Forever We Embrace: The Later Years (Always Yours #5)

1. Luca

Luca

Maya is sitting at the edge of the kitchen chair, her spine a rigid line that hasn’t softened in thirty minutes. She hasn’t looked at the window or the door, but her eyes track every shadow that shifts across the tiled floor of Ember House. To anyone else, she looks like a statue.

I keep my scent dialed back to a low, steady hum, a quiet baseline that doesn’t demand anything from her. I’m nursing a mug of tea that went cold ten minutes ago, my hands wrapped around the ceramic simply to give them something to do. Three weeks since the chaos at Vice she’s simply leaving it. I watch her until the door clicks shut.

Blossom collects her coffee and motions for me to follow her into the office. I carry my untouched tea with me, and the warmth of the kitchen disappears the moment she closes the door and sets the ledger on her desk with a heavy, hollow thud.

“We have a problem, Luca,” Blossom says, and she isn’t looking at the coffee anymore.

She pulls out a chair and sits, her face appearing years older in the harsh fluorescent light.

“The donor channels that went dark after the Vice & Virtue incident? They aren’t just flickering. They’ve cut the lines entirely.”

I look down at the columns of red ink. I trace the edge of a negative balance with my thumb, the paper slightly rough under my skin. “How many?”

“Three major foundations and five private Alphas who used to love the ‘charitable’ optics of helping Omegas,” she says, her voice flat and brittle.

“Now that we’re involved in federal investigations and making noise about systemic trafficking, we’re too ‘high-risk’ for their brand portfolios.

The expansion wing is a skeleton. The drywall is sitting in the hallway because I can’t pay the contractors to hang it. ”

“We can keep the current rooms open,” Blossom says. “Payroll, food, counseling, and the existing residents are covered for now. What we can’t do is finish the intake suites or keep adding beds at the rate the requests are coming in.”

I lean back, the coldness of the office air finally reaching my bones.

We have requests for intake coming from three counties away.

Frightened Omegas who’ve heard there’s a place where the Alphas don’t hold the keys, where the scent of a knot doesn’t mean a week of pain.

And I’m looking at a balance sheet that says we’re full. Beyond full.

“We can’t stop the expansion, Blossom,” I say, and I hate how small my voice sounds in the quiet office. “If we stop, we’re just another halfway house that ran out of steam. We promised these people a permanent sanctuary, not a temporary bunk.”

Blossom doesn’t soften. She never does when the truth is this ugly. “Then find the money, Luca. Because right now, we’re operating on a dwindling reserve that won’t last through the winter. And that’s not the only thing.”

She slides a folder toward me. It isn’t a financial statement.

It’s a draft for a governing charter, the edges already dog-eared from her own reading.

“Ember House can’t continue depending on you to make every decision from the dinner table at the Nest. We need formal resident representation.

We need permanent privacy protections that are hard-coded into our legal structure, so a future investor can’t buy their way into our files. ”

“The residents should have a permanent voice in what happens here,” I say. “Not an advisory role someone can ignore. Real authority, with privacy protections no donor can rewrite when the money changes hands.”

I look at the folder, then at the ledger, then back at Blossom.

The weight of it settles into my shoulders, a physical pressure that makes my neck ache.

She’s right. I know she’s right. I’ve spent years trying to build a wall between the people I love and the people who want to own us, but the wall is getting heavy, and the stones are starting to crumble.

“I’ll find a solution,” I say, the words feeling like a debt I’m not sure I can pay. “I’ll talk to the board. I’ll find new donors who don’t care about ‘optics.’”

“You’re hiding it from them, aren’t you?

” Blossom asks, her eyes narrowing. She doesn’t need to name them.

She means my pack. She means Blake, who’s still walking with a cane and checking his heart rate every two hours.

She means Luther and Maceo and Grayson, who’ve spent the last three weeks trying to pretend the world isn’t trying to tear us apart at the seams.

“They have enough to carry,” I say, and I stand up before she can argue. “Blake’s recovering. The merger attack at Keller Industries is still active. I’m not putting the sanctuary’s funding crisis on the kitchen island next to the kids’ homework. Not today.”

I gather my things, my movements sharp and efficient, a performance of competence for an audience of one.

I promise Blossom I’ll review the charter by Monday, and I walk out to my car before the silence of the office can swallow me whole.

The drive back to the Nest is a blur of gray pavement and low-hanging clouds, my fingers drumming a nervous, frantic rhythm against the steering wheel.

When I pull into the driveway, I take a minute.

I sit in the stillness of the car, watching the way the late afternoon light hits the windows of our home.

I breathe in the quiet, filtering out the dread and the unfinished drywall.

By the time I open the front door, my face is a mask of calm. “Daddy!”

The mask holds, but only just. Rosalie is a blur of pink leggings and a plastic crown that’s sitting dangerously askew on her dark curls.

She skids to a halt on the hardwood, a crumpled piece of paper clutched in her hand like a royal decree.

She looks so much like Luther in this moment—all commanding presence and unshakeable certainty—that it makes my heart ache with a sudden, fierce joy.

“The cake is wrong,” she announces, her voice high and imperious. “Grayson said we could have dragons, but the dragons in the book only have two wings. My cake needs four. And they have to be shiny. Like the glitter in the bathroom.”

I drop my keys on the bowl and crouch down, pulling her into my arms. She smells like apple juice and the vanilla lotion Grayson uses on the kids after their baths.

It’s the scent of safety, of a life I earned through blood and secrets, and I breathe it in until the tension in my jaw finally begins to give way.

“Four wings,” I repeat, smoothing a stray hair back from her forehead. “That sounds like a very fast dragon, Rosie. Are they going to be flying or sitting on the cake?”

She considers this, her brow furrowing in deep, tactical thought. “Flying. And the crown has to be at the top. The big one. So the people in the back can see it’s a princess party.”

“A princess wedding,” I correct gently, smiling at her. “And I think we can manage the dragons. I’ll talk to the baker. We’ll make sure the glitter’s the edible kind, or your Uncle Maceo will have a fit about the ‘structural integrity’ of the frosting.”

She giggles, a bright, clear sound that echoes through the hallway, and for a moment, the weight of Ember House feels manageable.

I let her drag me toward the kitchen, listening to her contradictory list of requirements—multiple dragons, a crown large enough to be visible from space, and ‘at least five’ layers of chocolate.

I give her my full attention, nodding at the right moments.

Later, after Rosalie has carried her cake plans into the kitchen, I slip back outside and sit alone in the car. The house glows through the windshield, close enough that I can see movement behind the curtains, but no one follows me.

I turn Blake’s engagement ring and wedding band against each other until the edges press into my skin. I’ll tell them when Nicholas has a real plan, when the numbers are less frightening, when I can bring them a problem with a solution already attached. Not tonight. Tonight, I keep it mine.

I wonder how long I can keep Ember House safe without admitting I’m frightened.