“Did you … hurt her?”
He quickly shook his head. “No. My father recognized the signs early enough that it did not quite come to that. Nevertheless, I could not stay in my pack.”
“How come you never told me?” she asked, rubbing his thigh.
“I have never told anyone outside of my family. Not Lotus, Sable, or Asch. It is not something I am proud of.”
A long time ago, Asch had told her that Caim had been fourteen when they had met. She couldn’t imagine how terrible it must have been to have to leave his home at that age.
“I’m so sorry, Caim. It’s awful that they would kick you out like that.”
“It was my choice to leave,” he said. “I cared very much for my father’s mate. It was easier to leave than to live in fear of harming her.”
Dawn sneezed inside of Mila’s sweater, reminding her that she and Caim weren’t sharing the intimate moment alone. She looked down her shirt collar to see that the pup was still napping.
“You are my family now,” Caim said, taking her by surprise. “You and Dawn. Asch as well.”
She smiled at him. “You’re my family, too.”
* * *
When Asch arrived back at his chamber, his family was sleeping. In his wolf form, Caim rested on the fur pallet. His body formed a protective curve around Mila and Dawn. Asch stared at them and a sense of longing welled up from deep within his bones.
As if sensing his presence, Mila lifted her head from Caim’s side. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and then turned to grace Asch with a smile.
Mila slowly untangled herself from Dawn and Caim. Asch came over to offer her a hand and she accepted, letting him lift her up. Unexpectedly, she took him by the hand and led him from the room.
Asch was usually good at reading his mate’s moods, but tonight had been a series of curveballs, so he didn’t bother trying to figure out what she was doing. Instead, he let her take him away, intrigued by her strange behavior.
She stopped at Dawn’s room and led him into the small chamber. Knowing she couldn’t see in the darkened room, he went to the shelf to light a candle. As he lit the flame, Mila came up behind him and wrapped her arms around his torso.
“I want to go away tomorrow. Just me and you.”
Asch fumbled with the lighter, and it dropped to the floor where it clattered against the stone. When he trusted himself to speak, he said, “Mila, don’t think that you need to—”
“I love you,” she said, “and I love Dawn. I know that I’ll love any child that we have together, Asch. I honestly don’t know if I’m ready yet, but I figure I’ll have the next nine months to get my act together, right?”
Asch turned to look at her and wondered if he had stepped into a dream. There were tears in Mila’s eyes, but she seemed almost as happy as he felt. Overwhelmed with too many emotions to process, he drew his mate in for a crushing hug.
When he finally let her go, she stood on the tips of her toes to press a quick, chaste kiss to his lips before stepping back.
“I’m gonna go spend a little more time with Dawn before we leave.”
Epilogue
Mila woke to see a pair of beautiful brown eyes gazing back at her.
With summer fast approaching, she and her mates had moved their room to one of the upper floors. A fissure in the ceiling let in cool air and a pleasant stream of afternoon light.
The light settled on Dawn’s face, highlighting her ivory skin and accentuating the rosy shades of her chubby cheeks. Mila reached out to stroke her daughter’s impressive mop of chestnut hair.
“Good afternoon, princess,” she said, her voice still a bit slurred with sleep.
Dawn popped her thumb from her mouth to give her mother a toothy smile. At only ten months old, her little daughter already had a full set of teeth, compliments of her werewolf parentage. Aside from that, though, she looked like a perfectly ordinary baby.
It had been just over a week since Mila had returned from a four-night-long tryst with Asch. The mating thrall had been considerably less daunting with only one sex-crazed werewolf to manage, and her hormones had kept her just crazy enough that she hadn’t spent the entire time moping over missing Dawn.
Everything had changed the moment she had arrived back at the den. Caim had met them outside, looking even more exhausted than she and Asch did. He had been holding Dawn, who was wailing like a little banshee and was remarkably furless.
The moment that Caim placed Dawn into her arms, Mila’s world had seemed to slide back into place. As she rocked her baby in her arms, she listened to Caim recount the time Mila had been gone.
Apparently, Dawn had been pretty well-behaved during the first night, but once they tried to put her down to bed, it had finally seemed to hit her that her mother was gone. After the second night without Mila, Dawn had shifted into her human form and had spent the next two nights crying inconsolably. As much as her heart had ached for Dawn, a part of her had been secretly happy that Dawn had missed her so much.
Over the past week, Dawn had flitted back and forth between her human and wolf forms. She definitely favored her wolf, but whenever it got close to bedtime, she would shift back into the form of a little cherub. Mila had a sneaking suspicion that Dawn was intentionally manipulating her, as Mila couldn’t resist bringing her daughter to bed with her when she was in her human form.
“How did we make such a beautiful little girl?” she asked Caim.
Her mate lay on the other side of Dawn, his head resting on one muscled bicep. His lips curved upward, but it was Asch who answered her question.
“She has a very beautiful mother,” he said.
Asch was behind her, his long body stretched out, acting as a buffer between her and the doorway. He propped himself up on one arm and pressed a kiss to Mila’s bare shoulder.
Mila turned to admire him, loving the way the sunlight caught his coppery hair. “Hey, you.”
“How are you feeling?” he asked and smiled.
She shrugged. “Same old, same old. Don’t worry. Remember, with Dawn it was like, two weeks before my scent changed.”
Asch’s smile widened, and the gears in her head began to turn.
Her pulse quickening, she babbled, “Is it, I mean, did it already—”
“Yes,” Asch said.
Mila was pretty sure she could see each and every one of her mate’s teeth, and his grin was infectious. She smiled back in a happy stupor as Asch leaned down to rub his nose against hers.
As Asch pulled her in for a hug, she heard Caim say to Dawn, “You are going to have a sister.”
Mila laughed out loud. “What makes you so sure it’s going to be a girl?”
In a matter-of-fact tone, Caim said, “Asch cannot have a son before I do.”
She crinkled her nose at him before pulling away from Asch and leaning over to shower Dawn’s face with kisses. Dawn giggled with excitement and her pudgy hands pushed at her mother’s face.
“You are going to be such a good big sister,” Mila told her. “You can teach your little brother how to hunt bugs and scare squirrels.”
She heard Caim snort and knew that the whole pack was going to have months of fun taunting him about the pup’s gender.
Sighing, Mila said, “I suppose we should go tell everyone the news.”
“Not yet,” Asch said, stroking her hair. “You know how Rosie and Brae are when you’re pregnant. Let us keep you to ourselves for a little while longer.”
Mila lay back on the bed, one arm around Dawn as she gazed lovingly between her two mates. She was sure that the future would be full of ups and downs. Life always was, especially when you lived with a pack of werewolves and had two stubborn alphas for mates. But she knew that no matter what happened, they would always be a family.
* * *
Et ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants—they married and had many children. The French version of happily ever after.
As if marriage and children are all that
is required of a happy ending.
But as idyllic as it sounds, I find it much more comforting than a vague ‘happily ever after’. To me, the concept of a happily ever after is painfully naïve. It is as if we’re celebrating the end of a storm, while remaining ignorant of the fact that it may very well rain again tomorrow.
Happily ever after is not the rainbow at the end of a storm. It is waking each day, secure in the knowledge that there is someone by your side—a hand to hold on to no matter if the tide rises or the winds rage.
Knowing you’re not alone in this wild and capricious world—that is happiness.
Marie du Luponte, 1931
An excerpt from Wolves of the Cordilleras
Christmas with the Alphas
For a year, Caim held bragging rights for being the first alpha to sire a pup, but all that changes when his mate becomes pregnant with Asch’s twins. With the balance of power subtly shifting in Asch’s favor, it’s up to Mila to bring her sulking, oaf-of-a-mate out of his funk. One way or another, she’s determined to remind Caim that he’s still every bit the dominant, virile wolf she fell in love with.
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Claimed by the Alphas: Complete Edition Page 34