Duke (The Henchmen MC 5)

"Thanks for dropping her off, Malc," she added, giving him a smile. "We'll settle her in."

It was a dismissal, but Malcolm just gave her a warm smile, touched my shoulder with a squeeze in a very paternal way, and moved off, taking the others with him.

"This is weird, right?" she asked, shaking her head. "But we're lucky enough that Lo gave us the medical ward to move into so we don't have to sleep in the barracks. Though, after a couple hours with all the kids begging you to play cars, Barbies, or color, you might decide you want to go live with all the grown ups. Maze," she called as she moved back so I could step in.

"Ferryn, put that Barbie head back on," a woman with long purple hair said as she walked past her, shaking her head a little.

"She doesn't want to be in a pretty pink dress," the girl objected.

"So change her clothes. Don't decapitate her," Maze laughed.

"She doesn't want to be a Barbie at all. She wants to be a dinosaur," she declared in a very 'duh' voice only kids and teens can seem to pull off. And to demonstrate her point, she stabbed the Barbie head onto a long neck dinosaur. "See? Much better. Now she can stomp on things."

"Your daughter is a piece of work," Maze said, but with a warm smile as she made her way to us. She was also sporting a rounded belly, though hers was much smaller than Summer's, obviously just barely out of her first trimester.

Summer held up a hand. "You don't need to tell me. The day before we moved up here, I caught her scratching at her Barbie's face with a scissor. When I asked her what she was doing, she told me that if boys don't need makeup, then girls don't need makeup either. She then chopped all the poor things hair off too."

"I swear sometimes she speaks, and I hear Lo and Janie's words coming out of her mouth," Maze agreed. "Hey," she said to me, giving me a smile. "Welcome to the most efficient form of birth control known to man," she said, waving a hand out toward the room as a whole.

I looked around then.

It was a typical medical-type ward with white sheeted beds all lined up perfectly against the walls, nightstands between them, and a long, wide path in the center. There was a station toward the end with cabinets and a sink and a bathroom in the rear.

But, unlike a typical medical-type ward, there was stuff everywhere. And I meant everywhere. There were Lincoln Logs under the beds. There were Legos in the pathway. There were Barbies sitting around the rim of the sink like a swimming pool. Kids clothes were strewn about, socks here, sweaters there, shoes mismatched and all over. There were various forms of electronics- laptops and e-readers in a corner by a TV that had two different gaming systems hooked up to it.

"I swear to God we're not slobs," Summer said, defending the mess. "But there are only so many times you can throw shoes back in the shoe bin before you have to say f-it and go have a cup of coffee. Even if it is decaf," she said, curling her lip up and I smiled.

"So you know that is Summer. I'm Maze. The nine year-old feminist is Summer's oldest, Ferryn. Fallon is hers too. He's one of the one playing with the Legos. The smaller one," she added, and I looked to see a boy of about six years old who looked just like his daddy knocking down something he had been working on. Beside him was a boy who was likely of the same age, but taller, wider, with the kind of shoulders that would make for a linebacker one day, dark hair, and the honey-colored eyes I recognized immediately. They were Wolf's eyes. "That's Janie and Wolf's son, Malcolm."

My head turned at that, thinking of the man in the hall. "Is he named after..."

"Yeah, Malc has been like a father figure to Janie," Summer said with a smile.

"And then that one playing with... oh, great," she grumbled and I looked over to see a little dark haired, dark-blue eyed three year old drawing on the wall with a crayon. "That's mine. Seth. He's got a little cabin fever lately," she added, walking over to him, taking the crayon and directing him over to the other boys.

"We do get to go outside so the kids can blow off steam and we can get some fresh air or watch the self-defense training. Or even target practice on occasion. But their lives, our lives are just a little bit more restrictive than they used to be. Everyone is... adjusting."

"It won't be too different for me. Actually, I'll probably have more freedom here than I did at the compound," I said, watching as Ferryn brought her dinosaur abomination over to the pool party Barbies.