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“Me either, actually.”
She smiles softly at me and I smile back before I start to unpack the basket. My wolf sniffs inside of me, curious about the food that I’m laying out on the blanket in between both of us.
My wolf and I both are on high alert, and I know that we’re both going to be counting down the minutes until Malia turns eighteen.
Only twenty-four more hours. Then we’ll know if she’s meant for me.
SIX
Malia
“Happy birthday!”Ren screams the next morning. I jolt up in bed, blinking the sleep away from my eyes.
“Wha?” I mumble, still half asleep. Ren grins at me.
“Happy birthday! How does it feel to be old enough to vote and gamble in select states?”
“Tired,” I groan. She nods solemnly.
“Yeah, I’ve heard being an adult is exhausting.”
I laugh, tossing a pillow at her face, and she just smiles and lays down in the bed next to me.
“Do you feel older?” she whispers.
“And wiser,” I tell her, making her laugh.
We lie side by side in the bed, both staring at the ceiling as the sun starts to splash color across it.
“What time is it?”
“Six thirty.”
I groan, pulling the blankets over my head.
“Do you want your present?” she asks me, ducking beneath the covers so she can see my face.
“Obviously.”
My bestie grins and darts out of bed. I sigh as I sit up, stretching as I move to lean against the headboard.
Ren is back a minute later with two newspaper wrapped gifts, and I smile as she places them on my lap.
We’ve always wrapped our gifts in newspaper. It was cheaper than wrapping paper and would go unnoticed by the other kids in the group home, so no one ever tried to steal our presents.
I grab the smaller package. I already know what it is. Every year we get each other socks as one of our gifts. It started that first year that we met. We could never find matching socks and most of mine had holes in them, so when Ren asked me what I wanted, I just blurted out socks.
We had laughed, but she had gotten me some and when her birthday came, she asked for socks, too. It’s become a running joke ever since.
“Socks!” I squeal when I unwrap the first present. “Just what I needed.”
She grins at me as I grab a pair and slip them on.
“And they fit perfectly!”
She rolls her eyes, tossing me the other present. I unwrap the newspaper slowly. Inside, there’s a dozen packets of seeds.
“I have a flower pot for you, too, but I didn’t want to make you carry that around for the whole vacation.”
