Page 57 of The Alpha Contract

The last of the moving boxes barely fit in the truck, something groaning ominously behind them as Dimitri gave a final shove to get them in.

“Watch it, all the dishes are back there!”

He turned his head to glare at me over his shoulder. “They’re ugly dishes, baby. Besides, my mom’s bringing hers. You really think we’re going to be eating anything in our own kitchen after she takes over? Get real.”

“But she has her own cottage!” I protested. “She’s not going to cook us three meals a day.”

Dimitri burst out laughing. “Uh-huh. More like four. Or five, after she starts in about how you’re too skinny.”

I glanced down at my perfectly normal, occasionally-gym-honed body in dismay. “I’m really not.”

“She thinks I’m too skinny, let alone you.” Dimitri gave a hard yank on the sliding door of the truck, and it rattled down and settled in with a satisfying thump and click. Something else settled inside the truck with another creak, and I winced. Fuck it. The door was closed. Too late now. “Seriously, Brook. You don’t understand Russian moms yet, but you will. We’ll never cook again. And she’s a much, much better cook than I am.”

I went a little misty-eyed thinking about the unimaginable quantities—and quality—of food she’d prepared for us when we visited her for the first time, two weeks after the showdown at the mating-reception-that-wasn’t. I was shocked by how well she navigated the kitchen in her wheelchair, apparently not slowed down in the slightest. Dimitri had finally told me how she’d been injured: his father, drunk and careless, too confident in his own werewolf healing to worry about his wife’s vulnerable humanity.

Dimitri had been typically tight-lipped about the details, though I trusted him to tell me more as time went on, just as I knew he truly did trust me. But he had trouble opening up. That was okay. I’d be there when he did.

At least I finally understood the root of his fierce protectiveness when I showed any symptoms of Hensley’s. Dimitri’s father had neglected his injured mate, scoffed at her for her weakness, and then finally fucked off back to Russia—with, it sounded like, some none-too-gentle prodding from his twenty-year-old alpha son. Reading between the lines, Dimitri had put him on the plane with his claws at his father’s jugular, confiscating all his available cash at the same time to use for Nadia’s care.

Another, very expensive, experimental surgery might get her walking again, and when Dimitri had found me researching hospitals one night when I should’ve been working on the company’s ten-year strategy plan instead, he hadn’t said a word: just pulled me out of my chair, kissed me until my head spun, and gone downstairs to make me a snack.

I didn’t need him to thank me. Nadia had embraced me like a second son, fed me, and apparently spent hours on the phone bragging about her handsome CEO son-in-law to all of her friends.

Yeah, I was team Nadia.

And Dimitri’s sister—the real one, not the pregnant one I’d invented without realizing how close I’d come to the truth—wasn’t bad either, a smaller, slightly less dangerous version of her older brother. Slightly. I wasn’t about to do anything to piss her off.

And she made incredible pastry.

Which brought me back to the food. “Yeah,” I said, sounding a little dreamy. “She really is a better cook than you. They both are.”

“That’s the gratitude I get,” he said, laughing, and yanked me into his arms, kissing me breathless. “You ready to go? Blow this popsicle stand?”

I took a long, last look at the house my family had chosen for me. I hadn’t hated it a lot of the time, although I’d definitely nursed a simmering distaste. And I’d liked it a lot more with Dimitri in it; he’d even warmed up to the couch he despised so much. “It looks a lot better with you naked all over it,” he’d said. And he’d been right.

But I had no regrets. We’d bought our own place a couple of miles away, closer to work in a quiet little rural suburb. Three bedrooms in the main house, and two in the one-story cottage out back, now fully remodeled in a big hurry to accommodate Dimitri’s mom and sister. Dimitri would be driving down to Arizona to get them at the end of the week.

“I’m ready.” And I was. So very, very ready to live out of the shadow of my family, to welcome a new family into my life, to make the best of every moment.

Before, I’d worked because I didn’t have anything else.

Now, I’d be working to support the people who loved me, who’d support me in turn.

“Me too.” Dimitri wrapped his arms around me, nuzzled my neck, and got me all hot and bothered within seconds. Dammit, there wasn’t room in the truck to do anything about it. “We still have to christen most of the new house. With furniture, this time. I still feel bad about the rug burn.”

“No, you don’t.”

He laughed and nipped at my ear. “No, I don’t. But I’ll bend you over the kitchen counter this time to save your back.”

“So romantic,” I groused, but I couldn’t suppress my smile—or the stiffening of my cock, which loved the idea of the kitchen counter.

And loved Dimitri as much as I did.

My fake mate. My unlikely alpha. My Dimitri, as imperfect as I was and impossibly perfect for me at the same time.

We untangled ourselves, climbed in the truck, and set off for our new home and our new life, hand in hand.

The End