“Your people aren’t mad at me, are they?”
“They’re eating and having a merry time of it. But they’re looking forward to us joining them.”
She nuzzled her cheek against his chest. “I’m hungry.”
“Good. I’m starving and if I don’t eat my main course, I won’t get any more dessert.” A sexy smile tugging at his mouth, he rolled out of bed, then jerked on his jeans. “And I’m hungry for dessert, again.”
Sitting before the fire in the living room, Sam’s bearded face glowed in the light of the embers while he told another story of their ancestors’ exploits of long ago. Darien wrapped his arm around Lelandi and pulled her close on the couch, and for the first time ever, she really felt part of the pack. Leidolf was sipping another beer in one of the chairs, studying Carol as she sat on the floor next to Tom, enraptured with Sam’s tales, her blue eyes wide with awe. Silva served another tray of drinks, and Lelandi’s father nodded off in his wheelchair.
Doc Mitchell and Chester McKinley played a game of chess nearby while Mason supervised. Eleanor and Nurse Grey made turkey sandwiches for everyone. The Hastings sat together on a love seat, cuddled together as if they were young lovers all over again. Jake took a seat on the other side of Carol and offered her a bag of chips. She smiled at him like she was in love, and Leidolf took another swig of his beer, his expression annoyed.
Peter looked happy and relaxed now that he was the new sheriff of Silver Town and gave Lelandi a satisfied smile. Trevor had vanished, and she wondered if he’d left to see Caitlin.
Darien rubbed her tummy absentmindedly and it made her warm and tingly inside.
She glanced at Carol. She didn’t want her to leave Silver Town after they’d become friends, but what if she could be the one for her footloose brother? Lelandi frowned. Carol had wanted to be near her parents, and Leidolf now had a pack of his own to lead and couldn’t abandon them.
She kissed Darien’s cheek and snuggled closer. Leidolf could figure it out on his own.
Now that Lelandi was Darien’s, life couldn’t get any better. Although he still had to deal with Trevor’s behavior concerning sixteen-year-old Caitlin. Her parents were agreeable the two were now mated, and she would move in with him, but his inappropriate actions had to be punished. Deviating from acceptable pack behavior couldn’t be tolerated.
As for Leidolf, itching to return to his pack in Portland, Darien couldn’t be more glad. The farther her brother was away from Lelandi, the better, considering how her emotional state was tied to his.
Carol was another issue. Dealing with a newly turned lupus garou was problematic. As soon as he could, he needed to have her mated so that her mate would keep her in line. He rubbed his chin as he considered Leidolf, who seemed aggravated over Darien’s brothers’ attention to Carol. Maybe Leidolf was the solution to Darien’s problem.
He leaned back on the couch and pulled Lelandi closer. Larissa would never know how much of a nightmare she’d created, but in her death, she’d brought Lelandi into his life. Because of that, he could forgive Larissa.
But the families of those who’d died—Ritka, Angelina, Hosstene, and Uncle Sheridan—wouldn’t be so easily appeased. For them, although they recognized their family members had committed grave injustices, many felt their actions somewhat justified. If Larissa hadn’t been mated already, then had an affair with Joe, most likely none would have committed the crimes. Some had voiced their dissent, and he assumed they might leave the pack.
He glanced at his cousins, Uncle Sheridan’s four grown sons. For some time now, they’d been conspicuously absent from any of the pack goings-on. Had they known about their father’s complicity?
Connor, the most light-hearted one of the bunch, looked Darien’s way. For the briefest of moments, he appeared sad, but he quickly hardened his expression and turned away.
Yep, ripples of dissent were already stirring, but Darien had dealt with problems like these for years. He’d deal with these, too.
Lelandi looked up at Darien and smiled, not in a sweetly innocent way, but in one that said she wanted some alone time with him. He rubbed her arm and leaned over and gave her a kiss.
Sam quit orating a story and Darien looked up and found every eye in the room on him.
“Lelandi’s feeling tired.”
Several smiled.
He rose from the couch with Lelandi. Loving every bit of her, the feral and the tame, he swept her up in his arms to whoops and cheers and headed to the stairs.
“You are so subtle, you know?” she said in a harsh, low voice.
He grinned. “You should be proud of me. I didn’t say I was taking you to bed to ravish you.”
She groaned and he laughed.
Several downstairs laughed and Sam began telling another story. And Darien, well, he was going to make sure Carol’s prediction came true. In nine months, he’d be cradling an armful of triplets. God, how he loved Lelandi. His dream had finally been realized.
“About Carol,” Lelandi said as Darien deposited her on the bed.
He growled low. “Now is not the time to discuss pack business.” He straddled her, his rock-hard erection straining for release, and she gave him a coy smile.
“This is pack business,” she reminded him.
“Believe me, from now on I’ll be taking care of a lot more of this kind of business.”
“Darien, I was thinking. I want to be a psychologist.”
“No.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
“You’d have to go away to college. So no.” His dark eyes challenged her as he quickly divested her of her clothes.
“I can take it online. When Larissa needed help, a psychologist had to come from Green Valley.” Lelandi ran her fingers through Darien’s silky hair, but she could tell from his hard expression, he wasn’t buying her pitch.
“I still say no.” He jerked off his shirt.
“Why?”
He climbed off the bed and ditched his boots and jeans. “I don’t want you talking to crazy people.” Returning to bed, he leaned next to her, and massaged her breast. “They can become infatuated with their doctor, believing the doctor loves them because she listens to their concerns, she cares about them. And one as attractive as you…” He shook his head.
“I could help people deal with grief and all kinds of different anxieties. I need to have something to do.”
His hand shifted to her belly, and he caressed her with a gentle touch. “You’ll have plenty to do.”
She growled.
He grunted. “All right. Get your degree online, and then you can see female patients, only.”
She laughed. “I can just hear what your people will say.”
“Our people. If a guy wants to see you, he’ll have to request an audience with either me or one of my brothers first.”
“That’ll cut down the number of male patients I get.”
He offered a devilish smile.
She touched his face, then leaned over to kiss his lips. “Hmm, Darien, my dream lover. Make the dream come true again.”
“It already has, sweet Lelandi. It already has.”
With that, he swept her into their own private world, vowing to take her for a romp in the woods in their wolf states later that evening to fulfill Carol’s prediction that men and women dressed in wolf skins made love beneath the pale light of the moon.
The End
