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"Good." She stood, brushed her hands on her thighs, and reached for the plate of cinnamon rolls. "Now. Tell me more about these honey cakes for this festival. Because if you think I'm letting someone else handle the baking for my son's first big event, you've lost your mind."

I looked at Bayer, and he looked at me, and something settled into place between us—quiet and profound and permanent. Like the last puzzle piece clicking home.

"I love your mom," Bayer murmured later, as we stood on the porch saying goodbye while Mom packed us approximately forty pounds of food to take back. "She's terrifying."

I grinned, knowing everything was going to be okay. "Where do you think I get it from?"

Chapter thirty-four

Bayer

Thanks to Danny’s mom, Gemma, Emery, and the rest of the she-wolves, Danny, Isla, and Raven were having a huge joint baby shower. Danny was the furthest along at five and a half months, and as Dr. Coughran had warned on his last visit, running out of room. We were all trying our best to get him at least two weeks further on. But stopping my mate from doing much of anything including organizing the move into our new packhouse next week was pretty much impossible.

Phoenix’s packhouse kitchen had been declared a no-fly zone for anyone with a Y chromosome since six o'clock that morning, except Emery and Danny, which meant I'd been exiled to the porch with Phoenix, Simeon, Matthew, Draven, Ben, Kaylan, and Rhys like we were a group of wayward teenagers caught sneaking into a party we hadn't been invited to.

"This is my house," Phoenix muttered for the third time, watching through the window as Emery directed a small army of women carrying streamers, balloons, and what appeared to be an entire bakery's worth of cakes through the front door. "Technically, this is still my house."

"Was your house," I corrected, stretching my legs out on the porch railing. "You lost sovereignty the moment Isla started nesting."

Simeon snorted. "He's not wrong." For some reason even she couldn’t explain, Isla’s bear had decided the packhouse’s laundry room was where she was going to nest and give birth, despite having a perfectly comfortable cabin of her own, and three very nice guest suites upstairs. The stern beta commander had been sneaking cushions in there when she thought no one would notice.

From inside, a peal of laughter erupted—Danny's, bright and unrestrained in a way I hadn't heard before everything happened with Christopher. The sound hit me square in the chest, and I found myself smiling like an idiot. Phoenix caught the expression and rolled his eyes.

"You've got it bad, bear."

"Never claimed otherwise."

The truth was, I'd have sat on this porch in a blizzard if it meant Danny got one perfect afternoon. The last few months had been a whirlwind—finalizing the territory agreement, beginning alterations on our new packhouse, managing Torrel's newfound loyalty which had developed when I took out the revenant, and watching Danny's body change in ways that both amazed and terrified me. Five months pregnant with triplets meant he was bigger than most single-pregnancy carriers at full term, and Dr. Coughran had started making house calls twice a week with increasingly stern lectures about bed rest that Danny completely ignored.

Just yesterday I'd caught him on a ladder trying to hang curtains in the new packhouse. A ladder. Five months pregnant with three bear cubs. When I'd pointed out the obvious insanity of this, he'd looked at me with those blue-gray eyes and said, "The nursery needs curtains, Bayer. The babies aren't going to hang these themselves."

I'd removed him from the ladder, curtains and all, and carried him to the couch while he called me a Neanderthal. Then he'd kissed me and asked me to hang the curtains three inches higher than where he'd had them.

I was so in love with him it was stupid.

"We’re starting!" Emery appeared at the door, practically vibrating with excitement. He was wearing a pale blue apron that said PARTY COORDINATOR in glittery letters, and I suspected he'd made it himself. "You can come in now, but you have to sit where I tell you and you absolutely cannot touch the cake table. Simeon, I'm looking at you."

Simeon held up his hands in surrender. "One time. I ate one cupcake, one time."

"It was the display cupcake, and you know what you did."

We filed inside like scolded children, and I stopped short in the doorway. The living room had been transformed. Streamers in soft blues, pinks, and whites cascaded from the ceiling, intertwined with fairy lights that gave the whole room a warm glow. A massive banner stretched across the fireplace reading WELCOME LITTLE ONES with hand-painted bear and wolf cubs. Bouquets of wildflowers sat on every surface, and the food table—good grief, the food table—was a masterpiece of organization that had Stella Jacobson's fingerprints all over it.

Danny's mom stood behind the table like a general surveying her troops, arranging platters with military precision. She'd driven up two days ago with enough food to feed a small country and had immediately taken command of the kitchen, which even Emery hadn't dared challenge. Stella had that effect on people.

"Bayer, sweetheart, come try this quiche," she called, waving me over. "I adjusted the recipe for Danny's nausea—less cream, more herbs."

"Yes, Mom," I replied obediently, because that was the only acceptable response to anything Danny's mother said now, including calling her mom, which I secretly adored. Phoenix caught my eye and smirked. I ignored him.

Three chairs had been set up in a place of honor near the fireplace—more like thrones, really, piled with cushions and surrounded by mountains of wrapped gifts. Danny occupied the center one, looking radiant. His belly was enormous, straining against the soft gray shirt he wore (one of my smaller ones), and he had his feet propped up on an ottoman.

Isla sat to his right, four months along with her and Matthew’s child, her pregnancy bump elegant and contained in a way that Danny's decidedly was not. She looked serene and beautiful, her dark hair piled on top of her head, one hand resting on her stomach while she laughed at something Sylvia was saying.

Raven was perched on Danny's left, barely showing at over six months but glowing with the kind of fierce joy I'd come to associate with new mates. Kasim hovered behind her chair like a Secret Service agent, which Danny had already made fun of twice. Two of the she-wolves and one of the bears wouldn't be able to make it as they were in heat, and I was thrilled for them.

I made my way through the crowd—and it was a crowd; I counted at least fifty people, a mix of wolves, bears, Gemma, and Danny's mom, who held her own among supernatural beings with a composure that continued to astound me—until I reached Danny.

"Hey," I said, bending down to press a kiss to his forehead.