“Hmm,” Greta says. She sets a plate of pancakes on the table. “Cormac and I sealed our bond in the spring of 1979. April, I believe. We were considerably quieter about it.” She pours syrup. “Of course, our bedroom wasn’t directly above anyone else’s.”
Willow puts her coffee down and presses both hands over her face.
“What?” I say.
“The walls in this house are old, dear. And thin. And your voice carries.”
“Greta!”
“I’m simply saying that if discretion is a priority, you might consider the cabin at the south pasture. It’s isolated. And soundproofed, because Cormac and I had the same problem in 1979.”
Merric is standing next to me with a plate in his hand and a smug look on his face. I elbow him in the ribs. He doesn’t stop almost-smiling.
Willow lifts her face from her hands. “I’m very happy for you both. Genuinely. But if I have to hear that again, I’m sleeping in the barn.”
“Noted,” I say. My face is hot. I haven’t blushed in years. Apparently, sealed mate bonds bring the blood back to your cheeks along with everything else.
Cameron comes downstairs.
Everyone pauses. Not tense—careful. He’s stopped on the bottom step, seeing us together, seeing the marks on our throats. His eyes move between us with the focus of a boy who learned the truth about his parents yesterday and is now confronted with the physical evidence of what that truth means.
“There’s pancakes,” Greta says. Because Greta solves everything with food.
Cameron sits down. Takes a plate. Doesn’t look at us for a long moment. Then: “You’re mated.”
“Yes,” I say.
“Like, officially.”
“Yes.”
He nods. Pours syrup. Eats a bite of pancake. Chews. Swallows. The whole kitchen waits.
“Good,” he says. “It took you long enough.” He takes another bite. “Also, Greta’s right. You were loud. I was right there on the sofa. I’m traumatized, Ma.”
Willow drops her head to the table. Greta turns back to the stove with the satisfied air of a woman whose life’s work is validated. Merric sits down next to Cameron and starts eating like a man who’s decided that if dignity isn’t available, breakfast will do.
I stand at the counter with my coffee and let the moment settle over me. My son at the table. My mate beside him. Greta at the stove. Willow groaning into the tablecloth. The morning sun through the kitchen windows, catching dust motes, turning everything gold.
This is what I fought for. Not the politics or the wards or the intelligence networks. This. A kitchen. A family. Pancakes.
The warmth lasts through breakfast. Merric and Cameron don’t talk much, but they eat side by side with an ease that wasn’t there yesterday—the careful, bruised beginnings ofsomething that might become normal if given enough time and enough meals. Cameron asks Merric to pass the butter and calls him “hey” instead of anything else, which isn’t “Dad” but isn’t “Alpha Rourke” either. Progress lives in small increments.
Then Merric clears his plate, leans back, and says, “We need to talk about Frostbourne.”
The warmth cools. Not gone—banked. Everyone at the table knows this was coming.
He lays it out simply. He’s been away from his pack for too long… weeks, counting the time at Aurora before this. Jonas, his acting second at Frostbourne, has been managing in his absence, but there are decisions that he needs to handle personally. The council is using his absence to erode his position. And Bern’s visit here—the intelligence he gathered, the aide’s meticulous documentation—was the opening move of something that requires Merric to be home to counter.
“I want Brenna and Cameron to come with me,” he says. “I want to introduce Brenna as my mate. To the pack.”
Silence. Willow looks at me. Greta’s hands stop on the counter.
“Your pack is traditional,” Willow says. “Half of them voted to exile magic-blooded wolves years ago.”
“I’m aware.”
“And you want to walk in with a Ravenclaw witch and say, ‘Surprise, meet the wife’?”
