Page 56 of Her Big Bad Wolf

Steam was practically visible from her ears as my mate glared at me, but still, she didn’t say a word.

“What about food? Will you keep feeding us?”

“I told Kyle I would, so yeah.”

The little one raised his hand next.

“What?”

“It’s cold down there. Can we have some extra blankets?”

“Sure.”

“Or maybe they could sleep in one of those extra rooms you told Kyle about,” Vanessa finally said.

I had a feeling she had a lot more choice words for me but didn’t want to make a scene in front of the boys.

“They like it down there.” I shrugged and blew it off.

If those little shits wanted to stay in the guest room, they could damn well ask. They offered to stay in the basement so I wasn’t going to just offer up the rest of my house.

Mason raised his hand again.

“Jesus, what now?”

“Can we use the bathroom up here?”

“You mean you haven’t been?”

He shook his head. “We found a bucket, but it’s almost full.”

“Christ, what the hell is wrong with you? Use the damn toilet.”

“But you keep putting the stairs up and trapping us down there. What the hell else are we supposed to do?” Noah asked.

I growled. I hadn’t thought about that.

“Stairs will stay down. No more peeing in the house unless it’s in the damn toilet. And take that bucket and dump it outside. That’s nasty.”

Once again Mason raised his hand.

I sighed. We were never going to get through this talk.

“No more questions. I talk; you listen. Now, where was I?”

“No more stealing shit,” Noah said with a smirk.

“Noah! We don’t use that kind of language,” Vanessa admonished him.

“Three: whatever she says goes.”

Vanessa perked up and I knew I was going to regret those words the second they left my mouth.

“Four: you all go to school. No cutting classes or you’re out of here. It’s bad enough you’re here at all. I’m not taking in ingrates.”

“What’s an ingrate?” Mason asked.

“Look it up,” I barked. “Starting tomorrow you’re all back in school.”