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“Oh,” she says. “Oh, Darlene. That is... that is something.”

It is something. It is absolutely something. Darian had been at it for forty minutes this morning. I’d heard him from the kitchen, the low, frustrated muttering, the sound of a hairbrush being set down and picked up and set down again, Darlene’s patient little voice saying no, Daddy, the other way. And the result is...

“Three ponytails,” Darlene announces, spinning so they can see all sides. “One on top and two on the bottom and one of them is upside down.”

“It’s not upside down,” Darian says from behind me. His voice carries the particular flatness of a man who has already lost this argument and knows it. “It’s... it’s a stylistic choice. It’s avant garde.”

“It’s upside down,” Damian says from the kitchen table, not looking up from his eggs and oatmeal.

Alpha Rylan makes a sound. It starts low in his chest and builds, and by the time it reaches his mouth, it’s a full, rolling laugh. The kind that comes from the diaphragm, the kind that makes his shoulders shake and his silver white eyes crinkle at the corners. Luna Selena’s laugh joins his, higher, brighter, and Alpha Rylan sets the basket down on the porch rail so they both can press their hands over their mouths.

“It’s fine,” Darian says.

“It’s avant garde,” I repeat, turning to look at him. His jaw is set. His ears are red. The particular shade of red that only happens when a man who has killed six rogues in a single night has been undone by a four year old’s hair.

“It’s a disaster,” he mutters.

“It’s beautiful,” Darlene corrects, and she spins again, the upside down ponytail swinging like a pendulum. The sound that comes out of all of us, Darian included, finally, reluctantly, the corner of his mouth giving way, fills the little house like something that’s been missing from its walls.

Luna Selena wipes her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing...”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“...at the situation. Which involves you. Heavily.”

Alpha Rylan picks the basket back up. “I brought breakfast. Pastries, fruit, coffee that will change your life. Can we come in?”

“Please.”

I step aside, and they move past me into the house. Alpha Rylan ducks slightly under the doorframe, Luna Selena’s hand finding the small of his back the way it does without thinking. The space that felt perfectly adequate ten minutes ago suddenly feels like a dollhouse with two Lycans standing in it.

Alpha Rylan sets the basket on the kitchen table, and the smell hits me before he’s even opened it. Butter, sugar, something dark and rich that makes my stomach do the thing it’s been doing for six weeks where it doesn’t ask permission before it wants something.

“Croissants,” Alpha Rylan says, pulling them out one by one like he’s performing a magic trick. “Chocolate, almond, plain. Fruit from the greenhouse. The strawberries are mine, don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. And coffee.”

He produces a thermos the size of my forearm. “Ethiopian. Single origin. I roast it myself.”

“You roast your own coffee,” Darian says.

“I roast my own coffee.”

Darian looks at me. I look at Darian. Neither of us says anything, because what is there to say.

Luna Selena pulls out a chair and sits, and the motion is so casual, so un Alpha Luna like, that it takes me a second to recalibrate. She’s wearing jeans. Actual jeans. And a sweater that’s seen better days. Her hair is down, still damp at the ends from what I’m guessing was a very recent shower, and she reaches for a croissant without ceremony and tears it in half.

“Eat,” she says, pushing the other half toward me. “Both of you. The kids can have whatever they want, there’s more in the basket.”

Damian is already reaching. Darlene has abandoned her avant garde hair in favor of a strawberry the size of her fist.

I sit. Darian sits. The coffee goes into mugs, real mugs, ceramic, with no chips, and Alpha Rylan pours it the way a man pours something he loves, slow and careful. The first sip is...

“Oh,” I say.

Alpha Rylan’s mouth curves. “Yeah.”

“That’s not coffee. That’s... what is that?”

“That’s coffee.”