“You two are disgusting,” Mason announced with theatrical disgust. “Like, cavity-inducing levels of sweet. I may need dental work.”
“You need dental work anyway,” Nate shot back without moving away from me. “When's the last time you actually went to a dentist?”
“I have excellent dental hygiene,” Mason said with wounded dignity. “It's genetic.”
“Genetic dental hygiene,” Anna said, appearing in the living room doorway with an armful of curtains and a look of fond exasperation. “That's a new one. Does that mean you boys don't need to brush your teeth?”
The sudden silence that fell over the room was thick enough to cut with a knife. Because Anna had just stumbled right up to the edge of our biggest secret without even realizing it, and none of us had any idea how to respond without either lying or revealing truths that weren't ours to share.
“Mom,” Nate said carefully. “They were just joking around.”
“Of course they were,” Anna said, but there was something thoughtful in her expression as she looked between Mason's suddenly tight shoulders and Cal's carefully neutral face. “Boys and their tall tales. Michael! Come help me figure out where these brackets need to go!”
The moment passed, but I caught the way Gideon's hands stilled on the wrench he'd been using to adjust something under the sink. We were walking a tightrope here, trying to be part of this family without letting them see the claws.
It couldn't last forever.
But for now, for this moment, I could pretend it was enough to help Michael coax life back into his old truck while Anna fussed over curtains and Nate stole kisses between trips to the toolbox.
For now, I could let myself believe in the fiction of normal.
“Hey,” Nate said softly, appearing at my elbow with a wrench I probably needed. “You okay? You went somewhere dark there for a minute.”
Trust him to notice the shift in my mood, the way my thoughts had turned toward futures that felt increasingly uncertain.
“Yeah,” I said, taking the wrench and letting my fingers brush against his in the exchange. “Just thinking.”
“Dangerous habit,” he teased, but his eyes were serious. “Want to share with the class?”
I glanced around the room—at Mason still sorting hardware with mechanical precision, at Cal measuring boards for Anna's deck project, at Michael and Gideon bent over the truck's engine like old friends sharing a common language of fan belts and spark plugs.
This was what we were fighting for. This fragile, precious thing we'd built without anyone quite realizing we were building it. The humans who'd become pack without knowing it, the wolves who'd learned to love fiercely enough to die protecting what mattered.
“Just thinking about how good this is,” I said quietly. “How right it feels.”
Nate's smile was soft and understanding and tinged with the same bittersweetness I was feeling.
“Yeah,” he said. “It really does.”
“Oi!” Cal called from across the room. “Less gazing into each other's eyes, more helping me figure out if these measurements are right. Because if Anna's deck collapses, she's gonna blame me, and I cannot handle that level of disappointed mom energy.”
“The measurements are fine,” Mason said without looking up from his hardware sorting. “You're just paranoid because you've never built a deck before.”
“I've built plenty of?—”
“Birdhouses don't count.”
“That was one time!”
I caught Nate's hand, squeezing gently before releasing him to join the good-natured argument about construction competency. This was pack—the bickering and the shared labor, the way we showed love through service and presence rather than words.
Even Gideon, standing quietly by the sink, was part of this fabric we'd woven together. Even if I couldn't quite bring myself to look at him directly.
The anger was still there, simmering beneath the surface like a slow burn. But so was the recognition that he was family too, had been family long before I understood what that meant.
Maybe forgiveness was just another form of construction project—something you built one careful piece at a time until it was strong enough to hold the weight of everything you'd built on top of it.
“Evan,” Anna called from the kitchen. “Can you reach the top shelf in this cabinet? I swear they built these things for giants.”
