He cleared his throat. “Nonna! Did you have a good trip? Did we know you were coming?”
“You can’t,” she said. The fact that she was speaking English, which she was perfectly fluent in but preferred her harangues in Italian, highlighted how serious this was. When she absolutely did not want to be misunderstood, she chose the language of her adopted country.
“Can’t what exactly? Why did you make the journey? Not that it isn’t a delight to see you.”
“You were supposed to be loving, not fighting.”
He closed his eyes. Of course, someone had told her about the fight. It would be a surefire way to end this experiment. “Was it Romeo? Nicolo?”
“The point is to extend the Amato pack, not end it here. We cannot be in a territory dispute. Come home.”
“What about pawing in the dirt, changing my life?”
Nonna looked over at Cat, who was now leaning down to listen to Gianna chatter, and his heart turned over in his chest.
“I forgot that sometimes change does not improve things,” she said quietly.
He could tell her they weren’t serious. He could tell her Cat would never leave Silver Spring, and he could not leave New York. He could tell her she was a witch, far worse than a wolfless shifter, and they weren’t compatible at all, but he could not make his mouth say the words.
Suddenly, Gianna popped up with a squeal and headed straight toward them.
“What is it?” he asked as all the wolves in the room went on red alert.
“She’s never hadCacciatore!” Gianna said on the way past him to the kitchen, Cat trailing behind.
“What?” he asked, totally thrown, but then his wolf pushed after his niece, and he realized it didn’t matter what she was saying; it was a way out of this conversation.
“It has tomatoes and peppers and chicken and onions…” Gianna said as she led the way into the industrial kitchen.
Cat stopped short, and reality crashed in.
“I’m a vegetarian,” she said softly, but this was a house full of shifters.
Everyone stopped.
Gianna pivoted. “How are you still alive?”
“You know vegetarians at school!” Mateo said, appalled by her manners.
“Yeah, but they’re not…” she frowned.
“No wonder she never got a wolf,” someone muttered from the back of the crowd. Mateo’s eyes jerked toward his wolves, but Cat would not have heard him.
“There’s no dish without meat?” Cat asked brightly.
Gianna shook her head, and Nonna snorted.
“In all of Italy?” Cat coaxed.
He wanted her. That had been true from the first moment he smelled her. It was more true once he had gotten her into bed, but a part of his brain had always skipped when he contemplated reality. What would his pack think? How would his work suffer? How could she fit in his world with her crystals and cross-country skis?
Watching Cat coax Gianna and his great aunt into the kitchen to dig up a dish she could eat, he realized he didn’t just want her in his bed. He wanted her to be holding their children. The vision was so intense, he wondered if this was what her real visions were like. He could feel the weight of a child in his arms.
That had been the real problem in New York. He met every female shifter there was to meet, and could have his pick of them, frankly. He was not a man that most women refused. All of them would fit seamlessly into his pack, his business, and his life. They knew how the game was played, and they ate their Chicken Cacciatore whether they liked it or not. His wolf, and frankly, he, did not want any of them. He didn’t want someone who could fit seamlessly into that life.
Gianna dragged Cat out of the kitchen holding a plate full of pastries and a smile. He couldn’t help smiling, too. It was the dinner he would have chosen at seven years old, too.
A traitorous voice in his head insisted that she represented something different more than something good, and keeping them for novelty was a shitty thing to do to a person, too.
