Lina ducked her head, but Carys nodded. “Yes, I think so. We….” She took Lina’s hand and squeezed. “Lina is thinking about joining us officially, if… if the alpha pair is okay with that. But obviously more than that, if her parents are.”
Brodie and Kye looked so fucking proud that I almost chuckled, but this was serious and I didn’t want to embarrass the girls, so I didn’t.
“Okay. So… I guess one question is whether we want to redo the rooms so soon?” I asked everyone.
Kye looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well we just renovated the whole house, right? Everything was decorated to the occupants’ preferences and so on,” I explained.
“Oh. True.” Kye, a human who had never had a lot of money, nodded understandingly.
“We can redo whatever we need,” Rian said firmly. No, the vampire millionaire didn’t have the same thought patterns we did.
Luca cleared his throat. “So… I know that there’s only so much space here and it’s a bit awkward with how the space is divided. But what if Max, Ben, and I moved to my side of the hallway and the rest of you could reorganize however you see fit?”
There was a bathroom in between Carys and Rian’s rooms, so it would be trickier to expand that space, but even with the bathroom in the middle, half a room added to Carys’ would be nicer.
The builders of the family started to talk about it all, and I leaned against Luca’s shoulder.
I was drowsy. We’d had dinner first and then we’d been hanging out ever since we got home a few hours ago. My energy was waning fast. As soon as I thought that, Max yawned really hard.
Kye, as tuned in to everyone as ever, cleared his throat. “Let’s let our travelers go upstairs, okay? Everyone else can continue planning, but we don’t need Ben, Max, and Luca here when they’ve just come home.”
We three got up and after some good night wishes and hugs from everyone—Brodie squeezed the back of my neck with his big hand and I noticed him doing it to Max and Luca, too—we stumbled up the stairs.
We’d showered when we got back, eager to get the wrongness of the smell of travel off ourselves, so all we needed to do now was to climb into bed and fall asleep.
Except Luca, who had to be hungry. The thought came to me as we all settled in, Max in the middle of us. The hunger seemed to come to Luca in that moment, because when I reached over Max to hand my wrist to him, he snorted. Then pulled me even closer so that I was practically half on top of my brother, and bit in.
I groaned, that familiar lazy arousal rolling through me. I let it go, ignoring the way I got half-hard, and rolled onto my back as soon as Luca released my arm.
“Thank you,” he said, and I could smell my own blood in the air for a moment.
“Of course,” I mumbled and promptly fell asleep.
Iwoke up to use the bathroom a few hours later. When I came back, Max and Luca were mostly on one side of the bed, wrapped around each other in a way that made me smile. I got back in and pulled the covers over us all, and pressed my back against Max’s, then went back to sleep.
The next time I woke up, it was barely light outside, but we’d also fallen asleep early.
I stretched carefully, then slipped out of bed and got dressed. I brushed my teeth and tried to be as quiet as possible, then glanced at the bed before going downstairs. They were perfect. Seeing them like this, knowing that I’d get to see them like this, made me a little emotional.
For once, I was the first one there. I started a pot of coffee and then went to sit in Luca’s favorite spot on the window seat. The front yard was just about visible to my wolf eyesight because the tall trees let very little of the early morning light in. Soon, the snow would melt and spring would arrive. I hoped it’d all be gone in the next month and a half.
I prepared for a lazy day at home, and tomorrow, I’d go back to work. I loved the groove my life had settled into. I looked around the kitchen that had new appliances and cheery wallpaper and pretty tiles for the backsplash, I felt a sense of sadness wash over me.
It was nicer now than it had ever been in my childhood, but once, it had been okay. Everything had always been worn, though clean. Our mom and Brodie and Bella’s mom had taken good care of the place.
But then different tragedies and the drugs had changed the pack. Even though Bella, Brodie, and eventually our mom had gotten out at various stages of the process of undoing the Douglas pack, we’d still lost way too many people.
Brodie and Bella’s parents were gone. Bella never wanted to come back to this town and I understood that. She’d cared about Brodie, Max and I from afar, which I appreciated.
Our mom… I didn’t want to see her again. She might’ve been alive and sober now, but she’d been useless to us for most of our lives. Our dad… I wished he would’ve been gone for longer than he’d been.
But if he’d died earlier, then Brodie wouldn’t have come back. Carys wouldn’t have suffered in my dad’s hands, but Brodie would’ve never met Kye.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that as shitty of a catalyst as Rusty Douglas had been, he’d inadvertently kicked everything into motion. Without his evil, we wouldn’t have the home and the pack we now did.
That didn’t absolve the bastard of anything, of course, and I didn’t know what to think about it all.
