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“We should probably move on to the part of my plan we skipped earlier.”
I chuckled. “I like that idea.”
* * *
We didn’t puton the clothes Shane had brought. Instead, we grabbed the extra blanket, wrapped ourselves in it, with me seated in front of Shane, my back to his chest, his legs in crisscross applesauce under my ass, and his arms around me.
I had never imagined a moment like this, with Shane or anyone else, and it baffled my mind. Being here, like this, with him, holding sticks with our marshmallows over the small campfire he had lit, was amazing. I could stay like this forever.
Well, we could definitely alternate between having sex and snuggling like this with s’mores. It would be even more perfect and even the faint pain I felt from my first time couldn’t ruin that.
I glanced around the flames from the fire casting moving shadows over the trees and the fissure in the rock formation. I could hear crickets, and an owl in the distance.
Otherwise, it was just us.
“How did you manage this?” I asked. My marshmallow turned golden and I pressed the chocolate and crackers around it. “Aren’t wolves and vampires scouting the forest?”
Shane nodded, his chin brushing on the back of my head. I took a bite of my s’mores and turned slightly to look at him. “They are, but tonight, I told them to avoid this area. No explanation needed.”
“No one seemed curious?”
“They sure did.” Shane’s marshmallow was black by the time he took it out of the fire. The way he liked it. Go figure. He assembled his s’more. “But I didn’t care. Though, of course, Killian knows about this outing. Lavinia too. I had to make sure someone knew where to find me, just in case. They’ve known about us for a while now, and I trust them.”
With my mouth full, I nodded. I swallowed. “They seem like good people. Or vampires.”
“They are. I owe them a lot for rescuing me, and here they are helping me still.” He took a big bite of his s’more.
“That’s what good friends are for, isn’t it? Or so I've heard.” I had never had any real friends, other than my mother, Rue, and Minsi. Maybe Roman could be considered a friend. But they weren’t my age or my peers. Besides them, I had had no one.
Shane swallowed and frowned. “Lavinia told me Serge gave you a hard time this afternoon.”
I tensed. Had she kept her word and not told him what had happened? “Hm, yeah.” I shrugged, waiting for him to ask me more about it, about the shadows. I waited a few seconds, but he didn’t say anything. “I don’t think we should bother with him. He won’t change, no matter what we do.”
“When I promote your rank, he’ll have to respect you.”
“But that won’t be true respect. It’ll be forced, and he will hate me even more.” I ate the rest of my s’more, chewed, swallowed. “I’ve been thinking about the ranking thing. When you promote me, won’t someone else become the omega?”
“I’ve been thinking about that too. I’m trying to devise a system where there’s no omega. Maybe the alpha, the betas, the warriors, and then the rest of the wolves have the same rank. No one needs to be at the bottom.”
“Can you do that? Isn’t that something innate to wolves? There always has to be an omega.”
“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out. Maybe we’ll need Lavinia’s help to make a new ranking system work?” He shrugged and put the last of his s’mores in his mouth. We had already eaten about five each. I felt full and sweetened all over.
“Who was omega before my family?” I asked. I had never considered this.
“Roman’s father’s family.”
My eyes rounded. “Really? He never said anything.”
“I guess once someone finally digs themselves up from that position, they don’t want to talk about it.”
“It isn’t that bad,” I said, on the defensive. Shane lifted an eyebrow at me. “Okay. It was. It is.”
“Raika, I want to tell you why your family was demoted to omega.”
My gut clenched. “I changed my mind about that. Maybe I don’t want to know.”
Shane shook his head. “It’s not bad. Look, when they were teenagers, my father loved your mother.”
