Page 9 of Wild Born

“His birthday is sorta Wolf Day,” Lee said, as I headed into the kitchen to make Baby Rhomas’s next bottle. “I know he was probably born a bit before that, but it’s the day we found him.”

“How do you feel about that? We could always say it was the day before,” I said, not wanting to discount the day Lee reunited with his own inner beast.

“I think it should be his birthday, Alpha. It’s the only day we know for sure. I love Wolf Day, but it can be his birthday too now.”

“Maybe that’s the Wolf Day tradition for me: Finding wolves.”

He laughed over our mating link and his tail wagged. Baby Rhomas didn’t have an easy path before him. No one born ever did, but he was ours and that meant he was safe and sound as any baby could ever be.

Chapter Six

Lee

Plenty of folks had questions about Baby Rhomas, but Bane took most of them. He was a bit better at not telling people to fuck off than I was. I didn’t mind explaining the wild-born genes or discussing theories of how a wolf’s genetic might evolve into that of a shifter in their pups. I didn’t entertain any of the mean ones that got handed down from the humans before they fell off the face of Earthside.

Each day, Baby Rhomas became a bit more ours. His wild-born scent was still there, but now he smelled like me and Bane and our kids. He smelled like Blake and Jonah and all his cousins. He smelled like pack and so he was. From time to time, the wolf we assumed was his sire came to visit. He brought dead rabbits and birds, and we always took them inside, even if there was no way we would let the baby eat then. Why discourage a father who was still trying to feed the child that civilization took away from him?

Bane skinned the rabbits and cured what was salvageable of the hides. When we had enough, we’d sew Baby Rhomas up a blanket from the gifts his wild heritage brought him. The she-wolf took longer to show, but she was nursing and focused on the two wolf pups still in her den or maybe it just took her longer to find the heart to see him again. Seeing him again meant leaving him again. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to walk away if I were her. Only she did. She came at night and peered through the sliding glass doors. She peered through his nursery window. She never came around when we were close, but she never made an effort to whisk him away into the night dark woods either.

By the time Bane’s birthday rolled around, she was a normal visitor, and I sometimes left her sandwiches by the window where she usually popped up with both paws to see her sleeping baby. Since we were going up to Hemlock Mountain Lodge for Bane’s birthday, I left instructions for Blake to do the same. My brother was uneasy about feeding a wild wolf and I understood his worry. She was still wild, but there wasn’t a wolf attack in recorded shifter history that came from a well-fed wolf. She wasn’t a danger to us and if those who worried about Rhomas’s effect on the pack still remembered him, they hadn’t bothered with us at all. They had more important and urgent things to concern themselves with in the woods.

***

I loved Hemlock Mountain Lodge and how rustic the world felt when we left the jeep behind and walked up the winding path to the actual hotel. Bane and I always made the walk hand-in-hand. We never packed much and what we did pack fit comfortably into a single suitcase that Bane carried along the way. We packed light because we hardly left the lodge and when we did it was usually in wolf form to run the trails or perhaps run straight to the top of Hemlock Mountain to see the statues of Juda and Frost.

“How are you feeling, mate?” Bane asked as we neared the lodge on foot. “About leaving the baby behind?”

“I didn’t know it would be this hard,” I laughed. “I should’ve. I’ve done it before. I always thought it would get easier.”

“I don’t think it does. Well, it does as the baby gets older, but the first time will always be difficult. Rhomas is a special circumstance too. We have to hope that Blake and Jonah get along with his birth parents.”

“I think they will. We’re wolves after all. She’s a wolf. Wild or shifter, I don’t think it matters. She’s not going to try to fight them. I’m not sure she understood what a vacation was when I told her, but I tried. I really did.”

“She might’ve understood it,” Bane said, trying to make me feel better. “I mean, wolves leave to hunt. So she probably understands it on some level.”

“I hope so. I don’t want her to think we abandoned him after she let us take him home with us.”

“I don’t think she’ll think that and if she does, we’re only up here for the long weekend. We might even be back before she visits again. Either way, I need this and not just because it’s my birthday. It feels like we’ve been on the go since our kids started having kids. We need a slow down. Even if it’s only for three days.”

“So, more sleeping than romping?” I teased him, bumping his hip with mine.

“I didn’t say that,” he laughed. “We could slow it down too. Draw it out. Draw out your pleasure. Make you squirm.”

His words drifted down into a whisper as he opened the door to the lodge and I walked through. A blush still dotted my cheeks when the guy behind the desk, Lefly, waved and said hello to us by name. Bane checked us in and I grabbed the keycard and suitcase and sprinted up the steps. I wasn’t the first man to arrive at Hemlock Mountain Lodge ready to go and I probably wouldn’t be the last. We were all wolves after all.

The suite was beautiful as always and smelled like sandalwood and patchouli. Incense or pheromone blocker spray I wasn’t sure, but no hotel room was clean and refreshed until pheromone blocker spray covered every inch of it. Most shifters weren’t as territorial as our ancestors, but sometimes you didn’t want to catch the scent of a stranger close by while you slept. Okay, all the time. For me it was all the time. Grady Moore had drilled that into my very soul.

“Don’t think about him right now. He’s over in the Pit being roasted or something. Okay, he’s probably in group therapy, but you know how miserable everyone in group therapy is. It’s probably a better punishment than being roasted,” my wolf chimed off in my thoughts as I kicked off my shoes and pulled my shirt off over my head.

We didn’t always jump straight to romping when we took vacations, but I was tired of wearing clothes and all the expectations that came with them. I loved my job, our pack, and kids, but sometimes I just wanted to be me. Even more so I wanted to just be me with Bane by my side. I checked my phone for texts and sent Blake a quick message to let him know we arrived safely before laying it on the nightstand and purposely forgetting about it. If there was an emergency, they could contact me and Bane over the pack or family link.

By the time the knob turned signaling my alpha’s arrival to our suite I was already in my birthday suit stretched out on the bed wiggling my toes and enjoying the light breeze of the AC on my bare skin. Bane squeezed into the room, knowing that I always stripped down when we arrived at the lodge. He shut the door behind him and double-checked that it was locked. Then he told Magi to dim the lights before crawling into bed with me.

“You’re still dressed,” I laughed rolling over onto my side to face him.

“For now,” he nodded and leaned in to steal a kiss.

Bane was greedy. It wasn’t just one kiss. The first led to a second which led to a third and his tongue probing into my mouth to dance and swirl around my own. I gave into his demanding mouth and the scent of him wrapping around me. Since having kids most of our alone time was scheduled around them and while I wouldn’t have traded our babies for anything else in the world, it was nice to not worry about one of them banging down the door or a call that they wanted to come home right then. They came first, but a couple times a year we tried to get away on our own. Usually for Bane’s birthday or our anniversary. Both if we were lucky. I liked to stay close to home for mine, because it didn’t seem like a proper celebration without Blake around.

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