Page 34 of What's Rogue Got To Do With It

My mate and I shared a glance and burst out laughing. “We’ve been discussing that on the drive.”

Auden tapped his head. “I’m a mind reader.”

Wait what? Was he serious? Or was he just good at reading people? He’d make an excellent gambler, not that I approved of betting because people lost everything when they gambled.

But him mentioning what needed to be done to make our cabin a home and how he interred himself into our plans… well that was what Alphas did even if you didn't agree. But the flip side was that you had people around you who looked out for one another.

"There's something else.” His expression had grown more serious. "I've been in touch with some other displaced shifters.Ones who might be interested in joining us and making this a real pack instead of the three of us."

My reaction was instinctive. I’d talked about wanting to expand the pack but the thought of strangers coming in and upending our routine was unsettling. My chest tightened and I rubbed my flat belly, concentrating on the baby.

Creven paused unloading our belongings. "What kind of shifters?"

"Good people who are alone. A wolf whose pack dissolved after their alpha died without naming a successor, and there’s a bear who enjoys his solitude but would like having backup when he needs it." Auden glanced between me and my mate as if assessing our reaction. "None of them are rogues but like you, Larkin, they are loners."

If Auden said they were good people, I trusted him.

We’d be a real pack and our cub would have aunties and uncles. Maybe there’d be more kids in time, and we’d have a school and perhaps a clinic. This was what I’d dreamed of during the years on the road.

That evening we sat on our cabin's front porch enjoying the sunset. Other than our planned renovations, there was nothing to fear. We were mated and had a baby on the way. And we belonged to a pack.

"Happy?" Creven put his arm around my shoulders.

“I am. We’ve finally found where we belong.”

20

CREVEN

Settling into the new pack life and knowing for the first time since I was marked as rogue, that I wasn’t moving, that we didn’t have a target on our back for being mated… what a difference it made.

My mate and I worked together not only to get the garden ready to plant next season, but also fixing up the different buildings, including our new home. And at night, the three of us ate around the campfire, talking about our day and listening to tales of what the pack had been like. We’d settled into a nice routine, one that made my fox happy. This might not have been where I envisioned being mated and raising our family, but now that we were here, I couldn’t imagine doing it anywhere else.

There might be only three of us, but it really felt like a pack in all ways. And my fox was settling into life with an Alpha that wasn’t our father easily. I hadn’t realized how antsy and confused he’d been by not having our den anymore. I felt similarly, but I thought that with our mate, he’d been doing okay. And he definitely had been doing better after we found our mate.But when we took the vow and were marked, something more snapped into place. He was back to his old self… only happier.

Tonight, we were having stew, and it wasn’t settling well with my mate’s stomach. My mate didn’t say as much, but he put it down after only taking a few bites, which wasn’t like him, especially not with one of his favorite meals. When I gave him a concerning look, he assured me it was fine… just the pregnancy talking. What I would do to take that away from him. And not just the nausea. I’d take the exhaustion, the discomfort, and the weird dreams. Anything and everything I could to make this pregnancy easier on him.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t an option.

“Tonight, we need a pack meeting,” Auden said, setting his empty bowl down.

I had assumed it was about finances or something similarly boring. Because, well, that’s what most pack meetings I’d been to were like. At least the meeting kinds. That, or security issues. From everything we knew, there was no need for us to worry about security. Auden’s beast wouldn’t be able to hide his worry over anything like that from us if something had recently changed, either, not with our connection to him.

After we became official as a pack, I saw for the first time how powerful the old man was. Our open bond to him as his packmates was stronger than the one I had with my father. When he allowed it, I could feel emotions running through it quite clearly. And really strong feelings, like when he stubbed his toe, those came through without him trying.

Larkin said he didn’t have the same flow of emotion with Auden that I did, although it was there. He described it to me asmore a feeling of belonging than what I was experiencing. I half wondered if it was because I was the closest thing Auden had to a Beta or if it was that my mate had been a lone wolf. Not that it mattered, not really.

“That sounds ominous,” Larkin teased. Or at least I thought he was teasing, until he grabbed my hand and held it tightly. Maybe I was missing something here—or possibly his stomach was that bad or maybe he was reading Auden differently than I was.

“Do you think we could wait another day? My mate’s not feeling so well.” I’d never have considered saying anything like that to my father when he was Alpha. Son privilege only went so far. But this was Auden. And our pack, in many ways, was very… loosey-goosey.

“It really can’t.”

And my mate had read the room much better than I had. This wasn’t something small that could wait. So much for thinking I could feel emotions through our connection.

Auden had seemed happy enough, and I crossed my fingers I was working myself up for no reason.

“This can’t wait. I’m gonna cut to the chase. We need to have a change of power here. I’m too old, and I’m too weak to be Alpha.”

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