Sophie laughed. That did sound like the Chrissy she knew. “Fair enough,” she said. “I won’t mention it. But I’m glad you told me.” Sophie had struggled at times to find common ground with Chrissy, who was always so standoffish. It was wonderful to know that her friend cared so much about her experience.
She turned her attention to the four babies lying on the ground before her. “How are they?” she asked Cam.
“They’re doing great,” he assured her. “There haven’t been any problems at all.”
“They’re adjusting all right to being out in the open like this?”
“Oh, they can’t tell the difference between this and the cave,” Cam assured her.
“But you must feel the weather more severely out here,” Sophie said anxiously. “And we had that storm a couple of nights ago.”
“It wasn’t a problem, I promise,” Cam said. “Most of them slept right through it. Didn’t notice a thing.” He grinned. “They sleep through the night pretty well for babies so young. I wonder if that’s a shifter thing?”
Sophie’s mind had stuck on something else. “You said most of them slept through it?”
Cam nodded. “Caleb was awake,” he said. “But you know how he is. He’s more observant than the others. Sometimes I feel like he’s months older than they are.”
Caleb. He was Sophie’s oldest child—if only by seconds—and in the months since his birth, it had become increasingly clear to both Sophie and to her alphas that he was likely to take the role of alpha in the new generation. He seemed astonishingly aware of everything going on around him, as though he was already trying to drink in as much information as possible in order to position himself as an effective leader.
Which was a crazy thought. He was only months old.
Still, it fascinated Sophie to watch him.
“Where is he now?” she asked Cam.
“With Burton, I believe,” he said. “He almost never sleeps during the day. I suppose I can’t blame him. This is so different from anything he’s experienced so far in his life, and he’s eager to take it all in.” He grinned. “The rest of them don’t even seem to know anything different is going on, but Caleb’s definitely picked up on the fact that something is happening.”
“He’s brilliant.” Sophie bent over to kiss the foreheads of the four children in front of her. “And the others are doing all right? Everyone is okay?”
“Everyone is fine,” Cam said. “You’re not supposed to be worrying about childcare right now, okay? We’ve got them. This is your celebration. Go out there and get something to eat. The food smells amazing.”
“You should go before me,” Sophie protested. “You’ve been waiting. I can watch the kids.”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Cam said with a laugh. “The alphas have me under strict orders. I’m not to leave this tent until Robby comes to take over baby-minding for me. I can’t surrender my post to you. Go on.”
Sophie laughed with him. “Fine,” she said. “I’ll go. But I’m coming back later.”
She gave her children one last lingering glance, then ducked out through the tent flap and went over to Burton.
He was holding Caleb so that the baby faced outward, away from his body, and Sophie was unsurprised. Caleb rarely tolerated being held in a position that didn’t allow him to see what was going on around him. She waved as she approached, kissed her son on the top of his head, then stood on her toes to kiss Burton. “This is amazing,” she told him, raising her voice enough so that Chrissy, who happened to be standing nearby, could hear her words of praise. “I can’t believe you guys put all of this together for me. It’s wonderful.”
“Come get some food,” Burton said. He wrapped an arm around her waist and led her over to a series of flat rocks that had been worn so smooth that Sophie could only imagine they had come from the river itself. On each rock, something good to eat had been laid out. And sure enough, at the center of the whole arrangement was a roasted turkey.
She pointed. “Where on earth did you get that?”
“That was Ryker’s idea,” Burton said. “He thought we ought to have something really special for the mating feast, and he got it into his head that a turkey would be the right answer. The whole time you and I were together, he was ranging around the forest, looking for a bird. We all thought he was crazy—but apparently, right before he came to the cave to take my place, he found it. Marco was prepping it to cook when I got back.”
“There are no turkeys around here,” Sophie said, utterly bemused.
“Well, there must be,” Burton said. “I thought he was fighting a losing battle too, but I guess I should have learned by now never to bet against Ryker.”
“That’s true,” Sophie said. “I guess if Ryker was determined to bring home a unicorn, he would probably find a way to make it happen. A turkey really shouldn’t surprise me at all.”
“Have some,” Burton said.
Sophie picked up a few pieces of meat and began to eat. Though she had spent most of her life as part of a pack that adhered to human traditions and lifestyles—like eating with utensils—she had quickly adjusted to the ways of the wild. It felt natural, now, to eat with her hands, and just as natural to fill a pocket of her dress with the nuts and berries her alphas had collected so that she could carry them around with her and eat as she went.
She moved to the fire and took a seat on one of the available rocks. Robby, one of the pack’s betas, was returning from the river with woven reed bowls caked with dried mud, each of them filled with water, and he handed one to Sophie so that she could have a drink.
Ryker found her and took a seat on the rock beside her. “What do you think?” he asked quietly.
“This is the most amazing thing I could have asked for,” she said, leaning against his shoulder and gazing around the clearing at all the people she loved. “I wouldn’t have thought this ceremony could be any better, but you surprised me.”
“We love you,” he said, giving her a little squeeze. “Everything we do is for you, Sophie. Never forget that.”
Chapter Four
MARCO
It was impossible to believe, sometimes, that this was really his family. That he had been so lucky.
Marco hadn’t ever expected to find himself a part of a pack. Unlike most of the rest of his family, he hadn’t begun his life that way. The others had belonged to packs and had broken away (or in Sophie’s case, been exiled). They had all lived in the south, and they had come north looking for the life of a feral wolf.
But Marco’s story was different. He had always lived up here in these lands. He had always belonged to the north.
Growing up, it had been Marco and his father. He had no memory of his mother, and if he had had siblings, littermates, he hadn’t known them either. He supposed he had probably been a single birth—there weren’t many omegas in this part of the world, so his mother had probably been a beta—but that wasn’t the kind of thing he and his father discussed.
His father had been a practical man, not an overly affectionate one. He had taught Marco how to hunt and fish, how to nest down and stay warm in the winter, how to avoid predators. In those days, when Marco had been young, when his father had been alive, these woods had been full of bears, and he had never been able to feel completely safe.