“But you do. You understand my controlled chaos. My brilliant, thoughtful, amazingmate. There’s just one thing that’s not where it should be.”
I look up, puzzled, and he opens his arms to me.
“You. You should be in my arms.”
I pad across the polished wood floors and let him take me into his arms, pressing up on my toes to give him a quick kiss. “Go, write down your breakthrough. As much as I want to be in your arms, we have a lot of work to do tonight. Let me make us some coffee. It’s going to be a very late night.”
“Saints, this’ll take us until dawn,” he mutters, nuzzling his bite mark again.
“All the more reason to get started. Ian, my alpha, my love, my mate, we have time now. We’re free, we don’t have to hide, and we have time.”
He brushes his nose against mine and captures my lips in a sweet kiss. “You’re right, my darling. My clever mate. White chocolate mochas with extra shots of espresso?”
“Ian, I’m making them so strong, we’ll be wired for days.”
I break from his arms and press a piece of his favorite chalk into his hand. “Go, be brilliant. I’ll be back before you know it. Actually, you’ll probably be so deep in thought, you won’t even notice my return.” I sniffle dramatically, thinking back to the time he accidentally left me waiting for half an hour because he was so immersed in a book of old Baphomet lore. “I’m used to it.”
“Menace,” he teases, his breath feathering over my cheek. “You’re mine, now. I’ll feel you whenever you’re near. Mine, forever.”
I press a kiss to his cheek. “Yours. Now, get to work, alpha. The sooner we get this figured out, the sooner you can bend me over that fancy new desk.”
He looks over at the desk longingly, and then over to the blackboard. “Perfect, tempting, beautiful brat. Go before I change my mind.”
I skip out of his reach with a giggle, blow him a kiss and then slip downstairs to make us mochas, a smile on my face and lightness in my heart.
I find my first mate in the kitchen and shoot him a puzzled look. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“Well, it’s hard to sleep when your mate is coming her brains out just down the hall.”
I blush as I grab a carton of milk from the fridge.
“But then you felt surprised and then puzzled. I came down to check on you, but you went into the study.”
“Ian had a breakthrough on the Ever Ember hex. We’re going to work through it, but I wanted to make us some coffee first.”
Cassian takes the milk from me and pours some into the metal frothing pitcher, taking over my job for me.
“That’s so… the two of you. Mate, then one of you has a stroke of brilliance and you work through the night. I’m so happy for you, Juniper.”
And he is. He’s not just saying what I want to hear; really and truly, he’s happy for me.
“Ian and I may not always see eye to eye,” he continues, “but he’s a good alpha. I’m glad things worked out the way they did.”
“Me too,” I say with a smile. “Thank you, Cass. You gave me this. By mating me, you freed me to mate my other alphas. To have the pack of my dreams.”
I cross the kitchen to him and give him a kiss on the cheek, then pull down two tall mugs as my mate tamps down shots of espresso.
“Make them strong.”
“I always do, love. Just the way you like them.”
I wrap my arms around him from behind and he lets me, not caring that I’m absolutely covered in Ian’s scent. I nuzzle against him, the alpha that made it possible for me to have this life, this pack.
When the mochas are done, he gives me a sweet kiss on the forehead. “Go, be brilliant. Good luck, though I know the two of you won’t need it.”
Cassian is right: wedon’tneed luck. What we need is more and more coffee as the night goes on. We work through the equation over and over again, pacing the study, smudging away chalky sigils with the sides of our hands, scribbling lines and lines of magical calculus on scraps of paper.
We’re checking over our work for the last time when the rest of my pack begins to awaken. Simon eventually pads over to the study and pokes his head in with a yawn.
