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Graham and Jude could hardly contain their enthusiasm. “Are you serious?” Jude asked, nearly falling over in stitches from his erratic and excited movements.
“You know if you’re doing it to access the Fang District, you don’t need to worry, right?” Graham added. “We’re happy to have you here, Grimmaw or not.”
“This is my first choice, as a free woman,” Delilah said, chuckling. “There’s nothing I’d rather do than pitch in to help this pack. You gave me a new life, and I can never stop thanking you. And I’m so sorry for what you had to do to defend me,” Delilah added.
“We’d do it again if we had to. Right?” Graham asked, now looking down at Jude. Jude nodded, smiling timidly.
“Oh my god!” Miranda shouted. “We’re going to be pack sisters?”
Delilah looked over her shoulder, uncertain of when Miranda had joined them, and cocked her head to the side. She had never even heard her approach. There were some things about Miranda that Delilah would never understand.
“You know you can’t keep secrets from me, Del,” Miranda said, smiling. “I’ll always be watching.”
“Creepy,” Jude said.
“Please,” Miranda contested. “After pinning her ex-boyfriend to the ground for her, I’m allowed to creep.”
Following the events of that day, Graham and Jude decided some form of celebration would be necessary, but the occasion was marked with somberness. They were relieved that there had been no deaths on their end, but it had all felt so unnecessary. And in Jude’s words, “It never felt right to celebrate a death.”
They settled on having a pack dinner and an evening run. Delilah could still see the blood on the brick tiles of the plaza; it would take time to clean up.
The pack dinner was hastily thrown together with leftover ingredients from their last dinner. The last thing Graham or Jude wanted to worry about was food preparation, but it was still entirely delicious. Delilah wasn’t even sure how Jude had stored steak for a week so it was still so delicious, but it was as fresh as the night she’d first tasted it.
Even though Graham and Jude were asked to recount the details of the fight numerous times, and they embellished the details every time, Delilah could see their underlying sadness. The things they didn’t explain and the parts they left out were what they kept close to their hearts, the things that would haunt them still.
Grimmaw pack had sent a message, not just to Silver Paw and Deacon Claw, but to all other packs that the Fang District was a safe haven. Anybody who challenged that again would be met with the might of the Grimmaw pack.
“We have an announcement to make, and I’m sure you’ve all heard,” Graham said, standing atop one of the tables and speaking to the modest gathered crowd. “Normally we save these announcements for the night of the full moon, but Delilah’s had enough tradition for one night.”
That comment was met with lighthearted, albeit slightly uneasy laughter from the packs.
“We’ve asked Delilah to join the Grimmaw pack, and she’s accepted!”
She heard a pride in his voice that he couldn’t betray. Jude smiled widely at her, and the audience cheered much louder this time as Delilah blushed.
The entire time she had been in the city, it had never quite felt like home. Something always seemed unfinished, lingering on the horizon, waiting for her attention. It had kept her from making permanent decisions as she was always afraid of having to uproot herself again.
But she realized that was gone now. She felt truly free to make her own life here, away from the prying eyes of her unsettled past.
She decided to join in the applause. It felt weird, clapping for herself, but she was clapping just as much for the sacrifices and love of the people around her. She was proud to be a Grimmaw.
At the dinner’s conclusion, with the stars shining brightly down upon them, Graham and Jude both picked her up in their arms and carried her to the park. She could feel herself melting in their grasp as they both planted a kiss, first on her cheeks, and then passionately on her lips.
And with that, she remembered what they had all been fighting for—this moment of brief, untampered bliss, a herald of all the joy to come.
Chapter 33
Delilah
Asuddensurgeofworry shot through Delilah as Jude and Graham walked into the cafe. It was only midday and wasn’t like them, so her first thought was that something was wrong. “What is it?”
“What’s what?” asked Graham, walking toward her and planting a kiss on her cheek. That act alone, plus the fact she could smell nothing other than their gorgeous scents told her she was worrying about nothing.
“Nothing, I just thought something must be wrong. What are you guys both doing here?” She took a breath. “Sorry, I’ll start again. What I meant was I thought you’d be at work.”
“Well, usually we are,” said Jude, beaming. “But it’s a year today since you landed on our doorstep, so we thought we’d mark the occasion.”
“Oh,” she said, surprised that they would even remember such a thing. She hadn’t. If anything, she wanted to forget everything about what happened before she came here. She was happy now, happier than she’d ever been and felt safe and secure with her alpha and beta, despite the reason she ended up in their territory in the first place.
