Page 242 of Lodestar

Throat thick with emotion, I wandered forward, moving behind Kat and sandwiching her in a soft hug, needing to be a part of this small circle.

My family.

Not just pack.

Family.

I breathed into the notion, pressed my face into Conor’s throat which prompted him to settle his hand between my shoulders to hold me closer, and accepted the rightness of this moment.

That rightness filtered through me, spreading through my veins, overtaking everything with the promise of hope—something I never dared allow myself to have.

“You okay, my love?”

Startled, I tilted my head back to look at him. “Yeah, I’m…” There was only one word for it. “…perfect.”

And I was.

Nothing was resolved, everything was in the air, and tomorrow was not guaranteed, but at that moment, I really, trulywasperfect.

He beamed a smile at me that was as earnest as it was genuine and I cupped his chin, knowing he could see the stars in my eyes and was unafraid to reveal them to him when he deserved each one.

“Star!”

Kat gained my attention by accidentally standing on my toe. “What, kiddo?”

“Who’s he?”

I blinked down at her. “Who’s who?”

She prodded me. “Him.”

Following her pointed finger, Conor was the one who, spotting the boy in the family room, answered, “That’s my nephew. Seamus.”

Her cheeks turned bright pink. “How do you spell that?”

“S-E-A-M-U-S.”

She frowned. “Why isn’t it ‘S-H-A-Y-M-U-S?’”

“You thinkhisname is bad? Wait until you meet Aoife,” Conor drawled, making me snort. “But we call Seamus ‘Shay’ for short. All the vowels together is kind of an Irish thing.”

Katina absorbed that information like the sponge she was. “Who’s Aoife?”

“My sister-in-law.”

I cleared my throat and took it upon myself to do the unthinkable: “She’s family now, Kat.”

My kid arched a brow at me, looking as sassy as a seventeen-year-old and not a preteen. “Family like Alessa or family like Link?”

Pondering that a second, I answered, “Bit of both, but Aoife bakes brownies for a living and doesn’t talk about motorcycle engines all the time.”

Kat giggled. “He doesn’t talk about themallthe time.”

I grinned. “Just most of it. But she’s going to be your aunt.”

Conor’s eyes widened, but he didn’t correct me.

“When? I haven’t had an aunt in ages.”

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