Page 14 of Packed in the Fire house

Once dry, I unfolded the clothing Rune had left for me—he had mentioned they belonged to Blaze—and couldn’t help but giggle. They were tiny compared to Rune, but gigantic on me. I was going to be swimming in the sweatpants and gray T-shirt that hadCalifornia Fireemblazoned on the front.

Still, they were soft, clean, and didn’t reek of my apartment fire, so I pulled them on gratefully. I had to roll the waistband of the sweats several times for them to stay up, and the T-shirt fell to my knees. I looked like a mess as I let my blonde waves air dry. There was no hair dryer, so I didn’t have much choice.

“Okay, sweetie, shall we see if we can get you a snack?” I asked, popping Luka onto my hip.

“Snack!” he parroted. He knew several words but couldn’t quite string them together to form a sentence yet.

If I was alone, I probably would have hidden in Walker’s room all day, with just the cookies from his desk as sustenance. I couldn’t in good conscience let my son survive off junk food, though, so I took a deep breath before unlocking the door and padding out into the firehouse.

I walked through an empty foyer, passing a bay where three fire engines were parked. Although there was no one around.

There had to be a few firefighters I had yet to meet. So far, I had only been introduced to the three who were part of a pack. While I wasn't particularly knowledgeable about how firehouses were run, I knew that there were more than three firefighters per firehouse.

“Truck!” Luka cooed when he saw the engines as we passed.

“Yes, trucks,” I agreed, looking around.

“Cher!” a deep voice called from somewhere above me.

Turning, I glanced up and saw Rune standing on a lofted balcony. “Hi,” I said with a smile.

Instead of answering, he pushed back off the balcony and jogged down the stairs to join me. “Did you guys sleep well?” he asked as he approached. Up close, I was reminded just how much bigger than me he was. He towered over me, but that soft smile on his face put me at ease.

“I did. I only woke up when this one did.” I spoke quietly, jerking my head at Luka, who was cuddling into me, his eyes still firmly on the fire engines. He had always been a very affectionate baby, I was waiting for him to get wild and wriggly, but he was a sweet, snuggly boy for now.

“The clothes are cute on you.” He beamed down at me. “You hungry?”

“A-a little.”

My stomach chose that exact moment to grumble loudly. My face heated as I looked at the ground in embarrassment, but Rune didn’t seem phased.

“I’ve got some bacon cooking, and there are plenty of breakfast options, come on.” He placed his hand behind my back and guided me up the stairs and into an upper area that consisted of a large kitchen and a table that could have easily sat twelve.

My eyes lingered on the large range oven for a moment. What I would do to have an oven like that at home. I could bake bread from scratch! I had always wanted to experiment with baking bread, but the run-down kitchen in my apartment was so unreliable that it was never feasible.

My steps faltered at the stark reminder that I didn’t even have that junky old oven anymore, because everything I had was gone.

“This place is lovely,” I commented as he led me to the seats nearest the kitchen counters, where a frying pan full of delicious-smelling bacon was bubbling away.

Rune shot me a prideful grin. “We refurbished it all ourselves. We had a week with an abnormally small workload because there was a trainee team taking our calls, and we weren’t supervising them—the guys at Station Six did that. So, we started making bets about how much we could get done around the firehouse… next thing you know, I’m ripping out the kitchen with Blaze.”

“That’s impressive.” What would it be like to simply be able to redo my entire kitchen on a whim?

“It was actually a lot of fun, but we probably should have warned Walker that we were going to do it. He came back from a meeting with the commissioner to find the kitchen torn to shreds. Let's just say, he was cranky that day.” Rune winced. “Take a seat, Cher. So you want some tea? Is your throat sore?”

Whenever he used that nickname, his accent became that little bit thicker, sweet like honey in a way that made my knees shake.

“No thank you. I’m not feeling that bad, considering.”

“Good, well if you change your mind just let me know or you can help yourself.”

I had never been that impressed by accents, but there was something about the way he said those words that made my body tingle. Nothing would make me happier than hearing more.

“My word, it looks like you’re feeding an army,” I said as I took in the mountains of food.

Rune chuckled, scooping up some bacon. “Not an army, just several hungry alphas, a beautiful omega, and a cute-as-a-button baby.”

My stomach fluttered as he called mebeautiful.

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