“I just want to sleep,” I mumbled to myself. Sleep. That elusive beast. The phone on my desk rang, and I reached for it, fumbling as I grabbed, knocking the receiver on the ground.
“Fuck,” I muttered, bending down to get it. “Hello?”
“That’s hot,” Cash said at the other end of the line. “So professional. You on lunch break? Can I come and fuck you over your desk?” My energy levels, and interest, perked up.
“Um, I think that’s like, breaking at least a few sexual harassment rules,” I commented mildly, but I couldn’t deny I was, uh, interested. It’d been a long few weeks at home with my niece. The last time one of the guys had tried to fondle me, I’d smacked him, and that was a week ago, and I couldn’t even remember which wolf it had been.
I should’ve probably apologized to the whole pack. I walked over to the window and pulled the blinds up.
“The rain is seriously depressing me,” I said to him, “but hey, I got Gem to back down. So that’s cool, right?”
“Mmm, yeah, it is, so uh about that lunch-break-” His voice became more solid, and the door behind me swung open. He smiled at me when I dropped the phone. Relief flooded through my whole body, and I ran to him. He picked me up and kissed me with a laugh. “I saw you this morning,” he said, pressing more kisses to my lips.
“Yeah, but I missed you. And the rest of the guys.” It’d been such a long day. “How’s the baby?”
“Not talking yet, or walking, or doing advanced calculus. So, y’know, I’m a little disappointed.” He smirked at me. “Wolf pups are a lot… quicker on the uptake,” he murmured and brushed my hair behind my ear. “So, Babe, Gorgeous, Beautiful, Dollface, how about I take you out for lunch?” He eyes my desk. “Or go down for lunch…”
“Don’t, seriously, or I’ll tell Willa on you.” Because I was tempted, I had to admit that. Nothing hit the stress relief like a good ol’ wolf-sponsored orgasm. “What’re you doing here, anyway? Where’re the guys?”
“Cooing at the baby. And Charlie’s buy a house in Los Angeles-”
I choked on my own spit when he said that, and I pulled back.
“Wait, what?” He grinned at my shock, and I glared. “He’s doing what?”
“We can’t stay in Wolfe’s penthouse forever, and you hate the rain-” He gestures outside at the drizzle. “So?”
“Were you guys gonna talk to me? I mean, it’s a house-” I hate to admit it, but I wasn’t even mad. Not even a little bit. There was a flicker of excitement in my gut, the feeling like we were on the edge of something crazy-exciting.
“Let’s blow this town,” Cash said, his voice dark and promising. “And by that I mean leave, not sexually service-”
“Stop!” I pinched his lips together, and he pouted at me from between my fingers. “You’re terrible. Okay. Sure. But I have to finish my degree, and the label, and-”
He sighed as I let go of his mouth.
“You can come back to do what you need to do, and I’m sure if you talk to Willa and Troy, they’ll tell you it’s a good idea. Besides, we think we know who we wanna produce with next, and she works out of L.A. exclusively now, so she’s not gonna come to Seattle just for us.” He seemed to have an answer for everything. And… I wanted it. I wanted to go. I only had a few months left to submit my final reports to my professor for my degree, and then I’d be basically a free agent. The only thing that would be tying me down? The guys and my niece. And those were two weights I was okay with carrying. They supported me as much as I supported them.
“But I want to see this house before he buys it,” I said, scowling. Cash smirked and raised an eyebrow.
“Babe, it’s a starter home. Don’t worry about it. We’ll sell it in a few years and buy something bigger. We’ll need to, with all the pups-” He cleared his throat when he saw my expression get stormy. “With all the guitars. We’ll need lots of bedrooms for the guitars.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied and then leaned into him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Okay. Guitars. I can deal with that.”
“Like at least eight,” he murmured and kissed me again, warmth spreading through me, his chest broad and perfect for snuggling into.
“That’s excessive,” I protested quietly but let my eyes close.
Eight.
I could… maybe, deal with eight.
Thirty-One
Epilogue
“So,” Cash peered down at the small baby in his arms, her hair a thatch of wispy, blonde strands. “Have you picked out a name for her yet?” Finn made a sleepy noise from the end of the couch, where he was sprawled out, and Ace was half-laying on top of him, the two of them napping hard. Well, they’d had overnight baby-duty, so they could sleep it off as far as I was concerned.
“Did Max go down on the list?” Charlie asked, his voice hushed as he shifted on the floor where he sat next to Cash’s legs. I shook my head in response, and Eli, sitting behind me on the large armchair, curved his arm around my stomach protectively. I leaned into him with a sigh.
“I’d rather, y’know, my niece have her own name, one that’s one-hundred-percent hers, so she doesn’t have to live in anyone’s shadow,” I replied after thinking for a few moments. I’d loved Max, but this baby girl deserved a name unique to her alone.
“You are gonna be so loved, sweetie,” Cash said to the baby, a smile teasing across his lips. Part of me wondered if this would satisfy the pack’s emotional need for pups for the time being. I hoped so. Getting pregnant, carrying a baby? Not for me. Not right away, anyway. I needed time to get over the scars of the battles we’d fought and the grief over the people we had lost.
“Don’t get too attached. She’s going to stay with Daria, Frank, and Wolfe while we’re on tour,” Finn said, cracking an eye. “Tour is not a place for a baby.”
Another reason why I wasn’t so hot on the idea of me getting knocked up with a werewolf-shaped bun in my oven just yet, the guys were doing so well, like so well, with their career, that they were getting upstreamed to a major label in a few weeks. A bigger record deal for their next album, a more considerable advance, although to be honest, they didn’t need it, what with the way royalties were streaming in, and merch sales too, on the older material. The guys were golden. I was too. The only things that still nagged at me were my own feelings, although it might take years before I’d gotten over the people I’d loved and lost.
“Let me,” I said, getting up to slide onto the couch beside Cash. He gently burdened me with my niece, and I cradled her against my chest. She was a quiet baby and that kind of worried me. Weren’t all babies noisy, making sounds and smells from both ends? But there she was, lying in my arms, her tiny potato face wrinkling up as she got used to a new person holding her.
That was one small victory that had come out of everything. She might have had the roughest start to life a child could ask for, losing both her parents and one before she’d even been born, but at least now, she could grow up free. No one would ever push her to marry the right person or do her magic if she didn’t want to. She could live as a mundane if she chose, or if she wanted to study, both Daria and Wolfe had offered to train her as soon as she was old enough.
Hope? No, too obvious. How did people even name babies, the ones they gave birth to? I couldn’t decide on a name to give her, and I hadn’t even gestated for months on end. Her blonde hair was completely my sister, but I thought that maybe, just in a little way, that the curve of her nose was me. But no matter what, even if she ended up looking like Creston, I vowed to love her and protect her. She was innocent in everything. I leaned down and kissed her forehead, giving her a tiny blessing of sparks, the energy so controlled now that my magic was back in my body.
“We can’t call her ‘baby’ forever,” Ace mumbled as he sat up, stretching with a long yawn. “Wolfe’s going to want us to decide on something.”
I let my finger travel down the smooth curve of her cheek, and it popped into my head, like the first time I’d seen the sta
rs through the clouds when I’d tapped into my soul-magic.
“What about Astra?” I asked. “It means star, y’know, cause she’s…” I lifted my head from staring down at her to find all five guys looking at me, their expressions ranging from amused to sleepy. “It’s not dumb,” I said defensively. When none of them said anything. “We can try it.”
“What, see if she responds to it?” Charlie teased. “She’s not a dog.”
“Well, you would know, wouldn’t you,” I grumbled and looked back down at my niece. Astra. That was nice, right?
“Kids might call her Asstra,” Cash drawled, “but we’ll beat them up.”
“You’re not gonna fuckin’ beat up any little kids,” Eli argued, the two of them glaring at each other.
“I would so fuckin’ beat up a little fuckin’ kid,” Cash shot back.
“Hey, Astra’s sleeping,” Ace cut in.
“Yeah, old farts, the baby is sleeping, so keep it down.” Charlie bent to scoop her up from my arms. “Let’s get you into a proper bed, without the old men whining and snarling at each other to keep you up, huh?” I watched him go, Ace following closely behind.
“Just wait until it’s your pup,” Cash said mutinously. “You’d cut off faces for your pup’s safety.” I patted his hand to calm him and turned to Finn.
“You’re awful quiet about it,” I commented. He shrugged at my words and smiled.
“I figure I’ll just call her baby-cakes for the rest of her life anyway, so what does it matter what you name her?” He winked at me and then bent over the arm of the couch, pulling up one of the acoustic guitars the guys kept scattered around the living room. He pulled it into his lap, fingers dragging along the strings. He may not have been Charlie or Eli on the guitar, but he still played well enough, and with his natural wolfish ability to woo anyone with magic, I felt myself turning toward him, my attention centered on him. “We better write her a lullaby. What rhymes with baby-cakes?”
I got to my feet.
“You figure that out,” I said, “I need to make a call and make sure our flights to Europe are all straightened out.” I stepped over legs as I left the oldest three wolves behind me and slipped into the kitchen. The house wasn’t modern, not like Wolfe’s apartment in Seattle had been, but this place was different.
This place was all ours. Bought and paid for with royalties, an unusual little Tudor-style 3-bedroom house in Los Angeles’s Burbank suburb. The rooms were small, but it was cozy, and it was starting to feel like home. It had a high, ten-foot brick fence all around it covered in vines, so the guys felt safe like just that could keep the monsters at bay. We weren’t being chased anymore, but old habits died like dogs in the darkness… slowly, and silently. We’d be carrying our fears and mental scars for a long time.
And after everything we’d gone through, we wanted to go someplace sunny for a while. A long while. The kitchen had been redone before we’d moved, white tile everywhere, and I leaned up against the sink’s apron-front, so I could stare out the windows above it, out onto the back garden. Thumb-roses crept their way up a trellis, and maybe one day they’d make a full arch of it, one day when Astra was old enough to sit under it with me, reading.
Maybe she’d even inherit her mother’s powers, and she could help the roses grow. Tears blurred my vision, and I closed my eyes.
I couldn’t say I had everything I wanted, but what I did have was more than enough.
“You alright?” Finn’s liquid-smooth voice poured over me, and I turned to find him standing in the entry-way. He leaned against it, arms crossed over his chest, a soft look on his face. “You crying, sweetheart? If you missed me that bad, I was right in the living-room this whole time.”
I laughed through the tears.
“Idiot,” I said, the affection bubbling up in my voice. He walked to me, and I wrapped my arms around his waist, pressing my cheek to his shoulder. “I’m sad-happy.”
“We’re safe, you’re safe, little baby-cakes is safe, and,” he paused to drop a kiss on the top of my head. “But those holes in your heart aren’t gonna close over any time soon, I get it. I’m still carrying some from when my family got dead. It’s okay. You can feel all those things and still keep going.”
I let myself lean into him, pulling him closer still.
“Thank you for saving me,” I whispered.
“Right back atcha, sweetheart,” he said. “Now you think you can put a pin in those tears of yours so I can make you feel good?”
I pulled back and gave him a look.
“I’m really not feeling like having sex right now,” I said, and he laughed, the sound loud and belly-filling.
“I was more thinking along the lines of let’s hop in the car and go down to that cookie place near UCLA that only takes cash. Get some milk, a few couple dozen cookies, and fatten ourselves up.”
“I definitely heard the word ‘cookies,’” Ace said, popping into the kitchen like a bad habit, with a grin on his face. “Astra’s down for a nap, and Charlie’ll stay, but I want some damn cookies.”
“Look who thinks he’s a big wolf, and all grown that he can make demands like that,” Finn replied, but he was reaching for the keys to the Range Rover and walking toward the side-door that leads to the garage.
Ace slipped his hand around mine and kissed the back of it, winking at me.
“Wanna come to get cookies?” He asked. Work could wait. I could call the label tomorrow. Or later. I wanted to just embrace the moment with my guys. My heart warmed and clenched at the same time. I was home, with them, and would be, forever, if I had any say in it.
“Yeah,” I said, trying to keep the emotion out of my voice so I wouldn’t sound so throaty. “Let’s go.”
The sun was waiting for us, along with the rest of the world, and the rest of our lives.
“Sounds good,” Ace whispered to me, “let’s go, sweetheart.”
Thank you, and you, and you…
I can’t even really begin to thank the number of people I should. In the words of Jane Austen, it is my unhappy fate seldom to treat people so well as they deserve. So I will try to remember everyone, and probably forget the most wonderful of all.
To my first cheerleader, Bri, thank you.
To Gina, Gina, Tori, Peggy, Nadine, Joy, Isabelle, and more, thank you.
To Janna, Nic, Tanya, Sam, Sully, and Dave: sweet friends, how much you’ve held my hand while I’ve complained and whined.
To my mother, thank you for being the strong role model I never deserved.
To Ciaran… there are no words. None. I love you.
To Lauren and Rebecca, you are both a gift to me, bringing Darcy to life in ways I could never.
To Kleenex, thank you, I am crying as I write this, because this series has meant everything got me, has brought me to the highest highs I never could have imagined, and completely opened my world.
To Chels, for your stellar editing job, thank you for leaving in all my ‘Canadianisms’.
To Steff, Lucy, Joey, Greg, Mary, Amber, Lucie, Tanisha, Crys, Westy, Susan, Haley, Tim, Devyn, Nancy, Sam O’Leary, Michelle, Alex, May, Richard, Elaina, Katie, Jennifer LL, Sydney, Jenee, Marielle, Sam R., Kris P and Patrick S, Iris, Katherine, Meg West, Jeff, Liv, April, Erika and Christine, Jay, Joel, Lanie, Renee Jean, Trina, Kassie, Rose, Alicia, Karissa, Kimi, Jackie F, The Lyns, V, Ryan and Trev, Lindsay, and the COAF crew, Rubab, Jorden B, and more… Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And also to my father, who never got to see the end of this series that changed everything for us, I miss you every day and I would do anything to bring you back. I hope you’re being good in the afterlife and remember, no strippers!
One final, massive, tearful thank you to you, dear dear reader. Thank you for being with me on this ride. Thank you for trusting me with your Saturday afternoons, your late Friday nights, your Monday lunch breaks. Thank you for writing to me and letting me know how much Darcy’s story meant to you. I hope that you are surrounded by
love, light, and happiness.
With all my love, every single bit of it,
Kit
(KT Strange)
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About the Author
KT Strange is an internationally best-selling and Top 100 Amazon author from the Great White North. After spending a decade in the music scene babysitting drunk rock-stars, she’s finally ready to settle down and write books inspired by her life on the road with bands and her love of everything paranormal.
Also she is rather fond of cats.
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