Chapter Eight
Eamon
Hemlock Mountain
After our army-sized breakfast, Rhomas tucked me into bed.
Literally tucked me into bed, securing the blankets around me and turning on a heating feature that was somehow buried deep inside the mattress.
He hovered over the bed, wondering if he was meant to sleep with me or to take another bed.
The house was large enough that I’d be surprised if he had less than a dozen bedrooms. Still, I wanted him to stay with me.
As soon as the thought crossed my mind it must’ve hit my scent because it was only then that he kicked off his shoes and crawled into bed with me.
Jolly followed behind him, lying all pressed up against his back.
There were so many things I wanted to talk to Rhomas about and then there was the half-opened condition of the mating link.
I wanted him as much as Glenn implied I should, but I was so tired and now with his body heat and the heater inside the mattress making me all toasty, I couldn’t fight off exhaustion anymore.
I didn’t want to sleep the first day of the new year away, but the night before had made that choice for me.
While I slept, I dreamt that I was chasing the guy who hurt my friend down.
Books ran along side me, flapping their covers and breathing fire.
Jolly was taller than our apartment building and gobbled him up only for him to run out of the tip of the wolf’s tail.
The chase started all over again and the hamburgers complete with their veggies and their buns joined in on the hunt.
This time one of the hamburgers ate him and he jumped out the other side of the sandwich, the color of a pickle smeared with mustard.
The chase scene may have played on forever if the aroma of grilled cheese and tomato soup didn’t reach my brain.
“Huh? Glenn?” I called out more out of habit than anything.
A second later, before I even had the chance to open my eyes, a tongue reached out and licked my eyelids.
“Good morning or whatever to you too, Jolly,” I managed to laugh as the wet tongue found my face again.
“When I told him we couldn’t eat lunch until you woke up, I never imagined that he’d wake you up,” Rhomas laughed from the doorway. “I hope you slept well.”
“I had the strangest dreams,” I said.
“It smells like it. I made grilled cheese and tomato soup. There’s also steaks because someone needs more meat than carbs in their diet even if he doesn’t believe me,” Rhomas said.
“A wolf after my own heart,” I said, wrapping an arm around Jolly.
He whined against my chest, tail wagging ninety miles an hour, trying to hurry me out of the bed for lunch. He wiggled out of my arm and rolled around the bed on his back.
“I gotta pee first, boy,” I said. “Wait, is it okay to call him boy? I know he’s not a dog but…”
“Unless it’s a bad name, call him whatever you like. He won’t bite you unless you call him late for dinner,” Rhomas laughed.
“Good to know,” I said.
“Come on, Jolly. Give him a few minutes to come to life. He’ll meet us in the kitchen when he’s ready.”
When I came out of the bathroom, I found a black fluffy robe and matching new slippers waiting on the bed for me.
I slipped them on and padded through the house, paying extra attention to the family photos lining the corridor.
Rhomas’s family was bigger than I ever imagined.
Though, when you live as long as shifters do, people who enjoy having kids keep at it.
I stopped at a photo of Lee holding a baby while Bane stood behind him with his arms around both of them. That baby had to be Rhomas because the baby was clearly a newborn and the photo wasn’t taken in the hospital.
“Ah, you found me,” Rhomas announced and I jumped out of my skin.
The man crept around even when he didn’t mean to.
“That was the day they found me. My birthday is also Dad’s Wolf Day.
The day he got his wolf back. It’s this whole big thing.
See…. My dad was taken by a bad guy once too.
A really bad guy and he was kept for a long time.
It’s why Thomas had to die straight away.
He’d already hurt Glenn really bad and a few others.
He burnt off the top part of the building.
Your stuff is okay and trained rescue workers are slowly moving out everyone’s belongings.
I told them they could bring your and Glenn’s stuff here.
I hope that’s okay. I didn’t know if you had another place.
I know most people don’t have multiple houses.
My parents don’t even anymore. Not really.
They’re all lived in now by me or my siblings.
Three of my siblings live at the Mage Street place because they’re professors there now. ”
“Thank you,” I said, still staring at the photo of Rhomas and his adoptive parents.
“This is mom,” he said, tapping a photo a bit further down the hall.
“When she passed away the funeral home got so weird. They asked if I wanted her pelt and I thought my sire was going to beat him black and blue. I still don’t think the funeral director realized that he asked me if I wanted him to skin my mother postmortem.
Then he argued that most pets were cremated and we had to find someone else to do it.
Eventually, I called Uncle Darian and asked if she could just be buried in her forest where she lived.
That’s where she is now. Not far from where they found me.
She has a little shrine and everything. The wild wolves visit her sometimes too. ”
I balled my fist up ready to punch a funeral director too. How could they be so blind?
“Hey, don’t get upset. That was a long time ago and in the end she got laid to rest properly,” he said. “Though, my dads get mad every time someone brings it up. Ralphie and Frieda are buried out there too. They descend from one of my litter mates. Jolly does too. Frieda was his mom.”
“Has Jolly had puppies?” I asked and Jolly appeared back in the corridor as if I summoned him.
“He’s snuck off a few times with a shewolf.
At first, Darian worried about dog DNA running in wild wolves, but you can’t really tell.
Plus, before you ask, no I never planned for any of them to be a service wolf.
Ralphie chose me and then Frieda did and then Jolly.
I don’t think they think of it as a job as much as they consider it just being pack.
Service wolf is just the name the pack officially uses because it’s in words shifters understand. ”
After lunch, I had a quick video chat with Glenn who was still very sleepy and then the pack called to tell me our stuff would be there in the morning, but might still need a bit of airing out.
We had just started making our way back to the bedroom when the phone rang again and it was Glenn’s parents.
I told them that he was okay and the attacker had been put out of everyone’s misery.
His carrier cried in relief and his alpha ranted on about calling pack security to complain.
I told him to go straight ahead and do that because they were more prepared for his complaints than I’d ever be.
Whatever their issues were, they’d have to work it out with him when and if he felt up to it.
With my mind on anything except mating, Rhomas gave me a tour of the house which included fourteen bedrooms counting ours, plus two offices, a library, and a billiards room.
There was also a playroom and a family room that wasn’t the living room.
I was sure I’d get lost in the house but at the same time it was easy to imagine our children one day roaming these halls.
Maybe we’d put up a big Yuletide tree in the living room but since everyone probably went to Lee and Bane’s for Yuletide, maybe we’d be the ones to host New Year’s Eve parties and then we could all go up the mountain to watch the ball drop.
All the thinking I did about our future pups reminded me that our claiming vows were still only half-completed.
“Does it hurt you?” I asked Rhomas as we walked hand in hand down one of the longer corridors that would lead to our bedroom if we took two left turns.
“Not physically. It’s a little swollen but it doesn’t hurt.
It’s just something noticeable. It feels like there is a scratching inside my brain.
It’s as if someone is in there scratching out secret messages on the walls and shuffling through my thoughts but I cannot decipher the messages.
It’s as if I’m reading a language I know but all the letters have been scrambled. ”
“That sounds painful,” I said.
“We did what we needed to do. You were undergoing something very frightening and for all the things I’ve learned to do, being in two places at once isn’t one of them yet.”
“Yet, huh?” I teased and bumped him with my hip.
“Perhaps one day I will. You never know what us wild borns are capable of,” he laughed.
“That sounds as if it would either be thrilling or terrifying.”
“For you it would be thrilling,” he smirked, turning toward me.
I turned to face him too and found myself with my back against the wall.
He looked down at me, resting one hand above my head and cupping my chin with his other hand.
He kissed me softly as I leaned against the wall, letting it take my weight.
Rhomas’s warmth radiated through me like a warm blanket as my lips parted beneath his, inviting his tongue inside.
It twirled around my own and I let myself get lost in him.
His scent surrounded me, forcing my thoughts onto him with every inhale.
It was hard to believe we’d known each other less than twenty-four hours. Logically I knew I’d lived without him. That’s how Glenn and I ended up on the burning roof but breathing in his scent while his tongue lapped at mine made that feel almost impossible.