Epilogue
Cara
Four months ago, I forgot to take my contraceptive pill.
Best mistake I ever made.
Now I’m sixteen weeks pregnant, finally able to eat breakfast without my stomach staging a revolt, and watching my three alphas argue about window measurements through the kitchen window.
The morning light catches the sawdust in Nate’s dark hair as he measures a board for the third time.
Lucas has his arms crossed, gesturing at something with the sharp precision of a man who’s never been wrong about an angle in his life.
And Theo—Theo’s laughing, shoving Lucas’s shoulder, completely unbothered by the accusation that his work is “three degrees off center.”
The past two months have been a blur of saltines, ginger tea, and Nate holding my hair back at 3 AM while Lucas monitored my temperature and Theo hovered in the doorway looking like he might cry.
But this morning I’m eating scrambled eggs, and the nausea that’s been my constant companion has finally, mercifully, eased.
Progress.
“You’re sure you’re feeling okay?” Lucas appears in the kitchen doorway, wiping his hands on a rag. His scent reaches me before he does—bergamot and cedar, clean and steady. It wraps around me like a familiar blanket, and I feel my shoulders relax.
“I’m fine.”
He crosses to the table and sits across from me, still in his old t-shirt and jeans from the construction work. There’s a smudge of dirt on his jaw that I don’t mention because he’d immediately go wash it off. “Your iron was low at your last appointment.”
“Lucas.”
“You should have spinach with that.” He nods toward my plate, already calculating nutritional values in his head. I can practically see him running the numbers.
“Lucas.”
“I’m just saying.” But he reaches across the table and squeezes my hand, his thumb brushing over my knuckles. Through the bond, I feel his concern—a low, steady hum beneath everything else. He worries. It’s what he does. I’ve learned to find it endearing instead of suffocating.
The back door opens and Theo shuffles in, still looking half-asleep despite having been outside for an hour already. His hair is sticking up in twelve different directions, there’s dirt on his knees, and he’s wearing a faded Holt Nursery t-shirt that’s seen better days.
His scent fills the kitchen—green and growing things, sunshine and fresh soil. It mingles with Lucas’s bergamot until the whole room smells like them. Like pack. Like home.
He drops a kiss on my head as he passes, one hand smoothing over my belly. “How’s my little sprout this morning?”
“Sprout’s letting me eat breakfast.” I take a pointed bite of eggs. “We’re very grateful.”
“Good sprout.” He pours himself a coffee, then turns and points the mug at my stomach with mock seriousness. “Keep being nice to your mama. She’s growing you a whole spine in there. Very complicated work.”
“That’s not how fetal development works,” Lucas says automatically.
“It’s exactly how it works. I read a book.” Theo drops into the chair beside me and steals a piece of toast from my plate. “The spine grows in week sixteen. I’m pretty sure.”
“You’re not even close.”
“I’m emotionally close.”
I’m laughing when Nate comes in from outside.
He doesn’t say anything—he never does, not with words—but his presence fills the room.
Sawdust clings to his flannel shirt and his dark hair, and there’s a sheen of sweat on his forearms from the morning’s work.
His scent hits me a moment later—pine and woodsmoke, something warm underneath. Safe. Steady.
He crosses to me, callused hand cupping the back of my head as he presses a kiss to my hair.
His nostrils flare slightly—my scent’s been different since the pregnancy, sweeter, and it makes all three of them a little crazy.
His thumb traces over the bond mark on my neck—his mark, with Lucas’s on the other side and Theo’s at the back—and a low purr rumbles in his chest. Just for a moment.
Just enough for me to feel it vibrate through me.
Then he heads to the sink to wash his hands, and I’m left with the ghost of his touch on my skin and his contentment humming through the bond.
Pack.
God, I love them.
They’re building a granny flat.
It was Grandma’s idea, sort of. She mentioned once—just once, over Sunday dinner—that the farmhouse was getting too far to visit every day. That her joints ached on the long drive. That she wasn’t getting any younger.
By the next morning, Nate had blueprints spread across the kitchen table.
“She shouldn’t be living alone anyway,” he’d said, not looking up from the plans. And that was that.
Grandma insists she’s just “staying over sometimes to help with the baby.” We all know she’s moving in. Nobody’s complaining—least of all me. The thought of having her close, of our baby knowing their great-grandmother the way I knew her, makes my throat tight in the best way.
I sit on the back porch in one of Nate’s flannels—the worn blue one that smells like him, that I’ve stolen so many times it might as well be mine now—and watch them work.
The framing’s up, Grandma’s future kitchen visible in the skeletal walls.
The afternoon sun is warm on my face, and I’ve got a cup of tea balanced on my belly because the baby makes a surprisingly good shelf.
“The window’s crooked,” Lucas calls out. He’s standing back, arms crossed, studying the frame with the intensity of a man diagnosing a complex illness.
“It’s not crooked.” Theo doesn’t look up from the board he’s measuring, pencil tucked behind his ear.
“It’s three degrees off center.”
“How can you possibly tell that from—”
“I have eyes, Theo. And spatial awareness. And a level, which you apparently aren’t using.”
“The level is fine. You’re the one who’s off-center.”
“That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Your face doesn’t make sense.”
Nate ignores them both. He’s crouched by the foundation, hammering something with methodical precision.
He’s been building things his whole life—this farmhouse, the nest room, the crib that’s already waiting in the nursery.
His hands know what they’re doing even when his packmates are bickering like children.
Mr. Darcy sits on the porch railing beside me, his orange tail flicking with disapproval. He’s been supervising the construction all week, which mostly means sitting in inconvenient places and yowling whenever the hammering gets too loud.
“Your cat’s judging us again,” Theo calls up to me, wiping sweat from his forehead.
“He’s Nate’s cat.”
“He was Nate’s cat. Now he sleeps on your feet every night. He follows you to the bathroom. He yelled at me this morning for opening the fridge too loudly.” Theo gestures at Mr. Darcy with his measuring tape. “That is your cat now.”
“He’s guarding the baby.” I scratch behind Mr. Darcy’s ears and he deigns to purr, though he still looks deeply unimpressed by the construction noise.
“He’s plotting world domination,” Theo counters. “Starting with this household.”
Nate looks up from his work. Catches my eye across the yard. The late afternoon light turns his gray eyes silver, and the corner of his mouth twitches—not quite a smile, but close. The bond between us hums with quiet contentment.
I blow him a kiss.
The tips of his ears flush, and he ducks his head, turning back to his work. But I catch the purr that starts up in his chest, low enough that only I can hear it from here.
Some things never change.
Grandma arrives for Sunday dinner at six on the dot, because Eileen Donovan has never been late to anything in her seventy-five years.
She’s carrying a strawberry rhubarb pie that smells like summer, and she’s wearing her “good” cardigan—the blue one she saves for special occasions.
But she doesn’t even make it past the back door before she’s inspecting the construction, pie thrust into my arms so she can examine the framing with a critical eye.
“They’ve got the walls up. Good.” She runs a hand along a support beam, nodding. “Sturdy. I want the kitchen window facing the garden, though. Did Nate get my notes?”
“All four pages.”
“Good. A woman needs proper light for her morning coffee.” She pats my belly as she passes back inside, her touch warm and familiar. “How’s my great-grandbaby today?”
“Active.” I set the pie on the counter. “I think they’re training for the Olympics. Gymnastics, specifically.”
“Strong baby.” Grandma beams, settling into her usual chair at the kitchen table like she owns the place. Which, honestly, she kind of does. “They’ll need the energy to keep up with me.”
She’s already planning. Already nesting in a building that doesn’t have walls yet. “I’ve started packing, you know. Just the essentials. Books. Kitchen things. That quilt your grandfather made.”
“Grandma, the flat won’t be ready for another month.”
“I like to be prepared.” She waves a hand dismissively.
“Besides, someone needs to be here when the baby comes. Those boys will be wonderful fathers—” She gestures toward the backyard, where Lucas and Theo are still arguing over the window placement and Nate is steadfastly ignoring them both.
“But sometimes a baby needs a grandmother’s touch. ”
“And you’re volunteering?”
“I raised your mother, didn’t I?” She sniffs. “She turned out fine. Mostly.”
I hide my smile. The truth is, we’re all relieved she’s moving in.
Lucas has been worried about her living alone since her last checkup—something about blood pressure and stubborn patients who don’t take their medication on time.
Theo’s already planned where her herb garden will go, sketched it out on the back of a napkin with the same care he gives his nursery designs.
And Nate—Nate’s been driving out to check on her every other day for years, shoveling her driveway in winter and fixing whatever needs fixing without being asked.
Now she’ll be right here. Close enough to share Sunday dinners and random Tuesday lunches. Close enough to hold our baby whenever she wants.
Family. All of us. Together.