Page 77 of Lost and Bound
“A million…dollars?” I croaked. “American dollars?”
“This is Canada, baby. A million cups of Tim Horton’s coffee.”
I gaped at him, my eyes wide, until he burst into laughter and pulled me roughly into his arms, squeezing me tight.
“Yes, a million dollars U.S.,” he said. “We won’t be able to sell them for that much, since we don’t know the right people. But even if we only get half of what they’re really worth…”
He didn’t need to finish that sentence. Half a million dollars—and I was willing to bet we could get more than that, with some of the contacts the pack had, leaving Calder’s completely out of it—would be enough to change everything. A few of the younger pack members had gone to Matt and the council recently with an honestly pretty kick-ass business plan for a microbrewery. But we didn’t have a fucking dime to put into it, and they didn’t have the credit for loans. One girl, a human member of the pack, was graduating from high school in a couple of weeks and wanted to get a double degree in agriculture and business and then come back and start an organic dairy farm. We couldn’t even afford to send her as far as the Lancaster community college.
But this…and then it was like a record scratch, because I’d been thinking of all the things the pack could do with all that money, when—it wasn’t theirs. Or mine, even. Sure, Calder would use some of it to build that little house for us, but…
I pulled back and looked him in the eye. I had to get the tone just right. Any hint of pressure, or expectation, would make me an entitled fucking scumbag. Packs worked like that, but Calder wasn’t a pack animal. And he didn’t owe us a fucking thing.
“What are you planning to do first?” I grinned at him as naturally as I could. “Buy a car you actually fit into?”
He grinned back at me and leaned in to drop a quick kiss on my lips. “No. First priority? Soundproofing Matthew and Arik’s bedroom so my brat of a brother stops making inappropriate pointed remarks.” He grimaced and added, “And it’s not like they’re so fucking quiet themselves.” I choked on a burst of hysterical laughter. Oh gods, was he saying— “And then send Meghan to college,” he added more seriously. “Obviously. I actually like cows more than I like most people, they’re peaceful. And she promised me she’d have a line of homemade ice cream. I’m sold.”
If anyone had ever asked me where on earth I expected to finish falling completely, hopelessly, head over heels in love with another person—not to mention who that person would be—a six-foot-seven polar bear shifter with permanently glowing eyes who fucked me three times a day, while kneeling on the weedy contaminated dirt outside an abandoned Canadian uranium mine, would have been…maybe infinity down that list.
I’d become a realist. And I’d thought that meant accepting all the awful things the world could do to me.
But it turned out reality could be infinitely better than anything my imagination could’ve produced. And all I had to do was accept it.
Calder smiled at me, and I wound my arms around his neck and pulled him down into the filthiest, most suggestive kiss I could manage, not withdrawing until he’d bruised my lips and stolen all the air from my lungs.
And he wasn’t breathing evenly either, eyeing me like I tasted as good as that future homemade ice cream.
“I only want you, too, Calder,” I said. “The diamonds are fucking great, don’t get me wrong, but—”
He tackled me to the ground, laughing and kissing me breathless again.
I forgot all about the diamonds.
Calder was worth more to me than anything with a price, and—I knew I was worth more to him, and always would be.
The End