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Laughter was as abundant as the delicious food Logan took his time savoring in between feeding Clover and wiping her hands before she could tug her hair or smush something on her face again. Light conversation and fond memories, they joked and teased one another throughout the meal, prompting the pups to squeal and giggle from time to time.
Happy pups.
The ability to laugh at their mishaps.
A love of sports.
Hobbies.
Movies.
Music.
Knowing the parallel roads they’d ridden to the ones he’d been on, Logan hoped that in time he could live a rich, full, happy life too and add more than meat to the table when it came time to contribute to the lives they’d built.
Dinner was capped off by a traditional bread pudding, something Wren had never had before. Watching his pup study it, poking at the layers, before finally pinching off a tiny piece to taste, Logan wondered what they were going to think once it finally passed their lips. And he clearly wasn’t the only one. Roark was dialed in on Wren too, grinning when Wren finally tasted the bread pudding, eyes widening before they grabbed their spoon and dug in. Logan watched Roark nod like he was making a mental note of Wren’s reactions, then it dawned on him that there was a good chance he’d made this dessert the way he intended to make the carrot cake tomorrow.
If it was half as good as his bread pudding, whoa, Goddess, it was out of this world.
“Where did you learn to cook like this?” Logan asked once he’d swallowed, spoon poised over his bowl, ready for the next bite.
“Onyx,” Roark explained, “and an assortment of other amazing folks who volunteer their time to help wolves who need some work with their cooking skills.”
“Onyx has been running classes out of the bakery for the last year,” Rusty explained. “We’ve all taken a few.”
“You know what life on the road is like,” Baz said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Most nights you eat it cold if it isn’t safe to have a fire, so most of us needed to learn more kitchen-based skills.”
“As well as what to keep stocked and how much of it,” Roark explained. “You should have seen the state of our cupboards a month after we moved in. They were Mother Hubbard bare unless you counted the supplies we had for the pups. We were shopping every other day, literally buying only what we needed for what we had to cook.”
“Wouldn’t know it from how full they are now,” Logan admitted.
“We took Onyx and Mama G’s class on setting up a home kitchen,” Rusty explained.
“And the course in meal prep and planning,” Roark added.
“If it didn’t come out of a packet, pouch, or can, I didn’t know what to do with it,” Kale said. “My old pack was in an area that was too rocky to have good growing soil, so the sparse collection of fresh produce we had came from the pack greenhouse. The prices were too steep for a wolf on a teacher’s salary. I try to take one new class each season, so there’s some variety to what I can contribute to the meals.”
“Might be a good idea if I sign up for a few myself,” Logan said. “Meat is just about the only thing I pride myself on being able to cook.”
Charlie chuckled. “Same, which is why I’ve taken a few myself. Being a bachelor, I only cooked if I was in the mood for something specific, otherwise I’d spent over a decade picking my meals up from the community kitchen and nibbling the contents of the carton on the way home.”
Nodding, Logan fully understood his plight. “At least I’m in good company. We could always take a few together and try to catch up to our mates.”
“Bet,” Kale replied.
Out of all of them, he was the quietest, but he missed nothing, a good trait to have for a schoolteacher, as was his ability to listen. When the usually quiet Anais began to wiggle and gurgle, Kale scooped her out of her highchair and carried her out of the room.
“Someone is about to blow out her diaper,” Charlie chuckled. “I’d better go play backup.”
He was out of his seat before anyone else could volunteer, while Rusty stood and started clearing empty plates.
“Let me give you a hand with that,” Logan said before gobbling up the last three bites of bread pudding so he could collect the bottles.
“Line those up on the counter, if you please,” Rusty said. “We rinse them and return them to the shop. They sterilize and reuse them, same as with the milk delivery.”
“Perfect.”
Working in tandem with others was odd, but not unpleasant. When Autumn Kings’ Gone, Gone, Gone came on, Rusty started singing along. Logan joined in and saw Rusty raise an eyebrow before grinning. Never in his life had he experienced a more domestic moment as this. Baz knew the song too and joined them as he carried platters into the kitchen and started putting the leftovers in stackable glass containers that allowed for maximum use of the fridge. Half would stay here, and half would go with Baz and company to serve as a late-night snack or easy lunch, depending on what the weather had in store for them tomorrow.
