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Rico laughed as he climbed out of the truck. “Holy shit, you should see the look on your face right now. You’re Alpha red, except it’s all over. Fucking dork.”
He was still laughing at me as I followed him inside.
Kelly was asleep by the time we returned. The pack was spread out through the house, and no one said a word about the Mylar balloons I was struggling to fit through the front door.
They didn’t need to.
I could see the amusement on their faces.
Rico shoved me toward the stairs. “We’ll fix the food. Get your ridiculous ass up to Kelly. I’ll let you know when it’s ready. It was my turn to help with food for Sunday Tradition, anyway.”
I nodded gratefully before heading upstairs.
Elizabeth was the only one still in the room with Kelly, sitting in a chair next to the bed. She looked up at me when I walked through the door. She grinned at me, wild and beautiful. “What have you got there?”
I kicked one of my boots at the floor. “Just some balloons. The woman at the grocery store said that people like balloons when they’re sick.”
“So you decided to buy all of them?”
“I didn’t know which ones to get.”
“One says ‘Happy Birthday.’”
I groaned. “I may have gone overboard. Rico was pissed off when we had to try and shove all of them into the truck.”
“I think Rico likes to bitch about things regardless. It’s a personality trait.”
I set the plastic weight tied to the balloon strings on the desk before handing her the plastic bag in my other hand. She looked inside. “And you seem to have bought every single cold remedy in existence.”
“I just wanted to make sure,” I muttered. I kneeled next to the bed. Kelly was sleeping, nose twitching as he sniffled. He looked warm, and Elizabeth handed me a cool cloth. I dabbed his forehead carefully, not wanting to wake him.
“He’ll be all right,” she said.
“I know.”
“Do you?”
I shrugged.
“Well, you should listen to me, then, and believe me when I tell you so. I am a mother, after all. I know quite a bit about such things.”
“He’s never been human before,” I reminded her.
“No, I don’t suppose he has. But I’ve had humans in my pack.” Her smile faded slightly. “I’ve taken care of the sick a time or two.”
“If it wasn’t for me, he wouldn’t even be like this.”
“Perhaps.” She touched my back before withdrawing. “But I think you’ll find it doesn’t matter to Kelly. Or at the very least, he thinks it’s a small price to pay. And one he would pay again and again.”
“Doesn’t seem that small to me.”
“What if the roles were reversed?”
I looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“What if Kelly had been taken instead of you? What would you have done to get him back?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t know the person I was. I can’t say what I would have done.”
