and DarkRiver had been becoming family for a long time. Belle, Micah, and Ace had added the final seal on that bond.
• • •
BASTIEN bared his teeth at his brother, Sage, when Sage dared try to take Micah from him after Bastien had just claimed his nephew from Drew. Sage pushed in anyway, putting a friendly arm around the waist of Bastien’s mate, Kirby, as he pressed up against her back and peered over her head at the baby in Bastien’s arms.
“Hey, peanut,” he said, touching a finger to the sleeping baby’s nose.
That nose wrinkled up but the baby slept on.
“Bastien, I want to hold him.” Kirby held out her arms on that whisper, and he put Micah into her gentle embrace.
Face lighting up, she cuddled the baby close. “Hey, you.” A gentle kiss to one velvet-soft cheek . . . and the baby made a tiny sound that could’ve been a happy growl.
“Did you hear that?” Bright lynx eyes, Kirby’s cat as curious about this new packmate as the human side of her. “He likes me.”
“Of course he likes you. He knows family.” Bastien’s heart was a huge thing inside his chest. “Look after them both,” he ordered his brother before going to find Mercy.
His sister was still sitting in bed, more because so many people were piled on it, talking and laughing, than because she looked in any way weak. Bulling his way through the crowd, he scooped her up in his arms to her laughing admonitions and smacked a kiss to her cheek. “You did good, Carrot.”
“Grr.” Claws dug into his shoulders but she kissed him back. “It hurt like a bitch.” A thoughtful pause. “I think men should have to give birth, too.”
Bastien winced. “Yeah, no.” Kissing her again, he put her back on the bed before her mate decided he was manhandling her too roughly and came after him—Bastien was confident of his own skills, but he wasn’t about to go up against a new dad who happened to be a SnowDancer lieutenant known as The Wall for his hardheaded stubbornness and refusal to surrender.
He caught Lucas’s eye as he was weaving his way out of the room, shook his head. He hadn’t yet zeroed in on the individual who’d paid the captain of the ship meant to be Naya’s prison. But he was close, so close he could almost smell it, almost reach out and grab that person by the throat, claws extended to do bloody damage.
Lucas nodded, the alpha’s expression stating he had trust in Bastien’s abilities.
Leopard padding inside his skin, Bastien returned to Kirby to find Sage cradling the baby under Kirby’s own hold. It meant his brother was pretty much cuddling Bastien’s very cuddleable mate.
Bastien shook his head. “You can’t steal either one of them, Herb.”
Sage managed to give him the finger while continuing to smile at the baby. Kirby, meanwhile, turned very carefully in Sage’s hold and handed the baby to him. “Support his head,” she instructed, as Bastien’s brother took Micah with utmost care.
“Hey, kid.” Sage’s grin split his face. “I’m your uncle Sage. Your favorite uncle.”
As Sage wandered off to Grey, who’d just claimed Belle from her aunt Brenna, Bastien wrapped his arms around Kirby from behind. “Cute, huh?”
“Gorgeous,” Kirby agreed. “I want one.”
Bastien chuckled. “Let’s get you used to shifting first.” Kirby was still settling into her skin as a lynx; she was also spending time with the family she’d never had a chance to know as a child—and she was becoming an integral part of his. The latter wasn’t much of a choice. The Smiths and DarkRiver had embraced her as one of their own; Kirby fit like a missing piece.
The cubs, especially, loved playing with Kirby. She was an adult, but her lynx form made her smaller than adult leopards, and so to the cubs, she seemed a perfect-sized playmate. The fact that she happened to be a kindergarten teacher and had the patience to both play with and handle spirited cubs made her even more of a favorite.
Now she laughed. “You might possibly be right—plus, I think we’ll be babysitting the pupcubs often.”
“Hopefully after they’re a little bigger. I’m kinda freaked out by their tininess,” he admitted in a subvocal whisper. “So fragile.”
Kirby patted one of his hands. “You’ll be fine. You have the gentlest hands.” Lifting one of those hands, she pressed a row of kisses to his fingertips.
And there went his heart going boom all over again.
Letters to Nina
From the private diaries