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I didn’t know how she managed to be so painfully adorable, intimidatingly badass, and stunningly beautiful all at different times, but Ayla definitely slid from perfection-to-perfection multiple times. Maybe it was that witchy quality. Maybe I was just biased. Whatever the reason, I was more certain than ever that my mate would be an excellent mother, through and through.
Was it strange that I missed the kid once her mother picked her up? Probably, but at least teasing Ayla and following her around while she tried to perform healing duties was fun. Some would have been annoyed at me, but my mate seemed begrudgingly amused at my antics.
That all came to a screeching halt when the others returned with Irina in tow. The relief flooding through me was pretty intense, but only half of it was mine. The rest came from my bond with Ayla. I was happy that she seemed to have at least mildly bonded with most of our group. She could pretend to be as icy as she wanted, but she really was a caring person.
“Irina! Good to see you. You look well for yourself.”
“That’s because she was at the ritziest place in this backwater town,” Tristian groused. “Living in a fancy wine cellar that they moved a giant bed into.”
Irina just smiled toothily, for all the world looking like a cat who’d gotten both the canary and the cream. “What? I was their guest, and they wanted me to be comfortable.”
“Who’sthey?” Ayla asked curiously, crossing to the entrance, and looking Irina over more studiously. I'd no doubt that she was trying to find any injury in the errant vampire, but it almost looked like she was checking the older woman out.
“Some old fogie who owns the one mansion in this town.” That was Mad Dog, who seemed much more amused than Tristian was.
“Good on you,” I said, though there was something that was bothering me. “What took you so long, though?”
“Got staked,” she answered bluntly, considering that was pretty terrifying for a vampire.
“If you were staked, how are you here?” That was Ayla, of course. Stakingwaspretty synonymous with killing Irina’s kind, but the vampire patted her side where there was, indeed, a conspicuous hole in her thin, leather armor.
“Gods, let me take care of that,” Ayla said, quickly ushering the woman away to the bathroom, no doubt.
“Thank you, it won’t heal fully until every splinter of the holy wood is out, so I'd be much obliged for your expertise.”
The two headed off together as I sat down with the others and had them give full reports. While it was certainly interesting to hear three different perspectives of the previous days’ events, none of them had any information that stuck out to me as particularly useful or that could be used as a clue. It was disappointing, just not enough to dull the thrill of having my entire team back.
I'd been prepared to continue on without them if it truly came to that, but I was immensely glad I wouldn’t have to. I’d picked my team for a reason, after all, and all of them surviving a surprise ambush by the Shriek’s men in enemy territory was a pretty good sign I'd done a good job selecting them.
The Blairs returned before Irina and Ayla did, with their slightly damp daughter in tow. Seeing the effervescent girl so sleepy and ready to nap after her long day just made me daydream about what it’d be like to be a father in my own right.
I’d resented the idea of having children for a long time, if only because my family nattered at me so much about it. They made an instinct that was intrinsic to being a wolf an annoying, joyless obligation.
But ever since feeling my fated mate all that time ago, my wolf had been much more interested in the idea, but only with her and no one else, naturally, which frustrated him to no end when he couldn’t find her. He'd found her now, though, so naturally my inner beast wanted make pups.
I curbed that line of thought, however, not needing to stink up the place with pheromones that my cryptid teammates could smell or show any visible arousal. We were their guests, and Ididn’t think pointing my erection in their general direction was the appropriate way to show my gratitude or manners.
The rest of the evening passed pleasantly enough, with the Blairs having several baskets of groceries delivered. I’d made sure to give them enough gold for it before I’d set out that morning, but they’d gotten a lot more bang for their buck than I'd expected. Impressive.
We really were lucky that Darla had stumbled across the kind thoughts of the sweet couple. They’d given us a haven in the storm, and I'd be forever grateful for that. Would we have survived without them? Of course. But they’d most certainly made it much easier.
After eating our fill at dinner and socializing with our human hosts for quite a bit, it was time for us to head to bed. Despite the fact that we were all prepared for lighter sleep on our mission, and the day had been relatively slow compared to others, I was pretty sure that all of us would try to rest, especially since we'd be heading out quite early in the morning.
I was all set to go to the couch I’d snoozed on in the den when I found myself being gently pulled to the side by Mr. Blair, his voice low. I didn’t bother to explain to him that with so many shifters in a house, it didn’t really matter how low his voice was, but I thought his thoughtfulness was quite lovely, so I didn’t say anything.
“Hey, I thought we told you, but the couch in the den has a fold-out bed in it that’s pretty comfortable. We didn’t mean to make you think that you had to sleep separately from your missus.”
“My missus?” I found myself repeating blankly before it clicked. Was he talking about Ayla? I wasn’t aware we had been that obvious about things. Huh.
“We’re not prudes here, my friend. We know all of your kind have their own traditions when it comes to love, so it’s not likewe care if you’re married or not.” He let out a small chuckle. “Not our business, you know? But my wife was worried we were being rude.”
“I appreciate you looking out for us,” I said, grinning. Normally I'd be suspicious of these humans since they were just so incredibly kind that sometimes it felt too good to be true, but Darla had confirmed a couple of times to me that she’d spent her entire time with them scanning through their thoughts, and the humans were the real deal. “I'd no idea it was a pull-out.”
“What’s a pull-out?”
Ayla came down the stairs with grand timing, freshly washed and dressed in the night clothes that Mrs. Blair had given her and Darla. They were big on her, considering she was several inches shorter than the matriarch of the Blair house, but they looked quite cute on her.
“Ah, there you are,” I said, a wide smile on my face as I went to her side and put my arm around her waist. Ayla looked so surprised by the action that she just let me guide her down the stairs and toward the den. “It looks like the couch is actually a comfy bed, so now we don’t have to sleep apart, my mate.”
