He snorted. "You are dainty."
He wrapped his arms and legs around her as if he would never let go.
"Grant?"
"Yeah, baby?"
"Even if we weren't mates, I'd love you forever."
She heard him swallow. Once, then twice. Finally, he cleared his throat. "Me too, my love."
She had been blessed by Fate to have Grant as a mate, and she would do anything to make him happy, even learn to love herself.
*****
The next morning, Grant tried to talk her into showering together, but she adamantly refused.
"Do you know how many bathroom related accidents I saw while working in the ER? Besides those showers are tiny."
Grant pouted the entire time they got dressed, making her giggle. To see a warrior his size making a boo-boo face because he had to shower alone was a wonderful way to start her morning.
Walking hand in hand, they headed toward the children's courtyard. Outside of the Garcia's house, Keegan stood yawning. When he saw them, he waved them over, grinning.
"About time you guys got up," he griped.
Ellie checked her phone; it was only seven in the morning. "How long have you been up?"
Keegan cracked his back. "Technically, I haven't been to bed yet. Last night, after your gram left, the twins got into the cookies and ate them, like, all of them. At one point, I thought Leif was going to chain them to the floor. That's when Travis got the bright idea to use all that energy for something good. So we headed up here and went to work."
Grant and Ellie looked at each other. "Work?" Grant asked.
Keegan wagged his eyebrows. "Wanna see?"
He led them away from the wolves' housing and into the market place. Ellie was astonished to see a large stone building standing to her right between the entrance of the wolf refugee camp and the public bathrooms by the transport tunnel. It was amazing to see such a large structure where once there had been nothing.
Keegan indicated the large structure. "We set it off to one side so as to not block the vendors. The twins built half of it right into the wall that divides Wolf Street from the market place."
"Wolf Street?" Ellie asked.
Keegan shrugged. "We couldn't keep calling it 'that place where the wolf refugees live now'. Anyway, what do you think?"
Ellie stared. "Is this a hospital?"
"Yup." Keegan nodded.
"You all built an entire hospital last night?"
Keegan laughed. "It's not that big and nowhere near as fancy as some of the human hospitals I've seen, but I think we managed to get all the basics." He pointed to the first floor. "There are three floors. We set up the first floor for all the patients. We made little alcoves for the hospital beds that have electricity so that all the individual monitoring machines could be plugged in. Sulis was able to grab thirty beds, so we have fifteen on each side. At the back of the first floor, we installed some industrial sized washers and dryers. We had to spell the pipes to make sure the water got hot enough to disinfect. That was not a fun thing to figure out at two in the morning, let me tell you." He raised his arm. "The second floor has some private rooms for anyone who needs to crash but can't leave, a small lab, and some test machines." He pointed to the top floor. "So far that's empty, so we set it up for storage for the extra mattresses, linens, gowns, and beds. We got enough supplies that in a pinch the hospital could take in as many as one hundred patients." He grinned. "Overkill I know, but you should have seen the twins last night, we actually expanded the hospital twice to keep them busy." He scratched his chin. "We couldn't figure out how to do an elevator, so we installed a mini-tunnel that's large enough for gurneys and the machines." He shook his head. "I had no idea it was so complicated to get sick. Humans have it rough."
Ellie still couldn't believe that they had created a hospital out of thin air in a single night. "This is amazing!" she gushed.
Keegan blushed and nodded to where warriors were still carrying things into the building. "We're just about done. Some of the vendors have already volunteered for food and laundry detail so you can concentrate on the kiddos."
Ellie was about to hug Keegan when a long tortured wail echoed throughout the level. Ellie's blood froze as all movement around them stopped. An anguished howl followed the wail and catapulted everyone into motion.
Ellie and Grant ran back to the children. They slammed open the front door and stormed through the house. When they reached the courtyard, they watched in horror as Susan Garcia shifted to her wolf. Her sobbing mate wrapped his arms around her body to keep her from hurting herself.
Ellie ran and fell to the floor beside Clara. When she reached out to check for a pulse, a hand stopped her. She looked up and her grandmother's eyes were full of sorrow as she shook her head.