Page 27 of A Second Chance for the Beta

At dinner, Charlie bombards us with questions, and all three of us try to answer all of them. I do have to give her the rundown on what happened with Candy and my parents, her grandparents, but she is taking it quite well on the outside. Through our bond, I can feel her conflicted feelings, though.

We can’t rely on it all the time,Nefeli says.We need to make sure our pup is going to open up to us on her term.

Our pup?I chuckle.

Well, isn’t she? Aunt, mom, sister—I don’t care.Nefeli sits up.I want to hug and protect her.

No one has hugged her for a long while, Nefeli,I say.We need to be patient.

Meanwhile, Dante skillfully shifts the conversation to the more exciting part of being a werewolf. He has clearly benefited from the one time he had to watch werewolf romance movies with Annie, Dave and me, and their mates. It was a bet to see whose mate would throw in the towel first.

Unfortunately, all three were very eager to cater to our whims and please us, so they ended up watching everything we presented them with. Talk about a joke backfiring.

Dante’s strategy works because Charlie gets livelier again and asks us the funniest questions she probably has from the movies and books she knows. It’s fun that the one thing I thought would scare her off actually drew her to us. I doubt it would have gone so smoothly hadn’t we been wolves.

We end the night with Lorenzo leaving with Charlie to get her things and help her deal with everything while Dante and I will handle the rest of the paperwork with Gerard. It’s hard to see her leave with Lorenzo, though.

“Hopefully, she’ll be safe,” Dante says to me with a worried expression while we see them drive off. We will meet her again tomorrow. I offered to go with her, but she wanted to do this alone.

“Are you worried already?” I chuckle.

He looks flustered. “She is my niece,” he states. “I need to make sure to protect her. I bet she went through a lot.”

My overbearing mate strikes again, but I love that he is already protective of her. “The fact that you accept her as part of our lives so easily means so much to me,” I say. “I don’t know if everyone would have been so generous.”

“Ella, she is your niece, and my lycan already sees her as family too.” He smiles. “I’m happy to have her with us.”

“This means we have to restructure our apartment,” I muse.

“Do you want to move out of it and into one of the houses?”

“I’m not sure. It seems like Charlie is intrigued by the packhouse, and it is quite luxurious. Seeing how she didn’t have any luxury at all so far, we could try it with the packhouse first. But we’ll need to reorganize everything.”

“I can move my office to another floor, where Liam has his,” he offers. “The office in our suite is big and has a balcony; we can make it Charlie’s room.”

“Yes, and it has a little en suite bathroom,” I say. “She will have some privacy like that. It’s going to be difficult for her to suddenly live with family. This will mean a lot of adjustment for all of us.”

She is a teenager, a young girl who grew up alone and neglected. This isn’t going to be an easy adjustment, but I’m willing to take it up with all the problems that might come towards us.

“You know what’s funny.” I chuckle. “Normally couples practice first by babysitting their cousins’ or siblings’ or friends’ babies or toddlers before having their own kids. But we take in a full-fledged teenager.”

It truly is weird how fate plays with us sometimes. I’m the least motherly person on the planet—even if Dave and Annie disagree, patience is not my virtue, and now I’m here, going to take in my teenage niece.

I look at Dante, realizing he hasn’t said anything. He seems to be lost in his thoughts, and for a split second, I wonder what’s wrong before it strikes me. I hinted to our future children. When we brush the topic, he retracts immediately and returns to his own world. Nefeli and I never manage to follow him into this world of his. It’s nothing my gift can break through.

His reaction makes my chest clench, though. I’m not the type of mate that wants children like tomorrow. Although it’s not unusual for werewolves to have children at a younger age, for me it doesn’t matter. I can wait, especially with our longer life span, but I do want children one day.

And Dante’s distraught reaction every time I hint it is truly making me more than a little anxious.

I’m contemplating saying something when I can hear my phone ring. “That’s the Council,” I tell Dante before answering.

“Ella,” Bernard’s voice reaches me. He sounds more serious than I like it. It’s never a good sign. “I have news about the photo you sent me.”

“The one I doodled?”

“Yes, exactly. Prince Eric checked on it, too, and got back to me. It’s no one from the pack in Tuscany and also not from one of the UK packs. At least no one we know about. However, the tattoo—we managed to link it back to a gang sign.”

“Wait, a gang!?” I ask, appalled.