Page 88 of Broken

“Think he’ll show?” Cole asked, only half-seriously.

“You never know,” Boomer said. “I think his heart might have grown another size. Someday it could be normal.”

The party mostly moved to the Rec Center after that, although half the pack stayed in wolf form and continued running around the valley, play-fighting and howling at the moon.

Somebody put out a couple of vats of beer for them at one point, which ended in drunken wolves howling at the arc lights and thinking they were the moon.

Also peeing in a lot of places they shouldn’t.

Cole and Ireland were inside, where everyone was just as drunk, but hadn’t reached the peeing-in-the-corner stage.

Ireland learned to play pool—badly—and came thisclose to taking Cisco Sanchez’s left ear off while trying to throw knives.

After that Cisco kept catching them in mid-air before they got to the target, just to be a dick.

Cole, after winning a fifty bucks off Cisco’s cousin Mateo at knife darts, found a seat in the corner out of the chaos. Breanna and Madison, looking for something to keep them busy while everyone was off on the mission, had prepped a ridiculous amount of food and drinks, and Roomba-based mechanical waiters were zooming back and forth, delivering refreshments until the junk on the floor gummed up their sweepers and they had to be cleaned out.

The two women had banked on everyone coming back okay. He respected that level of faith, especially from Breanna. She’d been there for the aftermath of a mission that went badly wrong, and helped in the Med Center for hours, tending the wounded and grieving the dead.

It was hard to be the one left at home when your mate went into danger.

He wondered how Ireland would feel about that, now that they weren’t bound by the bracelets. Whether she’d want to go with the team on missions that could use her magic—and when they couldn’t, how she’d feel about him going into danger without her.

But that was a problem for another day. Right now she was having the time of her life, partying with the pack, finally having a home and a place she belonged. And a mate.

Mate. The word fizzed through him like champagne. The thing he thought he’d never have. A mate, a home of his own, and for the first time in his life, peace of mind.

It was going to take some getting used to, but he was damned sure willing to try.

Cole let Ireland enjoy herself as long as he could stand, and then he went over, swept her off her feet, and carried her out of the Rec Center.

“You’ve had enough to drink,” he told her. “Any more, and you’ll be barfing.”

“Unh-uh. I have a shifter metabolism now.”

“Only when you’re a wolf. I’m taking you home to be ravished.”

“Oh.” She snuggled into his arms. “Okay, then.” She started nibbling on the side of his neck, in the exact place that made him crazy.

He tripped over a rock on the path.

“Yeah. How much have you had to drink?” she asked.

“I’m perfectly sober.” It was a total lie. Between the whiskey and her scent, he was drunk as fuck.

He put her down, and together they staggered back to their cabin. “Are we going to stay here?” she asked, as they negotiated the steps. “In this cabin? Because isn’t it supposed to be for guests?”

Cole paused on the porch. “I kind of miss being near Boomer and Karisma,” he admitted. “Maybe we can build our own cabin further up? By the testing field?”

She leaned on him, her forehead scrunched up in that way he loved. “You mean, where the bombs go off? Um. That sounds peaceful.”

He laughed. “Maybe we can magically soundproof it?”

“Maybe we should wait to decide until after I’ve been ravished.”

“Good plan.”

He opened the door, followed her inside, then closed it and walked her backwards until she was up against the living-room wall. Then he pinned her arms over her head and started to kiss her.