You are the perfect mate for a pack alpha, Liam told him.I love that you’re so good with him. Look at him, he’s practically dancing.
I just want my pack to be happy—all of us. We deserve some happiness.
How many of these wolves had been denied resources, or a home? It was heartbreaking, and he wanted to fix it.
Well, I’m proud of you.
Thank you.He blushed, but he was so pleased, so honored to be so well loved.
“Should I make gravy?” Brant asked. “I can make either a cream one or a tomato sauce.” Brant looked over the moon, he was grinning so hard.
“I love red sauce,” Ryan piped up.
Theo just groaned in pure bliss. “Yes, please. All the things.”
Then he took a huge bite of his sandwich.
He was still craving peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but he would supplement that with cheese, pickles, and meatballs. Who knew how he would be feeling in an hour? The cravings changed just that fast. Such was a pregnant wolf, he guessed. Thank goodness his family and pack understood.
Chapter
Fifteen
Liam was finally finding time to work on the cradle for his baby. The winter had brought a lot of indoor time, and he had found himself in a room sort of off of the main corridor that went down to the pool where he could do his woodwork and hide it from Theo.
He was carving it out of a single piece of cured tree trunk that he’d found, and he was super proud of the way it was looking. Liam understood it was traditional for alpha mates to do this for their omegas as long as they had the skill to do it.
The whoosh of the planer and the clunk, clunk, clunk of the carving knife with the hammer soothed him. While he would never be the kind of woodworker his brother’s mate Fen was, he really found that he enjoyed this.
Theo was with Gael, Sara, and Ben in the kitchen. They had found that Sara loved to bake, but cooking she was indifferent to. She had done it because she felt like she had to. So Theo and Ben were creating all sorts of amazing things they could make with the stuff that they’d put away for the year—dried mushrooms, canned tomatoes, and such—while Sara created fresh bread, muffins, and cookies.
He was going to have to really get out there and chop some wood soon in order for him to keep his alpha figure.
“Brother, are you in here? Have you seen my dogs? They’re all just—” Ryan opened the door and looked in at the pile of pups surrounding him. “Ah, never mind. I see you have them.”
“I do. They all wanted to be in here while I worked. I think they liked the smell of wood chips.” He grinned at Ryan. “Close the door! I don’t want to show off anything that Theo is not supposed to see yet.”
“Sorry!” Laughing, Ryan stepped inside and closed the door behind him. “This is kind of an amazing workroom. I didn’t know you had so many tools.”
Liam scoffed a little bit, feeling his ears heat. “I didn’t either. It sort of just happened.”
“Really?” Ryan looked at the pegboards on the wall, and he reached up to touch a rasp. “These kind of look old.”
“Yeah, I’m thinking it’s either a dragon magic or maybe the house has some sort of a ghost, you know?” That would’ve sounded crazy to him, even a couple of years ago, knowing about the wolves and the dragons, because Liam would have said he didn’t have any magic in him.
Now he knew better. Now he knew that his life would never be the same.
It didn’t have to be the same. Now his normal, boring life got to be a constantly changing universe, with magic around all the corners. His home with his brothers had been replaced by his pack, and now instead of being lonely, he had a mate and an instant family that was growing minute by minute.
He beamed at Ryan, who he thought felt the same way, even if he didn’t have a mate yet. “What do you think?” He dusted the top of the cradle off where it had a little roof over where the baby’s head would go.
“I think it’s super cool, man. I can’t believe you could do this. I didn’t even know you had it in you.”
Liam scoffed. “I always wanted to make a dugout canoe. Do you remember that? Like, so I could float down the branch of the river that ran behind the trading post.” He’d always, always wanted to do that after he saw a documentary on TV about how it was done. The thought of taking a huge piece of wood and making a boat out of it made him incredibly intrigued.
“Oh, dude! You should. You totally should. I’d love to help with that.”
“Yeah?” He beamed at Ryan, because they were bonding as brothers like they never really had before. “I would love that too. We’ll start in the spring. Shouldn’t be too hard to find some downed wood.”
