“What will you do with them when we get back?” Marlowe asks.
“Well, I suppose it will be bittersweet,” Romulus answers as we walk quickly toward the meeting spot. My skin has begun to itch from the inside out, but I don’t want to stop. We are all anxious to reach Lydia and the pups. None more so than me. “My brother’s pack cannot be ungoverned now. I will have to help them cope with the death of their alpha. Whether or not they liked Remus makes no difference, the loss of an alpha is difficult for pack members to deal with. They will be emotional and unstable for a little while, and easily provoked. They will need a strong and steady hand to guide them into a new formation, a new kind of pack than what they have been used to. I’ve done that very thing many times before with many other packs. I can do the same now.”
“Are you saying that you’re going to leave?” I ask with a very audible tone of worry in my voice.
“Not right away,” Romulus says, “and only for a little while. As soon as I can get the pack stable, then I will return.”
“What about Lydia?” I ask. I don’t want them to leave, either of them. Not now, not so soon after we’re supposed to be safe.
It doesn’t matter how many shifters surround us on the hill. I don’t think I’ll ever feel completely safe unless we’re all together under the same roof.
“She can make up her own mind about it. She can come with me to help get the pack settled, or she can stay behind with all of you. Knowing Lydia, she’ll choose to do a little of both.”
“What about our pack?” Kaleb asks. “What will our pack do while you are away?”
Romulus smiles and looks over at Rory.
“I think you know the answer to that,” he says, without skipping a beat. “Rory will lead the pack until I get back. As
he was always destined to do.”
“Wait, what?” Rory says as he looks at his dad with wide eyes. He stops in his tracks, all of us slowing for the first time since we’ve set out to retrieve the last members of our fleeing family. “You’re putting me in charge of the pack?”
“Temporarily, yes,” Romulus says as he puts his hand on Rory’s shoulder. “You’ll do a great job, Rory. Of that I have no doubt.”
“What if I have doubt?” Kaleb jokes.
Marlowe smacks him against the side of his arm and I laugh.
At the sound of my laughter, there’s sudden motion in the trees ahead.
Almost immediately, before any of us has the chance to stop and sense out who it might be, Lydia steps out from behind a massive oak.
She hadn’t even made it to the first mountain ridge.
Her surprise to see us is almost immediately overwhelmed with the relief on her face as she reads our emotions.
She runs toward us with the pups in their carriers and in her arms. She reaches Romulus first since he’s standing slightly ahead of us, and as much as I am dying to see my babies, I give them the minute that they both deserve. Lydia cries and buries her face against Romulus’ shoulder.
I really don’t think that she expected to see him alive again.
He holds her and rubs the back of her head, and when she lifts her face to his, he kisses her. I can see one of the baby’s faces peering out from above her arm between them.
My own heart aches to embrace them the same way.
Now, at last, there’s no reason for us to ever be apart again.
But Lydia gave up what might have been her last moments with her husband in order to keep my babies safe. And Romulus killed his brother in order to do the same.
The very least that they have earned is this moment of embrace. After they have held each other for a minute or so, and are convinced that they are both okay, Lydia walks toward the boys and me. She looks at each of her sons and hugs each one and plants a kiss on each of their cheeks. When she gets to me, she uses her free hand to reach for mine as she holds my daughter in the other arm.
“Thank you,” she says as she starts to hand me the tiny girl she holds. “You kept my babies safe.”
“I didn’t actually do anything at all,” I say. “I haven’t even turned yet.”
“Oh, but you did,” she smiles. “You do everything for them just by existing.”
Rory, Marlowe, Kaleb, and I hold our pups together as we stand pressed up against each other in a snug circle with the pups between us. The babies gurgle and coo as if nothing was ever amiss, and we kiss them all and laugh as they smile and look around.