“As long as she only uses her powers for good, I guess we’re safe enough.”
Hillary winked at him. Tracy walked up and handed out glasses of wine. “We may put you to work, but we’ll pay you with beverages, a good meal, and excellent company.”
“That’s a deal I can get behind.” And surprisingly, he meant it. He wasn’t feeling at all cooped up or surrounded, though he’d not had this much interaction with this many people in…well, who the fuck knew how long.
“Zach’s on his way. He was wondering if you wanted to go to the bar tonight, play some pool. I can’t, I need to work on a design I promised to rush.”
“Sure.”
Tracy sat down next to him. “If you don’t want to talk about it, I understand, but I’ve been wondering about your family. From before. You never went back to Arizona?”
He side-eyed the kid but figured she knew enough about unhappy shit to not get upset over a bit of reality, but he had to clean up his internal language a bit.
“My parents were conservative idiots. Overly religious, to my mind. My brother was gay, and while it wasn’t until he graduated high school that he came out, we’d known for some time that they wouldn’t approve. He turned eighteen while I was a sophomore in college and told them. As expected, they lost their minds. He moved in with me, we dropped contact with my parents and their families. There might be some relatives out there that aren’t jerks, but we didn’t really know them because they weren’t the type my parents kept in touch with.”
Alexis scooted over in her chair so that she could rest her head on his arm. The sudden lump in his throat was a surprise. He ripped more lettuce for a second.
“He’d never been the healthiest kid, and he died three months before he would have graduated from college, from complications with his asthma.”
“How terrible, I’m so sorry I brought it up.”
He heard the distress in her voice, so managed to work up a smile for her. “It’s okay. Actually, it’s kind of nice. I haven’t spoken about him in a very long time. I don’t want to think he’s been forgotten by the world.”
“What was his name?” Hillary asked.
He had to swallow around that damn lump. “James. Jamey.”
“I bet we would have liked him. He would have thought you were badass as a wolf.”
He gave a bark of laughter. “Yeah, I guess he would have. And you definitely would have liked him. He was a great guy.”
Aaron chose that moment to come to the table with a platter of chicken thighs and a giant bowl of mashed potatoes. “Are you all really still working on that salad?”
Adam looked down to see he’d pretty much torn up the last of the lettuce. Alexis held the bowl for him and he dumped the pieces in. Hillary slid over her plate of cut-up carrots and he added those. There was already avocado and croutons, so they called it complete as the sound of Zach entering the house reached them.
Dinner with a two-year-old was a new experience for Adam, but not an unpleasant one. He found that, as Hillary had warned him, Alexis didn’t speak often, but she payed attention to everything that was going on around her. And she was, unquestionably, happy to be there. So was Hillary, and not just because of her husband. She was clearly an everyday part of this family, of the pack, even though she hadn’t been here long, either.
Dessert was a bowl of mint chip ice cream, another thing he couldn’t remember the last time he’d experienced. Myra’s comments about the lack of life he was actually living intruded, but luckily he had plans to play pool to distract him. At least he could remember the last time he’d played, though now that he thought about it, five years wasn’t exactly an endorsement to his claims of living much of a life.
He followed Zach into the bar that the pack owned.
“If any humans had shown up and not yet been maneuvered out, one of the waitstaff would be at the door, playing bouncer, to let us know. Since no one is watching the door, we can talk freely.”
He nodded. “Good to know. I didn’t know places like this existed.”
“Some of the bigger packs have them, depending on the size of the towns they live in, how far off the beaten track they are.”
“Seems like Mountain Pack is pretty large for being so far from any major city.”
“Yeah, we like that, but some find it easier to get work and raise families in the city. Can’t blame them, sometimes it’s hard to make sure all of my wolves are able to work full-time jobs if they want them, but we’re big enough to provide a lot of the jobs ourselves.”
A man with blond hair to his shoulders and a shirt with the name of the bar on it walked up to them. “Zach, it’s been a while. Letting married life cramp your style?”
Zachary laughed hard. “Yeah, that’s exactly right. Peter, this is a friend from out of town, Adam Thorpe. Adam, our third, and my cousin, Peter Jenner.”
Peter lowered his head for a second, then offered his hand. Adam shook it, taking a look around. “This is a nice place. You work here?”
“I’m the manager. You guys want a table? Or straight to pool?”
