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Roxie finally joined her, wiped the sleep from her eyes, and yawned. “You are up even earlier than I am this morning. And you even took Rosco out for his morning walk before I could go with you. See?” She motioned to the tea Kayla had made and the apple-and-maple baked oatmeal she had just dished out for the two of them. “You so need Nate in your life.”
“I do.”
“Then what are you waiting for? You know he wants you too.”
“I know. It’s going to happen. Okay, so don’t you dare tell him, but I’m planning to ask him the day of the Fourth of July celebration. I just want to make this really special.”
Smiling, Roxie raised a brow. “Unless he asks you first. Then what?”
“Well, it will be a different kind of celebration. An already mated one.” Kayla carried her bowl ofoatmeal and tea to the table. Then she frowned at Roxie as she joined her. “Is there something you know that I don’t?”
They both took their seats at the table, and Kayla drank some of her tea.
Roxie sighed. “That the two of you should have been mated eons ago. You need to prioritize things better. Mating with a hot wolf first and then enjoying the time with him while you both do your jobs.” She reached over and patted Kayla’s hand. “I know you’re cautious about things. Especially about taking a mate. It’s for life, and we live such long lives, but I know you’ve never felt anything for another wolf like you have for Nate.” Then she frowned. “You’re both all right in the physical department, aren’t you?”
“You mean attracted to him physically? Sexually? Do we have unconsummated sex?” Kayla blushed. She couldn’t help herself. Normally, she could talk to her quadruplet sister about anything. Butthat, she realized.
“Yep, on all counts.” Roxie sipped some of her tea.
Kayla tilted her chin up and raised her cup off the table. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
Roxie laughed and spooned up some of her oatmeal. “Then I take that as a big yes. This looks yummy.”
“Tastes yummy too. I wanted to try out something different.”
Roxie took a bite of hers and smiled. “You’re absolutely right. I thought maybe the two of you would sneak into the guest room last night or that you might not be coming home and stay at his place.”
“Nah, we both had too much—”
“Work to do. You will always have too much work to do, Kayla. Prioritize.”
“I am. Fourth of July—lots of fireworks.” Kayla smiled.
Smiling, Roxie shook her head.
“Oh, I meant to tell you about last night. You were already asleep when I came home, but we were pushed off the road by a pickup truck and blew a tire. We thought it was a case of road rage until we saw police going to the scene of a shooting. I should have mentioned that first,” Kayla said when she saw Roxie’s eyes grow big. “The shooting took place at a jewelry store.” She explained the rest of what had happened. “Nicole already knows since she called us when we were driving home.”
“Wow. It’s good you both weren’t hurt, but you should have told me that last night.”
“I didn’t want to wake you. You’re a grouch when that happens, you know.”
Roxie laughed. “Yeah, sometimes. Hurry up and eat. We need to take a wolf run before it gets light out and we have to go to work.”
Kayla laughed. “You’re the one who got up so latethis morning.” They usually got up much earlier so they could get in a wolf run in the mornings. Once the full moon was here, it was an iffy proposition. They had wolf staff who handled the day-to-day operations whenever the siblings had issues with shifting. It was a good thing their pack had a lot of royals—wolves that didn’t have any issues with shifting no matter what the moon phase was because they had so few strictly human roots diluting their genes.
“Hopefully, we won’t run into those two men again or any others on our wolf jaunts. We were both so busy with work yesterday, I forgot to tell you that I had smelled that the black-bearded guy we had seen in the woods had been at the lodge,” Roxie said.
“And the other? The blond guy?”
“No, not him.” Roxie took another bite of her oatmeal.
Kayla drank some more of her tea. “Okay, so the black-haired guy’s a guest and just needed to find a place to talk privately with a friend.”
“That’s what I figured.”
Kayla sighed. Good. They didn’t need any trouble this morning on their wolf run.
They quickly finished up breakfast and cleaned the dishes, then stripped off their clothes in their bedrooms—the heat filling their muscles, stretching, feeling glorious as she turned into her wolf. She and Roxie left their bedrooms and bumped intoeach other on the way down the hall—standard sibling rivalry for both of them—trying to beat each other to the wolf door. It was definitely their ritual, and when their brothers had lived with them at the house, they had waited until the sisters had had their fun. It never ceased to amuse their brothers. Or the sisters. Kayla realized when she and Nate mated, she would miss that with her sister.
