Chapter 16

Riley

“There is one tradition you might like.” I was very proud of myself for not stiffening when Eloise brought that up one morning. Candy was nursing one of the babies and shot me me a meaningful look, as if making clear she’d put my son in his bassinet and throw down if required.

She wasn’t.

“Oh?”

A strange kind of serenity had fallen over me as I settled into the rhythms of motherhood. Probably because at this stage we were all working as a well oiled machine. As I fed the babies, someone was always there, to make sure I had a glass of water or some food, a pillow tucked under me if we were still in bed. I experienced this quiet, this peace, as each child fed and then was whisked away to be burped, have a nappy change or to be cuddled close and soothed. We were truly becoming a pack.

“You never got a chance to witness due to… the misunderstanding.”

I nearly snorted at the way my mother in law phrased it. Candy did and noisily. Eloise looked befuddled by my best friend’s reaction, but then forged on.

“Even if we’d known what you would become, you wouldn’t have seen it. You were a baby yourself when the other alphas were born, or just a twinkle in your dad’s eye.”

I shifted my son onto my shoulder, patting him softly, his little squirms, his grunts feeling like they filled my heart.

“An omega can’t shift for the entire pregnancy, as you know,” Eloise continued. “In some it can be hard, to divorce yourself from the other half of your soul.” Her hand slid over and took mine. “You are more than a mother, my son’s mate. You are more even than your work. You are an omega, but that’s only half of you. On the first full moon after an omega gives birth, you reclaim that part of you, the wild part. The bit that wants to run over hill and dale with the wind in her fur.”

If you’d told me Eloise would wake up and try to make me dissatisfied with my current state, I’d have told the guys to head her off at the pass, redirect her attentions to the flower beds that were in desperate need of a weed.

Instead, I just blinked.

For just a moment, we shared something that couldn’t really be put into words. Candy shifted restlessly beside me, sensing that something was going on, but not sure of what.

Eloise was right.

I loved my babies with a fierceness that took my breath away and sometimes it was hard even to relinquish them to their fathers, but right now I remembered I loved that too. Running on four feet, not two, the wind playing across my fangs. When I was in fur the world was a simple place. The colours dulled, my instincts took over, taking me where I needed to be.

And I was just about to reclaim that side of me.

At the next full moon, we had a bunch of people clustered outside on our deck while I stood here in a bathrobe. I watched them, watched the moon rise in the sky, then turned when Fen appeared at my shoulder.

“Ready?”

“No.”

I’d forgotten this, that hesitancy. A lifetime of being told I wasn’t an omega sometimes had me getting in my own head.

“Yes you are.”

He grabbed my hand and rubbed his thumbs over the knuckles, back and forth in a soothing rhythm, like we used with the kids and I understood how it worked. It brought my focus back to the room, to him.

“Yes, I am.” He blinked as I shoved the robe off, staring at my naked body. “But I’m going to shift here. If I get stuck, if I can’t take fur?—”

“You can…”

He had a whole speech prepared, but in the end neither of us needed to worry, because he was right. Letting the wolf come forward was like letting out a long yawn. It helped something relax in me, then out she came.

“Beautiful girl.”

My mates clustered closer. Blake had a baby on each shoulder, as did Haze, but not for long, because we’d brought some very special people here today for this event. Eloise and the dads were present, as was Candy, but more than that. Sage and her pack were dressed very smartly and looking around a little bemused. Charlie was watching everything with soft eyes, even as her mates stood at her back, tense and at attention. It was Lily and her guys I trotted towards, because standing in the centre of them was Evie. She held out a hand, luring me closer and the wolf knew what she was. Cub. Alpha. Pack , that’s what ran through her mind. She giggled as I sniffed at her palm.

“It tickles.”

“You’ll do the same when you grow up, kiddo,” Ben told her.

Right now wasn’t her time, it was mine and a need rose along with the moon. I let out a long howl, no doubt spooking the cows in the neighbours’ paddock, right before I took off. Shouts turned to howls as our children were placed in the care of their moon guardians, and then I heard the sound of their paws thudding the ground in hot pursuit. My stride lengthened, my claws raking the earth, throwing up the moist, rich scent as I passed. It didn’t mask my own though, because as I raced across stretches of grass and wove my way through trees, they found me. A black wolf, another, then a grey, one by one my pack formed around me and that’s when I saw the wisdom of some of the old rituals.

It was easy to get lost in motherhood. The children were so tiny, so vulnerable, they needed every single thing we had just to keep them alive. We could sacrifice our own needs for a while until they got bigger an more independent, but underneath that gift lay a truth. Me, Riley, wolf, scientist, omega, mate, I was all those things and now, I was a mother. I ran up to the crest of the hill beside our dam and howled this to the moon.

Everyone else had taken the quicker route, walking up the path that led to the dam and now they waited by the water. A single wail had my paws pacing back and forth restively. A bark from Fen’s wolf had us all surging forward. Because while we were the heart of the Taylor pack, there were more members. Our friends, our families, the people we’d tried to help, they clustered together to wait for us to induct the newest members.