43. EPILOGUE
Little Shop of Horrors Suddenly Seymour filled the ice rink as Artie and I skated, darting around each other with ease.
It was, hopefully if things went well, going to be our program choice for the 2026 Winter Olympics in Switzerland in two years.
Artie grinned at me as I zipped past him, reaching out through the bond to tease me as I got into position for our tandem spin.
His vision had, thankfully, stopped deteriorating as quickly as it had been before his surgery. He would still lose his sight eventually, but for now he was still able to see blurred figures and the blackening edges had only closed in marginally which pleased his doctors immensely to report.
I was glad that he still had some vision, because these days there was so much good for him to look at.
Case in point the happy baby squeal that cut right through the song and distracted both of us from our practice.
“I think we have a visitor, lovey,” I called to Artie who was already changing direction and heading in the direction of the noise.
There, standing on the other side of the half-wall, was Enzo with a very excited baby. He was still dressed in his work suit, his dark hair perfectly coiffed and he looked suave and handsome despite the cute bag with baby animals all over it slung over his shoulder.
“Who is that?” Enzo asked the baby who had just reached ten months since his unceremonious exit from my womb. “Is that Mama and Daddy?”
Ronan Callaghan was the light of my life and the light of everyone he encountered. Curly hair and a bright smile, it was a bit like I’d copy and pasted myself and presented my mini-me to the world.
“Mamamama,” Ronan chanted, reaching a chubby little fist out to me as I made it to the wall first.
“Hello, leanbh, I have missed you today!” I squealed as I pulled him into my arms. “You’re both out early today.”
Enzo leaned in for a kiss. “Mmm, give me another one before I maul our omega.”
I obliged, my stomach fluttering the way it always did when I got attention from my pack.
Artie pressed a kiss to the top of Ronan’s curls before he let Enzo wrap his arms around him and pulled him in for a kiss of his own.
“Okay you three, can we focus on the reason we’re here?” Leith’s dry voice cut through the romantic huddle we’d formed and I leaned around Enzo’s broad shoulders to where Leith and Wiz were sitting back in one of the stadium seats.
Grinning at them I leaned over the wall with Ronan on my hip. “Why are you here? Last time I checked you two have jobs that require you to be in various practices throughout the day—not that I don’t love seeing my men.”
Wiz was practically wiggling in his seat, reminding me of Lucky when the dog got excited about treats. “Can we tell her? I am literally going to explode if we don’t.”
“We were supposed to wait for the rest to show up, Wiz,” Enzo said to the other alpha with a roll of his eyes.
“The rest?” I asked, quirking a brow at them. “Okay, you four, spill it.”
“Four?” Artie protested. “What did I do?”
I wasn’t buying his innocent expression for a second. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire, lovey, if they’re up to something I guarantee you are waist-deep in it with them.”
“Ciara, did you seriously forget your birthday? Again?” Brynn’s voice came from the open doorway of the rink and I glanced up to find my entire family coming down the short walkway dressed in silly party hats.
“I was hoping we could all forget,” I called dryly, gently prying my son’s fingers out of my hair as I watched them start to set up for a party. “Isn’t food not allowed in here?”
Colt, who was putting out a cake, snorted. “Who’s going to tell me no?”
He had me there.
“And we have one more thing to show you,” Enzo said as he ducked and produced a little bag. “Do you remember what you told me before Ronan was born? What you wanted to do?”
“Did I do anything other than scream?”
So many people told me that I would forget childbirth, that there were special hormones that were built-in to make me forget the pain and make me want to have another baby as soon as this one was done weaning.
But even now I still remembered feeling like an alien was ripping its way out of my body with a head that was in the ninety-ninth percentile for infants.
I think the guys were still traumatized from it all and I’d nearly broken Leith’s hand from hanging onto it so hard.
If I ever did the whole childbirth thing again—and that was a big if—I definitely wasn’t going to try and tough it out because of some silly sense of pride. I’d learned my lesson the first time.
Enzo just grinned at me. “You said, and I quote, ‘I want to do all the things my mam didn’t get to do with me. I want to teach him how to skate.’”
“That seems like a lot of words to have happened in between my shouting,” I said, returning his smile with one of my own.
“You are very good at multitasking, mo ròs,” Leith chimed in as he and Wiz stood and joined us.
“Who knows, maybe I imagined it because you were trying to crack my hand in half once Leith and I switched out, but either way…” Enzo dug in the bag before producing a pair of the tiniest ice skates I’d ever seen.
“They aren’t functional in the way that yours are, but they will make for some adorable pictures.”
I gaped at them with glee before I pressed my lips to Ronan’s soft cheek. “What do you say my leanbh? Do you wanna ice skate with Mama?”
Ronan let out a happy squeal that I was taking for his version of baby consent.
“And we’re all going to join you,” Brynn said excitedly as she stepped onto the ice, the hands of the now five-year-old Birdy and Theo in each hand as they wobbled on their children’s skates.
A lump formed in my throat as I realized exactly what kind of party they were throwing me.
“Is this…?” I started as Leith took the baby from me so he and Wiz could finagle the skates onto his plump little feet.
“A children’s skate party?” Artie asked with a grin as he wrapped his arms around me from behind. “Of course it is.”
I’d only told them about it once—wanting to have the kind of kids’ party that I was too old for by the time the dads brought me back to Minnesota with them.
“Oh, I’m going to cry,” I muttered, waving a hand at my stinging eyes. That was one thing that had never gone back to normal after my pregnancy. I still cried at the drop of a hat, much to the amusement of my family.
“Try to hold it in, gorgeous or else your makeup is going to be smeared in your pictures with Ronan,” Wiz called as he finally managed to get the second skate on his foot.
“How did you two get those on so quickly?” Christa, one of Aurelia’s alphas, asked as she and Wilder struggled to get a similar pair onto the feet of the baby that was wriggling in her mother’s lap.
“Nina is not having it,” Wilder grumbled as the baby shot her father a red-faced glare.
“I think she just wants to stay with Mommy,” Christa said, finally giving up and turning to Tobey who was at his mother’s elbow and grinning at his little sister.
“She can stay with me and Mom,” the boy said only to be swept up by Charlie who had shot up into a gawky, full-fledged teenager in the past year.
“Oh no you don’t, you were the one who wanted to play hockey which means that you need to practice your skating.”
Tobey pouted as Charlie carried him off to get his skates on.
“Are you ready to skate with Mama?” Leith asked Ronan who hung from his hands like a limp ragdoll, grinning gummily up at the alpha.
I accepted the baby with fresh skates back into my arms and skated into the middle of the ice as the rest of my family zipped around us.
“Are you ready, leanbh?” I asked, not expecting an answer because he was a baby and couldn’t talk yet.
But his giggle was an answer enough.
Gently, I leaned down until his little baby feet touched the ice and held him up by his hands in the same way that we did when we practiced his walking at home.
“Smile, Mama!” I heard Enzo call and I tilted my chin up to grin at the camera as Ronan squealed with joy.
This picture would be a perfect match to one of the ones that was in an album that I kept in the cedar trunk I’d brought back with me from Ireland.
We’d donated most of Finneas’s things, but I’d packed up all of the pictures that he kept and we’d also brought Riley back with us. The cat now spent his days relaxing in high up places as he avoided the rowdy golden retrievers who he’d become reluctant roommates with.
Finneas had been a shutterbug until alcoholism truly took over his life and there were hundreds, if not thousands of pictures of me, Mam, and the three of us.
One picture that came to mind as I skated with my son was one of me and my mam.
I was probably no bigger than Ronan and we were in one of the local ice skating rinks as Mam held me up in a pretty pink princess dress as she stood on ice skates and grinned at the camera.
Even almost two years after going back to Ireland I still had complicated feelings about my father, but whenever I braved a look at the pictures I knew that, at the base of it all, he’d loved us at least a little bit before the alcohol got to him.
“Come on, that’s enough pictures,” I called to my pack as Brynn zipped around me, her two alphas having taken their children as they skated in slow circles around the ice. “Join me!”
Artie made it to me first and he gently took one of Ronan’s hands in his own and we skated together.
Leith and Wiz were next, stepping easily onto the ice as they skated to us with ease.
Finally, Enzo was last, and despite being as enamored with hockey as he was, he wobbled in his fancy suit as he joined us with a shaky grin on his face.
“You got it?” I asked, holding out a hand to catch him if need be.
“Of course I’ve got it, you four may be able to skate circles around me, but I think I can remain upright at the very least,” Enzo said dryly as he finally made it to us.
Ronan let out an ear-piercing squeal, bouncing on his little feet as he tried to move ahead of us on the ice and frowning at our hands when we wouldn’t let him go any further.
“It looks like Ronan here is going to be better at skating than you soon and this is his first time on the ice,” Leith joked as he clapped a hand on the other alpha’s back and nearly ruined his balance in the process.
“It wouldn’t surprise me one bit, that kid has Olympic gold running through his veins on both sides,” Enzo grumbled, glaring at the other alpha.
“Who knows,” I said, leaning down so I could get a better look at Ronan’s smile as we skated slowly together. “Maybe he’ll be into football instead.”
My four packmates shot me an incredulous look because none of us knew a thing about football.
“Or maybe not,” I amended with a grin. “But, either way, I can’t wait to see how he grows.”