“We’ll eat when I’m done remindingLucathat he can’t answer the door without pants,” Gideon says, his tone half exasperation, half amusement, but 100% promise.
Luca squeaks, rolling off the crib mattress and onto the floor before scrambling to his feet. He sprints out of the room, cackling like a maniac, only to crash into Leo and Grayson in the doorway.
Gideon lunges after him but is thwarted by the massive seven-foot-tall stuffed giraffe. It teeters as he stumbles, giving Luca just enough time to slip away, shrieking with victory down the hall.
“Dammit. I almost had him,” Gideon growls, steadying the giraffe with a huff.
Grayson giggles, bending the oversized stuffed animal’s neck to fit it through the door. “Getting slow in your old age, Gid.”
“Pearce,” Gideon says with a dramatic sigh, “I did feel bad that you’d beotherwise occupied with our offspring tonight, but now? I’ll treasure every moan and cry fromourtreasure a little bit extrabecauseof your absence.”
Grayson’s face falls in exaggerated dismay. “What? Tonight?No.”
He turns to Nix, eyes wide with betrayal, but Nix acts busy, sketching in his notebook. At the bottom of the page, a gangly giraffe with pink and green spots takes shape, stretching up the entire length of the page. Its long eyelashes, full lips, and its shocked, betrayed eyes bear a striking resemblance to someone familiar, even with Nix’s admittedly questionable artistic skills.
Gideon winks at Nix, holding up nine fingers as a reminder before spinning on his heel to chase after his wayward soulmate.
Leo leans against the doorway, laughing as he rubs his hands together. For once, he’s just happy he’d kept his mouth shut.
“You were zero help!” Grayson huffs, punching Leo in the shoulder.
“I helped myself, dumbass. Now, where are we putting this, Nix?” Leo asks, patting the giant giraffe like it’s a prize.
When Nix shrugs, Grayson drags it into the corner behind the double-glider rocker.
“Whose idea was that?” Nix asks, raising an eyebrow. No one but Artem needs to know he and Luca had one in their sights on the day Nix had gone into labor.
“Gerard the Giraffe is the joint brainchild of the greatest minds this pack has ever seen,” Leo announces, bowing with an exaggerated flourish. “It’ll look even better once we finish the new kids’ room.”
Grayson nods solemnly before collapsing to his knees beside Nix, sliding a hand up the leg of Nix’s shorts to cop a feel. He presses a kiss to Nix’s soft thigh, almost knocking the notebook off the window seat in the process.
Leo snatches the notebook mid-fall, before settling on the floor beside them. “What’s this?”
“I’m writing a letter to the girls,” Nix says. He doesn’t mention that he hasn’t written anything himself yet. He just lets Leo flip through the pages, watching as his mate’s expression softens.
“Oh, hey, can I?” He picks up a green gel pen,popping the lid off with his lips, and scribbles something under Gideon’s chicken scratch before handing the notebook to Grayson.
Grayson grabs a pink pen, grinning as he adds a few accents to Gerard the Giraffe’s already unique likeness. Suddenly, a faint shimmer sparks across the page, and Gerard winks one long-lashed green eye.
Nix chuckles, shaking his head. “Show-off.”
Grayson smirks and writes two simple lines beneath Leo’s entry before turning his focus to the lower right corner of the page. With meticulous precision, he uses every color in the rainbow, layering and blending as the glow of Grayson’s magic fills the room.
Nix’s fingers find their way into Grayson’s growing hair, absently stroking as he watches, mesmerized by the steady pulse of energy flowing through their bond. Leo just sits back and observes, his hands resting on his knees, a small smile tugging at his lips.
When Grayson finishes, he hands the notebook to Leo. “Blow on it,” he instructs softly, waiting until Leo complies before leaning in to kiss him hard.
Grayson presses another kiss into Nix’s knee, and Nix swears he feels a spark of fire there, too. It mimics the fiery glow of the setting sun as it casts the nursery in the golden warmth of the early evening.
Jamie appears in the doorway with Mari and Rosie in his arms. Nix flashes back to earlier that afternoon, when he’d been thinking about how he could never have imagined how his life would have turned out. Seeing his first love with their children safe in his arms fills his heart to overflowing with joy.
Grayson disappears, and a second later, the sound of water running fills the air.
From somewhere on the other side of the house, there’s a high-pitched shriek followed by the slam of a door. Nix smirks, his imagination already painting the scene: Luca, no doubt, paying the price for his bare-assed sass—and doing ithappily.
Leo takes Mari from Jamie, cradling her with practiced ease, and accepts a kiss just as Rowan steps into the room. Taking Rosie from Jamie withequal care, Rowan follows Grayson toward the bathroom. Bath night is always a favorite—for at least half their pack, anyway.
“What’s going on with Luca?” Jamie asks, scooping up the notebook from where Grayson had left it. He flips through the pages, a soft smile tugging at his lips as he takes in the tiny doodles scattered throughout.
