hunter corrects. "That doesn't count."
Riley perks up immediately, craning her neck to see what we brought. "Is it the broccoli thing?"
"Of course it's the broccoli thing," I tell her, pulling out the container and setting it in front of her. "When have we ever forgotten?"
She grins, making grabby hands for it. These moments are what we're fighting for. These small instances of normalcy and happiness in the midst of everything else falling apart.
Isaac gets his noodles, and he immediately digs in with his hands despite having a perfectly good fork right next to it. I decide not to fight that battle tonight.Pick your battles, that's what Evie always used to say.
While the kids eat, the three of us migrate to the living room, collapsing onto the couch. Hunter takes one end, I take the other, and Silas settles in the middle, his legs stretched out and feet resting on the coffee table.
Hunter makes a show of looking at Silas with exaggerated surprise. "Well, well. Look who decided to join the land of the living. Glad to see you outside your office cave,babe."
Silas flips him off, but there's no heat in it. "You're hilarious."
"I know," Hunter muses, then sobers slightly. "Seriously though, you doing okay?"
"Getting there," Silas says, which is probably the most honest answer he's given in weeks.
I twist to look back at the kitchen, watching Riley carefully cut up her broccoli casserole and feed bites to Isaac, who happily accepts them. She's being surprisingly gentle with him, making sure each bite is cool enough before offering it. These are the moments that remind me she's still a kid herself, still capable of sweetness despite the armor she's built up.
"Ran into Dylan at the diner," I say casually, watching Hunter's reaction from the corner of my eye. "He mentioned his sister might be able to help us out."
Hunter's response is no surprise. "No."
The word comes out immediately, leaving no room for discussion. But we're past the point where he gets to make unilateral decisions without at least hearing us out.
"She's not looking for Alphas," I continue, trying to keep my voice level and reasonable. If I play this wrong, Hunter won’t even entertain the idea. "She got out of a bad situation. Dylan said her ex was abusive and that she's trying to get back on her feet. He thought she might be interested in helping with the kids over the summer, and that it might be good for her to have something to focus on."
Silas shifts beside me, his interest piqued. "Amelia? Dylan's little sister?"
"Not so little anymore," I say. "But yeah."
Hunter's jaw works, that muscle in his cheek twitching the way it does when he's thinking hard about something he doesn't want to consider. "We've been down this road before. Multiple times. It never ends well."
"Dylan said to meet tomorrow at lunch," I press, because we can't let fear of the past keep us from moving forward and fuck, we really need this. "It can't hurt to talk to her. Even if it's just for Riley and Isaac, we have to do something."
The mention of the kids softens Hunter's expression, the way it always does. They're his weakness, his soft spot, and the one thing that can get him to agree to almost anything.
"Fine," he says after a long moment. "But I'm staying home the first few days if we do this. I'm not leaving a stranger alone with my kids until I know for sure they're safe."
It's a reasonable boundary, one I expected, even if Amelia is absolutely safe territory. But there's still the matter of that first meeting, making sure Hunter doesn't scare off Dylan's sister before we even have a chance to see if this could work.
"Just don't terrify her off, okay?" I say, meeting Hunter's eyes. "Give her a chance. Dylan vouched for her, and he wouldn't do that if he didn't think she was good people."
Hunter laughs, but it's not a particularly amused sound. "Since when did you decide to trust other people?"
"Since I realized we can't keep going at this pace," I push out. "That we're going to break sooner rather than later. If we don't figure some shit out, the kids are going to suffer. And Evie wouldn't want that. I also know Amelia or at least I used to, briefly."
Invoking Evie’s name is playing dirty, and I know it. But it's also the truth. Evie would be heartbroken to see what we've become. How we've let grief consume us, how we've stopped living and started just surviving. She'd want better for us, for her babies.
Hunter's expression shutters, pain flickering across his face before he locks it down. He grunts, then sits forward with his elbows on his knees.
"New plan," he says, his voice taking on a more commanding tone. "Bring her here. I don't want to waste time with niceties at some coffee shop. Let her see the kids, see the house, and see what she'd actually be walking into. I need to see how she reacts to them, how she'll be in our home, taking care of our pack."
I grimace, already imagining how intimidating that's going to be. Walking into a house full of Alphas, being evaluated and assessed, probably feeling like she's on trial. It's going to be uncomfortable as hell for Dylan's sister, especially if she's as fragile as Dylan implied.
