Chapter 24: Stay Till Morning

The twins turned seven on the third Saturday of June, and the lake was warm for the first time that year.

Torin had been up since four.

I knew because I came down at five.

I found him in the lake house kitchen with flour to the elbows, losing a fight with a sheet cake.

"I have run a pack for two years," he said, without looking up.

"I have faced down my own father in front of two hundred wolves."

"And?"

"This will not stand up."

I looked at it.

The top layer was sliding gently to the left, and the frosting had gone into the cracks.

"It's a very honest cake," I said.

"Ingrid."

"It tastes the same."

"It's their birthday."

"Then give me the knife."

I fixed it with a layer of buttercream.

Then I laid a ring of the raspberries I had brought from the shop around the edge.

He watched every move I made with the knife.

"Sunday dinners," he said.

"You're going to keep letting me wash up, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"I haven't decided."

He grinned.

It was becoming a common sight.

The party was in the garden at noon, with no pack in it at all, only the people who mattered.

The Beta had come, with a present for each child.

He had shaken my hand without a word.

Briony was with her aunt in Montana.

Aldric lived in a small house at the far edge of Hollowbrook land, under a ward the elders had set.

He was permitted no visitors.

I did not think about him.

Hazel wore her glasses and a paper crown, and she shifted twice before lunch.

The second time she tore her party dress.

She raced across the lawn on four brown legs with a fat wild rabbit loping beside her.

Jonah chased the pair of them with a plastic sword.

"I'm the Alpha!" he shouted.

"No, I'm the Alpha!" Hazel yelled, as her small wolf skidded in the grass.

"You are not," said Torin.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Bearing the Ruthless Alpha's Twins from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.