Chapter 64
SIXTY-FOUR
Tony
TWO WEEKS AFTER KNOX finally mated Jez, my new pack sat at a giant table in a trendy Michelin-star restaurant in St. Louis, breaking bread with my old pack.
Not that I had any real claim on the Price pack. They’d taken me in and sheltered me five years ago, back when I’d been a desperate, emotionally damaged teenager. For them, it had probably been a normal Tuesday. For me, it was the first time I’d seen people treating other people like a real family.
Zalen Price, Byron Harper, Emiel Hamilton, Luca Doyle, Nat Bell, and Mia Dimitriadis had welcomed me back to the city of my birth with open arms. The owners of Nat and Mia’s former restaurant had closed the place down for the evening, turning St. Louis’s hottest eatery into a one-night-only private venue for us.
In addition to the main pack, Byron’s no-nonsense adoptive grandmother Bea had showed up, and nearly made me start bawling on the spot by telling me how proud she was of me.
It was Bea who’d hidden me away from my abusive stepfather—and the juvenile authorities—when staying at my house had become too horrible to bear.
The old alpha matriarch looked the same as she had back then—stoop-shouldered and indomitable, with frown lines and smile lines etched into her craggy face in equal measure.
She pointed a forkful of pasta at Jez, who was sitting across from her and looking generally overwhelmed by the sheer number of people talking and laughing.
“You’re carrying pups,” Bea said, completely unfiltered as always. “I can smell it on you. Have you taken a pregnancy test yet?”
“Bea!” Byron yelped, his gray eyes going wide.
The table went abruptly quiet. Jez lifted a hand to her belly—a subconscious gesture she’d been making more and more often over the past few days.
“Not yet,” she said softly. “It’s too soon for a test to work. Do you really think I am, though?”
Bea gave a decisive nod. “Oh, yes. It’ll be twins, I expect.”
Jez’s cheeks pinked, but her expression was pleased as her eyes darted first to Gage, then Heath, and finally Knox.
As though the mention of kids had summoned them, three of Mia and Luca’s brood came flying into the dining room from the back, where the owner Shaniqua and some of her staff had been keeping them entertained.
“I may have to pick your brains when it comes to childcare,” I said wryly, grabbing the little girl who launched herself into my lap and steadying her in place.
“Hide and seek,” Emiel said, nodding wisely. “Lots of it. Except instead of hiding in the house, you slip outside and take a walk for twenty minutes while they run around looking for you.”
All three children glared at him in outrage.
“I knew it!” crowed one of the older boys.
“Snitch,” Luca said. “Now we’re going to have to find an entirely new way to cheat.”
Three childish voices rose in outrage, as I tried not to give in to laughter.
“Have you decided on a place to move yet?” Zalen asked, addressing Knox—pack leader to pack leader.
Knox made an affirmative noise and set down his cutlery. “We’re leaning toward an area outside of Lisbon. I have an acquaintance who keeps a villa there in addition to his pack’s main home in New York, and he speaks highly of the place.”
“Lisbon,” Byron echoed. “That’s Portugal, right?”
“It is,” Knox confirmed.
Byron met my gaze. “That’s quite a move.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. New language; new customs. But I think we can all use a change after everything that’s happened. Besides, we’ll visit the States at least a couple times a year, if not more. And video calls still work from Europe—I checked.”
Mia chimed in. “If it’s anything like Spain, I bet it’s gorgeous. I did a two-week exchange program to Madrid when I was in high school, and I loved it there.”
“It’s a slower pace of life than what I’m used to,” Knox admitted. “That’s for sure.”
“You say it like that’s a bad thing,” Gage muttered around a mouthful of lobster.
Heath snorted and tipped his head in Knox’s direction. “We’re taking bets on how long he holds out before he’s starting a new business empire on the Iberian Peninsula.”
“Ha, ha,” Knox said. “Very funny.”
After the meal, Nat joined me outside for some air while the others were busy exchanging contact information in the dining room.
“How are you doing, Tony?” he asked. “How are you really doing, I mean?”
I paused and blew out a slow breath, letting the question settle over me for a moment.
“I’m... good. Really good. It’s been a lot, though.”
Nat settled back against the brick wall of the restaurant, crossing his arms as he regarded me. “You’re okay with the others having a mating bond, when you’re not a part of it?”
And that was... direct. Apparently, he’d been spending too much time around Bea lately.
“Yeah,” I told him truthfully. “I am. Though I won’t deny that it can be a bit freaky sometimes.”
“Oh, yeah. The silent conversations, am I right?” Nat agreed, nodding his head in understanding. “Anyway, the reason I ask is to make sure you know about the hormone thing. For heats.”
I blinked at him. “The... what?”
“The hormone thing,” he repeated unhelpfully.
“You have to get them through, erm... creative means. But betas can get in on the edges of a mating bond by taking omega hormones in the run-up to a heat, and then being bitten in by the alphas. I’ve done it a couple of times, and it can be.
.. well... pretty intense, actually. But it fades after a few days, since betas don’t have a mating gland to regulate the connection. ”
I blinked at him some more.
“Oh,” I said eventually.
“I figured you should at least know about it,” Nat said with a shrug. “I don’t get the impression that it’s widely discussed.”
“I’d have to think about it,” I said, after another long pause. “I’m not sure I’ve got room inside my skull for any additional layers of crazy, beyond what’s already baked in.”
Nat snorted, ducking his face to hide his smile. “Fair. If you ever want more info, I can link you to some forums and other resources. Nothing scientifically published, unfortunately—but for what it’s worth, it doesn’t seem to have done me any harm so far.”
“Good to know,” I replied, filing that away as something to think about later. Possibly much later.
I loved my new pack with every fiber of my being—but they were also a bunch of psychologically twisted-up bastards. For now, I was more comfortable having them inside me in a physical way, as opposed to a psychic way.
Still, it was nice to have options. Maybe someday, I’d feel differently about the idea.
It was getting late by the time all the goodbyes had been said, and the high-end leftovers boxed up for storage in our hotel suite’s refrigerator.
The stretch limo Knox had hired for the night was beyond ostentatious, but I was tired enough and stuffed enough that it didn’t even bother me anymore. Once we’d all piled inside and left Soulard, bound for the Ritz-Carlton in Clayton, Knox leaned forward and took Jez’s hands in his.
“I’ve arranged a surprise for you, back at the hotel,” he said, looking into her eyes.
A furrow appeared between her eyebrows. “A surprise? Is that why you were texting back and forth like crazy while we were waiting for the car to pull around?”
“It was,” he admitted. “Do you trust me?”
I watched with interest as all four of my packmates did the silent telepathy thing for several seconds.
“You know I do,” Jez said softly.
Knox nodded. “Thank you. In that case, your surprise will be waiting for us in the hotel suite.”
Despite my best efforts, I ended up fidgeting almost as much as Jez for the remainder of the trip.
Meanwhile, the alphas looked positively smug.
Once we arrived, we carried our plastic bags full of Styrofoam food containers to the elevator bank, and took a car up to the insanely expensive set of rooms, which I’d been informed wasn’t technically a penthouse suite.
Knox led the way down the hall to the end, swiping his keycard and opening the door.
Gage took Jez’s leftover food and ushered her forward, while Knox stood to one side to let her pass.
Consumed with curiosity, I hovered behind Jez’s shoulder with Heath standing next to me, both of us peering past her into the room.
Inside, a careworn middle-aged woman with dark blond hair going gray leapt up from the comfortable sofa in the sitting area as though she’d been propelled from a Jack-in-the-box.
Jez gasped and froze in place. I was sure that if Gage hadn’t taken the plastic bag of food from her hands earlier, she would have dropped it on the floor in shock.
“Jezzie?” the woman asked in a wavering voice. “Baby? Is it really you?”
Jez’s breath hitched—almost a sob.
“Mom?” she said, her voice shedding a decade or more in the space of a single breath.