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No- notjusthis girl. His mate. His luna.
Cal holds up a pair of handheld mirrors. “Wanna take a look?”
“Yeah,” I breathe, bouncing up excitedly. He holds one of the mirrors behind me while I take the other from him and bring it up in front of my face, angling it until I can see the reflection of the tattoo across the base of my neck. “Oh my gosh, I love it!” I gush, turning a bright smile on Madd. “What do you think?”
He leans down, grabbing my face in both hands and planting a hard kiss on my mouth. “I fuckin’ love it,” he growls against my lips, nipping them with his teeth.
Cal peels off his latex gloves and starts cleaning up his equipment, disappearing into the back room of his tattoo shop before returning with a bandage to put over my tattoo.
“Keep this on for a couple hours,” he instructs as he applies it to the back of my neck, securing the edges. “Then you should be good to take it off. Use unscented lotion on it a few times a day for the next week to keep the skin moist and the lines should stay nice and sharp.”
“Thanks again, Uncle Cal,” I say, hopping off the tattoo chair. He’s not actually my uncle, but as the Norbury pack’s beta, he runs in the same circle as my parents- I’ve known him since I was born, and he’s always been ‘Uncle Cal’ to me.
He tips his head, flashing me a rare smile. “No problem. Stay outta trouble, huh? I can only imagine what you two have been getting up to since you got back together.”
“Nah, we’re past the teenage mischief,” Madd drawls. He steps up behind me, wrapping his arms around my body and resting his chin on the top of my head. “Though I hear Ace and Seb have been giving you and Alpha Chase a run for your money.”
“They’ll be your problem soon,” Cal replies. “They’re going out for the squad this summer.”
“Dang, I haven’t seen those boys in forever,” I muse, my mind conjuring up the image of the scruffy-haired kids I used to know. They’re as close in age to one another as me and the Kessler twins are, and the two of them have always been just as inseparable as the three of us always were. Maybe even more since they grew up in the Norbury packhouse together as the sons of the alpha and beta.
“They haven’t changed much, they’re just a lot bigger now,” Cal says, his eyes brimming with pride. “If you come back for more ink, maybe Ace will be the one to do it. He’s getting pretty good.”
“Ace did this one,” Madd says, flipping over his forearm and pointing out a skull tattoo with impressive shading. “He DJ’d at Andie’s birthday party, but you probably didn’t recognize him. He and Seb have grown a lot since their wolves came in.”
“I was a little distracted that night,” I mutter, glancing up at Madd.
He winces at the reminder.
Stepping back to pull a few bills out of his wallet, Madd passes them to Cal, thanking him before leaving the shop. Then the two of us climb into his Jeep, heading over to the squad complex.
Though only a couple of weeks have passed since my initiation, it feels like so much has changed. Madd and I have fallen into a somewhat of a routine when it comes to balancing our duties to his pack-ourpack, now- and leading the six-pack security squad, typically spending mornings on pack duties and afternoons up at the complex. While we’re still on alert for the hunters and vetting Javi’s pack to potentially welcome them into our alliance, it feels like life is calmer lately as we navigate our new normal.
It has been shockingly easy for Madd and I to fall back into old patterns with one another. Things between us are better than they ever were, to the point where sometimes I forget that we were apart for so long. Time may have changed us both, but deep down, we’re still the same Sloane and Madd that grew up here side by side, running amok and chasing mischief and falling in love.
We were always endgame.
Madd parks his Jeep in the lot at the complex, and we climb out to head around to the gate, spotting Andie Raines wrestling boxes from the trunk of her car along the way.
“Need some help?” I ask as she struggles to pull a box toward her while balancing another on her hip.
She throws me a glance over her shoulder, sighing in relief when our eyes meet. “Yes, please! My brothers were supposed to be here to do this, but they totally ditched me.”
“They’re leading up gun training today,” Madd says as he relieves Andie of the box clutched to her hip, hauling it up into his arms. “Don’t think that counts as ditching you.”
She rolls her eyes, tossing her red hair over a shoulder flippantly. “Semantics.”
I shake my head, giggling as I reach into her trunk to gather another one of her boxes. “Why didn’t you call Tristan? He would’ve come help.”
She shrugs. “Didn’t even think of it.”
Madd and I exchange a glance, but Andie just blows past it, grabbing ahold of a box and stepping away from the bumper of her car. “Have you guys seen Lo around at all today? She’s not up in the IT hub. I feel like she’s been a ghost the past couple weeks.”
“She’s been working on gathering intel,” Madd provides. “I actually need to get ahold of her, see if she has anything new for us on Javi’s pack.”
Andie steps around her car to head for the gate to the squad complex and Madd and I follow suit, all of us clutching her moving boxes in our hands.
“Think we’ll let ‘em in?” Andie asks.
