Page 61 of Home: Posy 5

He nodded, so I patted his chest and walked toward Camille.

"This is going to be so much fun!" She grinned. "We can eat junk food and watch girl movies and stay up late painting nails or braiding hair. Yours looks amazing, by the way. How do you do that kind of braid?"

"It's called a five-strand braid. I'll introduce you to my stylist later." I grinned, knowing Ash would love the attention and compliments. If I gave him a little pout, he'd even braid hers, too, if she wanted. "He's absolutely fabulous!"

"Excellent!" She lifted her arm invitingly, so I slipped mine through it and linked our elbows.

Then she led me along, giving me a quick tour of the house, including her bedroom. I could tell she put a lot of time into decorating her space and making it a haven. It was mostly white with shades of lighter blue and beige - far from the girly pink or purple I'd half expected.

"Wow! This is a big bedroom!"

"It's the master. Grandpa can't do the stairs so well anymore, so we turned one of the rooms downstairs into his bedroom, and I took over this one." She opened one door and showed me a big walk-in closet. "It's a little too large for me, to be honest, but my music stuff fills up a lot of the space."

There were clothes and shoes in her closet, of course, but also a wall of ribbons and trophies and a bookshelf full of notebooks, CDs, and sheet music.

"What instrument do you play?" I asked as I stared at all of her awards.

"Trumpet. I have a full scholarship to play with the college's marching band. I'm the only girl in the entire brass section."

"That must be intimidating at times."

"I guess." She shrugged. "Most of the guys are much more competitive than I am, but they're a great group of friends. There are a lot of girls in the windwoods, percussion, and color guard, so I hang out with them when I get overloaded on the testosterone."

I didn't need to know the specifics to understand she was talking about different instruments in the band, so I nodded and followed her back into the bedroom.

"Who's this fellow?" I pointed to a fluffy gray rhino perched on her bed.

"Oh, that's Butchie." Her whole face burned red as she grabbed him and hugged him to her chest, her shoulders coming up in a posture I knew all too well. "Sorry. I know it's babyish—"

"My stuffy is named Mr. Nibbles," I cut her off. "He's a bunny. He sleeps in my special room unless I need him. I lost him once, and my betas, their mates, and my mates turned the whole house upside down to look for him."

She looked at me, and her shoulders relaxed when she saw I was telling the truth.

"I can't be without him. Daddy gave him to me the year before he passed," she confessed as she carefully sat Butchie back on the bed and patted him on his head.

"I don't know where I got Mr. Nibbles." I frowned as I tried to remember. "Hmm. I'll ask James or Aiden when they get here tomorrow. I've always just had him."

"You probably got him when you were very little," she suggested, and I agreed since I couldn't ever remember a time without my bunny.

After I visited the restroom, she took me down two sets of stairs to where we'd sleep tonight. There were three king-sized mattresses laid out together on the floor, just like we did when we stayed at Tall Pines.

"Will this work?" she asked and didn't make any comments about our sleeping arrangements, for which I was grateful.

"It's great! Thanks!"

"This is called a walkout basement," she explained. "It's a perfect apartment down here. There's even a kitchen and a full bathroom."

"It's certainly big enough," I agreed as she showed me both. "Is that what it was intended for? An apartment?"

"I'm not sure about its original purpose. When we were kids, it was our playroom, which worked out great because those glass doors there go right out to the backyard." She paused to point at a pair of French doors. "Our grandma's name was Zora Glase, and this was her parents' house. When they were alive, our uncle Aaron lived down here. He never found his mate, so he didn't see any point in buying his own place."

"Oh. That's so sad!" I covered my mouth with one hand.

"I know. He was such a great guy, too, and so funny. Always telling jokes. He kept busy helping Grandma and Grandpa with the pack and took care of our great-grandparents as they got older. The Glases were among the first in our pack to die in the sickness, and Uncle Aaron passed not too many more months later."

"Did Grandpa move here once your brother became alpha?"

"Yep. It's been the two of us here for the last five years."

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