Page 26 of Wrong Number, Right Gray Wolf

“Wait a second. Don’t you live here now? Where are you going?” She’d gone even further ahead than we realized.

“Being mates doesn’t mean you automatically move into someone’s house,” I said. But even when I did, it didn’t feel right, and she called me out on it.

“Mates are family. Families live together. I can’t believe you two are the grown-ups.”

“Our house only has this tiny space, and sometimes Papa needs to work from home. He doesn’t have enough room here.” I’d thought about this a lot, and there was no way we could all fit in either one of our places.

“He can sleep in your room.” She turned to him. “Or if you wanted to, you could be a fox and sleep in my room.” In some ways, she understood this better than we did, and in other ways, not so much.

“Grown-ups need their own spaces.”

“Then what do we do?” She looked heartbroken.

“Maybe we buy a house?” Stephen suggested.

“But then Miss Caitlin will be far away. She’s family too.”

And that was why her being so far ahead of us wasn’t as great as it should be. There were so many logistics to figure out.

“How about you leave all of this conversation to the grown-ups, and we’ll figure it out.” It was a lot to consider. We needed outdoor space. We needed a study. We needed bedrooms. We needed places we could shift, and Posy was right—we needed to be not too far from Miss Caitlin.

“Fine. I’ll let Daddy and Papa talk about it. But don’t leave without saying goodbye.” She raced to her bedroom.

“She kinda runs things around here, doesn’t she?” he teased.

“I’m glad she does. We were on a train that was pretty much at a stop, and she has us headed toward the future that we want.”

He picked up my hand and kissed it.

Stephen and I talked about the grown-up side of mating such as money, mortgages, and locations. It wasn’t the fun part of this, but a necessary step.

Twenty minutes later, Posy came out with a drawing of a house she said we should buy, one I doubted existed. It had a turret, because apparently all good houses needed one, and a backyard with trees and flowers and a dog. Both my wolf and Stephen’s fox were running there, and a smaller wolf representing herself was by our sides.

She also had our human forms standing in front of the house. Apparently, we’d split into two beings each in her little imagination land.

“I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to find a house just like this.”

“It can be a different house, but it needs the turret.”

“How do you know that’s what that’s called?” Stephen asked, obviously impressed.

“Because my teacher reads books, and the turrets are always where the interesting things happen.”

It made sense.

“Papa.” She stood in front of him, her eyes wide. “I know you can’t live here now, but maybe could you have a sleepover?”

“Okay. But I have to go home and get some things first.”

“That’s okay. Just promise you’ll come back soon.”

“I promise.” And he left and came back an hour later, true to his word.

We ate dinner together, and it felt so much like we really were a family already, and not just because we’d deemed it so but because we were.

I made sure that Posy was already asleep and then walked into my bedroom, where, for the first time since we’d moved in, I would be sleeping with someone.

There had been countless times when I’d taken my wolf form and slept in Posy’s room when she was sick or having a rough time, but never once had I brought an omega to my bed, because never once had any omega been as important as Stephen.