"It's a supporting wall," Ian Foley explains for the fifth time. "You can't just knock it out."
"Why not?" Dane asks, crossing his arms over his broad chest with a stubborn scowl.
Ian sighs, and then slowly and patiently repeats what he's already explained four times.
"Because it will compromise-the-structural-integrity-of-the-house," he enunciates carefully, and waves a hand. "Mess a bunch of shit up, in the long term."
"Like what? Can't you... compensate?"
Dane adds a sneer and a nasty twist to the last word, and I mentally plant my face in my palm. He's been itching for a fight for weeks, and Ian—given his history with Julian—is the perfect target.
Fortunately, Ian's not an alpha. Instead, he has the patient, self-accepting air of a man who was once convinced he needed to be and has since outgrown that conviction through the rare and painful process of self-reflection.
"Yeah," he allows, brushing a hand through his short red hair—much lighter than Ambrose's dark auburn shade—and sighs again as he studies the wall. "If we replace the basic posts with heavier, load-bearing beams, reinforce the foundation and the roof structure, then sure—we can 'compensate.'"
"Good," Dane nods. "Do it, then."
I wince. Dane is both literally and figuratively 'poking the bear,' and while my five-year-old self might have been interested in who would win 'Grizzly vs. Wolf,' I'm currently more interested in preserving the furniture.
"Great!" I exclaim, clapping my hands with pretend enthusiasm. "I'm so glad that's settled. Oh, by the way, Dane—I think Grace has something to show you. Outside. In the yard."
"Oh yeah?" Dane grunts. "What?"
"I don't know," I shrug. "You'll have to go see."
He shoots me a look that says I'm not fooling him, but stomps away to talk to Grace anyway. When she visits, she always brings food.
Ian sighs, watching him go. "Shit. I almost wanna take his bait, just to let him blow off steam," he says, adjusting the black patch he wears over one eye. "Poor guy."
"Don't worry about it," I say, rotating a sore shoulder. "He gets plenty of exercise. He's just not great at the 'human emotions' thing. He misses Julian."
It's been almost three months since the night at the standing stones and, to be honest, Dane is doing better than he was.
For the first few weeks, he'd relapsed into the behavior he'd displayed the first time Julian disappeared, spending almost all his time as a wolf, and refusing to leave the site where our mates had vanished.
Freya, Chloe, Grace, and I had brought him food and forced him to Shift and talk to us, but eventually, we'd decided that an intervention was in order. Freya—brave woman that she is—took on the task, and whatever she said or did, it seems to have worked.
He'd returned to us, resumed his responsibilities, and thrown himself into his work and—especially—into the task of remodeling the cottage.
Ian's family owns the place and the land it's on, so Dane had needed his permission and blessing—readily given—and as Ian himself is a carpenter, it made sense that he'd take on the job. Unfortunately, when Dane's mood goes south, as it often does, Ian often ends up in the cross-hairs of his wrath.
"What about you, kid?" Ian asks, taking a swig of water from a reusable bottle and wiping his brow. "You doin' alright?"
I'm pretty sure Ian is only a few years older than me, and I wonder if anyone smaller than him is a 'kid' in his mind. Although, given that his own mate is quite a bit younger and even more slightly built than I am, I sort of hope not.
"I'm okay," I answer, and it's true: from the start, I've been better off than Dane. "I miss Ambrose, of course, but I know he's alright."
I rub the spot in the center of my chest where the fire in my heart burns with a low, steady warmth. It's not the same as having him here, but it lessens the ache of separation, a bit. Compared to what I went through when I thought he'd rejected me, it's not that bad.
"Yeah, I get that," Ian says, his expression softening. "I got the same sorta thing with my Sam. I don't like bein' apart from him, but if it can't be helped, it's like..." He squints, searching for words, then shrugs. "Like I can still sense him, I guess."
Sam, Ian's mate, is a demon hybrid—half human and half incubus—and (unsurprisingly, I suppose, given his nature) shares a soul-level bond with his unlikely lover, which Ian has described as a sort of mutually binding demonic pact.
He's right that Ambrose and I share something similar, but it's more like we've exchanged a part of ourselves rather than merely linked them, and in my case, at least, there have been certain side effects.
Ian frowns as I move my shoulder again and wince as it hurts.
"You sure you don't want me to go a few rounds with him?" he asks, meaning Dane. "I got the bulk to handle it. Might mellow him out a bit. Plus, I wouldn't mind the chance to get a few swings in of my own," he adds.
I shake my head, giving him a reassuring smile. "Nah. Freya and I have him in hand, and I heal a lot faster than I used to."
I hadn't noticed right away, but gradually it had become more obvious, and then undeniable: my wolf's form had changed.
My fur, before an unremarkable dark gray, is now longer, thicker, and has a warmer undertone, while my ears and tail are tipped in red. The amber hue of my eyes, too, has shifted towards the darker end of cinnabar. Most notable, though, is the way I now heal more quickly than I ever have before—something of Ambrose's ability that, along with his fire, it seems he's shared with me.
I'd discovered it the first time Dane went too far, when he, Freya, and I were running as wolves and his human emotions had come out as aggression in his wolf. We were playing 'chase,' and despite being the better sprinter, he'd worn me down and caught me, and then he'd bitten too hard and broken my arm.
It was an accident, and stuff like that happens now and then (we're wolves, after all), but he'd been tortured by guilt anyway, of course, and Freya had given him hell. We were all surprised when the next day I'd woken up with very sore, but otherwise solidly mended, bones. I still couldn't bounce back the way Dane did, but a break or a sprain—or a dislocated shoulder—now meant only days, rather than weeks, of recovery.
This is fortunate, because burning off his feelings with exercise and aggression is how Dane copes, and it helps not to have to worry too much about being badly hurt while Freya and I flank him and keep him under control.
In some ways, he's worse than he was the first time.
Then, as now, he'd suffered the pain of being separated from his mate. This time, though, he's also terrified.
Because this time, when Julian returns, Dane will be a father, and of all of us, he's the least sure he's ready for that.
"Well," Ian sighs, turning his attention back to the difficulty of the wall. "For all our sakes, I hope Jules and your man come back soon."
"Yeah," I agree, looking around at the mess of the half-gutted house. "Though for Dane's sake, I hope we get this finished first. Otherwise, Julian will freak."
~ ☾ ~
Two more months go by.
Winter ends, Spring arrives, and the days grow warm. The meadows turn green with lush grasses, the forests with new leaves, and the promise of life is carried in the flower-scented breeze.
I hope it's Spring in Faerie, too, and that Ambrose is somewhere beautiful.
In the meantime, Dane's not the only one preparing his home for his mate's return.
I hadn't been sure I'd be able to bear living in the old mansion after everything that had happened there, and I knew Ambrose wouldn't blame me if I abandoned the place. Nonetheless, after all the crime-scene tape was cleared away, and Mathilda and the others had left, I'd discovered that it still felt like home to me.
Still, I'd been stressed out of my mind.
The place is immense, and I'd balked as I imagined the cost of everything from the electricity bill to the property taxes. Fortunately, Ambrose was a man who didn't like to think about such things more than he absolutely had to, and everything was on some kind of auto-pay system.
Which was fortunate, as I had no access to his bank accounts, and almost no money of my own.
In essence—from a legal standpoint, at least—I was a squatter, living in an empty home while the owner was away.
Then there were the remnants of the horrors that were harder than ashes and crime-scene tape to clear away.
I'd be lying if I said the passages in the walls didn't give me nightmares; or that, once I'd discovered the room attached to the basement where Rowan had kept Aengus for so many years, I didn't seriously consider burning the whole house down.
In the end, though, these things were the small, dark corners of an otherwise beautiful home, and—like flaws in a personality—they didn't represent the whole.
So, I did what I could, spending hours on end cleaning and making repairs, turning the ruined lawns and gardens into a more natural, eco-friendly landscape, and falling into bed each night grateful for the ache in my bones and the exhaustion that carried me to sleep, and which kept my mind off a certain, red-haired dragon whose absence I felt with every breath.
~ ☾ ~
"The university called," I announce one morning in April over a breakfast of a spicy Andouille sausage scramble prepared by Grace. "They apologized and offered my old job back."
I'm sitting at the table in the newly refurbished kitchen-slash-dining area in Dane's home, along with Freya, Chloe, Grace, and Dane himself.
"Heeey!" Freya exclaims, whacking the side of my arm. "Good for you, Nono! You gonna take 'em up on that?"
I shake my head. "No, I don't think I will, Frey."
"What!?" She sits back, eyes wide with shock. "I thought that job meant everything to you!"
I nod, spearing a slice of sausage with my fork as I compose my thoughts.
"It did," I say. "I spent my whole life carving out a place for myself in that world—'Noah Hunter, Professor of Linguistics.'" I roll my eyes. "If I'm honest, I never really felt like I belonged there. I loved my studies, loved my field with my whole heart." I shake my head. "It never loved me back. I think that's part of why I was vulnerable to someone like Thom. It seemed like he accepted me when no one else ever would."
"Noah..." Freya's lip trembles, and I suppress a laugh as an impression of a cartoon character with huge, shining eyes flashes across my mind.
"It's okay," I assure her. "And I know you and Dane dug up all kinds of dirt on Thom. Thank you. It means a lot, and I—"
"Actually..." Freya interrupts, biting her lip. "Don't be mad, Nono, but it wasn't me an' Dane. It was... It was my 'hunting' partner, Darius. He owed me, and... Well... I kinda passed the job along to him."
I stare at her a moment, caught between genuine surprise and an unhealthy level of enjoyment at her obvious discomfort.
"Oh. Well, then..."
"Darius is extremely subtle," Freya assures me earnestly, leaning across the table to grasp my hand. "He'd never—"
"Expose himself?" an unfamiliar voice asks, smooth as the best dark chocolate, as a man emerges from the shadows at the corner of the room.
He's tall, handsome, dark-skinned, and clearly inhuman. He has the look of a cross between a Vodun Priest and a vampire, and I get the feeling he may be both, with talismans about his neck and sharp teeth showing in his wide, bright smile.
"Darius L'Amour," he says, bowing from the waist. "A pleasure, I am sure."
"Darius!?" Freya hisses, twisting in her seat. "What about 'wait in the fucking car,' do you not understand?"
"Apologies, sister," he drawls, eyes shining with incorrigible and wicked humor. "I could not resist."
"Shit." Freya huffs, leaning her face against her hand a moment before regaining her usual unapologetic composure. "Fine. Whatever. Everyone, meet Darius." She gestures between us. "Darius—everyone. Except Julian and Ambrose, obviously. And the rest of my family. Which is considerable in number."
She sighs and rests her head on her folded arms.
"Forgive me," Darius drawls. "I did not intend to intrude, but Freya speaks so highly of you all, and after driving that wonderful 'Recreational Vehicle' of yours all the way from Louisiana to the Pacific Coast... Well, I could not resist the temptation to observe."
"Darius," Freya hisses again, without lifting her head. "Go...wait...in...the...RV."
A smile lights his eyes and stretches his lips, but he bows with easy acquiescence, and with a last nod to the rest of us, departs like a shadow fleeing the edge of light.
A moment passes in which no one speaks.
"Freya?" I ask, touching her shoulder. "You okay?"
"Yup." She nods, lifting her head. "I'm okay if you're okay, brother."
I offer her a smile, but Dane's scowl looks like it's in danger of splitting his face.
"Are you and that...man...uh...?" he asks—or tries, since it comes out as more of a choked rasp.
Freya glares. "He's my 'hunting partner,' like I said. Nothing more."
Dane slumps with obvious relief. "Oh. Okay then."
"Okay, then," Freya echoes with narrowed eyes, though there's a challenge in her tone.
"So, anyway," I interrupt quickly. "Point is, I'm grateful that you—or Darius, or whoever—exposed Thom for who and what he was, but... Well, I guess I don't want what I've already lost. I want something more. I want something new."
I shift my gaze from her to Dane.
"I want to stay here, in Spring Lakes," I say. "With my Pack."
~ ☾ ~
I wake early in the morning on the 1st of May with a tingling in my chest.
I sit up in the wide, mostly empty bed in Ambrose's room, and for a moment, I'm worried that there's something wrong with me. Then I see the little flames licking up and down my arms, and I understand.
My mate is coming back.
A few quick phone calls later, and I'm dressed and on my way to the site of the standing stones, my heart racing in my breast.
I park my old car and set out across the night-darkened field, and within moments I'm joined by Freya and Dane.
Together, we gather at the edge of the stones, hearts in our mouths, as we wait for some sign from the other side.
Then, with the subtlety of the silver edge of a moonlit cloud, the doorway opens, and Ambrose appears.
He looks like some ancient god of the Hunt, dressed in furs with his wild hair long and woven with ribbons of moss, his red-brown eyes lit with flame. They land on me and his whole being lights with joy.
"Little wolf," he says, and then I'm in his arms.
And I'm home, as I have never been before.
A moment later, though, I pull away, alarmed as I hear my brother's half-strangled cry, and turn to see him take Julian in the gentlest embrace.
When he steps back, his eyes unabashedly wet with tears, I see the reason for his uncharacteristic carefulness.
Julian holds not one tiny bundle, but two.