Chapter 22
Blaze
I loved it in Bluewater, but something about Grove Holler spoke to me. It’d been my home for so long. Thinking about living in Bluewater permanently both excited me and made me nervous.
“What’s on your mind?” Gage asked.
Shaking my head, I kicked back in the rocking chair on his porch for the millionth time in my life. “Leaving.” One word told a big story.
“Man, you found your mate,” Gage said. “There’s not much better than that.” He chuckled and sipped his beer.
He was right. Nothing compared to having Sammy.
She made anywhere feel like home. “I’ll come visit,” I said as I opened my second beer.
We’d packed up my place and sent it through the portal with Sammy and Anthony.
She assured me there would be no problem unpacking my things while I spent a few days back here saying goodbye.
“Of course you will. And I expect plenty of invitations to come to Bluewater. Hell, maybe some of that mating magic will rub off on me and I can spread it around here.” He chuckled and looked out at the woods as twilight fell.
“You’re where you’re supposed to be,” I said in a soft voice. Any human wouldn’t have heard me, but of course Gage had no trouble. “You’ve made a safe, happy pack here.”
He grinned. “It’s unconventional, but you’re right. This is…” He sucked in a deep breath. “Home.”
“Of course it is.” I nodded once and pulled on the bottle. “I don’t know how to thank you for the life you gave me here. If you hadn’t found me, I really don’t know what would’ve happened. I was losing myself.” I didn’t love being all mushy like this, but Gage deserved to know what he meant to me.
“Let’s fly,” Gage suggested. “One last time.”
Grinning, I launched off of his porch and shifted, pumping my wings as hard as I could to lift me off the ground and into the air. We raced over the treetops, secure on our mountain. Nobody would see us or bother us here.
I let my toes skim the tops of the trees and then roared happily as we flew the path of the river far below. Diving, I banked just in time to keep from crashing into the rocky riverbed and let my claws dip into the water and scare the fish.
It would’ve been nice to fly over deer and other animals, but they all kept out of our woods.
They sensed a greater predator than any of them had ever dealt with and stayed well clear of us.
That was normal for any area full of dragon or wolf shifters.
Plus, we had a couple of bears and big cats, too.
After our flight, we dropped into Gage’s front yard and shifted back, our chests heaving with the exhilaration and adrenaline that accompanied a flight. We’d come back just in time.
It was my last night in Grove Holler, and the pack was beginning to arrive.
We walked over from Gage’s place to the meeting hall and helped set up the pot luck.
I got more than one clap on the back and about a dozen hugs.
I’d invited Sammy, but I think she had sensed that I wanted to say goodbye on my own.
These people were family, and leaving was extremely bittersweet.
Late into the night, Gage and I begged off.
The families with young children had left hours before, but the single and young members of the pack would be partying and shifting until the morning.
I’d be home before many of them even slowed down and went to bed, and I wanted at least a few hours of sleep.
With one last hug, Gage and I said our goodnights and our goodbyes, then I collapsed in his spare bedroom.
All my things had been moved out of my place and poofed up to Maine to Sammy’s the day before, so he’d offered his spare bedroom.
This way Sammy didn't have to stay up late to get me back to Bluewater.
After setting my alarm, I crashed and slept like a rock.
When my phone blared the next morning, I jumped up, brushed my teeth and hair, slipped on my sneakers, and waited for Sammy.
Seconds later, my beautiful mate appeared with a broad grin on her face. Sammy threw her short, slender arms around my neck and we appeared in the front yard.
Roxy ran outside with her arms spread wide. “Do you like it?”
I stood gaping at the house. When I’d left, a small, quaint cottage had sat in this clearing. They’d changed it quite a bit in the three days I’d been gone. Where it had been only one level, there were now two. And… “Is the downstairs bigger too?” I asked.
Roxy beamed at me. “Yes! We made you a man cave!”
She darted down the stairs and pulled me toward the porch. “It was so much fun. Livvie and Olivia came and helped, and then we got all your stuff moved in.”
I looked back at Sammy quizzically. She just chuckled and shook her head. “We positioned the furniture, but the boxes are ready for you to go through.”
My entire adult life had been sent over without me, and somehow it hadn’t bothered me to think of Sammy going through my things. There wasn’t anything she couldn’t see or know about. How odd and wonderful to have a person in my life like her.
And I was growing very fond of Roxy as well.
She rushed me through the rooms that had already been there.
“Look!” she exclaimed. “A bigger kitchen!” Before I had time to really appreciate the new layout, she yanked me through the kitchen and opened a door that hadn’t been there before. “Here, it’s your room!”
My jaw dropped. Most of my furniture was in here. Couch, recliner, coffee table. “It looks great,” I exclaimed.
“Well, I figured we could either try to mix and match our things, or we could do two rooms,” she said. “This one is more masculine and that one more feminine.”
I winked at her. “So I’m to be banished to the leather and wood domain, eh?”
Roxy shook her head and answered for Sammy. “Not at all. I prefer it in here. Plus, you have a PlayStation! I always wanted one.” She lowered her eyes. “I hope you don’t mind that I hooked it up.”
Perching on the end of the sofa, I tapped her nose with the tip of my index finger. “Not only can you hook it up, you can consider it yours.”
I loved that gaming system, but Roxy needed something of her own. And besides that, there was a new model coming out next year. If she played this one, it would be something we would be able to do together, buying the newer version. “We’ll pick you out some games of your own.”
Sammy stood back and grinned as Roxy abandoned the tour completely to grab my tablet. “I’ll look for some now!”
As Roxy lost herself to online shopping, Sammy nodded for me to follow her out.
“I expanded our bedroom,” she said softly and crossed the kitchen to a short hallway that had previously just been a door.
“Laundry room and mudroom.” She pointed to a door that she passed by, then we walked into her bedroom, which was much larger and had a bigger bed.
My bed. “My bed is upstairs in the guest room,” she said.
“And Roxy had a blast picking out stuff for her room.”
I jumped on the bed and bounced around a little.
“This is wonderful, Sammy, thank you.” I nodded my head toward the new den where I could hear Roxy turning on one of my racing games.
“She seems at peace.” She’d lost some of the terrified edge that had been in her eyes before I left.
“Amazing what three days will do for a girl.”
Sammy hopped on the bed more daintily than I had. “I think she’s starting to believe that I won’t abandon her.” Scooting forward, Sammy pressed her lips to my jaw. “Welcome home,” she whispered.
I gathered her into my arms and inhaled her scent with a smile in my heart and on my face. Home. I was really home. “Thanks, babe.”
“You know,” she said when I loosened my hold on her. “I’ve been thinking. I really like having Roxy around.”
Pulling back, I looked down at her. “Yeah?” I was pretty sure I would, too.
“Yeah.” Sammy looked up at me with uncertainty in her pale blue eyes. “I know I’m just doing the big sister thing, but it makes me feel motherly, especially since I’m about to step into my role as high priestess.”
“Well, I guess a leader of a coven in a way is like their mother.” I had a feeling I knew where she was going but I didn’t want to say anything and be wrong.
“True. I just wanted to tell you that I’m not unhappy about all this. And if I’m enjoying this aspect of being a mother, maybe I wouldn’t totally loathe having a baby one day.” She shrugged as if it were no big deal, but I knew damn well what a big deal it was for her to admit that.
Yanking her on top of me, I planted a big, sloppy kiss on her lips. “Stop!” she exclaimed. “Not yet. Let’s get Roxy through high school. Remember, we have a very long life ahead of us. Plenty of time for making rugrats.”
I buried my face in her neck. “I’ll happily give you babies whenever you’re ready.”
She sighed and hugged me tight. “Thank you.”
“Hey,” I said. “No need to thank me. I can’t believe I’ve gotten this lucky.
We’re a team and will be until we’re old and decrepit…
which will apparently be a very long time from now.
” We lay like that for a while until a question popped into my head.
“I wonder if our baby would be a witch or a dragon.”
She chuckled. “We won’t have to wait long to find out. As soon as Livvie pops her little one out we’ll know.”
“Either way, whatever we have, I’ll wait patiently for the day.”
Sammy smiled up at me. “I love you, Blaze.”
My name and the word love on her lips sent shivers through me. “I love you, too, mate.”