“True, but if you leave us, we’ll be so despondent that eating anything at all will be a chore. So, the sofa it is. Or starvation. Either work,” Dakota declared cheerfully, and I sighed. Would they? Or was he only saying that? “How about this, if I can prove to you that you matter you have to stay? If I cannot, then you are free to leave?” Several protests sounded at his words, but he met my gaze with a quirked brow. After biting my lip for a moment, I hesitantly nodded. I felt like I signed my eviction notice. “Wonderful, so after dinner, we’ll pull out the old album, and you shall see. Until then, bunny, you belong to me, so chair sharing is our game.” What?
Sure enough, for dinner, I sat on his lap, and I sighed, glancing at Marissa guiltily only to feel surprised when she appeared to be pleased. Oh boy. The wonderful news was the food turned out to be delicious. The bad news, however, was everyone ate silently, glancing at me every few moments with concerned frowns. Oh geez, was I made of glass for the moment? Ky chuffed, and I frowned, but he still nodded. Okay, the second order of business was to figure out if the wolf got into my head, or… what? He’s good at guessing? Even I knew better than that. So, did he guess by my feelings, or could he perceive my thoughts? Even better, could I block it, or would he always have access?
“Stop mulling, bunny,” Dakota scolded, and I blinked before refocusing on the present. They cleaned dinner up, and a picture album sat on the table in front of me. Glancing at Dakota, I frowned, and he nodded towards the leather-bound book. Gulping, I reached with shaking fingers to pull it closer and opened the cover. A young man with laughing, gentle amethyst eyes stared at me, his lips curled in a smile that made me think he was laughing seconds before someone took his picture. His ash-blond hair lay across his forehead as if the wind only just finished tousling it. But what got me the most, was the sadness, love, and grief that filled the room while I stared at the man who looked like me.
My lips twitched when the next page revealed him with his arm around a young Dakota’s neck, ruffling his hair while the smaller boy struggled to get away. The following picture showed a young Kyler trying to frown, albeit the corners of his lips curled into a slight smile while the young man beamed. They stood beside each other, Kyler with his arms crossed while the young man had one hand on his hip and a bouquet of roses in the other.
The next picture was of him and a ragtag group of kids, one of whom had white-blond hair with black tips. That boy was grinning ear to ear while an amber-eyed, black-haired boy pouted. Behind the pair, the rest of the kids watched wide-eyed from behind the young man, clinging to his coat and pants while they leaned around him. With his hands on his hips and a slight grin, I faintly heard a melodious voice teasingly scold Kyler for being a sore loser. I blinked, and the voice stopped, which made my heart pang because I longed to hear him speak again.
On the next page, he sat underneath a tree, reading a book while surrounded by wolves. With the sun shining on them, they appeared to be basking, and at peace. The following picture, however, showed the young man in a predator’s stance, on the hunt and ready to rip something apart. His eyes glowed, while his hair seemed to have gotten longer. But the most startling thing about the picture was the infant wrapped in the blanket cradled in his arms. Perhaps not so much the baby caught my attention, but the blanket. I couldn’t breathe, and from a distance, I heard Dakota saying my name, but I could not focus on him.
He tried to stop me when I stood from his lap, gasping to force what little oxygen I could into my lungs. Riff moved towards me, but I held up my hand to ward him off, and he stopped with a wounded expression. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but if he did what he wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to do what I needed. Char stood from his chair, albeit he did not approach me. Instead, when Marcus stood, he stepped into his path.
“Char, move,” Marcus growled. Shuddering, I glanced at the young man who had become an essential part of my home, but he grinned over his shoulder with a wink. Then, he shook his head in answer to Marcus’s order. “Now.” Again, Char shook his head, and I backed away when he gestured for me to go.
“Angel needs to do this alone. If we soothe her upset, she will let it go, and that won’t do her any good,” Char murmured in an almost pained sounding voice. Did disobeying the alpha hurt? Recalling Riff falling to his knees when he stood against Kyler on my first day of school, I determined that it must. Poor Char, I didn’t want him hurt because he was trying to help me. Did I somehow accept that he and I bonded through this pack? Was that why he understood better than the rest of them? Well, at least I had something to puzzle over to keep my mind off other things.
While I mulled, as Dakota would say, my breathing calmed, although my shoulders tensed more with every step I took. It wasn’t so much the blanket that bothered
