Chapter Fifteen
Ben
Being home was the best. I hadn’t realized how much it would affect me to be away until I got back.
We were currently all on the couch. My head was on Luca’s lap and my feet were on Brodie’s. He had his hand on my bare ankle and it settled my soul something fierce.
Max sat on the floor, holding my hand while he leaned against Brodie’s legs.
Rian lounged on Luca’s other side. All our important connections were being—“We’re being recharged,” I said out loud, mid-thought, interrupting any conversations that were going on around me.
I moved my foot to gesture at Brodie’s hand. Everyone looked at all of us and the laughter that rolled through us all was everything. Even Cindy on top of her tree chirped happily as if she understood what was going on. That set off another bout of laughter.
This was the life, wasn’t it?
“Oh, hey, so should we have a pack meeting while we’re all here?” Kye asked suddenly.
“Might as well,” Brodie agreed with his mate and kissed him. Then he addressed everyone. “So we’ve all talked about what’s going to start happening when the snow melts.”
The final renovations, right.
We talked about the sunroom and Rian told everyone how Holden was thinking about maybe putting in a catio for Cindy—for some reason Holden still thought he couldn’t ask for these things.
The man was way too humble and didn’t understand how big of a part of this pack he really was, or how much we loved him.
Since Lina was there, curled up on one end of the couch with Carys, Brodie asked her if she wanted to take on the catio build.
“Maybe your dad would like to use it as one of your apprenticeship projects?” Rian asked.
She was technically her dad’s apprentice, but had been working on the pack house with Brodie for months and months in between other jobs.
It apparently wasn’t easy for her to always see eye to eye with her dad when it came to work, because he saw her as his little girl still, or some such.
Either way, she was a talented builder already and Brodie, who had a lot of experience in the field, was happy to be her mentor.
“Could be interesting,” she murmured, then looked at Holden. “If you don’t mind me doing it?”
“Oh, not at all. We could figure out the spot and the measurements once the snow’s gone. Make an actual plan and everything,” he said easily, smiling at her.
“It’s not a difficult thing to build, it just needs to be very precise to look good, so I think it would be a nice thing to add to your portfolio,” Brodie added, raising a brow at her.
Smiling, she nodded. “Good point. We’ve been doing a lot of other types of stuff here. When we start to tear apart the sunroom so we can start replacing what’s rotted, it’s not gonna be anything that needs finesse the same way building a catio will.”
They went on, planning the catio’s location a bit, talked about the extension to the tiny porch in the back corner, and I closed my eyes just to listen to my family talk around me.
“Ben?” Brodie asked some time later. I might’ve dozed off.
“Huh?” I squinted at him. Everyone was still where I’d left them when I closed my eyes so it couldn’t be much later.
“I was asking Max, Luca, and you if we want to make changes in the rooms.”
“Oh.” That seemed important, so I maneuvered myself upright, careful not to kick Max on the floor. I glanced at Luca and Max. “What do we think?”
They both shrugged. We now occupied two rooms, which made no sense when Luca had very little stuff and we all ended up in the same bed most nights.
Unless Luca fell asleep on the couch down here while watching something on the TV with Rian or Carys.
Even then, he joined us eventually during the night.
I knew Max and Luca didn’t have opinions because Luca felt he was too new to the pack and Max was… well, Max.
“Okay, so I’m not trying to fish for information or whatever,”—I waved a hand and looked at Carys and Lina—“but since Lina stays here a lot of the time, I think it’s safe to say you two wouldn’t mind having a bigger room?” I smiled at them.
Lina ducked her head, but Carys nodded. “Yes, I think so. We….” She took Lina’s hand and squeezed. “Lina is thinking about joining us officially, if… if the alpha pair is okay with that. But obviously more than that, if her parents are.”
Brodie and Kye looked so fucking proud that I almost chuckled, but this was serious and I didn’t want to embarrass the girls, so I didn’t.
“Okay. So… I guess one question is whether we want to redo the rooms so soon?” I asked everyone.
Kye looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Well we just renovated the whole house, right? Everything was decorated to the occupants’ preferences and so on,” I explained.
“Oh. True.” Kye, a human who had never had a lot of money, nodded understandingly.
“We can redo whatever we need,” Rian said firmly. No, the vampire millionaire didn’t have the same thought patterns we did.
Luca cleared his throat. “So… I know that there’s only so much space here and it’s a bit awkward with how the space is divided. But what if Max, Ben, and I moved to my side of the hallway and the rest of you could reorganize however you see fit?”
There was a bathroom in between Carys and Rian’s rooms, so it would be trickier to expand that space, but even with the bathroom in the middle, half a room added to Carys’ would be nicer.
The builders of the family started to talk about it all, and I leaned against Luca’s shoulder.
I was drowsy. We’d had dinner first and then we’d been hanging out ever since we got home a few hours ago. My energy was waning fast. As soon as I thought that, Max yawned really hard.
Kye, as tuned in to everyone as ever, cleared his throat. “Let’s let our travelers go upstairs, okay? Everyone else can continue planning, but we don’t need Ben, Max, and Luca here when they’ve just come home.”
We three got up and after some good night wishes and hugs from everyone—Brodie squeezed the back of my neck with his big hand and I noticed him doing it to Max and Luca, too—we stumbled up the stairs.
We’d showered when we got back, eager to get the wrongness of the smell of travel off ourselves, so all we needed to do now was to climb into bed and fall asleep.
Except Luca, who had to be hungry. The thought came to me as we all settled in, Max in the middle of us.
The hunger seemed to come to Luca in that moment, because when I reached over Max to hand my wrist to him, he snorted.
Then pulled me even closer so that I was practically half on top of my brother, and bit in.
I groaned, that familiar lazy arousal rolling through me. I let it go, ignoring the way I got half-hard, and rolled onto my back as soon as Luca released my arm.
“Thank you,” he said, and I could smell my own blood in the air for a moment.
“Of course,” I mumbled and promptly fell asleep.
Iwoke up to use the bathroom a few hours later. When I came back, Max and Luca were mostly on one side of the bed, wrapped around each other in a way that made me smile. I got back in and pulled the covers over us all, and pressed my back against Max’s, then went back to sleep.
The next time I woke up, it was barely light outside, but we’d also fallen asleep early.
I stretched carefully, then slipped out of bed and got dressed. I brushed my teeth and tried to be as quiet as possible, then glanced at the bed before going downstairs. They were perfect. Seeing them like this, knowing that I’d get to see them like this, made me a little emotional.
For once, I was the first one there. I started a pot of coffee and then went to sit in Luca’s favorite spot on the window seat.
The front yard was just about visible to my wolf eyesight because the tall trees let very little of the early morning light in.
Soon, the snow would melt and spring would arrive.
I hoped it’d all be gone in the next month and a half.
I prepared for a lazy day at home, and tomorrow, I’d go back to work. I loved the groove my life had settled into. I looked around the kitchen that had new appliances and cheery wallpaper and pretty tiles for the backsplash, I felt a sense of sadness wash over me.
It was nicer now than it had ever been in my childhood, but once, it had been okay. Everything had always been worn, though clean. Our mom and Brodie and Bella’s mom had taken good care of the place.
But then different tragedies and the drugs had changed the pack. Even though Bella, Brodie, and eventually our mom had gotten out at various stages of the process of undoing the Douglas pack, we’d still lost way too many people.
Brodie and Bella’s parents were gone. Bella never wanted to come back to this town and I understood that. She’d cared about Brodie, Max and I from afar, which I appreciated.
Our mom… I didn’t want to see her again. She might’ve been alive and sober now, but she’d been useless to us for most of our lives. Our dad… I wished he would’ve been gone for longer than he’d been.
But if he’d died earlier, then Brodie wouldn’t have come back. Carys wouldn’t have suffered in my dad’s hands, but Brodie would’ve never met Kye.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that as shitty of a catalyst as Rusty Douglas had been, he’d inadvertently kicked everything into motion. Without his evil, we wouldn’t have the home and the pack we now did.
That didn’t absolve the bastard of anything, of course, and I didn’t know what to think about it all.
“What’s wrong?” Brodie murmured from the kitchen doorway.
He looked sleep rumpled in his sweats and T-shirt, his hair sticking up here and there. Even asking the question, he still looked so… secure, that it brought tears to my eyes.
“Hey, hey….” He strode over and hugged me without asking any more questions. He could tell I was overwhelmed.
I held onto him as I tried to get myself under control. Then Brodie murmured, “Just let it go,” so I did.
I wept, letting go of the sorrow that had been clinging to me even in the face of all of the happiness I had experienced in the last year. Maybe therapy would’ve been a good idea. I knew it helped Luca. Max had been contemplating it, too.
At some point, the kitchen had filled with the scent of coffee, and then another set of hands touched me. I didn’t open my eyes, but I could tell it was Holden.
Maybe it was the whole “crying because of my Dad” thing or just the utterly masculine support I was getting or, more likely, a combination of both, but when I surfaced, I felt like a new man.
I felt settled. Like something inside me that was outside of my relationship with Max and Luca had slotted in. When I looked at Brodie, his eyes flashed red, which told me that mine were shining yellow. Holden flashed his yellow ones to me, too, smiling like a supportive big brother, maybe.
“Better?” Brodie asked, also smiling.
I looked at the front of his shirt and grimaced. He looked down, whipped the shirt off and handed it to me. “Might as well mop your face a little.”
I chuckled wetly and did as told, then blew my nose and scrunched the shirt up to take to the laundry as soon as I got up.
“Brodie, uh, there’s something I want to ask. I haven’t talked about it with Max but I know he agrees.” There weren’t many things in life my brother and I didn’t agree upon, after all.
“What is it?” Brodie’s eyes were caring and his expression open.
Holden stepped back and went to start breakfast.
“How would you feel if Max and I changed our last names to McRae?”
Brodie gasped, his eyes widening. Then tears fell down his cheeks, and we laughed together, hugging again.
Holden chuckled in the middle of cracking eggs. That was the scene Kye and the girls walked into.
“What the hell is going on here?” Kye asked, trying to make sense of the situation.
It set us off more, and Holden started to laugh with Brodie and me.
“Why can’t you weirdos be weird after I’ve had coffee?” Kye whined, walking over to us and hugged Brodie from behind, pressing his cheek against his mate’s bare back.
“Because Ben and Max want to be McRaes,” Brodie said, sniffling a little.
Kye gasped and looked around him. “You do?”
“Yeah.”
He squeaked and rounded Brodie, then pulled me into a hug.
Laughing, I patted his back.
“Okay, okay. Let’s make breakfast,” Carys said, even though her eyes were shining a bit more than usual, too.
We changed our names before the next full moon. That run turned out to be rowdy as hell, and we came back in dirty and happy and boisterous. Luca had opted to stay inside, something about the slush versus snow ratio being off now, which Rian heartily agreed to.
We had a feast after we changed back, then slept the night in a big puppy pile in the living room.
Life in that comfortable, happy groove continued.
Holden and I went to work in town. Brodie and Lina started on more renovations. Kye and Carys helped them and kept the rest of the house organized and clean and the pack fed. Rian acted as an all around helper and spent money wherever it was needed.
Luca and Max started the guitar lessons, but Max also researched his butt off trying to figure out what he might want to study now that he had his GED.
Luca and Brodie worked out most days, which gave Luca a confidence boost when his lithe body started to ever so slowly gather more muscle.
The best thing was that everyone was healthy and happy, and the house was filled with joy and love. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.