Page 26 of Found (Mate Rejected #8)

EPILOGUE 1

MACK

ONE MONTH LATER

I yawn as I fold my arms across my chest and stare up at the night sky.

Janie, our beautiful baby girl, isn’t a soul healer like other omegas. She’s capable of healing others by touch.

No one understands her gift, at least, not yet, but we have slowly come to accept that picking her up usually results in her healing whatever small scrape, bruise, or cut we have.

And once, one of Adela’s wrinkles.

Tonight isn’t the first time I’ve come out here to lay on a lounger at the bottom of our garden, pondering her incredible gift. I don’t usually ponder for too long because Janie doesn’t like to sleep and will probably wake up soon.

I’m drifting off to sleep when Aerin slips onto the lounger beside me.

Smiling, I slide my arm around my beautiful mate and kiss the top of her head. “Ah, looking to escape the terror inside?”

Aerin laughs. “Janie is not a terror.” She pauses. “When she’s asleep. When she’s awake… well.”

Since Janie was born, I don’t like to stray far from the house, or Aerin, for that matter.

But once I’d rocked Janie back to sleep after feeding her from the bottle, something about the way the moonlight drifted over the garden drew me outside.

It’s not the same one Aerin and I have fallen out of more times than I could count.

Bennett’s present to us, after Janie was born, was a double lounger, not made out of plastic, big enough, in his words, “For you, Aerin, and Janie to not kill yourselves rolling out of on a regular basis.”

It’s the best present I’ve ever had.

“Are you falling asleep?” Aerin whispers.

“Probably.”

She yawns. “Me too. Any time there’s silence and my exhausted brain just shuts down.”

I nod. “Yeah.”

We fall silent.

“Are you waiting for the crying to start back up again?” I ask.

She slips her hand under my shirt, resting it over my heart. I hum in pleasure. “Yep. You?”

“I never stop. I love her, but I’m desperately hoping we’re reaching the point she’ll sleep through the night.”

We’re still planning to make the big move to an old farm outside of town, to build a home for everyone, but I’ve handed over most of the organization for that to the rest of the pack. My sleep deprived brain can’t handle a project that scale. Not yet.

“And just when we’ve gotten her settled, we’ll be thinking of doing this again,” I say.

“Yeah,” she breathes. “Crazy, huh?”

I give her a gentle squeeze.

We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the future. That’s when we’ve not been falling asleep between feedings. Part of those conversations has included Shane, Aerin’s former mate. And about whether we are going to tell Janie about her biological father.

Aerin had been resistant to the idea. I had as well. But the more we’ve thought about it, and the more we’ve talked about it with Adela, we’ve come to the decision that it’s something Janie needs to know.

Whether we like it or not, Shane is a part of Janie’s past. So when she’s older, we’ll tell her about Shane. The last thing he did was die protecting Aerin, even if he did more wrong than right.

“Mack?”

“Yeah?”

“I’d like to move to the farm before we have our second one,” she says.

I grin down at her. “So it’s easier to find babysitters?”

She laughs. “No. Just the thought of moving after sounds exhausting. Do you think we’ll be able to?”

I consider it.

We’ve bought the land already. When we came back from Michigan, I didn’t want to waste time when I saw how quickly things could threaten our happiness. And even though the den looks brand new, with no sign of the fire that nearly destroyed the house, it doesn’t feel the same. For me or Aerin.

And shifters have always been stronger together than apart.

Construction is going to be the thing that takes the longest and I have no idea how long that will take. Maybe upwards of a year, considering the scale of the project. We would need a three story home for it to be big enough for everyone. Especially to house the new arrivals we hadn’t been expecting to stay.

“I’ll ask your dad,” I say.

She sighs. “Please don’t give him any control, Mack. He will crave more of it. It’ll be like giving a gremlin water. They multiply. So will his need to control something.”

I laugh. “He won’t. He’s busy with other things.”

She shudders. “You are putting filthy images in my mind. Stop it.”

Douglas Boone didn’t just move to Winter Lake with his beta, Moses and Lucy. He came with a woman, and it looks like he had another reason to cede control of the Boone Pack.

“He seems happy,” I say, thoughtfully.

She claps a hand over my mouth and I grip her wrist, kiss her palm and peel it away. “I didn’t mean they were up to anything filthy. Just that he seems to be appreciating a life with a little less responsibility. He asked if he could help out with the rebuild and I’ve been debating whether to agree or not.”

“And now you think yes?”

“I think we’re all going to have to work hard to get the house ready. Not just because of baby number two.”

“Penny’s Bakery,” she says.

“Penny’s Bakery,” I echo.

The grocery store manager is still breathing down the back of Penny's’ neck, eager for more of her delicious home-made cakes to stock in the store, and potentially, nationwide. To do that, she needs a bigger kitchen. One of the outbuildings on the old farm we bought would be perfect for that.

“And the wolf mural?” Aerin’s tone is wistful.

I kiss her. “I did it on one big panel in case we moved. We can take it with us.”

She grins. “And will you do another one for baby number two?”

“If you want me to. I’ll do a better job this time.”

“You already did the best job with Janie’s.”

I’m not sure about that. I see the little mistakes I made, though Aerin never seems to.

“Then I’ll do it.”

Her eyes drift from me to the forest that borders the bottom of the garden. “I love this house so much. It was my sanctuary, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever be a person who easily embraced change, and this is going to be a big change for all of us.” She smiles at me. “But I’m really excited about this next change.”

“Me too, love.”

“And my dad is going to be there. Probably with a new mate… which is weird to imagine.”

“Him having a new mate?”

She shakes her head. “Him wanting to play a part in my life and offering to babysit Janie.”

I was surprised by that, but he genuinely seems to enjoy being a grandfather. When I heard him laughing with her a week ago, I thought I was hearing things. Until I saw the grin on his face as he held Janie and I knew I had heard exactly what I thought I had.

“Have I told you that I love you today?”

She grins at me. “You have, but I don’t mind if you want to say it again.”

I bend to kiss her again.

An ear-splitting scream sounds from the house and we wince as we break apart.

“She was sleeping so peacefully,” she says, getting to her feet.

“How about we double team and try to get some sleep on the recliner in her room? She always seems to sleep better when we’re there together.”

“Because she’s high maintenance.” She gets up and holds out a hand for me. “I was too. Moses told me so, and I warned you when you said you wanted five or six kids just like me.”

I grin at her. “And I wouldn’t change any of this for the world.”

A slow, happy smile splits her face. “Neither would I. I love you, Mack Winters.”

“And I love you, Aerin Winters.”