Page 142

"Hey, yourself." He caught my hand and held it against his belly, where one of the cubs immediately kicked my palm with enough force to make me wince. "They've been going wild since my mom made the honey cakes. I think they can smell them."

"They can," I confirmed, settling onto the arm of his chair because there was no force on earth that could keep me more than three feet from him right now. "Bear cubs respond to food smells in the womb. It's how they start learning what's safe to eat."

Danny stared at me. "You're telling me our children are already food-motivated."

"They're bears, love."

"Heaven help me," he muttered, but he was smiling, and his fingers stayed laced with mine. The front door opened again, and Esther swept in with Estrelle close behind her, and the room seemed to shift—not dramatically, but in that subtle way it always did now when the twins entered a space together. Esther wore her usual expression of quiet authority, but Estrelle—Estrelle was different these days. The haunted woman who'd barely spoken above a whisper when she'd first been rescued had been replaced by someone who held her shoulders back and met people's eyes. Not healed, exactly. Healing. There was a difference, and it mattered.

Ben materialized from somewhere near the back of the room the instant they entered. I watched him cross to Estrelle with the kind of careful determination I recognized—the same way I used to approach Danny when I wasn't sure he'd let me close. Estrelle's face crumpled into something raw and beautiful when Ben reached her, and she took both his hands in hers without a word. They stood like that for a long moment, just holding on, and I had to look away because the intimacy of it felt too private to witness.

Since the cave, they'd been building something fragile and real. Phone calls at first, then visits—tentative, awkward, full of long silences and false starts. But Ben had kept his promise to Danny, and Estrelle had met him halfway.

Emery clapped his hands, drawing everyone's attention with the natural authority of a teacher commanding a room full of five-year-olds. "All right, everyone! Welcome to the most important baby shower in the history of baby showers, because we're celebrating not one, not two, but five babies!"

A cheer went up from the crowd. Tia, balanced on Gemma's hip, added a delighted shriek of her own. Callie was content for her big brother Rhys to cuddle her.

"We have games, we have food—do not touch the food yet, Simeon—and we have gifts. But first—" Emery paused for dramatic effect, his eyes sparkling. "We have a very special reveal."

My heart rate kicked up. Danny and I had asked Dr. Coughran to put the results of the last ultrasound in a sealed envelope, which we'd given to Emery three days ago with strict instructions. Danny had wanted to find out the sexes of the cubs at the shower, surrounded by the people who mattered most. I'd agreed because I'd agree to almost anything that made him happy, but also because I genuinely wanted to share this moment with our pack.

Our pack.

The words still felt new, still carried a weight of responsibility that sometimes kept me up at night. But looking around this room—at Maya and Sylvia laughing with Stella, at Phoenix standing shoulder to shoulder with a beaming Kaylan, at Ben sitting quietly beside Estrelle with a tentative closeness that made my chest ache, at Draven trying very hard not to stare at Maya and failing spectacularly—I felt the truth of it settle into my bones. This was my pack. Wolves and bears and silver-skins and one extraordinary human mother who made a mean cinnamon roll.

"Bayer?" Danny tugged my hand. "You okay?"

"Perfect," I said, and meant it.

Emery wheeled in a cart draped with a white cloth, on top of which sat three large boxes wrapped in gold paper. Each box had a ribbon—one green, one purple, one red—and a tag that read CUB #1, CUB #2, and CUB #3.

"So, here's how this works," Emery announced, practically bouncing on his toes. "Danny and Bayer are going to open the boxes together. Inside each one is a stuffed animal that represents the birth sex of each cub.” I knew why he’d clarified that because whatever they were born as didn’t define them. “So—”

The front door opened quietly, but everyone was so shocked at who stood there, the room fell completely silent.

It was Dimitri.

The silver-skin stood in the doorway looking profoundly uncomfortable, which was saying something for a being who'd lived several centuries and presumably attended events far more intimidating than a baby shower. He wore a dark suit that probably cost more than Phoenix's truck, and his arms were laden with three wrapped packages in silver paper that caught the fairy lights and threw tiny rainbows across the ceiling.

He’d been apologetic over not sharing the reason Ben hadn’t developed, but confessed he didn’t trust us with such a huge secret. Only coven elders knew.

We’d all got over it.

"I have been granted passage," he said stiffly, as if someone might challenge this. "By Alpha Colton himself. I have the documentation if required."

Phoenix pinched the bridge of his nose. "I told the gamma to just let you through, Dimitri. Not make you fill out paperwork."

"There were forms," Dimitri said, with the particular dignity of someone who had filled out every single one of them in triplicate. "I completed them all."

A ripple of laughter went through the room, and I felt Danny's hand find the back of my shirt, tugging me down. "Sit. He's not going to eat anyone."

"The coven sends its regards and its blessings," Dimitri continued, stepping farther inside with the cautious air of a man navigating a minefield. His eyes swept the room—lingering briefly on Rhys, who gave him a small nod and Ben who did the same—before settling on Danny. Something in his expression softened by a fraction. "For the cubs. From the coven."

From the coven.

Even I was still shocked that Dimitri would choose to celebrate three pregnancies when their fight for their own race was even harder. They had no silver-skin females, and human females didn’t generally survive the pregnancy long enough to even reach the birth. In a strange way, they had it harder than us.

He crossed the room and placed the silver packages on the gift table with exacting precision, adjusting each one until they were perfectly aligned. Then he straightened, clasped his hands behind his back, and seemed utterly lost as to what to do next.