Page 88 of Retribution

I heard him, I did. My heart is doing this flip flopping thing it does when it’s too full. It’s all on the tip of my tongue, I want to say something back, but Lucas kisses my lips gently.

“If I ever suggest something that may be even slightly difficult for you, I want to be there to support you,” he says. “I need you to hear me, because you’re not going to be a mother to this baby alone. Just like I’m going to be here for whatever you need to do to heal and rebuild your life. You’ve done so much while you’ve been alone. You simply don’t have to do it by yourself anymore, okay?”

“Okay,” I gasp, feeling as if the air is too thin. It’s not panic, I’m simply overwhelmed by emotions. There are bubbles of butterflies that are threatening to take over.

I feel giddy, excited, and completely lost all at the same time. How did they become so important to me so quickly?

“Now, let’s try this again. Can I make you an appointment with a doctor? The doctors here talk too much. I don’t have to worry about that as much with the contractors I hire because they get non disclosure agreements in all their contracts,” he rambles.

Is he nervous?

“Yes, please. What doctor are you going with if they all gossip?” I ask.

“One who I may be able to get to do a house call,” he says. “I’ve been working through it while we’ve been talking, and I think that would be the best way to do this. Leila shouldn’t be exposed to germs from a waiting room either.”

“Is that why you were rambling just now?” I ask, unable to not tease him.

“You noticed that?” he asks, color flooding his face.

“Oh yeah. I did.”

“Ugh. I try not to do that, but it happens when I’m working through different options,” he sighs. “I was also thinking about how overwhelming it would be to have four alphas crowded into a small office. It would be too much. The doctor might shit himself.”

“We can’t have that,” I sputter, trying not to move as I laugh.

“It would be terrible,” he agrees, kissing me again. His body is warm against me and I find myself melting into his embrace as he slides his arms around the baby and I.

“What else is going on in your very busy mind?”

“It’s because I slept,” he says, his hair falling over his forehead as he smiles at me. There are a lot of different ways that Lucas presents himself to the world, but this is mine.

The goofy, nerdy, highly addictive Lucas really does it for me. Some people might say that it’s too soon for me to be this head over heels over Lucas, but I’ve seen him in some very vulnerable situations. He never cracked or attempted to use his alpha bark.

I think he used his imprisonment as a form of vacation, which may make him as insane as I am.

“Does that mean you rebooted yourself?” I ask. I drop my head back on the pillows, realizing that the bubbles I feel are both love and happiness.

Woah.

“It seems so,” he says, picking up his phone to text someone. “I’m asking Oliver to start the paperwork for our pack and Leila to submit to the HPO. I am also asking him to get some paperwork started for her. I need to ask a question though.”

Lucas is in the groove. The one where he’s split between doing several things as he gets shit done.

“Are you going to look at me when you ask?”

“Yes,” he grunts, dropping his phone to give me his full attention. “There are two ways we could go about making Leila part of this family.”

I’ve been with her for about three days since the fire, bonding and figuring out what she likes and dislikes. In my head, she’s mine. It still boggles my mind that my alphas are so willing to walk with me on this path.

“Hit me with it,” I whisper, tears threatening. I feel as if I’m on a rollercoaster that I can’t get off. I’m not even sure I want to.

I’ve shut everything down for so long outside of pain to be able to control and feel something that now it’s as if I’m trying to drink from a firehose.

It’s messy and hurts a bit.

“We could submit completion of adoption papers, or we could forge Leila’s birth certificate so that you’re her mother and we’re her fathers.”

“That’s a lot of names,” I gasp, tears slipping free.