Page 196 of Pack Baby for the Silver Foxes

Lincoln’s mouth trembled.

“You made room for all of me, the frightened parts, the ridiculous parts, and the part that wants to paint instead of doing something respectable with a law degree. You gave me a home where my children can be loud, where my sister can arrive with her many opinions, where dogs can have complicated romantic lives, and where I can be loved without disappearing.”

I looked from Hudson to Lincoln.

“I choose you. Both of you. I choose this pack, this family, this life. I still refuse to choose which one of you is more mine.”

“Good,” Hudson whispered.

Lincoln lifted my hand and kissed it.

The registrar pronounced us legally bound under the civil pack partnership and family registration provisions Pax had bullied into submission.

That was probably not the official phrasing. It was mine.

Hudson kissed me first, Lincoln kissed me second, and then both my children shouted, “Mama!” and ran into my legs so hard I nearly took out the table.

Epilogue Mary - cont'd...

I watched as Maeve danced with Mac beneath the lights strung between the trees while Mila tried to teach Rain a spin and nearly knocked over a table of champagne flutes. Presley sang with Fritz’s mother near the cake because apparently every gathering eventually became a concert if Presley stayed long enough.

Pax found me near the cake with a glass in one hand and the look of a man who had been thinking about something for a while. “Business management and pre-law,” he said.

“One day I’ll finish it.”

“You could finish it.” He said it lightly, which from Pax meant he had already worked out how. “Mateus and I would employ you afterward. You’d be insufferable to work with but I think you’d be extremely good at it.”

Mateus arrived at his shoulder. “He’s been rehearsing that since the vows.”

It was a real offer. That was the strange part of it. Not a favor dressed up as one, and not a man deciding what I ought to want out of my life.

Lincoln came up behind me with Violet asleep against his shoulder and caught the end of it.

“She likes to paint,” he said. “So she’ll paint.”

Pax lifted his glass half an inch. “Understood.”

“Keep the offer, though,” I said.

“It doesn’t expire,” Mateus said.

Damien arrived late from the airport, with two ridiculous stuffed bears for the twins and a hug for me that no longer felt like an apology trying to wear friendship. “You look happy,” he said.

“I am,” I said. “But I need to put some different shoes on.”

He nodded. “Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. I won’t be long. You stay here and find your fathers.”

I slipped away to the upstairs room.

The suite was quiet when I let myself in. I put the bouquet on the dresser and got as far as taking off one shoe.

Then a sound came from under the desk.

I went still. Two years of Rain had taught me what a child holding its breath sounds like.

“Hello,” I said, to the desk.