Chapter 37
My plan was to go on parental leave in two months, but it was getting more and more difficult to go through an entire shift.
It didn’t help that there were more non-pack werewolves at the hospital now.
On the one hand, I appreciated the safety net their presence would offer Marcus.
On the other, it was actually unsettling that the packs had pulled off that many transfers of doctors and nurses in such a small amount of time for a single omega.
It made all of us even more protective of Marcus.
I was in the car, heading back to the house after doing the grocery shopping when Vi called. Sometimes I wondered whether she could secretly read minds and knew that I’d been thinking of the pack just then.
I considered dodging the call, but she’d just call Linc or Dom instead. I hit the answer button.
“Ellie!”
“Aunt Vi.”
I could hear her sneer. “You’re making me sound old. How’s my grand-nephew-to-be?”
“Do you think having a grand-nephew makes you sound younger?”
She clicked her tongue. I pulled down the sun shade. November had just started, but there were still sunny days, even if the leaves were losing their green and turning to reds and golds.
“Careful now. Seriously though. Everything okay? No one has seen Marcus in weeks. People do wonder how he’s doing.”
By people, she meant herself. Dom’s mom too.
Dom’s brother was still in a tizzy over how to break the news of a nephew to his wife.
Linc’s parents, honestly, were so much easier to deal with, not least because they were half a continent away.
My mom had offered to move in with us though, and my sister had hinted at a baby shower.
I had no idea whether Marcus would be okay with that.
I didn’t know that I was. He still didn’t have our bites.
“He’s not been feeling like leaving the house, Vi. We’re certainly not going to force him.”
She hummed. “Anything I can do? Or anyone. I know you like being alone out there and apart from the pack, but that doesn’t mean we won’t support you if there’s anything you need.”
I sighed. “I’ll bring it up with everyone.”
There was a pause. “He’s still not allowed you to give him a mating bite, has he.”
I signaled and made the right turn down our road. “Since we found him in the woods that day, he’s had to deal with more revelations and trauma than anyone should have to in years. He’s only had weeks. There’s no reason to pressure him.”
“Were you always this stubborn? I can’t remember you being this stubborn when you were younger.”
“Vi, I’m not stubborn. I care about our mate, and he needs time.”
She sighed. “I just mean that explaining to him what the benefits would be might help ease him into the idea. People have managed that before.”
“Listen, I’m almost at the house. Why were you calling?”
“I have good news. The hunters—and Steven—have all decided to take plea deals rather than risk court.”
“That’s great news. Thanks. Marcus is going to love hearing that. I assume they’re not going to be released anytime soon?”
I heard her moving around. She was probably in her home office. “I don’t have the details of that yet. Sentencing comes later. All the elders I’ve been talking to are very invested in that, as you can imagine.”
I frowned. I had a feeling about where she was going to take the conversation next.
“Speaking of elders. We’re still coordinating with everyone who has pack members in law enforcement. Is there anything else you remember? Anything else that’s come up for Marcus?”
“I only came to when the sheriff cut me free, and Marcus has told you everything. He has absolutely no reason to hide anything from you. You understand that, right?”
“I do, but I also know that sometimes it can take a while for memories to make sense again. I have to ask, Ellie. I want to be able to protect him and you and the rest of the pack. That’s my job.”
I sighed. “Right. I know that. Sorry.”
She chuckled. “Talk to him about giving him your bite again. He might thank you.”
“There is only so much he can handle at a time, you know.”
Her voice filled with curiosity. “What does that mean?”
“That suddenly waking up as an omega is hard. Look, I’m at the house. If that’s everything—”
“We do need to have a baby shower at some point.”
I groaned. “I’m hanging up now. Bye.”
I ended the call before she could say another word, parked, then grabbed the grocery bags. All the while, anticipation was bubbling inside of me. It hadn’t been that long, but I was missing Marcus like prolonged silence misses true laughter.
Inside the house, his warm scent washed over me, bringing bone-deep relief and making me sigh before I’d even made it to the kitchen.
The boxes of Marcus’s stuff, everything he’d wanted to bring from his apartment, were still piled in the hallway, even if Dom had started bringing some of them upstairs.
In the living room, Dom was reading another parenting book while lying stretched out on the couch. When we’d moved all my stuff from medical school in, he’d told me he’d never have been able to memorize that much, but he took studying to be a parent incredibly seriously.
“Long day?” He looked at me over the book. This one was on early childhood development; not exactly light reading.
I maneuvered the bags onto the counter. “That, and I missed you.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “You missed me specifically? I’m flattered.” He put the book down and came over. He nudged me away from the grocery bags and hugged me close. “So flattered.”
I’d once made the mistake of thinking of Dom as the flirty kind of alpha who wasn’t the type to stick with a relationship. But he wasn’t like that at all, not one little bit, and while I would’ve loved to be the loyal one in our little family, it was, without a doubt, Dom.
“Well, that’s not quite what I meant, but this is nice.”
I kissed his warm lips and surrendered to him pushing me up against the counter. When he’d had enough of my mouth, he found a spot under my chin he liked. I hadn’t shaved this morning, and Dom loved that kind of thing.
“Did you buy more socks?”
I chuckled. “I did. They were on sale, so I splurged.”
“Mmm, good. I could keep going,” he said against the racing pulse in my neck. “But if Marcus heard you come in, he’ll be all mad and pouty about you not going right up there to say hi.”
I stroked Dom’s spine as he continued to drip kisses all over the skin of my neck, wrapping me in his scent.
“How’s he doing?”
“Oh, he complained all morning about Blob kicking him, said something about how sweatpants were not clothing he ever wanted to see ever again, only to then steal half the laundry out of the hamper, some of which were my last sweatpants. I actually think something’s bothering him, but he nearly threw a pair of your dirty socks at me when I asked him about it. ”
“I have some good news for him. Might cheer him up. The hunters took a plea, all of them.”
Dom let out a sigh of relief. “Thank fuck. Court would’ve sucked.”
I nodded. “Agreed. Let me go say hi and tell him.”
Dom nodded, his warm breath against my skin making me smile. “All right. I’ll pack away the shopping. Ask him what he wants for dinner too.”
We kissed, and with some effort, I peeled myself away from him. He looked gloriously flushed standing there, and I was probably the same.
I headed up the stairs, and here, Marcus’s scent was even stronger. The door to Linc’s office was shut, which meant he either had a meeting or didn’t want to disturb Marcus.
There were two more boxes of Marcus’s things right outside Dom’s door, waiting to go up to the attic once Dom was finished with it. I walked past the boxes and poked my head into what had been my room until just a few weeks ago. It technically still was.
This room was the smallest one upstairs, if you didn’t count the attic, which was Dom’s current project. I did have a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf in here, and while it was mostly medical texts and non-fiction, I wondered whether it was the books that had lured Marcus.
He was on the bed, that much I could tell.
The bed itself was covered with blankets, most prominently the summer duvet from Linc’s room, but there were one or two towels in there too, from what I could tell.
As it turned out, Marcus preferred natural fibers for his nest, and while Linc’s, Dom’s, and my clothes looked like a clumped-together mess to me, I had no doubt that the chaos made sense to him.
He’d rolled our socks into little balls, and they were on the floor all around the bed.
“Hi, Marcus. Are you sleeping?”
He’d draped one of Dom’s flannel shirts over his head, and his laptop was next to him. It looked like he’d found one of my sweatshirts and decided to wear that. His hand rested on the swell of his belly.
“Do I look like I’m sleeping?”
“Well, you know, it’s not that easy to tell, actually.”
He groaned, and with peak annoyance evident, he pulled the flannel off his face and blinked at me. “I know this isn’t normal. You don’t have to rub it in. I’ve turned into…into…a collector.”
I chuckled and took a step into the room. His eyes immediately darted to where I was putting my feet. He had a thing about anyone moving the sock balls, for some reason, and their number was growing each day.
“You’re fine.”
“I am absolutely not fine.”
“Want to talk about it?”
He snorted. “You know, that’s what my therapist says.”
“And what’s the answer?”
He pulled his laptop close. “I’m too exhausted to really get upset, but I know this is…a situation. Do you know what my therapist said the other day?”
“He probably told you this is normal.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. It would be so easy to do anything and everything for him, but that wasn’t what he wanted.
I wasn’t quite sure yet what he did want.
Things had moved faster than they should have, and while I loved everything about our life, I sometimes wished there had been more time for us to get to know Marcus better in the beginning. A courtship period, basically.