Chapter 5 Lina #2
Mary’s face flashed through my mind but I pushed it away. Mary was under guard. She couldn’t exactly be sending threatening texts from her house arrest.
Could she?
I shook off the thought as we pulled up to the pack house. My tired brain was making me paranoid. I needed food and sleep and to stop thinking about mysterious messages for five minutes.
Then I noticed the unfamiliar car parked out front.
Huh.
I didn’t recognize the vehicle. It was nice, expensive-looking, with out-of-state plates that I couldn’t quite make out in the fading light. We weren’t expecting visitors as far as I knew.
“Whose car is that?” Hunt asked, voicing my own confusion.
“No idea.”
We climbed out and the twins immediately attached themselves to Hunt, one hanging off each of his arms as he walked. He didn’t seem to mind, flexing dramatically and lifting them off the ground with each step while they shrieked with laughter.
I pushed open the front door and called out, “I’m home!”
The words died in my throat as unfamiliar scents hit me. Wolves. Wolves I didn’t know. In my house. With my family.
Every protective instinct I’d developed over the past year snapped to attention. I grabbed the baseball bat we kept by the door, the one Knox had wanted to replace with a bigger gun even though he always said he’d be there to protect me, and stepped inside with my weapon raised.
My muscles were tense and my heart was racing as I rounded the corner into the living room, ready to face whatever threat had invaded my home.
Knox’s parents sat on one of the sofas, looking perfectly relaxed. Across from them sat a man and woman I’d never seen before, both of them well dressed and clearly wealthy based on the jewelry glittering on the woman’s wrists.
Right.
The Cranes.
I lowered the baseball bat, feeling slightly ridiculous. Knox’s mother had mentioned they were coming. I’d just forgotten in the chaos of the day.
The twins went running past me toward their grandparents, throwing themselves at Serena and Marcus with the enthusiasm only small children could muster. Serena’s face softened as she caught Thea, pressing kisses to her granddaughter’s cheeks.
“Lina, dear,” Serena said, looking up at me with a smile. “Come meet the Cranes. William and Margaret, this is our son’s mate. Lina.”
I set the baseball bat aside and walked forward to shake hands, doing my best to look welcoming rather than suspicious. William Crane had a firm handshake and a politician’s smile. Margaret looked me up and down with the practiced assessment of a woman who’d spent her life judging other women.
“Lovely to meet you,” Margaret said, though her tone suggested she hadn’t actually decided if it was lovely or not.
“You too. Sorry about the bat. We’ve had some... incidents.”
“Understandable,” William said smoothly. “A Luna must always be vigilant.”
I noticed the slight emphasis on Luna, the way his eyes flicked to my pregnant belly. Judging. Assessing. Wondering, probably, how a human had ended up mated to one of the most powerful alphas in the region.
“Knox, Noah, and Isabella are in the kitchen,” Serena told me. “Isabella was just dying to catch up with the boys.”
That was odd. Knox always came to greet me when I got home.
Always. Even if he was in the middle of something, even if he was busy with pack business, he’d drop everything to meet me at the door and kiss me hello.
The fact that he was in the kitchen with some woman instead of here with me sent alarm bells ringing in my head.
I shared a look with Hunt. He raised his eyebrows slightly, clearly thinking the same thing.
“I’ll just go say hi then,” I said, keeping my voice light.
Hunt fell into step behind me as I walked toward the kitchen. The twins had already abandoned their grandparents in favor of showing the Cranes their drawings, which gave me cover to slip away without seeming rude.
The kitchen door was closed.
Since when did we close the kitchen door?
I tried to push it open but it wouldn’t budge. There was weight against it, something or someone blocking it from opening properly. I pushed harder but it still wouldn’t move.
Hormones are a hell of a thing. They can make you cry at commercials, crave pickles dipped in peanut butter, and apparently, they can give you the strength of ten men when you’re irritated enough.
I took a step back and kicked the door open.
The bang echoed through the house. Four pairs of eyes from the living room snapped to me in alarm. Knox’s parents and the Cranes all stared with startled expressions.
I smiled and shrugged. “It was stuck.”
Then I pushed through the now-open doorway and saw a woman stumbling backward, catching herself on the counter. Dark brown hair, blue eyes, designer clothes, and a scowl that made her pretty face turn ugly.
“I was standing against it!” she snapped at me.
This must be Isabella. The childhood friend Knox didn’t remember. The woman his mother had described with such fondness, mentioning how she’d had a crush on Knox when they were young.
I immediately disliked her.
When the hell was going to be the day I’d meet a normal she-wolf who wasn’t a complete bitch? Was it too much to ask for one female wolf who didn’t instantly treat me with hostility and barely concealed contempt?
“Then don’t put yourself in the way or you’ll end up hurt,” I grunted, not bothering to hide my irritation. “Isabella, right?”
She straightened up, lifting one perfectly shaped eyebrow at me.
Why did she have to be so beautiful? Tall and slim and polished, with the kind of effortless elegance that made me feel dumpy and huge in comparison.
Seven months pregnant and swollen everywhere, standing next to a woman who looked like she’d never eaten a carb in her life.
“I am,” she said, standing taller and looking down at me with barely concealed disdain. “And you are...?”
I snorted. She knew exactly who I was. Every wolf in a hundred-mile radius knew who the Luna of Ravenshollow was. She was playing games, trying to make me feel small and unimportant, and I wasn’t going to dignify it with an answer.
I didn’t have to, anyway, because Knox was already crossing the kitchen in three long strides. He was in front of me in an instant, his hands gripping my waist as he lifted me up and kissed me with an intensity that made my toes curl.
“Hi, baby,” he grunted between kisses, his mouth moving over mine with desperate hunger. “I missed you so much.”
Hunt and Noah both started whistling, making exaggerated catcalls and whooping sounds that echoed through the kitchen.
“Get a room!” Hunt called out.
“Some of us are trying to maintain our appetites!” Noah added.
I laughed against Knox’s mouth, pulling back slightly to catch my breath. His gray eyes were dark with want and his hands were still gripping my waist, holding me against him possessively.
“I missed you too,” I whispered, reaching up to touch his face.
He finally set me down, though he kept one arm wrapped around me as I turned to hug Noah.
“Hi,” I said, squeezing my brother-in-law.
“Hi, favorite sister-in-law,” Noah replied, hugging me back warmly.
“I’m the only one.”
“Doesn’t mean you can’t be my favorite. You brought sanity into this family. Before you came along, Knox’s idea of fun was growling at people.”
“That’s not true,” Knox protested.
“You once made a trainee cry because he filed a border report in the wrong folder. The kid was seventeen.”
“He needed to learn attention to detail.”
“He transferred to another pack, Knox. He literally moved across the country to get away from you.”
Hunt snickered from his spot by the door. “Remember that time he smiled at the council meeting and three people thought he was having a medical emergency?”
“Someone actually called the pack doctor,” Noah confirmed. “They thought he was having a stroke.”
“I smile plenty,” Knox said defensively.
“You didn’t. Not before Lina.” Noah grinned at me. “Now he walks around grinning at nothing and humming in the hallways. It’s honestly disturbing. Maybe I prefer the growling.”
“The humming is new,” Hunt agreed. “And unsettling. He doesn’t even know he’s doing it.”
“I don’t hum.”
“You were humming this morning,” Noah said. “In the changing after training. I could hear it through two walls.”
“It was a good training session.”
“It was terrifying. I thought someone had broken in and was torturing a cat.”
I found myself laughing despite everything, despite Isabella’s glaring presence and the tension that had been building all day. This was my family. These ridiculous men who made me feel welcome and loved even when everything else felt like it was falling apart.
Knox’s arms wrapped around me from behind, pulling me back against his chest. He buried his face in my neck and inhaled deeply, making that rumbling purr sound that had become so familiar.
“You smell amazing,” he murmured against my skin, ignoring Hunt and Noah.
I rolled my eyes. He was never going to stop mentioning it, for fuck’s sake.
Hunt made a gagging sound. “Can you two please be normal for five minutes? Some of us are single and suffering.”
“Find a mate,” Knox suggested without lifting his head from my neck.
“Working on it. The ladies of Ravenshollow are proving difficult to impress.”
“Maybe try showering more than once a week,” Noah offered.
“I shower plenty. I’m just selective about which day.”
Isabella was fuming. I could see it in the rigid set of her shoulders, the way her jaw had tightened, the barely contained fury behind her pretty blue eyes. Good. Let her be furious. Let her see exactly where she stood in this pack and in this family.