by Amanda Milo
“CEASE FIRE!” Maggie shouts. “Ice cream! SAY ICE CREAM!” she cries.
Charlotte slumps forward, groaning so loudly she can be heard over the congregation’s laughter. Beside her, Ginny, arms folded, a smile on her face, shakes her head. “Typical. Maggie, you’re so special.”
“Thank you!” Maggie calls back. Then she turns to Finn. “Can I have—”
“Maggs,” Finn says gently. “That pail over there?” He tips his head to indicate the bucket. “That whole thing is ice cream. If you don’t get full on that, we’ve got the other flavors up at Half Moon, but garl, if you don’t get full on that, something is wrong with you.”
EPILOGUE
LUCAN
ONE YEAR LATER.
“Dad,” Susan says, voice full of exasperated affection. “You don’t have to do the dishes. You’re the guest here.”
The scents of cloves, sugar cookies, wet boots, and chemically imitated citrus soap are thick in the kitchen, where my dad is steadfast in staying.
It’s cold enough to see your breath in here, just like werewolves like it. It’s two days before Christmas and the sleeves of his oatmeal Aran fisherman’s sweater are rolled up, his arms are buried to his elbows in soapy water, and a winsome smile graces his face—the man is the picture of contentment. Chestnut hair showing almost as much grey in human form as his coat has gone silver in his wolf form, my father shakes his head, keeping his gaze lowered because he’s a submissive, but he’s smiling back at Susan warmly. “Guests who help tidy up are remembered fondly, and they get welcomed back.”
He draws another mug under the water, scrubbing it with care. It’s one I bought for Susan, because mugs are the one place where she loves to see puns, and I love wooing her with things that make her happy. This one has a craftily designed set of letters that look like they’re made of yarn, and a crochet hook is printed on it. The mug reads Coffee, because I was up hooking all night.
(We’re not crocheters, but I couldn’t stop laughing at the play on words, and my reaction as I gave her the gift made Susan crack up. She still smiles when she uses it. Witty coffee mugs; the gifts that keep on giving.)
Susan moves to hug my dad one-armed, holding our son, Shane, in her other. “You know you’re always welcome, with or without doing any cleanup. Here,” she offers. “Take your grandson, and I’ll finish the dishes.”
My father makes a dramatic sound of indignation. “You’re not doing these dishes. You just had surgery!”
“That was over three months ago,” Susan points out, gasping and laughing at his absurdity. Thanks to our joined incomes and my help around our household, Susan felt secure enough to have carpal tunnel surgery a while ago. And like she said, she’s recovered, already back to work and everything, her wrist doing worlds better.
My father, though, is not sold. “Saoirse told you to sit down and take a load off your feet, just wait til she gets back. She’ll say, ‘See? That’s the problem with humans. None of you feel properly compelled to listen to an alpha.’”
Susan kisses him on the cheek before dutifully sitting down, catching my eye and giving me a wry shake of her head as she re-situates Shane on her lap. To dad, she asks, “There. Happy?”
My father meets her eyes and wags a soapy finger in front of her nose. “You know how Finn is lippy?”
“Definitely.”
“Do you know how we controlled him when he was a boy?”
Susan makes a thoughtful face. “You didn’t beat him enough, I’m thinking, if that’s where you’re going with this. But how?”
My dad laughs, turning back to the sink and starting on a big salad bowl. The same salad bowl Susan gave me way back when we first met, so that I could ride in her car without getting sick on the seats. To my credit, I never did end up using it to yark in. All the women in this family drive more gently than Finn.
“We’d threaten to beat Lucan,” my dad tells her.
Susan freezes, hand poised to use Shane’s sleeve to mop up his slobbery lower lip. “What?”
Hearing his mother distressed makes Shane’s human ears turn furred and wedge-shaped.
Grinning, my dad fondly recalls, “You could walk Finn out to a tree and tell him to pick his switch, and he wouldn’t be sorry for whatever he’d done. He’d take a switching like a man, and his da and mam never knew if the lesson was really sinking in, you know? But we found out that if you told him to go pick a switch so that Deek would be punished in his stead, his whipping boy—well, Finn was right sorry then. He’s a rascal, but he’d walk over broken glass for his loved ones.”
Susan is not sharing the warm fuzzies that my dad is. This walk down memory lane has her concerned. “Did you actually whip Lucan for things Finn did wrong?”
Although she keeps her voice level, there’s an unmistakably protective edge to her tone. She may not be a werewolf, but she has the protective heart of an alpha.
And she’s all mine.
I leave the cookie dough I’d been rolling out, wiping my flour-coated hands on my apron as I round the counter and cross to her and lean down and kiss her.
She relaxes, eased that I’m not at all bothered by this history. Shane, however, heard the agitation in his mother’s tone and he’s turned into a full werewolf. When Susan feels his tiny but sharp claws on her forearm, she glances down at our bundle and sighs, beginning to strip off his onesie. “Half the fun of having a baby is picking out the cute little clothes,” she laments.
“Stop getting upset and your son will get to model the cute little clothes,” my father points out. “And nah, we never switched Lucan. But Saoirse would have me take him out to the woodshed while Finn watched. And Lucan was instructed to limp out, make a good show of his ‘punishment.’”
“That’s terrible!” Susan cries with a disbelieving laugh.
“But effective,” Finn calls out over the sound of him knocking his boots against the doorpost to clean them of as much snow as possible before he enters the house, bringing searing cold in with him.
Snuggling a furry Shane under her chin, trying to stop him from gnawing off the buttons at the throat of her sweater dress, Susan throws me a look asking for support. Not with Shane—with Finn and my dad.
I push the rolling pin over the dough. “It really was effective. The rest of that day, Finn would be an angel.”
My dad scoffs. “Only until he turned, what, eleven, and stopped being fooled?”
“It was about that, yeah,” Finn confirms, grinning wistfully. “But you all had me going, that’s for sure.”
“Where’s your mate?” I ask him.
“She’s getting our boy, and then we’re crashing at Night Howl all week. She’s hoping to do horseback riding with you, Sue, if you’re up for it. And Gin and Char.”
“Def—” Susan starts.
My dad turns away from the sink, a puzzled furrow lightly marking his brow. “What about a sleigh ride? While the girls go on the trails with the horses, you boys should get the kids together for their own adventure through the woods.”
“Ohhh, yes, please!” Susan exclaims. Her face is shining when she throws me and my father a happy grin. “Maggie—all of them actually—they will love that. Gosh, I love Christmas. Everybody here, something tasty baking in every house, and all the family doing fun things together.” She gazes down at our son, expertly removing her fingers from his teething mouth, making his tail wag.
“Personally, I’m now fond of Valentine’s day,” Finn says, stealing a ball of cookie dough from off my tray, the one meant for the oven in a moment. Susan hisses at him but I just drop another ball into the empty space and he keeps talking. “There’s excellent babysitters available in every house so there’s bound to be someone who’ll free up our hands, help us out so we can do date night right.”
I actually like this too but I don’t need to share my opinion. Finn swipes another ball of cookie dough off the tray and Susan growls, “I’m going to chase you out of here with a wooden spoon.”
> “You’re going to need more than a wooden spoon to beat me away from these cookies,” Finn drawls, taking another.
“Threaten to whack Shane with the spoon,” my dad offers—and while Susan gasps, so does Finn.
My dad laughs and pulls the plug on the sink, dishes washed, rinsed, and set neatly in the drying rack on the counter. He turns to me, his eyes meeting mine briefly. “Why don’t you let me take over here, and you relieve your mate of Shane so she can get ready to go for a relaxing ride? The good Lord knows it might be the only way she’ll get off her feet today.”
“He claims as I’m in the middle of doing nothing but sitting down,” Susan grouses, setting Shane on the floor. He high-steps, ears up, paws clomping, tail lashing back and forth wildly as he gambols towards his grandfather’s sock-clad toes and begins to attack them.
I hand dad the rolling pin, catch the neck strap of my apron, drawing it over my head, and pass it to him.
“See this?” my dad says to Susan and Finn. “Tell a submissive wolf what to do and he does it.”
“It is nice, when you’re the one giving orders,” Finn agrees.
There’s a knock at the door. An uncharacteristically tentative one, which identifies the visitor before we can catch so much as sight or scent of her.
Finn turns and opens the door, not bothering to ask our permission to admit the guest, because we’re Pack. Everybody who knocks is welcome.
It’s Brooke. Ginny’s mom.
“Hi,” she says to him, eyes downcast. She’s essentially a human alpha, but she’s subordinate to him—not because she can’t shift, but because Finn’s fiercely dominant. He’s affable so much of the time a human could be forgiven for mistaking his status, but a werewolf would never make the same mistake. We feel it. “Susan said to stop by…”
“Come on in!” Susan calls, struggling to catch Shane, who found one of his pacifiers on the floor behind a bin of carrots that need to be tossed out to the wood cows.
Brook has been working at the Pack’s butcher shop, works hard, arriving early and staying late, and she’s been doing really well physically. She’s stayed clean, proving to herself and the Pack that she’s got a future.
Where her relationship with Ginny is concerned though, things are… strained. It’s dangerously thin ice. Brooke made choices that caused her daughter to suffer terribly. Worse, Brooke knew what was happening with her boyfriends and Ginny—and Brooke punished her for it. That’s a betrayal no child should have to endure, and if Ginny didn't love her mother, the Pack would have killed Brooke, not rehabbed her.
But although Ginny’s concern saved Brooke’s life, Ginny keeps her further away than even arm’s length. Sometimes she chooses to stay home rather than go to the butcher shop with Susan or me when we pick up our weekly order of cuts.
And since limiting contact with her mom is what Ginny wants, we respect that.
With her permission though, Susan has been inviting Brooke on some social outings. For example, right now. “How do you feel about horseback riding?” Susan asks, only sparing Brooke a quick smile before she’s crouched back in front of Shane, holding his pacifier aloft triumphantly as she stretches for the fridge and pulls out a good carrot (the ones in the bin are slimy and going just a little off. Fine for the woodland critters but not the choicest for us) and offers it to Shane in trade.
He makes an excited woofing noise and carries it around like a bright orange stick.
I guide him to the door so he can play outside. And I’m not going to lie: we love kicking our son outside. Wolf pup poop is a breeze to shovel up, and we rarely have to deal with terrifying diapers of doom. 10/10, I’d recommend shifter pups to anyone.
(Plus? Puppy breath. Shane has it, and it’s delicious.)
Shane happily picks up his carrot, drops it, picks it up again, and repeats this process all the way to the door, his big paws clomping as he goes. I take a moment to step into my boots at the door, grab a blanket off the shelf, and I follow him out.
He makes a garbled wurf of happiness and pounces into a sizable drift of snow.
As a human baby, he hasn't mastered walking yet. As a wolf pup, he can already run. Thus we fenced the yard so that he’s got a safe place to play, about twenty feet by thirty feet, the werewolf version of a playpen. He loves it, and he’s almost always outside. And the beautiful thing about werewolf children who can shift is that they can play in the snow without needing to be bundled up. The only concern is if Shane shifts to his human form while he's outside. A baby's naked skin can't suffer the exposure for long, which means he needs to be watched when he's playing.
Finn joins me in overseeing my toothy son, letting Shane nip at his boots before he bends and retrieves a rope toy, one that’s frozen solid so it’s more like a rope brick. He tosses it and watches Shane bolt after it, woofing madly. “Can I talk to you?” Finn asks.
“Sure.”
He sidles up to me. He shifts his weight, scuffing his boot. “You and Sue are using an IUD, right?”
I raise my eyes to his. “Yeah.”
He grips the back of his neck and avoids my eyes. “Does it ah… Does it cause you any damage?”
I snort. “Strings got you?”
He throws his hands out. “Yeah! Feckin’ thing stabbed me right in the dick!” He grabs his fly. “That uterus guard has a bite like a cobra. I still have a red spot.”
I look for Shane and find him clawing and chewing bits off of the snowman Maggie made with Liam yesterday, unaware of the subject of our conversation. Still. “Don’t show me—” I tell Finn, grimacing.
“I’m not showing you! I’m gesturing. Anyways,” he meets my gaze and implores me. “How did you fix it? Tell me there’s a fix because this can’t be repeated. My cock’s developed a phobia—which is the cruelest thing in the world. The doctor promised us it was effective birth control, but she didn’t tell us it was because I’d be afraid to ride my wife—”
I hold up a hand, trying not to smirk even as I’m snickering. “They soften up. The strings. You can tuck them up past her cervix so the most you’ll feel is their loop, like a tail, but they won’t be able to nail you again.”
Finn sags in relief. “Jaysus, Mary, and Jacob, thank fuck.”
A midnight blue Dodge truck pulls up to the house. It’s ours, and Ginny exits from the driver seat. She got her license a few months ago; she didn’t feel ready to get behind a wheel before now, even though Susan offered to take her out to practice. But when I started learning, so did she.
And then Ginny turned around and taught Hudson.
Hudson, who put in the official request to join our pack, and was approved. Every werewolf can tell that he and Ginny are destined mates, even without the Claddagh promise ring that she wears on a chain around her neck.
Hudson wears one too.
The two have kept very private, with no announcements about their engagement, although the pair did sit down with Susan and me to get our blessing for them to marry when they turn eighteen.
Because we like and trust Hudson, and can see he’s a good match for her even if there wasn’t a near-visible matebond between them, of course we gave it.
Charlotte exits from the passenger side of the truck, and Ginny opens the back door on the driver’s side to help Maggie from her car seat.
“Ladies,” I call, giving them a nod. I meet Charlotte’s eyes in particular, and she grins at me like always, because she worked hard and made a lot of cookies over the last year to ensure I was conditioned to give her my direct gaze. Even if I can’t maintain it, she’s trained me to send her eyes at least a brief glance. An unintentional side effect of my conditioning though? Every time I look into her eyes, now I get hungry for cookies.
Finn waves. “You pups are looking savage.”
“You are,” I agree. Sweater dresses in jewel tones, black leggings on all of them, and puffy winter jackets in white and pink for Charlotte and Maggie. Ginny has no jacket at all, which is typical and understandable. Sh
e loves the crisp air, same as any werewolf.
“Thanks,” Ginny calls, boots crunching until she reaches the paver stone path that’s stringently salted (with paw-safe salt, of course) so that nobody slips and dies. The ice storms in December are nothing to mess with, and it’ll only get worse as the cold season ramps up. The real chill and serious storms begin in February. Even werewolves hunker down then—with coats. Ginny chuckles at Shane who’s trying to rip the scarf off of the snowman, and she asks us, “Is mom inside?”
She means Susan. This summer, when she asked Susan a question, she began her query with, “Mom?”
Susan didn’t make any big deal of it—other than drawing Ginny into a loving hug. And that was that. Susan has been “Mom” to her ever since. But then again, Susan has been a mom to Ginny for a very long time.
Ginny refers to me as Lucan or Deek, and that’s perfectly fine by all parties. Charlotte and Maggie use my given name to refer to me too, as they should. They have a dad. And he’s determined to have his time with them, when he’s got the time. Jillian has to drive all the way up to Pack headquarters to collect his daughters now, and Finn and I like to see the girls off. So does a good portion of the pack, mostly in wolf form. If Jillian is intimidated, we’d never say it was our intention.
But we’d probably admit that it’s a lot of fun.
“Both of your moms are inside, actually,” I tell Ginny, and I don’t miss the careful glance Charlotte sends Ginny’s direction.
“Oh,” Ginny says.
Finn, hands slid into his pockets, rocks on the balls of his feet. “They’s a bunch of them going horseback riding. You three are welcome to tag along with them, I’d think. Course you may want to ask someone with more authority on the matter than me, but if nothing else, you can form your own riding posse or…” He inclines his head, smiling and bracing himself for the response. “We could set up sleigh rides.”
Maggie stops in her tracks, clapping her mittens together and exclaiming, “A sleigh ride?!”