As his presence wove through the bond like shiny silver thread, I felt the rest of us slide together into a smooth, cohesive whole. Passion, loyalty, and stubbornness—all of it bound into a single, functional unit by the smooth embrace of Knox’s cool logic.
“I love you,” I sobbed, not directing it at any one person... just the room as a whole.
Instantly, that love was reflected back to me, multiplied a hundredfold. I was swimming in it, drowning in it, breathing it in until my body stopped relying on air and started living on adoration.
“We love you, too,” Tony said unsteadily, his steadfast friendship weaving seamlessly into the new tapestry of my life, even if he didn’t live inside my consciousness like the others.
“I don’t deserve this,” I whimpered, my voice wavering dangerously.
“Kitten,everyonedeserves love,” Gage said, his warmth swelling to the forefront of the bond.
“Goddamn it, Gage,” Tony said, not sounding any better off than I felt. “Don’t make me cry while I’ve got Heath’s knot up my ass. It’s undignified.”
Knox’s quicksilver presence shimmered, amusement breaking through the cool façade. A moment later, he was chuckling—his forehead pressed to my nape as laughter rippled outward through the bond. Gage was the next to break, leaning his head back and guffawing. Heath followed, his stifled snorts muffled in Tony’s hair.
The bubbly feeling of joy flowed over me until I was half-laughing, half-crying.
Tony made a disgruntled noise as merriment echoed through the nest.
“Gladsomeone’sgetting amusement value out of this,” he muttered in a sour tone.
The laughter rose higher, echoing through the bond like bells ringing.
SIXTY-FOUR
Tony
TWO WEEKS AFTER KNOXfinally mated Jez, my new pack sat at a giant table in a trendy Michelin-star restaurant in St. Louis, breaking bread with my old pack.
Not that I had any real claim on the Price pack. They’d taken me in and sheltered me five years ago, back when I’d been a desperate, emotionally damaged teenager. For them, it had probably been a normal Tuesday. For me, it was the first time I’d seen people treating other people like a real family.
Zalen Price, Byron Harper, Emiel Hamilton, Luca Doyle, Nat Bell, and Mia Dimitriadis had welcomed me back to the city of my birth with open arms. The owners of Nat and Mia’s former restaurant had closed the place down for the evening, turning St. Louis’s hottest eatery into a one-night-only private venue for us.
In addition to the main pack, Byron’s no-nonsense adoptive grandmother Bea had showed up, and nearly made me start bawling on the spot by telling me how proud she was of me. It was Bea who’d hidden me away from my abusive stepfather—and the juvenile authorities—when staying at my house had become too horrible to bear. The old alpha matriarch looked the same as she had back then—stoop-shouldered and indomitable, with frown lines and smile lines etched into her craggy face in equal measure.
She pointed a forkful of pasta at Jez, who was sitting across from her and looking generally overwhelmed by the sheer number of people talking and laughing.
“You’re carrying pups,” Bea said, completely unfiltered as always. “I can smell it on you. Have you taken a pregnancy test yet?”
“Bea!” Byron yelped, his gray eyes going wide.
The table went abruptly quiet. Jez lifted a hand to her belly—a subconscious gesture she’d been making more and more often over the past few days.
“Not yet,” she said softly. “It’s too soon for a test to work. Do you really think I am, though?”
