“You and your pack are welcome to visit our home. No trouble, but I’d like to put this mess behind us. We can talk. Make plans.” And he could tell Cash himself that it was safe for him to go home.
I thought he might want to.
Aleks hummed again. “Yes, you need our help right away. Clearly.” He waved his long-fingered hand through the air like he was conducting a symphony for himself. “Fine, fine. We will come, and you will spend some of your pile of money on food for us.”
I sucked in my cheeks to keep from smiling, but I was losing that fight. He couldn’t know how much I liked the sound of that. “Of course.”
Aleks marched off, toward his pack, the gray wolf at his side, muttering incredulously about billionaire werewolves.
Maybe he was right—that wasn’t a thing that should exist. Now that we had so much, it was time to fix things where we could.
And maybe we’d make things a little easier for the next set of wolves who wanted to go to school, strike out on their own, and see the world.
With a soft sigh, Dakota leaned against my arm, and I shifted to wrap it around him.
“I don’t think the luck potion wore off,” I murmured, pressing a kiss against the top of his head.
Dakota flinched back, frowning up at me with a pucker between his brows. “Kosuke promised that it would.”
I chuckled. He probably had. Though I’d never met him and likely never would, I got the impression that Dakota’s great-great-grandfather was a man willing to bend the rules when he could get away with it, and when it came down to protecting my family, I couldn’t begrudge him for it.
I shook my head, squeezing him close. “It’s just hard to imagine things working out this well without a little luck on my side. Or maybe just you?”
Dakota’s cheeks flushed, and I pulled him close, oblivious to the fact that his clothes were rough against my bare skin. When we kissed, it didn’t matter; the whole world went right.
40
Dakota
“Those vagabonds from the woods clean up nicely,” Kosuke told me, standing next to me at my wedding reception, and I did not sigh at him.
Much.
He had improved, but he was always going to be that old-fashioned elder family member, I supposed.
“Just because they’re not rich like us doesn’t make them?—”
“Yes, yes,” he agreed. “They’re fine as they are. I’m simply saying that the Russian alpha boy looks very good in the tuxedo your mate gave him. Does he have any idea how much it cost?”
I scoffed at the very notion. Aleks wouldn’t have accepted such an extravagant gift if he’d known what a Versace tuxedo cost. Probably more than the house he lived in was worth.
On the other hand, maybe he could sell it after the wedding and buy something useful for his pack.
Or not, because who would buy a used tuxedo with shoulders that broad? A football player, maybe, but I figured they could afford their own suits.
It was good to see him there, though. Him and Cash and his mother Katya and a silent man who followed him everywhere,whom I assumed was the gray wolf from the night of the challenge, Viktor.
Clearly, Aleks’s pack was very protective of him, and I couldn’t help but see it as a good sign. Most of them had been uncomfortable around Grant.
It was odd, wearing a suit and with his hair styled, Cash suddenly reminded me of a young Elvis. Very handsome in his own right, and clearly, Aleks knew it.
He couldn’t seem to take his eyes off the nervous man.
“Who is this?” Kosuke asked, an actual note of interest in his voice, more than the amusement he was giving for most of the wedding guests. I looked up to find that Igarashi Minori had just arrived.
She’d missed the wedding itself because of a delayed flight, and spent almost an hour apologizing to me over the phone for it, but even as a mage, she couldn’t control planes, so I’d had no complaints.
Besides, she’d been cutting a business meeting in Hong Kong short in order to come at all, and how could I complain about that?
