Dean recovered his mate’s dinner and sat down to wait. Telling his wolf to calm down. Thankfully, Silas didn’t take long and soon joined him. Dean’s wolf wanted to wag his tail in delight. Silas sat down and started tucking into Dean’s cooking like it was the best cuisine in the world.
Dean smiled. He loved the pack’s communal meals, but he did miss cooking and intimate dinners like this. They should do this more often, Dean decided. Romantic meals, just the two of them.
Except it wasn’t going to be just the two of them for much longer. They were bringing a pup into their family. Dean thought about that while he ate and he realized he was genuinely looking forward to it. He was going to be a dad. It was daunting but great. Raising a mini-Silas? How awesome was that?
But maybe they should have more romantic moments whilst they could? Cram them all in? Stock up before they were too busy being parents. Dean smiled, he liked that idea.
“What are you smiling about?” asked Silas.
Dean grinned. “Just thinking about how much I love you.”
Silas shook his head as if he thought Dean was a lost cause. But he smiled fondly.
“That reminds me!” exclaimed Dean suddenly.
He pulled the pebble out of his pocket and handed it to Silas, who took it but stared at it like he had never seen a pebble before. Dean had seen it in the morning when he had been helping out with the building work. It was a very nice pebble. Smooth, light gray with pretty white swirls through it. It was oval shaped and a comforting weight. The size sat nicely in the palm of the hand and it absorbed body heat, making it pleasantly warm to the touch.
Silas looked at him like he was crazy.
“I gave you a pebble, and you accepted it, so we are penguin married now,” said Dean with a delighted grin.
Silas gave an exasperated sigh, but he slipped the pebble into his jean’s pocket. Dean beamed.
“I’m working on getting you a birth certificate so we can get human married and Baltazar is asking around for a vampire priest who is willing to do a binding ceremony to non-vamps,” said Dean.
“I haven’t said yes to all this,” said Silas, raising an eyebrow.
“You will,” answered Dean with a cheeky wink.
Silas laughed. The sound warmed Dean’s insides, as it always did. “You’re right, I will,” confessed Silas.
“But we are not getting hippopotamus mated, that’s for sure!” added Silas with a chuckle.
Dean gave him a questioning look. Silas saw it and grinned. “They poop and fart at each other.”
“I would do anything for love, but I won’t do that,” declared Dean.
Silas just groaned at the cheesy song reference and took another mouthful of his dinner. They ate in silence for a while.
“Does our guest have anything useful to say?” asked Dean.
Silas shook his head. “Doesn’t seem so. Just a dumb human mage who thinks hunters don’t hate him too. Fanatically anti anything not human and greedy for money.”
Dean grimaced. “What an ass-hat. Are you going to kill him?”
Silas nodded as he took a sip of his wine. Dean watched him intently for a moment to see if he liked it and when Silas made a little happy noise, Dean felt like doing a celebratory dance. But he restrained himself and turned his attention to the matters at hand.
“There is a boggy patch by the eastern woods, probably a good place to hide the body.”
Silas nodded as he ate. “Okay.”
Dean hid his sigh of relief, he really wasn’t keen on keeping anymore zombies around the place. They scared the shit out of him. Always had. It was one of the many reasons he had been hugely relieved to discover that he wasn’t one.
“What shall we do with Aaron?” asked Dean.
Silas shrugged. “Let him rejoin the pack, I guess. He has proven his loyalty.”
Dean stared at his mate for a moment. He had never asked why Silas had wanted to exile Aaron in the first place. Dean now knew that the beta had been one of the people who had guarded him when he was a captive. Guarded him when he was drugged and chained to a bed. An omega in a pack that Silvanus had admitted was short of them. Dean shivered.
