Theo grins triumphantly. Lucas sighs but doesn’t argue.
Grandma asks about names—we’ve got a shortlist for each, though we keep going back and forth—and about the nursery timeline. Nate tells her, quietly, that he’s almost finished with the rocking chair. He’s been building it in the evenings, after the granny flat work is done, sanding the wood smooth so there won’t be any splinters.
“Of course you are.” Grandma looks at Nate with something soft in her expression. “Good man.”
Nate focuses very intently on his plate. The bond pulses with his quiet pleasure at the praise, the warmth he’d never admit to out loud. Under the table, his hand finds my knee. Squeezes once.
They’ve been preparing for this baby since the day we found out. Maybe longer. Maybe they’ve been preparing since they built that nest room nine years ago, hoping I’d come home.
After dinner, Grandma corners me in the kitchen while the others clean up.
“I’m proud of you,” she says, her hand warm on mine. “You know that.”
“You mention it every week.”
“And I’ll keep mentioning it until you believe it.” She squeezes my fingers, her grip still strong despite the years. “Now. Tell those boys to stop arguing about windowmeasurements and just build my kitchen. I want to be moved in before my great-grandbaby arrives.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And Cara?” She catches my eye, her expression softening. “You picked good ones. I always knew you would.”
My throat tightens. “Grandma?—”
"Go on." She shoos me toward the living room. "Go sit down. Put your feet up. You're growing a human in there."
My phone buzzes just as Theo's pulling me closer on the couch.
Josie:So hypothetically
Josie:If someone told their entire family they had a pack
Josie:When they definitely do not have a pack
Josie:And now said family expects to meet this pack at the reunion
Josie:How screwed would that someone be?
I stare at the screen. Then I call her.
"Josie. What did you do?"
"Don't tell my mom."
After Grandma leaveswith promises to see us Tuesday. After the dishes are done. After Theo finishes singing off-key while scrubbing pans and Lucas gives up trying to correct him and Nate dries everything in patient silence.
I stand in the nursery doorway.
Moonlight spills through the windows, silvering the crib in the corner and the rocking chair beside it.
The walls are soft yellow—Theo’s choice, because “it looks like sunshine, and every baby should wake up to sunshine.” The changing table is stocked and organized, because Lucas can’thelp himself. The blankets in the crib are soft and warm, because Nate spent three weeks researching which fabrics were safest for newborns.
This used to be Lucas’s room.
Now it’s waiting for someone new.
Arms wrap around me from behind. Nate, his chin coming to rest on my shoulder, his hands spreading across my belly. His scent surrounds me—pine and woodsmoke—and his purr starts up, low and rumbling against my back.
“Okay?” he murmurs against my hair.
