“Sprout’s letting me eat breakfast.” I take a pointed bite of eggs. “We’re very grateful.”
“Good sprout.” He pours himself a coffee, then turns and points the mug at my stomach with mock seriousness. “Keep being nice to your mama. She’s growing you a whole spine in there. Very complicated work.”
“That’s not how fetal development works,” Lucas says automatically.
“It’s exactly how it works. I read a book.” Theo drops into the chair beside me and steals a piece of toast from my plate. “The spine grows in week sixteen. I’m pretty sure.”
“You’re not even close.”
“I’m emotionally close.”
I’m laughing when Nate comes in from outside.
He doesn’t say anything—he never does, not with words—but his presence fills the room. Sawdust clings to his flannel shirt and his dark hair, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his forearms from the morning’s work. His scent hits me a moment later—pine and woodsmoke, something warm underneath. Safe. Steady.
He crosses to me, callused hand cupping the back of my head as he presses a kiss to my hair. His nostrils flare slightly—my scent’s been different since the pregnancy, sweeter, and it makes all three of them a little crazy. His thumb traces over the bond mark on my neck—his mark, with Lucas’s on the other side and Theo’s at the back—and a low purr rumbles in his chest. Just for a moment. Just enough for me to feel it vibrate through me.
Then he heads to the sink to wash his hands, and I’m left with the ghost of his touch on my skin and his contentment humming through the bond.
Pack.
God, I love them.
They’re building a granny flat.
It was Grandma’s idea, sort of. She mentioned once—just once, over Sunday dinner—that the farmhouse was getting too far to visit every day. That her joints ached on the long drive. That she wasn’t getting any younger.
By the next morning, Nate had blueprints spread across the kitchen table.
“She shouldn’t be living alone anyway,” he’d said, not looking up from the plans. And that was that.
Grandma insists she’s just “staying over sometimes to help with the baby.” We all know she’s moving in. Nobody’s complaining—least of all me. The thought of having her close, of our baby knowing their great-grandmother the way I knew her, makes my throat tight in the best way.
I sit on the back porch in one of Nate’s flannels—the worn blue one that smells like him, that I’ve stolen so many times it might as well be mine now—and watch them work. The framing’s up, Grandma’s future kitchen visible in the skeletal walls. The afternoon sun is warm on my face, and I’ve got a cup of tea balanced on my belly because the baby makes a surprisingly good shelf.
“The window’s crooked,” Lucas calls out. He’s standing back, arms crossed, studying the frame with the intensity of a man diagnosing a complex illness.
“It’s not crooked.” Theo doesn’t look up from the board he’s measuring, pencil tucked behind his ear.
“It’s three degrees off center.”
“How can you possibly tell that from?—”
“I have eyes, Theo. And spatial awareness. And a level, which you apparently aren’t using.”
“The level is fine.You’rethe one who’s off-center.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Yourfacedoesn’t make sense.”
Nate ignores them both. He’s crouched by the foundation, hammering something with methodical precision. He’s been building things his whole life—this farmhouse, the nest room, the crib that’s already waiting in the nursery. His hands know what they’re doing even when his packmates are bickering like children.
Mr. Darcy sits on the porch railing beside me, his orange tail flicking with disapproval. He’s been supervising the construction all week, which mostly means sitting in inconvenient places and yowling whenever the hammering gets too loud.
“Your cat’s judging us again,” Theo calls up to me, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“He’s Nate’s cat.”
