“You have a point. Okay, just… do your best. And don’t call me sir.”
They walked up the road a bit more and rounded a curve. Everything opened up, revealing an area with multiple houses and a couple of large buildings. Toby’d been expecting some big stone-and-ivy-covered monstrosity, not a hidden cul-de-sac.
“You may want to step back,” Nick warned. He lifted his head and… roared.
“This is the strangest dream. I actually feel sorry for me,” Toby said. “The horrors must be… well, horrible. And look, I can’t even come up with decent words. It’s bad. I’m probably fading already.”
Nick simply smirked at him and walked a few paces away. And then… wow, whatever was in that orange soda must have been a really powerful hallucinogen. Because not only did he have dragons and brownies and strange men who roared and flamey circles and Vikings, but now there were all sorts of… baby animals.
Cute little white lion cubs and different kinds of bears. Regular kids, too, from toddlers to teens. They just… came out of nowhere and everywhere like some sort of fairy tale… oh, right.
His brain was seriously messing with him.
He was never drinking orange soda again.
“I think I should sit down,” Toby said.
And then he did.
Right in the middle of the road.
The animals and kids all swarmed Nick. Maybe his brain was making the headmaster into some sort of Snow White character. If little cartoon bluebirds appeared… and nope, not a bluebird, but what looked like a hawk landed on Nick’s shoulder, and a lady walked down the street carrying a little girl with beautiful black wings. It was the strangest, most beautiful thing Toby had ever seen in his entire life.
At least until the giant gray wolf appeared with two little girls on its back. Toby couldn’t look away from them. His heart skipped a beat. The wolf’s eyes locked onto him.
And suddenly, Toby didn’t think he was dying. He was pretty sure this was the most alive he’d ever been. His heart sang, fluttering happily in his chest. He wanted to laugh and cry all at once.
What was happening to him?
The wolf walked closer, cautious. The girls clung to him. Toby shifted his attention to them. They were so beautiful. The little one slid from the wolf’s back and walked closer to Toby. She couldn’t have been more than three or four. Her sister followed closely behind her, and the wolf… the wolf just stared at him.
The little one walked over to him and touched his face. Then she smiled. The older one smiled too. “We knew you would come.”
They turned around and sat in his lap, right there in the middle of the road. Toby managed to tear his gaze away from the wolf long enough to look back at Nick. The little girl with wings was now in his arms, and the kids crowded around him, babbling away as kids did.
But Nick looked over at him.
Just glanced his way and grinned.
And Toby thought that maybe he wasn’t hallucinating after all.
Chapter Two
“You should talk to Nick.”
Brooks looked up at his alpha-mate from his position kneeling in the grass. He started to play dumb, but Sam would never let him get away with it. Instead, he returned his attention to taming the wild blond curls in his hand. He wrapped a tangle-free ponytail holder that he’d picked up at the drugstore around the curls before pecking a kiss onto the top of Marigold’s head.
“Thanks, Brooks,” Marigold said before she ran back to the other kids.
Brooks’s heart skipped happily as he watched her go. She’d come so far the past few weeks, especially since he’d rearranged his schedule to start spending more time with the Smith pack. His excuses were less than subtle, but no one had called him on them.
Yet. Sam never let any of them get away with much. Avoidance wasn’t his thing. Brooks let out a sigh and looked over the field where all the kids played.
Nick and Jedrek, the alpha and alpha-mate of the Smith pack, had gone into town for a few hours, so Brooks had offered to hang around and help keep an eye on the kids. With over forty of them, they needed all the help they could get.
“Ignoring me isn’t going to work,” Sam said.
Brooks was willing to try. He pushed to his feet and searched the grassy area until he located Daisy. He didn’t have to look far. She lay on the grass, inspecting something with a