Chapter 116: YOU’RE ALLOWED TO BE HAPPY TODAY

Chapter 117

Ren

I woke before the sun did, and the first thing I knew was that I could not feel my left arm.

Lumi was asleep on it. She wasn’t beside it, she was on it, with her cheek squashed against my bicep and one leg thrown over both of mine like she had claimed me in the night and meant to keep me.

Her braid had come loose and spread across my chest in a dark tangle, and every breath she took came with a tiny whistle that was not quite a snore, though I knew better than to say that out loud.

I could have moved. A man with any sense would have, because the arm had gone from numb to something closer to dead, and an Alpha who can’t close his hand is not much use to anyone.

But she had slept badly the first half of the night, twitching and turning and whispering Theo’s name into the pillow where she thought I couldn’t hear, and sometime after three she had finally gone heavy and quiet against me. I wasn’t going to be the reason that ended.

So I lay there and watched the ceiling turn from black to gray and counted her breaths.

My phone lit up on the nightstand a little after six. I reached for it with my right hand, slowly, the way you’d lift something off a sleeping cat, and read the screen with one eye open.

*Darren: The man in Montana keeps his records in an office that doesn’t open until tomorrow. Our people are in position, but if we move before then he’ll know we’re coming. Rest today. That’s advice from a friend, and if it doesn’t work, it’s from a man who is tired of watching you not sleep.*

I read it twice with my jaw tight, because every part of me wanted to be in the truck already, and then I read it a third time and knew he was right.

Going in early would only get us a locked door and a man who had time to hide whatever he was hiding. I typed *Understood* and set the phone face down.

"Mm." Lumi didn’t open her eyes. "Your heart went fast."

"Go back to sleep."

"You’re doing the thing where you lie still on purpose." She finally lifted her head, and her hair stuck up on one side like she’d been through a wind tunnel. "How long have you been awake?"

"Since five."

"Why didn’t you move?"

"Your leg was on mine."

She stared at me for a second. "That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard."

"I can’t feel my arm."

"Ren."

"I’m serious. I think it’s gone."

She pushed herself up and took my wrist in both hands, and the moment the blood started flowing again I hissed through my teeth, which made her laugh so hard she had to put her forehead on my shoulder.

She kept rubbing my arm the whole time, saying sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry between wheezes, and I decided right then that a dead arm was a fair price for that sound.

"You’re an idiot," she said when she could breathe.

"Yes."

"A sweet one." She poked my ribs. "But still."

When she’d settled back against the pillows, I told her about the message, and I watched her face change while I did it. The light went out of it, and her fingers curled into the sheet.

"So we just wait," she said. "A whole day."

"Yes."

"While he’s out there." She shook her head. "I can’t, Ren. I’ll climb the walls."

"I know." I turned on my side so I was looking right at her.

"I felt you last night. Even asleep, you were holding onto him so hard I could feel it through the bond. I’m not going to tell you not to worry, because you’d call me a liar, and you’d be right."

"I would."

"But we can’t leave before tomorrow no matter what we do, and if you spend today staring at a wall, Theo doesn’t come home one minute sooner." I took her hand.

"So here’s what I want. One day where we’re just two people who don’t have to be strong for anybody, and if it gets to be too much, you tell me and we stop. I won’t think you’re a bad mother for it, and neither will he."

She was quiet for a long time. I felt the bond tug, a little ache moving back and forth between us like a tide, and then she breathed out slowly.

"If I start spiraling, you tell me."

"I’ll tell you."

"And if you start going all Alpha and silent and brooding, I tell you."

"That’s fair."

"Okay." She wiped under her eye with the back of her wrist. "One day."

"One day," I said, and kissed her knuckles, she smiled at me with her whole face for the first time since the courtroom.

....

I decided to make breakfast, which was my first mistake.

Most of the staff had been told to stay out of the main house until noon.

Neve probably had a hand in that, and so I had the kitchen to myself, apart from the woman sitting on my counter in one of my shirts, swinging her bare feet and eating blueberries out of a bowl.

"You’ve never cooked," Lumi said.

"I’ve cooked."

"Name one thing."

"Eggs."

"Cooked or burned?"

"That’s not the point." I pulled a bag of flour out of the pantry and it slipped, and a cloud of white puffed up over my chest and my chin and most of the floor.

She made a noise like a kettle starting to boil.

"Don’t."

"I didn’t say anything."

"You were about to."

"I’m only sitting here." She popped a blueberry into her mouth, perfectly calm, and her eyes were laughing at me the entire time.

I got the batter mixed, mostly, and I poured the first one into the pan with the confidence of a man who had watched someone else do it once.

It sizzled, and bubbled, and I stood there with a spatula staring at it as though it might explain itself.

*Tell him the pan is too hot,* Astra said, and I heard it as clearly as if she’d been standing next to me.

"Astra says the pan’s too hot," Lumi translated, and the wolf in my chest gave an amused huff that I was not going to admit to.

"Tell her I have it under control."

"She says you don’t."

"Your wolf is a snitch."

"She’s honest. It’s different." Lumi slid down off the counter, coming to stand beside me, and looked into the pan. "Ren, that’s black."

"It’s golden."

"On what planet?" She picked the spatula out of my hand, flipped the thing over, and we both looked at it. It was charred on one side and raw on the other, and shaped a little like Texas.

"I supervised it," I said, and she lost it all over again.

She laughed so hard she leaned her whole weight against me, so I put my arm around her to keep her upright, and we stood there with flour on both of us and my face aching from smiling.

"Move," she said finally, nudging me with her hip. "I’ll teach you. Medium heat, wait for the bubbles, and don’t poke it, whatever you do."

"I wasn’t going to poke it."

"You were absolutely going to poke it."

She stood in front of the stove and I stood behind her with my hands on her waist and my chin on the top of her head, and I watched her flip a perfect pancake with one flick of her wrist. She did it so easily that it annoyed me a little, and I told her so.

"I cooked for several years," she said, still looking at the pan, and her voice didn’t change but her shoulders did. "I got good at it."

I pressed my mouth to her hair. "You cook for people who deserve it now."

"Mhm." She turned her head, and there was a smear of flour on her nose, so I wiped it off with my thumb.

She caught my wrist and kissed the inside of it. I closed my eyes and allowed the sensation settle over me.

She turned fully around, and I kissed her properly, slow and without any hurry, with her hands tugging at the front of my ruined shirt.

That was when the smoke alarm went off.

I had forgotten about the first pancake, which had been sitting on the burner this whole time.

A thin gray line was rising off it, and within three seconds the alarm was shrieking loud enough to rattle the cupboards.

Lumi screamed with laughter, I grabbed a dish towel and started fanning the ceiling like a fool.

Astra and my wolf were both howling in our heads for completely different reasons.

The kitchen door banged open.

Julian stood in the doorway in bare feet and pajama pants, holding a red fire extinguisher in both hands like he was about to storm a castle.

Neve was right behind him in her robe, with a thick binder under one arm that had WEDDING written across the front in marker, and underneath it, in smaller letters, DO NOT TOUCH.

"Is the house on fire?" Neve demanded.