“Ohh…I would pay good money to see baby Aidan projected on the side of the house,” Peter said with a chuckle.
“We’re packmates now,” he replied, shooting him a dark look. “One in, all in.”
“Aidan, sweetheart? Come up, love. Don’t be shy,” Renee said. “He was always the more retiring of my boys. Even as a little boy…”
“Bro, we ditched the projector,” a teenage boy with Aidan’s eyes said, running up to us. He grinned and winked at me. “We stashed it in the next-door neighbour’s yard.”
This was one of Aidan’s brothers, Jared.
“Yes!” Aidan replied, performing a complex handshake with the boy. “Is Rexy on the PA?”
“As we speak. Hey, Flick,” the boy said, giving me a smile and a once over.
“Do not check out my mate, you little shit,” Aidan said, grabbing him by the collar and hauling him forward.
“Calm down, pops. I was just looking. Damn, you are lucky getting that on the regular, because she is—”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll remove your teeth. One by one.”
“K. You need to chill. Plenty of other babes on the loose. I’m gonna go and check out Mrs. Keely’s daughter because she’s due to come into season soon. Me and you, bro, could be coming up, starting our packs at the same time.”
“Jared, you are fifteen. You are not joining a damn pack, and you better hope Mrs. Keely doesn’t bloody hear you carrying on, because Mum will…”
Their words faded away as Aidan hauled his brother through the crowd towards his family. My family, I realised. I knew what living in a small town was like, how it could get cramped and insular, but as I looked around the mass of people, I realised something that was small for most but revolutionary for me—I could be happy.
The idea of it took my breath away with its magnitude. To have a home to come down to every day without having to worry about whether there were coffee cups on the table or if the sheets had been washed and replaced. For Kade to have a safe space to spread his crazy toy empire, building increasingly complex scenarios that would only earn him a fond nod. To lie in peace at night, entwined in the bodies of people I loved and cared for, who loved and cared for me. To feel wanted, needed, recognised, and desired. This was heady, heady stuff. I’d spent more than a decade in hell, only to end up here.
How, I wondered as Renee and the dads all embarrassed the shit out of their son, while Jared and the other brothers snickered as the stories went on and on.
“Flick?”
My head jerked sideways to see Sen had moved closer.
“I…” He smiled, shaking his head. “I’ve never bloody done this before. Look, I’m gonna offer you a token later, and I just wanted to check if you liked it.”
He grabbed my hand and placed a small stone sculpture in my palm. I rolled it over and saw it was a small stone wolf, carved from a black and white flecked rock. It even had little chips of green glass for eyes.
“It’s beautiful, Sen,” I replied.
“Flick? Peter? Where are you?” Renee called out over the crowd.
“I’ve gotta go,” I said. “Mother in law is calling.” I placed the stone back into his hand, his fingers tugging at mine for a moment before I pulled free, and that heat washed over me, making my skin tingle when he took it back.
“Good luck, mate,” Peter said, slapping Sen on the back, and then we walked through the crowd.
“…And I just want you to know how proud I am to have you in our family, Flick.”
Renee was in full flight, her skin glowing, her eyes starting to shine with tears, and I found myself doing the same. Her pack was all around her, her kids as well as her mates, and she was just so bloody happy and sh
e wanted to share it with me. She was already tousling Kade’s hair and patting his shoulder like we did, like he was her biological grandkid. Which I guess here didn’t matter. With all those dads, only one was likely to be the sperm donor, so I guessed here, blood wasn’t thicker than water. Kade, like many kids, just liked the attention and the spotlight.
Renee finished her speech and looked at me expectantly. I should have been listening, staying in the moment and participating in what this family had going on. The expectant pause seemed to stretch out, asking me over and over to say something, anything. So I did what I could.
I grabbed Peter by the hand, stepped up to Aidan and Kade and Renee and the dads, and I put my arm around as many as I could, resting my head on Aidan’s shoulder, the weight of Peter’s arm across my back letting me know he’d joined us. I was still working out what the hell this whole pack thing was, but perhaps it was this—a group of people prepared to open themselves up to others and let them in.
“Thank you,” Renee whispered.
“Now, as alpha, it's customary for me to say a few words about the happy pack.”