Liam really thought he could eat twice that much, but he wasn’t gonna be a pig, at least until Keegan filled his own plate. Then he was like, “Hey! Why do I get half of what you get?”
“Well, because I’m an alpha wolf and you say you’re just a dude.”
“Kee, that is not fair. I’m starving. I carried someone halfway down the freaking mountain. You just had a tiny baby strapped to your chest.”
“I would have carried the guy if you asked me.”
He stared. “I had it.”
“I know you did.” Keegan grinned at him. “So you want some more spaghetti, Mister Man?”
“Shut up, you dick, and give me some more fucking spaghetti and meatballs. Give me three more meatballs if there are that many.” He wasn’t going to be like an asshole about it, but he was hungry.
“There’s plenty.” Keegan hooked him up and they sat down and, well, basically they snarfed up the food so fast that he didn’t even really remember eating it. It was just nom nom nom nom thump. He sat there after it was all said and done, blinking a little bit. “Man, I’m sorry, I was about to expire.”
“That’s fine, Liam. You’re allowed to be hungry.”
Well, he hoped so, because he sure had been. “I hope Theo and the baby are all right. I hate not knowing. What do you think about him? He looks a lot like Fen, doesn’t he?”
Keegan nodded. “You know Fen said that there was some terrible problem with his pack, and that lots of them had left, but some of them couldn’t. All I can figure is maybe this is part of Fen’s pack?”
“If it was, how could Fen have just left them?”
“He wouldn’t have just left them. I mean, he obviously wouldn’t have known that there was a pregnant omega. It wouldn’t have been right.”
“I guess.” He chewed his lip. “Rory was clearly pregnant before the omega that had Gael, and Fen’s been here since and Rory got pregnant, so this is water under the bridge.”
“Right. No, you’re absolutely right.” This couldn’t be anything that Fen would know.
“And he did say he had pack members who ran off. I guess we’ll just have to find out.”
Keegan nodded. “I think, and I could be wrong, but I think what’s going to happen is I’m going to take the four-by-four back down to the pack. I’ll talk to Fen. I’ll get a hold of your brothers and let them know you’re up here and then once we know things, I’ll come back and get you and Theo so I can bring you down to the main pack.”
There was something about that that just didn’t ring correctly. He knew better than to mention it then. It wasn’t like Keegan was going to harm Theo in any way, but he just didn’tfeel like going down to Keegan and Jameson’s pack so Theo could live there was going to be a thing. Still, it didn’t matter. They could argue about that later. He was perfectly capable of snarling on Theo’s behalf. Perfectly.
Loyal came out and offered them both a tired smile. “They’re both asleep. Niall says they’re both going to be fine. They are incredibly malnourished and they need rest.” Loyal gave Liam a curious little look also. “He’s gonna need his mate. It’ll help.”
Liam didn’t even hesitate, because even if he wasn’t Theo’s mate, even if this whole thing was bullshit, if Theo needed him and Gael needed him, that was what he was here for.
“I’m going to head back down.”
Loyal shrugged. “He can stay as long as he needs to stay.”
“All right. I’ll call your brothers, Liam, and I’ll tell Rory. I imagine Rory and Fen will come up in a day or two to see Theo and see if Fen knows him.”
Liam nodded, because that was fine; he didn’t care. He didn’t really care about anything right this second except for seeing Theo. In fact, he just headed back toward the bedrooms like he knew where he was going. Then again, he’d been following that same call for months now, trying to figure out how to get to it so…
He guessed he’d blown it a little bit. He’d let everybody put him off and make him wait, made everyone wait too long. He was done with that though. He guaranteed it.
Theo was sleeping hard, a second low bed next to him holding little Gael. The baby rested under Theo’s hand, looking so small and fragile that it made Liam’s heart ache.
Liam kicked off his shoes and shrugged off his overshirt before checking out his jeans to see how gross they were. He didn’t want to be nasty and climb in next to Theo naked, but neither did he want to infect the bedsheets with God knew what kind of dirt.
Niall wandered through, offered him a smile and a pair of soft sweatpants without either one of them saying a word, and then wandered back out. Like a ghost. Like a weird wolfy shamanistic ghost. Still, yay sweatpants.
When Niall ghosted back through holding a sweater, handed it off to him, he just had to laugh softly. “Thank you for dinner by the way, Niall.”
Niall gave him a happy smile. “I’m glad I could provide. When you wake up, maybe you’ll want some cookies.”
