Chapter 30

Chapter Thirty

When I meet my mom for dinner, Mr. Bosley’s murder is all she can talk about. “He must’ve gotten caught up in something shady,” she says, “or why else would he end up at the bottom of the bay?”

I shrug.

“Well, what are you going to do for work?” she asks. “Are they giving you severance?”

“Yes, I have a new job.” I bite my lip. Am I ready to tell her yet?

“Oh, I hope they have good insurance.” Rather than asking a single question about my work, she spends the rest of the meal talking about her upcoming trip to Mexico with her friends, and I don’t have the courage to tell her the truth about the brothers.

Not yet.

Still, I find myself spending more and more time at their place. Most nights I wind up in a cuddle puddle on Leon’s bed, thoroughly spent. There’s very little reason to stay at my own apartment when I’m here working most of the day, and then spend my evenings having dinner with the guys and getting fucked until I’m dripping and utterly spent.

When I get home one night—and their den has started to feel like my own home—I’m surprised to find all the guys there. Eli sometimes has a pottery class, and Jace likes to go to the bar and watch sports, so it’s unusual for all four of them to be there at once.

The moment I’m inside the front door, they all stand up.

“Uh oh,” I say, hesitating in the entryway. They clearly want to talk about something important. The part of me that assumes the worst reflexively curls in, afraid of what they might have to say. What if it’s over already? What if they’ve changed their minds about me?

“We wanted to talk to you.” Leon grabs my hand, and just the feel of him helps settle my nerves a little. He kisses my cheek. “About what you want.”

“What I want?” I’m mystified by the question. I have everything I could want right here, in front of me.

“For your life. For our lives.”

The others have such hopeful, vulnerable expressions that all my nerves settle. Seeing this beautiful home they’ve created, looking at their faces, I think that this is where I belong.

“I want you,” I say with certainty. I know there’s a reason it feels so comfortable, so natural to be with them. This is the place I was always meant to find.

“Even this crazy life we have?” Jace asks, sliding his arm around my waist and bending down to kiss my cheek. “Four bozos with zero business acumen? Who are all just a bunch of big dogs?”

“Yes. Especially that.” I lean into him. “Maybe it won’t make sense to people outside, but it feels perfectly right for me.”

Quinn can’t help himself and runs to wrap his arms around me. He kisses me deeply, and already, fur is spreading across his body.

He’s such a horndog, and I love him.

“Then that room down the hall we started carving out?” Leon says. “It’s yours, if you want it.”

Move out of my shitty apartment that costs too much and live in this wonderful home of theirs? Twist my arm. “Yes. I do.”

Eli’s face relaxes with relief. Jace swoops me up off the ground, kissing me hard, wrapping my legs around his waist.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, rubbing his face on my hair. “Thank you for being ours.”

“Always.” And it’s true—I could never love anyone like I love these four perfect men.

It was an easy decision to ditch my apartment. There was nothing there for me but atrociously high rent, when I could be shacking up with my four mates in their beautiful underground home, instead.

I move into the new room the guys have carved out of the hill, right next to Leon’s, bringing my bed, my desk, and my dresser with me. It’s lovely to have my own space, but still be near all of them. We almost always sleep on the big bed in Leon’s cavern of a room, the four of them curled around me.

Naturally, I get to meet their parents. Mr. Graham acts like any other dad in his sixties, with a bit of a beer belly. His hair is still dark, just like his sons, and thick across his body. I don’t even have to be told to know he’s a werewolf.

“Oh, I’m so happy they found you!” Their mother, Delaney, is sweet as a cupcake and has perfectly round cheeks. “I remember when their dad imprinted on me...” She swoons. “What a whirlwind romance! It didn’t take long to know I was his mate.”

They exchange a kiss, and behind me, Quinn makes a disgusted blech! sound.

If I’m going to do the job they want me to, I need an office, so my first item of business is to clear out the little cabin that acts as the “house” on the property. While the guys and their dad work on clearing away old junk and furniture, then repairing what’s fallen apart over the years, Mrs. Graham helps me pick out a desk, a chair, and plenty of filing cabinets. I didn’t expect how powerful I would feel getting to select what goes where and creating the most efficient workspace for myself possible.

“I knew it,” she says after a while of us assembling the desk from terrible instructions.

“Knew what?” I ask, realizing I’ve put the wrong screw in.

“That they would all bond to one person.” She shrugs. “They’ve just always been close, the type to share. It’s not uncommon for siblings to bond to a single mate and form a pack.” She grins. “I expect I’ll have lots of grandkids.”

A flush takes over my face. The plan is that once the office is up and running, and I’ve figured out the flow of things, I’ll stop taking the pill. We still have to complete our ceremony, but we’re waiting until the next full moon.

Tiff! You going to be done soon?

It’s Quinn texting me. He’s always so impatient for me to come play with him. He likes to roll around with me on the floor until he’s good and worked up, and then he fucks me until I can’t walk.

Eli’s been experimenting with fingering me from behind while I’m bouncing on Quinn. We’re building up to taking him there, and I’m thrilled and nervous. But oh, it feels so good when he does it.

Luckily, my body has adapted pretty well, and I’ve gotten back into running again. Now I jog through the beautiful woods that surround my new home, and sometimes I’ll even catch sight of deer or a fox.

I sit back from the desk project and text a quick reply.

I’ll be back in a bit. Then you can even chase me if you want

Quinn sends me a bunch of puppy dog faces, and I put my phone in my pocket to finish the desk. When it buzzes again, I assume it’s one of the boys. But when I glance down, I find that it’s a call from my mom.

Great.

I contemplate not answering. I haven’t once felt bad about myself since I moved in with the guys, and I don’t like the idea of what lies in wait if I meet with her. But I only hold out on picking up until the third ring because she’ll get annoyed with me if I let her go to voicemail.

“Hey, Mom,” I say, steeling myself for the worst.

“Hi there, honey. Are you feeling better this week?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. “I’m calling because I need to reschedule our usual dinner date. Can we go on Friday? Miriam wants to go to happy hour, and?—”

“Sorry,” I interrupt. “I have a date that night.”

Maybe it’ll get her off my back until I can figure out how I’m going to tell her the truth.

“So it’s going well with the boyfriend, then?” For a second, I’m offended by the strength and volume of her surprise. “That’s great, Tiffany.” Then she pauses, and I can hear her thinking hard on the other end—which never goes well for me. “Is it serious?”

Well, Mom, I just moved in with them. They practically consider us married, and we’re already talking about having kids.

“I guess so,” I answer.

“Then I want to meet him!” She huffs. “Okay, instead of going out on Friday, bring your date to the house. I’ll cook dinner. I need to know all about the man who is so lovely as to be getting serious about my daughter.”

I frown at the way she says it, like I should be blessed to have a boyfriend.

It’s a terrible idea. I could bring just Leon, but that would feel wrong. I’m mated to all of them, and each of them means the world to me.

But I have no idea what Mom will say when she meets them and I have to explain our unconventional situation. I suppose I have to rip the band-aid off sometime, and it’s better she knows now than when I have to explain my baby bump has four dads.

“Okay,” I finally say. “We’ll come over on Friday night. But you’d better make a lot of food.”

“Huh? Why?”

“A lot of food. Just believe me.”

When I hang up, Delaney is watching me. “Your mother?” she asks, as if she could tell just by the sour look on my face. I nod. “You think she won’t approve?”

“Oh, definitely not.” I could laugh. “She doesn’t think I can get one guy, not to mention four.”

Oddly, this earns a mischievous grin from my new mother-in-law. “Then this will really stick it to her.”

I decide then that I like her, and I think I’ll be happy to become a part of their family.

The guys’ eyes are wide when I explain what we’re doing on Friday night.

“You want us to meet your mom?” Leon asks, mystified.

Jace rubs his forehead, brows creased. “All of us? Together? Are you sure?”

I frown at them. “Of course we’re going together. What did you expect?”

Quinn, Eli, and Jace all turn to Leon. “Well, we thought you’d just bring him,” Jace says.

“You really think I’d leave you out?” I pull Jace into a hug, and his hat falls off his head. “But I love you.”

He chuckles, and his hand skates down my back to my ass. “I love you, too. We just thought it would be easier for her to accept one of us.”

They might be right, but I don’t care anymore about what’s acceptable and what isn’t. I almost got murdered by the mob, and my boyfriends are werewolves. My shitty job is gone and my boss is dead. I have nothing to lose, and I don’t want to hide who I love. It’s not fair to them or to me.

“Thank you,” Quinn says earnestly. “For including me.”

“I told Mom to make plenty of food,” I say, “so hopefully she listens.” I kiss Quinn on the lips, and he pulls me in, bending me backwards with the force of his answer.

“I say this calls for a celebration,” Eli says, his body already starting to shift.

“What sort of celebration?” I ask, knowing exactly what he’s going to say.

“It’s time to catch the rabbit.” He steps forward as black chest hair spreads across his body, turning into fine fur. So I turn around and sprint out the door at top speed, and four wolves howl behind me as I dart away into the trees.

When Jace, the fastest of them, catches me, he fucks me with my pants around my ankles.