21. Kira
21
KIRA
ONE WEEK LATER
T he house I spent so many miserable years in is a very different place now that Bryce is dead.
I wasn’t sure I would be ready to come back to Missouri so soon, but after Bryce was found, ostensibly mauled by a wolf, and an investigation ruled out any wrongdoing, I wanted this life to be over so I could start my new one with Dom in Wylder.
The first thing I see when I step into the den are Dom’s postcards torn into tiny pieces.
They weren’t the ordinary postcards I thought they were before. They were signs that Dom, no matter where he was in the world, was thinking about me.
They were memories.
And now they’re gone forever.
Dom, seeing the devastation on my face at Bryce’s petty act, wraps his arm around me and draws me against his chest, kissing my hair. “I’ll get you a hundred more, Kira.”
I swipe the tears from my cheeks. “No, it’s okay. I have you. I don’t need a postcard.”
“Maybe I could take a picture of me, print a postcard and send it to you in the mail. I won’t tell you when I do it, or if I’ll even be wearing anything. But…”
A smile stretches my lips as I lift my face to him. “Dom, you cannot send naked pictures of yourself through the mail service.”
He returns my smile. “Are you sure? It might brighten Ivar’s morning delivery.”
The front door swings open as I’m laughing, and Galen sticks his head in. “Ah, are you ready to start packing? Everyone is a few minutes behind us with the U-Haul trucks.”
Dom and I did not come to Missouri alone.
I didn’t just fall in love with Dom. I also inherited—or found—new friends. Family even, in the form of Pack Hunt. Because it isn’t just Dom who can turn into a wolf, they all can, too.
My new life is going to be very different from the one I’m leaving in Missouri, and I can’t wait for it.
I look at the house I shared with Bryce. It was his home, his décor, his style, so it never felt like my home. “It won’t take long. There’s only a few clothes and stuff from my parents I want to keep. The rest, I’ll donate and the money can go to a woman’s shelter.” So can the money from the sale of the house. I don’t want it.
“We can get started on the other house if you’re not taking much from here,” Galen suggests. “We can do it in a couple of hours.”
Pack up an entire house in two hours? That sounds like wishful thinking to me. But then again, they can turn into wolves and heal bullet wounds in under an hour, so maybe it’s not wishful thinking at all.
I fish my car keys from my pocket and pull the keys from my childhood home from the keyring. “Here. I’d like to take everything but the furniture. Whoever buys the house can get it as part of the sale. Oh, and Aaron’s Ford Mustang. I want to take that.” I look at Dom. “Are you sure it’s okay?—”
“It’s fine. We have a couple more outbuildings. We can store stuff until you decide what you want to do with it. But I have some ideas.”
“You do?” I eye him curiously.
He kisses me. “I do.”
We’d talked about what I wanted to bring from Missouri on the long drive from Wylder. Dom said it was okay for me to bring all my parents' furniture, but like the house, I think it’s time I let it go.
Aaron lived there between deployments, but it stopped feeling like home to me when my parents died. When I lost Aaron as well, the house just became a reminder of everything I lost, that I wasn’t ready—or willing—to let go of.
It’s time to let go of the past and step into the future.
Dom, being the amazing man he is, encouraged me to call the pawnshop in Chicago where I’d pawned my dad’s watch, even though I told him they’d likely already sold the watch.
They hadn’t sold it.
So, on our way to Palmerston, we made a brief detour in Chicago, where Dom refused to let me buy back my dad’s watch. He bought it for me. It’s in the glove compartment of his car, and I don’t think I could love Dom any more than I already do. Knowing Dom, he will do something, or say something that will make me love him even more.
Packing my life in Missouri goes fast.
Twenty minutes later, I’ve filled a box with the precious few items that I want to take with me. Mostly mementos from school, jewelry I inherited from my parents, and a few of Aaron’s things.
I’ll organize a house clearance service, donate everything else, and the furniture can stay for whoever buys the house. If Bryce’s dad wants anything, he’s welcome to take it.
By the time I’ve finished gathering the few belongings I want, and Dom and I drive over to my childhood home, they’ve packed up the bedrooms, the den, the kitchen, and are busy in the garage boxing up Aaron’s tools.
Galen said they’d be done in under two hours. I hadn’t believed him, and I was right not to. It looks like they don’t need longer than an hour.
I stand there, jaw hanging open as they make quick work of packing.
Since I’d only get in the way, and Dom refuses to let me lift anything heavy in case I hurt my back, we stand in the front yard ‘supervising.’ It feels like a lazy way of doing nothing.
Some neighbors come over to share their condolences about Bryce. They must know things were over between us when I didn’t go to his funeral, and none of them seem surprised that I’m not wearing my wedding ring.
Maybe they knew Bryce wasn’t a good husband, or maybe they didn’t. I no longer care. I just want to leave this place behind me and move on.
“You’re sure about selling?” Dom asks later when we’re on the road with two packed U-Haul trucks driven by his packmates behind us. “If you wanted to keep your parents' house, we could get someone to watch the place for you so you don’t have to come back here.”
“How did you know I didn’t want to come back?” I ask, dryly.
He takes my hand and squeezes it. “I could tell.”
Anyone could have. I was in Dom’s car, pushing to leave the second the last U-Haul door slammed shut.
As we leave my small hometown behind us, I glance in the rearview mirror and shake my head. “It’s time to start over. It was home, but it hasn’t been home for a long time. When all the people I love died, it became a cage.”
He presses a kiss on my knuckles. “Then I’ll help you sell it.”
I sigh, not looking forward to all the paperwork I have soon coming my way with the sale of two houses, and a divorce that I no longer need. Bryce’s death means I’m a widow instead of a divorcée. At least, according to the courts. I stopped being Bryce’s wife when I left him.
“I have a question,” Dom says.
“Yeah?” I turn to face him.
“When you were a kid, did you have any pets?”
I eye him curiously. “Yeah, a dog called Pepper. Why?” She was a tiny white Shih Tzu that my parents got for me because I was scared of dogs and they didn’t want me to be. I loved Pepper so much. When she died, I never wanted another dog. None would ever come close to her.
He starts laughing. “Nothing.”
“Dom, what is it?”
“Galen said if you’d had pets when you were younger, it might be a sign you liked animals, and wouldn’t leave me if I told you what I was.”
I stare at him. “But wolves aren’t like dogs.”
I mean, maybe they kind of are from a distance. But wolves are predators. Dogs are, well… dogs.
He kisses my knuckles. “If you would please tell him that, presumably at the kitchen table where everyone is around to laugh, I would appreciate it.”
I grin at him. “Okay.”
He squeezes my hand before releasing it. “Now we’re on the highway, you’re on radio duty.”
“And I can pick anything?” I grin at him.
He changes lanes and gives me a defeated look. “I just signed myself up for six hours of Taylor Swift, didn’t I?”
“Well, maybe not exactly six.”
And no, I do not inflict six hours of Taylor Swift on Dom. He would let me, but I don’t. We share radio duty along with the driving and the snacks.
It’s the perfect partnership.
Dom and I marry at night, in a lightning storm two weeks after his birthday.
Galen conducts the ceremony. I wear a white strappy summer dress, and a flower headband with peonies and wildflowers in my hair. Dom just wears white trousers.
No, it doesn’t make sense to wear a flower headband in a lightning storm, or even to get married under one. But to me, it’s perfect. And to Dom, it’s his perfect birthday.
So it is perfect.
And after Dom kisses me, I meet the growly, surprisingly cuddly, and protective wolf side of him.
We spend the next hour laughing in the rain, chasing each other and kissing as his packmates melt away. When the rain gets too much, even for us, Dom carries me up to the ladder to the straw bed in the outbuilding.
I’m lying on the straw as he braces himself over me, his bent elbow beside my head, and a smile in his eyes. “Did I make you happy today?”
He asks me every day. The last question of the day is always that.
“You did. But…”
He pauses before he can kiss me. “But what?”
I kiss him, soft, sweet, and exactly how I’ve wanted to all day. “I’m not sure I made you as happy as you made me.”
“You did. How tired are you?” His fingers grip the bottom of my white dress, and he slowly tugs it up. It’s strange to see the silver wedding band that I slid on his finger an hour ago. He slid a thinner, matching silver ring onto mine. We chose them together, with help from Noel and Melissa, the married owners of the jewelry store.
I wasn’t sure where the ring would go when he became a wolf, and he didn’t want to lose it in the rain, so he put it on my necklace so I could wear it for him. And as soon as he shifted back to his human form, it was the first thing he asked for.
After he kissed me, of course.
“Not too tired for that.” I smile.
He kisses my lips, then right beside my mouth. “This freckle had to be the first.”
“The first?”
“The first.” And he kisses each and every freckle. I assume he does, because the day has been a long one, and he takes his time doing it.
When I wake up, we’re back in our bed, my rain-dampened skin dry, and I have a warm comforter over me as Dom snores beside me. It’s late. The house is quiet and there’s not even a hint of moonlight peeping in from the edge of the curtains.
Then I wake him up.
He doesn’t have any freckles, so it doesn’t take nearly as much time to kiss him all over.
That doesn’t mean I don’t take my time.