Josh found Ray bent over his drawing pad, bedroom door mostly open and so lost in the work that he didn't notice Josh walking in. And then he saw Mikey on the bed, curled up and deeply asleep. Maybe Ray wasn't the only one distracted.

“He was the only one we could get to take a nap,” Ray explained without looking up. “Marisa's got the other four with her.”

“Oh,” Josh said. “I didn't think you knew I was here...”

That made Ray look up, blue eyes serious. “I know where every one of you is every second of every day.”

Josh swallowed, trying not to give away his alarm. It was probably pointless, even if Ray wasn't using his hearing and keen nose to keep track of them and somehow knew by some other omega ability, he still couldn't miss Josh's heart racing when Josh was standing in front of him. “Even outside pack territory?”

“No,” Ray said curtly, turning away again. He clearly resented the limitation.

Josh's heart contracted. And then he realised he was feeling sorry for Ray instead of doing something to help him. Again. He'd been thinking of simply offering the work and hoping Ray accepted, but why the pretence? Ray hadn't lost his mind when he'd acquired the ability to tell where everyone in his territory was, or even when he'd been assaulted in that same territory and forced— He was hurt, and he wanted to heal just as much as Josh wanted him to. He didn't need to be deceived like a child refusing medicine.

“About that... I have an idea.” Ray didn't look up, but Josh saw him pause in his shading. It wasn't the portrait, just a study of Clara's face in profile—probably in preparation for the bigger piece but already a beauty in its own right. “What if you helped with the building?”

Ray looked up, bemused. “The beta wing?”

“Yeah, the main rooms are done, but Gabriel says we better prepare for more betas now and we can't do the plumbing without a specialist, so...”

“Just putting bricks one on top of the other?” Ray checked. He sounded dubious, but he tended to be a little negative.

“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Josh argued. Of course, if you didn't need to be told the bricks had to be perfectly aligned in an alternating pattern because you had an eye for design... “And you'd be close, but... you wouldn't be with them all day, every day.”

“You are really selling this,” Ray said tersely. Josh didn't reply. Ray wasn't really objecting; he knew what had to be done, he just didn't want to do it. “Who... I mean, someone else will take over for me, right?”

“Gabriel said Marisa would want to. She doesn’t like the work, the—”

“Dirt,” Ray finished, wryly amused. “Of course she's freaking out.” Ray paused. Josh bit his lip and let the silence stand. He wasn't blind; Ray had avoided leaving the babies with Marisa since he'd been taken. He loved her, but he didn't trust her—or his wolf didn't. “I don't know—”

“I'll come with,” Josh interrupted. Ray stared at him, which was fair enough because it obviously had nothing to do with Ray's reluctance. “I’ll be with you if you need me for anything,” Josh offered lamely.

“You are right, I'm just...” He shrugged, twisting his pencil in his hands fast enough it blurred. It clearly required all his concentration to keep it from flying away—that explained why he wouldn't look up and meet Josh's eyes.

“You need time,” Josh said softly. “But the sooner you start...”

“Yeah,” Ray agreed. “Come here,” he demanded, and Josh was by his side at once, looking down at the sketch. “Is her nose weird? No,” he added when Josh pulled a face, “not her real nose, did I get it wrong?”

“Mmm...” He concentrated on the photo reference, trying to imprint the image of his daughter's face in his mind, then looked at the drawing. He'd learned to do this for Ray years ago. It had been too long since he'd been asked to. Had Ray asked Sergi when he'd taken it up again after presenting? He knew he hadn't been drawing lately, but...

“Josh?”

“Ah, yeah, sorry. I think it's a little too high.” He pointed. “It’s only a little but it's too close to the eyes, so...”

Ray was already humming his agreement. “Okay, I can...” He leaned in, not seeming to notice that his shoulder was resting against Josh's arm.

Josh stayed very still, not wanting to mess up his work, and just watched as Ray erased, then blew away the remains and marked the vague outline before straightening to have a look at the photograph again. “Yeah?” he asked Josh.

“Better,” Josh said. His voice came out too rough. He thought Ray tensed up, but he went back to drawing too quickly to be sure.

As if he truly was an angel sent to look over his parents, Mikey grumbled on the bed, clearly waking up. Ray glanced up, but Josh waved him away. “You have a deadline,” he joked and went to pick up his son.

At least Alec had talked Ray into weaning the babies off his milk. It made a new pregnancy more likely, but it wasn't like that was a concern at the moment anyway. After seeing him injured and covered in a strange alpha's scent, Josh's wolf was insisting on never letting him out of its sight again, but it had no interest in anything besides rubbing its side against its mate. It was the same for the others, Alec had said.

Alec wanted to find out why, Josh... Josh just wanted it to last. He didn't need to ever touch Ray again in anything but friendship; he'd give up every kiss, maybe even every touch like in some outlandish science fiction plot in which one lover's skin became poison to the other... He'd do anything in his power to keep Ray safe.

He still wanted him. He'd wanted him since he was thirteen years old— maybe the first person who’d made him stop and wonder what kissing felt like.

But he'd loved him even longer.

&

Gabriel took them over to the site the very next day; twenty metres away from the main house and facing east instead of west—both for defensibility and a modicum of privacy.

“Oh,” Ray said. “I didn't realise it was going to be this large. “And you are making it bigger? Won't that make it larger than the main house?”

“Well, it's not just for the betas. I figured we are better off setting up the children's rooms now even if they are just brick and cement for the next three years.” He'd said it easily, a professional confident in his work, but he stopped at once, catching Ray's alarm. He didn't open his mouth fast enough, though.

“You want to set up the children’s all the way over here?” Ray demanded between gritted teeth.

“It’s traditional, the betas—” Gabriel started.

Maybe he was sorry for how he'd acted during... the incident. Maybe Ray’s fury just intimidated him. “Traditional?” Ray echoed with pure, unrestrained disdain. “You know what else is traditional? This whole plan where you throw an omega at multiple mates and let them figure it out on their own! How's that been working out for you?”

“Ray...” Gabriel sounded pained. Ray was staring him down and the alpha wolf didn't react in any of the ways an alpha should have. Did he not feel the challenge? Or was he just keeping it down for Ray?

“If you think any of my children are going to have more than one mate...” Ray said in a low menacing voice.

“Stop,” Josh asked. He made sure it was just a word, none of the wolf's authority in his voice. Ray turned to him, eyes blazing. “Of course we wouldn't want that, Ray, you know we can see you...” He looked down at the soil they'd given up so much for. “You aren't happy. We aren't blind.”

“They will all get a choice,” Gabriel added. He took a step closer to Ray, hand slightly raised but thought better of it—perhaps he wanted to keep the hand—and just crossed his massive arms across his own chest. He should have looked intimidating but it was clear he was simply holding himself back. “I swear to you,” he said, heartbeat too fast, and meeting Ray's eyes like a man looking at his executioner. “They will get a choice. Anything that's possible. Anything we can... We will find ways.”

He was honest, Josh thought it'd have been obvious by the rawness of his voice even if they couldn't hear his accelerated but steady pulse. Ray turned his back on them. “Show me the rest,” he told Gabriel quietly.

Ray didn't speak again until the tour was over. “I thought so,” he said with a sigh. “You haven't planned for any storage, have you?”

“Storage? We'll have closets...”

Ray shook his head. Josh could see him hesitate for a second longer, maybe biting back a cutting remark. Ray was, at heart, a kind soul, but he had a mouth on him and not much patience for mistakes that seemed obvious to him. “Are you going to put the vacuum cleaner in the closet with your shoes?” he asked patiently. His body gave away the irritation he'd mainly managed to keep out of his voice, but Gabriel and Josh politely didn't mention it.

Josh nodded his support. “Ugh, yes, and brooms and all that. Spare blankets...”

“Exactly,” Ray said. “So can I have a look at the blueprints?”

Gabriel had acceded to it, even though he was a decade older than them and had spent all of the last ten years of his life knee-deep in the business. He wasn't an architect, of course, but Josh heard him drop terminology like he didn't even notice it wasn't common parlance. He objected to Ray's first choice for the bathroom—after he'd decided the original one had to be a storage room instead—but he gave him two other choices. Ray ended up agreeing to split one of the bigger rooms with a false wall they'd soundproof once they had some cash. The bathroom could be on one side, the smaller bedroom could be available to someone who needed the solitude. Ray had looked at Gabriel approvingly as he said it and Gabriel had given a tight nod at once. Josh wondered if they were thinking of someone in particular—it wasn't unusual for betas to share bedrooms, after all. All five of the betas who'd agreed to join their pack knew about the tight quarters, too. But it seemed oddly specific still.

He'd grown up with both of them, but that didn't mean he couldn't have missed a smaller, more private family reunion or two. His parents did take the holidays off and often dragged Josh away from pack territory—mostly to visit cousins in other packs, but they'd made it as far as France once when his mother was feeling particularly cosmopolitan. He bit his lip to keep from asking.

“So you are happy with it?” Gabriel asked after about an hour's debate. He sounded so much like the man who’d sat on the floor and listened to them babble about their private games that Josh had to look at him to check. But, of course, he looked the same, werewolves didn't age that much and it had only been about ten years anyway— even a human would not show much sign of ageing.

Ray, on the other side of the makeshift table they were using to keep the blueprint tacked to, was already watching Gabriel too closely. Gabriel's index finger twitched, as if he wanted to move, but he stayed still and withstood the scrutiny anyway.

“I’m happy with it,” Ray echoed. “I’m sorry, I should have looked at the blueprints earlier. I know it'll be a lot of work to change it now...”

“Nah,” Gabriel said, smiling easily for the first time in... Josh didn't quite remember. He'd thought Gabriel liked the responsibility, but maybe he'd imagined things would go more smoothly for their nascent pack. Maybe he wasn't enjoying the ride so much when the road was pretty much one big pothole. “It’s good you told me now, we only need to change where we put the plumbing, really.”

Ray frowned, thoughtfully. “I haven't looked at the numbers this week, but I thought you did that overnight thing? And Alec should have got paid for the extra hours he put in last month, right? You said three thousand, right? We should have enough.” He glanced at Josh, even though Josh didn’t have a head for numbers and Ray and Gabriel had been dealing with it and telling them about it at meetings. “Anything extra?”

Josh shook his head. “No, Marisa spent a little more buying in bulk but she used her savings. She said we can pay her back when we are a little more stable.”

“Did she write it down anywhere?” Gabriel asked.

“Well, it’s Marisa so...” Josh assumed she had either a ledger or a spreadsheet she considered them too disorganized to look at.

“Yeah, but if we don’t know we owe her money,” Ray explained. “Then we can’t take the expense into account.”

“Oh, sorry,” Josh said, feeling like an idiot. “She just mentioned it because I said we really had to stick to the budget. I think she didn’t want to bother you with it. I don’t think it was a lot, maybe a hundred quid?”

“It’s fine,” Gabriel assured him, turning back to Ray already. Josh felt a bit stupid; he was an adult and maybe he wasn’t good at numbers but he certainly could keep track of household expenses. But he’d never lived on his own before they’d formed the pack and his parents had never involved him in such matters. Gabriel and Ray had a spreadsheet and a notebook they took to pack meetings. Josh could at least try to read it so he knew what his mate was talking about. Ray had grown up dealing with the small annoyances of running a household; he didn’t deserve to be left to it by default, though. He probably didn’t like it much either. Who would?

“...maybe this weekend,” Gabriel was saying when he tuned in again.

“Weren’t we going to have a meeting?” he cut in.

Gabriel stopped talking, but Ray shot him a confused look. “A meeting? What for? We have been saving for this. We need to finish it so the other betas can come over.”

“What about the sensors, though?” Josh asked.

“The sensors,” Ray said, like the words were foreign in his tongue.

“We were going to have a meeting about it,” Josh explained, more to fill the heavy silence than because he supposed Ray hadn't heard him the first time around. “I thought it was important to you...?”

“Yes,” Ray said at once, sounding more certain.

“We should have a meeting anyway.” Josh turned at Gabriel's unexpected support. “It's the right way to do things, isn't it?”

Ray nodded, blinking a little too much, then shrugged. “I guess.”

Josh put his hand on his elbow. Ray jerked. Not away, just in surprise. He shot Josh a contrite look, lips parted, but didn’t explain himself.

Josh shook his head, dismissing it at once. He'd promised himself not to coddle Ray when it wasn't necessary, but he couldn't be expected to do anything but give him a break—not as an alpha, as a friend—when he looked like he was so out of it.

He crossed his arms and turned to Gabriel. “I can show Ray how it goes tomorrow morning, but if we want to get the others together tonight we should head back. Alec was making dinner, right?”

Gabriel took the change in topic and ran with it, raising his eyebrows at him. “Sure, you want to have a meeting, not like you can smell that we are having roast lamb, is it?”

“Hey,” Josh said, smiling. “You can't blame a wolf for having a nose!”