Between the amazing sex and the natural inner buzz of her healing body, Max was starving. They left the bathroom, and she found her childhood memories of the estate's layout taking over, leading her to the kitchens.
"Does your family have servants?" Gio asked.
Max shook her head. "It's not how we live. Well, I guess I should say it didn't used to be; who knows how Nacio has changed things. But when I grew up here, we all took our turns helping to cook meals for the family."
Gio feigned shock. "You mean you can cook?"
Max whapped him with the back of her hand. "I'm a very good cook. I just don't like cooking alone. It was always a family affair, me and my sister and cousins and aunts in the kitchen. It just felt so wrong doing it by myself that I couldn't bear it."
"I also like to cook," Gio told her. "I can think of nothing finer than preparing a meal together with my mate."
"Mate," she murmured and leaned against him. They entered the kitchen hand in hand.
It looked as if things hadn't changed so much, in this place at least, since she was a child. Two older women were rolling out bread dough. Max introduced them to Gio as her Tía Carla and Tía Juliet, her mother's sisters. Sofia's two little girls were also there, doing homework at the table, and Elina was sitting by the fire, working a spit to turn a lamb roast on an old-fashioned iron spike. Elina sprang up with a soft gasp when she saw them.
"You're all right!" she said to Max, clasping her hands. "I was so worried. There was so much blood."
"It's okay, I'm tougher than I look," Max said, squeezing back.
The aunts spoke little English, but between Max's interpreting and Gio's Italian, they managed to get by. Gio was quickly put to work washing dishes, which he accepted with good humor.
Max found herself settling with ease into the kitchen work. She kept getting little glances from Gio, both amused and happy, and she wondered if he found it strange that she was so comfortable in this domestic sphere. But she was. She would have hated to have no other options, but since it was her choice, she loved the feeling of being enfolded back into the warm camaraderie of kitchen work. Soon the wine was brought out, and Gio accepted a glass as well. Outside the windows, dusk settled over the valley.
"It's wonderful to see you this happy," Gio told Max quietly. She had tears in her eyes from laughing; it was the first time she could remember that happening in a long time.
The entire family ate dinner at a long wooden trestle table. As with every family dinner that Max could remember, it was an ever-changing array of relatives who were there, coming and going. Some members of the family were out on patrol around the village; others had duties among the flocks or working in the village. Tonight, Max's parents were there, as well as her aunts and some of the cousins and uncles from the extended family. They greeted her with hugs and congratulations that were embarrassing in their effusiveness.
"No Sofia?" Max asked her mother once the family reunion had settled down.
"She's in the village," her mother explained. "That girl has only been the alpha for half a day and she already works too hard. Someone needs to take her dinner to her."
"What about Nacio? What's going to be done with him?"
Her parents looked at each other, and Max felt slightly ill. Of course it was a problem. The survivor of an alpha challenge would also have to be dealt with somehow, without involving the human authorities.
"Don't tell me he's been exiled," she said, trying to keep it light. "I'd rather not have that much in common with him."
"He's not exiled yet," Tía Juliet put in. "Nothing has been decided. He is under guard in the old dungeon."
The conversation was in Spanish and Max hadn't thought that Gio could follow it, but at the word dungeon—el calabozo—he raised an eyebrow. Apparently he knew that one. Max mouthed at him to wait for an explanation later.
"I didn't even know we were still using that," Max said.
"Under Nacio we did," her father said. "Things will be different now, I hope. Shall we eat?"
Food was passed around the table, and Max's father poured the wine. With the pleasures of good food and good company, Max felt as if she was relaxing, becoming whole again, for the first time in years. Gio completed her in a way she had never thought possible, but her family was also necessary to her happiness. Her heart brimmed over with love and joy.
Under the cover of the cheerful conversation at the table, Gio leaned in to speak to her. "You know I can't stay much longer," he said quietly. "I can't put these good people in danger."
Max felt as if a cold bucket of water had been dumped over her head, dousing her peaceful, relaxed state. She actuallyhadforgotten, even if for just a little while. To her, once again, this was the ultimate place of safety. Nothing bad could touch her here.
But of course it wouldn't be safe, for her or anyone else, if the cultists found it.
Now she began to truly understand what Gio had been living with for the last year. Every time he found somewhere safe, he lost it. Whenever he started to build a home, he had to abandon it. If she stayed with him and they couldn't somehow end the threat of the cult, that would be her life too.
"Do you think they can still trace you?" she asked softly.
"I don't know. If they have Javic working with them again, then it's likely. But they'll have to be coercing him, since they no longer have the leverage they used to." He nodded down the table at Elina. The thin, shy girl was getting past her nervousness, tucking into her food as if she hadn't been fed properly in years.
