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The first thing Mack did when we came home was to carry me upstairs, tell me to close my eyes and show me the surprise he’d been busy working on.

He said that he nearly didn’t get a chance to show me at all and he didn’t want to wait for the perfect time to surprise me anymore.

Mack opened the nursery door, told me to look, and I fell deeper in love with him than I believed I ever could.

I sit in the new reclining rocker he set up in one corner, taking in the sight across the room, and I still can’t believe Mack did it himself.

I thought my surprise would be a toy for Thumper. A rocking horse, maybe. Something more for her than for me.

“I’m not an artist, but I did the best I could,” he had said as I struggled to contain all the love in my heart.

Mack didn’t set up a rocking horse for our baby. He created a happy ever after for all of us.

On one wall, he painted a mural.

It’s a forest scene in earthy and calming greens. But it isn’t the nature scene that made me cry my way through an entire box of tissues.

It’s the family of wolves he captured. Pups and a pair of wolves, one that I knew was him, and one that I knew was me.

I have spent more time sitting in this rocking chair, cradling a mug of tea, than I have anywhere else in the last two months. I joke that it would take a crowbar to get me out of this room. I love it that much.

“You ready to eat soon, love?” Mack calls out.

I set my mug aside and lever myself to my feet like the beached whale I resemble. No one calls me that, but I’m big all over, despite Mack assuring me that I’m the perfect size. My ankles are swollen, and it takes me forever to get from point A to point B.

Point B is usually the bathroom or the kitchen, depending how hungry I am, which, on most days, is often.

I amble across the room to the window, and nudge aside the drapes to take in Mack standing in the backyard on another blue-skied day.

“I’m always ready to eat,” I tell him with a smile.

He grins at me. “I’ll tell the others to come over for lunch then. We’ll have pizza and cheesecake.”

I make a face and hope he can’t hear my stomach grumbling. I literally ate thirty minutes ago, but try telling my growling belly that. “Including my dad?”

He laughs at me.

Mack has been handling my dad choosing to settle in Winter Lake better than me. I love the fact that Moses and his mate Lucy have also decided to call this place home. Moses, a dad to mewhen my dad was too busy leading the Boone Pack, had said he’d been beta for a long time. The new Alpha of the Boones needs a beta who will grow with him, instead of inheriting one.

But I’m not used to my dad being around. I’m used to him being busy with work and leaving me to my own devices.

Will we ever have a normal father daughter relationship? It’s hard to say. But he seems determined to try, making more effort to see me on a regular basis than he ever did before.

“Including your dad,” Mack says as his smile fades. “If it helps, I found it just as awkward with my dad. It gets easier.”

“To figure out what to talk about when we know so little about each other?”

He nods.

Ivy and Connall are back with the Lonergan Pack. They stayed with us for a couple of days after the fighting in Michigan, and are planning to come and stay for a week next time.

Connall will never be my favorite person in the world, but Mack’s dad calls him more often, and he actually apologized for scaring me months ago. He’s making an effort to be a better person—and dad—and I appreciate that. So does Mack.

I rub my lower back and Mack’s eyes deepen with concern. “More back pain?”

“The same one.” It’s been getting worse, making sleep almost impossible lately.

“I’ll put this mower away and come and get you,” he says.

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