Chapter 30

"Teddy! C'mere a second!"Jack called.

I was busy painting, so it took me a second to answer him. Talia told me once when we were cuddling in bed that she thought the compound was cold. She said she was only warm when she was with me and Leo. One thing that made it cold to her was the colors, so after asking permission from Aiden, we decided to repaint. The living room had something called an accent wall in olive green, and the other walls were something called cream. It looked white to me, but Esme said it was off white. I didn't know what that meant, but it didn't really matter. The colors made Talia happy, so that's what we went with.

Leo wanted dark blue walls in his room. Talia worried it'd be too dark and make him grumpy, so we brightened it up with some yellow and white, and they were both happy with that. I stuck little star stickers on the ceiling when he was at school, and he was real happy about it, so I felt pretty good about my contribution. The bathrooms needed to be repainted too, but I hadn't gotten to that yet. I was finishing up our bedroom. It still made me smile every time I said ‘our'. It was ours. I was all moved in, I got a job at Corey's bar as a bouncer, and I spent every night with Talia in my arms. This was our home. They were my family. And I couldn't be happier.

"Teddy?"

"Comin'!" I called out. I had to finish this spot, or it'd look weird later. I quickly finished what I was doing and hopped off the step stool. I didn't need too much of a boost, I could reach pretty far, but the ceilings were high and there were some hard to reach spots. I grabbed the towel from my back pocket, wiping my hands as I headed to the entryway. Talia was with Leo today for school. He didn't need her to sit with him all day anymore, but they were going on a hike, and since Carmen was still recovering from having a baby, Talia volunteered to go with Rhea and Sariah to help out. I stayed behind to finish up the bedroom so it would be dry by the time we went to bed.

Jack was waiting for me and when I came around the corner, so was Christian and Derek. He smiled brightly when Christian held up an envelope.

"Results are in."

I sucked in a sharp breath. Turns out, our pa's had the same last name. We couldn't be certain on if we were related, since they were estranged and neither one told their mates about each other, so Aiden offered to do a DNA test for us. We'd both been waiting on pins and needles for the results.

"And? What's it say?"

Jack patted his legs like a drum roll while Christian opened it up and showed us. "You're cousins. Your dads were brothers, just like we thought."

My breath whooshed out of me in a rush and I beamed, my strides eating up the distance between me and Derek. We clapped each other in a rough hug and he looked as overjoyed as I felt. I remembered him telling me his family was scared of him. Even his own mama was afraid of him. I already had plans to introduce him to mine. Mama didn't care about size. If I told her she was safe around him, she'd be right as rain and happy to meet him.

"Liv's gonna be hell to live with now," Jack grumbled to Christian. "She loves being right on a whole other level."

Derek snorted and finally released me. "She does. But she's pregnant and you gotta deal with it. I'm gonna tell her when I get back. You comin' to dinner tonight?" he asked me hopefully.

"Should be, yeah. Just gotta finish painting. I wanna surprise Talia."

"Is that why there's purple on your nose?" Jack asked with a smirk.

I rubbed it, and sure enough, a smear of purple smudged across the back of my hand. I grinned.

"Never said I was any good at it. I'm just glad I remembered to cover the furniture first. Don't think Leo will let me forget I got paint on his pillow case."

They all laughed, and I was happy to linger until I noticed the clouds rolling in. If it rained, two things would happen. The cubs would have to skip their hike, so Talia and Leo would be home early. And everyone would come here for dinner since it was bigger than crowding into one trailer. Which meant I really needed to hurry up and finish.

"Crap. I gotta hurry."

Derek looked at the sky behind him and winced. "Yeah, I gotta go. Bear don't like Liv driving if it"s sunny out. He'll be hell to deal with if I let her drive here in the rain. We'll see you at dinner. Cousin."

Beaming at him, I waved as I walked backwards towards my room. I really liked that. I had a couple cousins on my mom's side, but they teased me a lot when we were younger. They were alright now that we were older, but old scars, I guess. I didn't really warm up to them. I was glad I finally had a cousin I could get along with. Derek was great and his bear was as big as mine, so we could wrestle without worrying about hurting each other. He was fun. His mate was nice, too. Tough and Jack called her snarky, but she was nice to me and mellow around Talia. I was pretty sure she had taken over a little of Talia's recovery, bringing her with to her tattoo shop sometimes and refusing to let her hide when I was at work. She did the same thing with Esme, and Talia seemed okay with it. She was always smiling when I got home.

Thankfully, Jack and Christian came to help me finish, because I was right that they'd be back early. Leo and Talia came into the room right as we finished pulling off the tape protecting the ceiling. Talia looked real happy about it, but Leo wrinkled his nose.

"It's purple."

"Uh huh. Your mom likes purple."

"But you sleep here too," he pointed out. He still had some trouble with letting go of what the pride taught him. He wanted to look and act tough and manly, and he needed to be reminded that stuff like that was different for everyone.

"I like purple," I said with a shrug. "And I like your mom more. You gotta make your mate happy. It's the rules."

"I like purple too," Jack chimed in. "Christian has this purple shirt that he won't let me steal from him."

Christian rolled his eyes with a smile. "It doesn't fit you. Stop trying to steal my clothes."

Jack beckoned Leo while still bickering with Christian. Turns out, Christian was a whiz at science stuff, and he volunteered to help Leo when Andrew said he wasn't any good at it. The whole compound helped him if he struggled, and he was a smart cub. It didn't take much to get lessons to stick. He was ahead of most cubs his age and Carmen had to order new workbooks for him to keep him interested. Talia did a good job raising him.

Once they were gone, I shuffled over to Talia, wrapping myself around her. "You like it?"

"I love it," she murmured. She reached up, running her fingers through my hair, her eyes still locked on the room. I loved it when she did that, and I closed my eyes and rested my chin on her shoulder with a happy sigh.

"Got the results back today. Derek's my cousin. Makes me feel like I belong out here."

Turning in my arms, she put her hands on my chest, her brows drawn together tightly. "You do belong out here. You belong with me and Leo."

A smile pulled at my lips, and I rested my forehead against hers. "True. I meant part of the crew. It's a little weird that we're separate from Blackridge, but we don't count it as a second crew."

She hummed thoughtfully. "Have you asked Aiden yet?"

"No… I'll probably sound stupid…"

Talia is and always would be a gentle spirit. Part of that was her history, but part of it was just her. She was the gentle twin. Kiara said she was born first and the older sibling was the tough one. I wasn't sure if that was true or not, they were the only twins I knew, but it fit them fine. Opposites in personality, but similar looks. The only time Talia seemed as fierce as Kiara was when me or Leo talked down about ourselves. Her frown deepened and a little dominance tinged the air around us.

"You're not stupid. You're smart. And it's a smart idea. Aiden watches over all of us. Why shouldn't he be alpha? He's a lot nicer than the pride alpha, too…"

I brought up the idea of being a crew to her first because I knew her experiences with an alpha weren"t great. It took a while for her to warm up to the idea, but the more time she spent around Blackridge and saw Jackson interacting with his crew, the more she agreed we should be tied together like that, too. Crews took care of one another, supported each other. The compound residents were a crew in all but name and having an alpha. I had an idea for a name. We just needed an alpha.

"Will you go with me?"

She was getting braver by the day. And if I was going to talk to the dragon about it, then I wanted someone smart with me. She helped me come up with the name, after all. Seemed fair to me.

She lifted onto her toes, kissing me gently. "Okay. We'll talk to him together."

Together. The way it should be. Not just me, Talia, and Leo, but the whole compound. We were a good group, and we had a strong connection with Blackridge, so when we picked out a name, we figured it should reflect that. Hopefully, he'd like it enough to accept. It was his animal that kept us safe.

Never figured I'd be smart enough to figure out a name for us, but I feel like I did okay. I looked down at the little cartoon I drew of all of us. Leo liked my drawings and asked me to make it. And scrawled across the top in Talia's neat handwriting was the name we picked together.

Dragonridge.