And one person knew where to find them.
“Yoo-hoo,” a cheerful voice called from outside the lodge, making its way up to the room where I’d stayed for the past month.
“I’ll miss you,” Sagely said impulsively. “I admit, it was nice getting to know you, even if the circumstances weren’t ideal.”
“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “It really was.”
I’d called my family to tell them I couldn’t make it home for the holidays, but mostly, I had spent the time grieving. Now it was time for action.
I followed Sagely down the stairs, and after a lengthy goodbye—it took a while to make it through all my siblings, parents, nieces and nephews—we made our way to the well in their little community. Astrid was skipping around it and singing while a dozen kids of varying ages trailed behind, trying to copy her every move. I couldn’t help but smile as we stopped to watch her. Even smiling felt different now, as if each smile were precious and hard-earned.
Alarick’s arm tightened around my waist, and he leaned down to speak into my ear. “Maybe we can come back here once we’ve found mates for my brothers,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind if that were our family.”
“You want a dozen kids?” I asked, leaning back to gape at him.
He shrugged, giving me an adorably bashful smile. “I mean… I wouldn’t mind a big family. I think I’ll be a good dad. I sure as hell know what not to do.”
“I think you will be, too,” I said, standing on tiptoes to give him a quick kiss. “But… Twelve kids?”
“How about ten?” he asked, linking his hands behind my lower back and pulling me against him as he smiled down at me.
Brooklyn snorted and rolled her eyes. “Get a room.”
Since losing her mate, she didn’t seem interested in staying with the Lunessa Pack. She said they felt like strangers, and she’d rather stay with us. And like me, she couldn’t enter the pack bond that let her communicate telepathically with natural born werewolves, so she’d always be a bit of an outsider. Maybe, if Jose had lived, she would have stayed, content to have a familiar face nearby. Or maybe she didn’t hate me so much after all.
“Seriously,” Alarick said, pulling my chin up and searching my eyes. “Do you want to come back here? This seems like a nice place to raise a family.”
“Better watch out,” Adolf said. “If you come back here, Timberlyn might decide she wants a couple more Wolf brothers in her bed.”
“Then you can have your wood stacking competition every night,” I teased.
The guys all laughed, and my heart swelled with happiness for a moment. I’d lost people I loved, but I still had so much. I still had family—three of them. The wolves, the witches, and the family I’d grown up with.
“I hear gingers have no souls,” Donovan said. “So, I don’t know about coming back. Seems to me like they’re raising an army of soulless gingers around here.”
“He’s got a point,” I mused. “Not about the soullessness of redheads, but about the sheer numbers. If our kids get my hair, they might get lost in the ginger sea.”
“Your mom does seem extra fertile,” Adolf agreed.
“Ew,” I said. “Can you not say it like that?”
“Say what?” Astrid said, skipping over.
“Your hair’s kinda reddish,” Adolf said, examining Astrid’s beehive hairdo. “Is Sagely your mom, too?”
“Oh, no,” Astrid said. “My mom’s a tree. My dad murdered her, and I was raised by an evil witch who locked me in a tower to collect my tears. But she’s a tree now, too.”
“Are you sure no one else here knows how to get to another world?” Donovan asked, raising a brow skeptically.
“Oh, they know how to get there,” Astrid said. “But I can actually go in with you. Come on. I’ll take you to the cave.”
“It’s going to be just a cave, isn’t it?” Donovan muttered as we started after her.
“Either that, or she’s going to knock us out and harvest our organs,” Brooklyn said, sounding cheerful as she strode along beside us. In all the time I’d known her, she’d been so angry. But somehow, she seemed to have found peace on the other side of her grief. I had to admire her for that. Actually, I admired her for a lot of things. She was about the toughest person I’d ever met. Who would have thought, after all my time at Ravenwood Academy and all the friends I’d made, that she would end up my closest female friend?
“I’m going to take you to the world of the gods,” Astrid said, turning to face us and walking backwards. “Odin knows everything, and he has wolves by his throne, so I know where a few are already. He can see where the rest are. Plus, he loves me.” She sang out the last line, turning to run down the slope to the road we’d come in on. She cartwheeled along it until her hair came out of its moorings and she tripped on it.
“You think she’s ever said anything normal in her life?” Brooklyn asked.
“I’m betting no,” I said. “But if she can show us some wolves, I’m okay with that. Plus, she’s happy. It’s sweet.”
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be as happy as she was, but I was sure as hell going to try. It helped to know what lay ahead. My life’s work had been carved out for me already, starting with going into other worlds to find mates for the wolves. We’d stop the vampires and save humanity. Someday, we’d come back here and have ten redheaded werewolf pups, and I’d be as happy as Astrid. With my friends and family around me, and Alarick by my side, how
