Page 366 of Alpha Mates

Julian’s head snaps up before he rolls onto his feet as quickly as he can, but the bump slows him down. “In his room,” he says, fingers flexing. “Now give it.”

“We’re supposed to open it together,” I remind him, handing over the papers anyways. Isabel had run all the way from the border to hand them to me.

I crowd over his shoulder as he tears open the envelope and plucks out the papers. There’s a letter from the Council he tosses aside without a second glance. I let it fall to the floor, already zeroed in on the thick parchment paper with the Council’s seal imprinted on the bottom.

“This document will be used by blah blah blah,” Julian grumbles as his finger slides over the lines of fluff until he gets to the line we’re both waiting for. “The Council hereby appoints Julian Heil and Aiden Calderon as the guardians of Levi Gagnon—ahhh!!”

Julian’s scream bursts out of him. He leaps into my arms before I have a chance to read the rest of the sentence, but I’ve already seen what I need to. Levi is ours—not temporarily, not until all other options were exhausted—but for good.

“I can’t believe it,” I whisper as I hold him tight. “I mean, fuck.”

“He’s ours,” Julian whispers, giggling as his feet kick out under him.

In all ways that mattered in our world, we’ve adopted him. If he wanted our name, that would be the next step. That is, if Levi still felt the same way he had months ago.

“Don’t even go there,” Julian warns, glaring at me as he draws back. “He’s going to freak out.”

I chuckle as warmth spreads in my chest. I don’t know what “freaking out” looks like on Levi—but I can’t wait to find out.

Every time we brought up Levi’s options, he ended up in tears, begging to stay with us. He wanted to be with us, but there were still moments when I wondered if it was just a survival instinct. If the fear of being alone again blurred what he really wanted.

But I don’t think that anymore. Because while it’s been slow coming, Levi’s started to crawl out of his shell over the last two months.

Julian doesn’t always see all the changes because he was still so quiet, but I see the seemingly little things and know they’re colossal. Like how he no longer ate everything we put in front of him because, apparently, he hates blueberries and broccoli.

Or how he didn’t crawl into bed as soon as we said bedtime anymore; now he drags his feet and pouts the whole way there.

Levi is a good kid, one who listens, and always tries to be on his best behaviour, but I’ve learnt that that’s just who Levi is.

And now, he’s ours.

“Should we tell him now?” Julian asks, angling towards his room—then spinning again with wide, panicked eyes. “Or do we wait? Should we do this with a gift? Or is the certificate its own gift?”

“We can tell him now if you can calm down,” I chuckle as I grab his elbow before he can do another lap. “Come on, breathe, babe.”

Julian nods rapidly, trying to centre himself. He looks at me as he breathes, and I struggle not to squeeze his cheeks. He absolutely hates when I do that, but it’s not my fault they’re so chubby and cute.

Julian hadn’t put on a whole lot of weight since we discovered that he was carrying our pup, but it was noticeable to me. When he had his shirt down, you couldn’t tell anything was different, but when it was up, there was a bump. He refused to show to anyone but me and the healers since we’d broken the news to the rest of the pack.

As expected, that day had been beyond awkward. Standing on stage, trying to convince hundreds of wolves that theirmalealpha was pregnant. Nobody at the time was brave enough to say anything, but the disbelief had screamed through the pack bond like a siren.

I let Julian stumble his way through the announcement, watching until he ran out of words. And then I did what we should’ve done at the start—I lifted up his shirt.

My ear still burns sometimes with how tightly he twisted it after, but it’d worked. Shock rippled through the pack bond before everyone was on their feet and scrambling forward to see for themselves.

I suppose having already accepted the oddity of two alphas for mates made it easier to accept. After the shock wore off, the majority were happy. There were, of course, a few sceptics who I’d suspected were there from the start when we announced ourselves as mates. This had just been the tipping point.

They’d been vocal about the wrongness of what was happening, and I’d been equally vocal in giving them the boot out of the pack. Julian’s parents had been among that group, but if he’d noticed, he hadn’t said a word, so neither had I.

Julian never talks about his family. Sometimes he still cries. And when he does, I’m there for him, just like he’s there for me on the nights I come back with Reon’s blood under my fingernails, because I can’t speak about mine either.

Mine are still in the pack, but it’s like they’d enacted the same personal mandate to stay away that Julian had given his. They never tried to speak to me, never tried to see me, and any time I smelled their scents in the air, they made themselves scarce before I could even spot them.

Nothing and everything had changed between us. They were still absent, the reasons had just changed. Not that it matters. I have Julian. And this family we were growing with our pups, and that’s more than enough.

“What’s that look for?” Julian asks, pausing his breathing exercise to frown at me.

“I’m just thinking about how excited I am to do this with you,” I say, tucking his loose strands behind his ear. “We’re starting a family, Jewels.”