“He worked hard on this,okay? Let him have his moment,” Lain says, and Callum sits there in a confused state as I connect my laptop to the television.
“This all feels very corporate,” Callum says.
Maisie, who’s squished between the two Alphas, wearing one of my shirts, smiles.
“I love a presentation,” she says, and I give Callum a look that says I told you so.
“Now, keep in mind I made this before the whole scent match and spontaneous heat thing.” Frankly, finding out she was my scent match altered my whole life. I don’t care that she didn’t tell us right away. I get why she did what she did. Maisie isn’t impulsive, and she needed all the information. As soon as she knew we were all her scent matches, she did what she thought was best.
“We’ve already cleaned out the spare bedroom. That is your own private space to do with whatever you like along with the nest. However you’d like to decorate or change it, we’re here to make it happen,” I tell her, and her cheeks pink when I mention the nest.
“Maybe let’s make a no fire in the nest rule,” Lain adds helpfully, and Callum reaches over Maisie and smacks him on the thigh. “What? That’s actually a pretty solid rule. This house is like old as fuck.”
“As insensitive as that rule may be it actually isn’t a bad one,” I say, and I’m looking at Maisie.
“Why are you looking at me? Callum is the one who lit that disgusting eye mask on fire,” she says.
This has Lain peppering kisses against the side of her head.
“In the moment it was really scary when you were throwing shit, but now that we’re past it, it was kind of a turn on,” Lain says.
“Shut the fuck up, Lain,” Callum says and I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“We’ll make a list of nest expectations with Maisie’s approval. Now, can I move on to slide two?”
“It’s your presentation,” Callum says.
Lord give me fucking strength.
“Slide two is all about finding what would fulfill you in Scotland. We support you in whatever endeavor you choose. If you don’t want to work”—Maisie makes a distasteful noise—“right. That’s what I thought. We want you to be happy and whatever that looks like in your career, we’re here to support you.”
“But you wouldn’t want to work in London, right?” Callum asks, and I almost completely forgot about her job offer.
“No. I want to stay here. I’m not 100 percent sure what I want to do, but I have some ideas, most of them involve the Heather Beag for now.”
That has all of us puffing up with pride. If she really wanted to work somewhere else, do anything, we would support her without hesitation. But the idea of her working out of town, notsleeping in the same bed as me night after night, makes my stomach hurt.
“Slide three is all about getting your sister to stay and what it would be like if you were both to live here. And about how close knit the community is and how well you already fit in.”
“We’ll need to have a talk with Alan about how friendly he’s being,” Callum chimes in, and this has Maisie biting her lip and turning to him.
“Are you really jealous of Alan?”
“Jealous, no. Annoyed by the old bastard, yes,” Callum tells her and Maisie shakes her head.
“None of you have anything to worry about. I think a pack of four is way more than enough. I’m not interested in adding anyone else. I mean, my heat was manageable, right?” she asks.
“You do not need another Alpha,” I say sternly, and I’m not even mad she baited me into the question.
“Or Beta,” Callum adds in.
“I’m too needy for you to add anyone else,” Lain says, and she rests her head on his shoulder.
“Moving on. The next slide is…Fergus,” I say, looking at Lain, who clearly added the dog into the slide show. I knew I shouldn’t have given him editing access.
“Do you think he’ll accept me as his new mommy?” Maisie asks Lain, and he blinks at her. Meanwhile, I’m adjusting where I stand because the thought of Maisie being a mother is like a whole new realization for me.
“Aye. In fact, I think the sly dog knew you were our scent match all along. I’ll have to ask him about it when he gets home from his grandparents’ getaway.”
