Page 61 of A Baby for the Beast
I don't want dinner. I want my girls.
"Uncle Luke?" Sam's eldest daughter, Evie, approaches me with a little plastic hair accessories case, and Remus shuts up about going and finding Hayley and Tess. "Can I do your hair?"
"Yeah, get up here, kiddo," I say, pushing away from the extra-large patio table we all chipped in to get Janie a couple of years ago because the family's grown a lot.
So far, it's Henry, Sarah, and me out here waiting for Janie and Sam to bring out the last of the food. Hayley and Tess will be here, hopefully soon, because I'm starting to get antsy with how long they've been gone.
Has it only been for the weekend? Sure. They're just visiting Hayley's parents, but I miss them like hell. Usually, I go with them because I hate being away from the girls, but there was a competition this weekend for the kids I help train. I'd already volunteered for the event before Hayley made plans to go out of town.
Evie stands on my thighs while I hold up her little plastic case of the world's tiniest hair ties. I only know they're actually for hair because I've had to fight with the damn things so often when getting Tess dressed up for her little dance classes. She fights too, and she's damn good at it for being six, but Hayley wants her to do whatever her little six-year-old heart desires, which means dance classes on Wednesday and Fridays and fighting on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Who knows, maybe in a couple of years we'll add a team sport to the mix just to keep our schedules packed.
"What style are we going with?" I ask Evie, who's doing more hair pulling than actually getting the rubber bands around my hair.
I've let it grow out since I stopped fighting. I don't need to tie it back in a bun like Henry, but it has enough length that Hayley can grab onto something when we're in the nest. It also means that Sam's girls have realized they can tie it into the tiniest pony tails and make me look like a dork.
It makes our omega happy, though.
I know, buddy.
"You're going to be a princess," Evie says. She watches for my reaction, and I make sure to give her an over-exaggerated gasp of surprise and a smile.
"You better make me a pretty princess," I whisper to her. "My mate is going to be here soon."
Janie and Sam set the rest of the food on the table before telling us to dig in. Lilah and Scott aren't out here yet, but he was putting off enough pheromones earlier when they were on the couch that we had to come outside because Remus was getting antsy.
We need our omega and our daughter back so we can just take them home. It'll help to calm him down a bit once he knows they're safe and nothing happened to them while they were gone. Nothing ever does, but Remus is a worrier.
The two most important people in the whole world have been out of my sight for days. You should be a little more worried, or maybe I just love them more.
"Oh, forgot my beer," Henry says.
"Lilah and Scott are still in there," Sarah calls after him right before he pushes the sliding glass door open.
He waves behind him, ignoring the warning that everyone at the table except for him seemed to understand. Sarah sighs and shakes her head, and I laugh at what Henry probably just interrupted.
A minute later, Henry comes walking back out, the highs of his cheeks scarlet and his face looking properly scandalized. I smirk at him because even Remus picked up on what Sarah was warning him about, and we're still terribly clueless when it comes to sex talk most of the time.
"What'd you walk in on?" I ask.
Henry shakes his head, his blush growing. I'm sure I might sound like I'm trying to antagonize him, but I have a kid tying my hair up and torturing me with how bad her motor skills are.
"Something he's not going to talk about in front of my daughters," Sam says, his dad voice coming out and earning him a swoony look from Janie.
Henry closes his mouth. I doubt he was going to actually tell us what he saw, and I doubt we'd left Lilah and Scott in there long enough to do more than some heavy petting. Still, that's not something Henry will say around the kids. He and Sarah censor themselves more than the rest of us when it comes to that kind of thing.
"Is Jace coming tonight?" Janie asks, changing the subject.
I don't pay much attention to the conversation going on around the table because Evie is humming along as she pulls at my hair, causing me to have to put on a strong face and not wince. Not because I think she'd care, but because I know any of the other alphas out here will love to just give me a hard time for getting hurt by a five-year-old.
"Where are the girls?" Henry asks me, but his attention is grabbed by a frumpled Fenrir and Lilah coming out of the house and joining everyone at the table.
Which is fine, if he thought about it for a second would remember that I've done nothing but bitch and moan all weekend because they weren't here. I even spent most of yesterday at the coffee shop because I needed someone to distract me. Sure, he also put me to work helping the younger alphas he had working at the bakery yesterday, but it did help me get through the day without letting Remus out to find our mate and daughter.
There's some ribbing happening between the adults at the table, but I don't pay any attention to that. Not when I can hear the sound of a car pulling up in front of the house. Okay, technically, it could be a car pulling up for any of Sam and Janie's neighbors, too, but I want it to be Hayley.
"Time for me to go," I tell Evie, lifting her up and settling her in the chair I'm vacating. I don't even say goodbye to anyone at the table, not that I could if I wanted to, because Remus is taking over, not even being kind about it either. One second, I'm incontrol of our legs walking around the side of the house, and the next, Remus is practically sprinting around, tugging little rubber bands out of our hair as he does.
Hayley's bent down, leaning into the backseat of the car to help Tess with something. Remus doesn't give her a second to stand up or even register he's there before he's wrapping his arms around her waist and tugging her to him, our purr filling the air around us.
