When I woke in the morning, Dylan wasn’t in bed again — but this time, I got the sense he hadn’t been forced to skip out on me. I could smell coffee brewing from the kitchen, and when I rolled over to press my face into his pillow, it was obvious he’d only just left.

Of course, this was his bed, so his scent was stronger in all these fabrics than it had been in mine. With that and the knowledge that breakfast might be coming, there was very little incentive to get out of bed until he called for me. This was the kind of life I could get used to — although, I reminded myself, there would usually be a pup in this equation.

It had been a long time since I’d been around kids. I didn’t run into many at SeaTac Tat, and when parents did bring them in, we usually asked them to stick to the reception area. Wasn’t wise to have them running around near the needles. I wasn’t sure how I was going to be around Dylan’s. The idea of it was pretty intimidating, but it was a challenge I found myself surprisingly ready to rise to. I wanted to make this work.

For how long, I still didn’t like to guess. Committing to the idea of being with somebody was hard, after so many years of managing by myself. Besides, I still couldn’t get the risk of the virus out of my mind.

I didn’t want to think about that on such a perfect morning.

As I heard Dylan coming back through, I closed my eyes again, and turned into the pillow.

It didn’t last long. As soon as he stepped through the door, he hummed. “You think a parent can’t tell when someone’s pretending to be asleep? Please. You’re an amateur.”

I grinned into the pillow, way too delighted to be caught, and rolled sleepily onto my back to look up at him. His arms were folded as he leaned against the door, and he was wearing an apron. Of course he was.

“I was hoping you might try to wake me up,” I said, drawing my eyes down to the front of his apron, and the crotch of his pants lurking behind.

He tutted, squeezing his arms tighter. “Not on your life. I’m not burning the first breakfast I’ve ever made you.”

I raised my head a little, seeking out the scent. “What’s cooking?”

“Blueberry muffins, avocado toast and brown sugar and banana oatmeal. Plus an orange and mango smoothie, if you want it.”

“Holy shit.” I sat up on my elbows, blinking. “Prolific. What time did you get up?”

Being sincere was worth it to see him squirm. “Oh — no, it isn’t much...” Even as he denied the compliment, I could see it pleased him. “I can’t take credit for the blueberry muffins. They’re from a few days ago. Well kept, though — and vegan,” he added quickly, embedding himself further in my heart. “Avocado toast is just… avocado toast. And I owe the oatmeal to Pinterest.”

“Well. I’m impressed.”

I shuffled to the edge of the bed. He took the signal and bent down to kiss me, brief and soft. I had to remind myself how early this relationship still was.

“You always this much of an overachiever?”

“With a kid as fussy as mine, you get used to preparing options,” he admitted, standing up again. “And… yeah, as you might have noticed, going a little overboard is kind of my thing.”

“Look, I’m not complaining. The most I usually get for breakfast is dry toast tinged with the scent of everyone else’s bacon, and this is just… incredible.”

He shuffled back out to the kitchen, tinged pink. “You haven’t eaten it yet. You should probably hold the applause in case I’m a terrible cook.”

“You are way too anal retentive to be a terrible cook.”

Dylan tutted, but I could practically hear the smile on his face. Not wanting to miss any more of it, I dragged myself up out of bed and forced myself to at least try to make it. I figured he’d appreciate the gesture. With the room a little more in order, I borrowed the largest pair of sweatpants from the stack on Dylan’s chair, and followed him out to the table.

“Dylan, seriously?” He’d mentioned Pinterest just now, and I wasn’t surprised. The spread he’d laid out looked like it was fresh out of somebody’s Instagram. Taking the seat opposite his, I drank up the happiness on his face. “You are amazing. I don’t deserve this.”

“Oh, stop,” he said. “Just eat. I’m happy to cook for somebody who understands that it takes time and effort. And I’m assuming you won’t pull a face and tell me it smells funny…?”

“No, ‘cos it smells fucking fantastic.”

I was already halfway through a slice of avocado toast, suddenly ravenous at the sight of all this food. I felt like I hadn’t eaten in years, despite the pizza we’d shared after our heartfelt discussion last night. Crazy to think Dylan would ever agree to eat that cardboard, knowing that stuff like this was in his repertoire.

“I’m glad you like it,” he said, positively glowing. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering how the hell he was still single — and then sunk into a little pit of guilt, remembering how it was only his own heartache that had held him back. “You know, we-”

He was interrupted by the sound of a knock at the door. By the look on his face, he took it about as well as an explosion or a high-pitched scream.

“That’s Brandon. Would you mind putting a shirt on?”

“Who’s Brandon?”

Still, I was already up from the table to follow orders, hunting through the same laundry pile from before. I lifted one out, only to hear a strangled noise from Dylan.

“Ah — sorry. Not that one. He’ll know it’s mine. The white one, maybe…? Sorry. Thank you.” Then, as the knocking started up again: “Coming!”

I tugged the white shirt over my head, combing my fingers through my hair to look a little less mussed and still none the wiser about who this Brandon was. I hadn’t touched the smoothie yet, but with a little of that freshly-brewed black coffee in me, I had enough clarity of thought to realize that how I was handling this was… kind of weird. Brandon was a man’s name, and my wolf-self had clearly already begun to think of Dylan as my omega. There should be some jealousy playing in, and yet all I felt was Dylan’s tension, and the desire to get one of those blueberry muffins in me.

Curious. I knew I’d have to explore that later, but right now I was more interested in finding out who had come to the door.

“Daddy!”

“Hi, Jo-Jo!”

Well, that made sense. I tugged the sweatpants I’d borrowed a little higher up my hips, and stepped through into the hallway. He hadn’t asked me to pretend I wasn’t here, so I figured I’d better introduce myself. It’d be weirder if I hid away and waited to be discovered. Right?

When I reached Dylan, he already had his daughter on his hip. She looked a hell of a lot like him, only a little more sharp and pointed — and her brown eyes were bright as they landed on me.

Either she was shy or well-behaved, though; she let the man standing in front of Dylan have first say.

“Oh. I didn’t know you had a guest.” Judging by the smile twitching at the corner of his lips, it wouldn’t have mattered whether I was in a shirt that was noticeably Dylan’s or not.

“Yeah,” said Dylan, flustered already. “Jack, this is my brother, Brandon. Brandon, this is… Jack.”

“Nice to meet you,” I said, offering my hand. Usually, it’d be the stranger to the family that was nervous in this scenario, but Dylan seemed to be filling that quota for the both of us. I met enough people at the tattoo parlor; this was easy. I turned to Dylan and Josie then, giving her my best wolfish grin. “And this is Josie, isn’t it? It’s nice to meet you as well.”

“I like your arms.”

“Hey, thanks.” I didn’t have to see kids often to understand what that meant. I held them both out in front of her, glancing down across all the black and gray ink. There was nothing she shouldn’t be looking at on there; all my more adult work was in more personal places. Not unless her dad didn’t want her looking at skulls, anyway. She reached out with a shy hand, and I prodded at my own skin to let her know she had permission. “I see you’re an artist yourself.”

She shook her head, hiding in her dad’s shoulder.

“Aw, c’mon! Of course you are. That’s your work on the fridge, right? You did a great job.”

Josie’s smile was big enough to poke out from behind Dylan’s arm — and Dylan’s smile was pretty telling, too. She spoke muffled against her dad’s shirt. “Are you going to color them in?”

“My arms?” I turned them over, hunting for the few spots of red to show her. “I don’t think so. Why? You think it’d look better?”

She nodded, wriggling to be let down.

“Josie,” said Dylan, in a warning voice. “You can’t color in his tattoos. They are not a coloring book.”

“Sure they are,” I insisted, flexing my fingers as I turned my arms over, looking for a good spot, and looked up to meet his eyes. “I don’t mind.”

He looked at me for a beat, eyes straying over my face. This was the level of fondness that had cooked me breakfast. The man who had shared his story with me. The omega I’d spooned to sleep yesterday — and somehow, this was all in the same body as the man I’d slept with the night before last. What did I do to deserve him?

“If you’re sure,” he said, smile betraying him.

I nodded, flashing my grin at his brother too. “Yeah. It’ll be fun. Good to meet you briefly, Brandon.”

“You too.”

I heard the amusement in his voice — and the silence that followed me out. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that they were waiting for me to leave so that they could talk about me, but that didn’t intimidate me either. Dylan didn’t have anything bad to say about me, as far as I knew. If Brandon did, well… I wasn’t into Brandon.

I found Josie rifling through a box of craft supplies in the other room, and perched at the table. At least this way I could still eat my breakfast.

“Can you have pink?” she asked, still hunting.

“Yep. Any color you want.”

I picked up the coffee, taking another restorative mouthful as I waited for her to join me. She crammed an entire box of coloring-in pens onto the table — some of those pens looking a little worse for wear. I caught myself making note of that for future presents, and wondered when I’d gotten so ahead of myself.

“Alright,” I said. “We’ve got… flowers. Dragons.”

“I like the pattern.”

“The… oh. Right.” I shifted to put the right part of my arm in front of her on the table — a complex mandala that wrapped all the way around my forearm. “So. I’m Jack.”

She smiled, already mostly focused on coloring. “Are you my daddy’s friend?”

“Yep. That’s me.”

“That’s good,” she said. “It’s nice. Because...”

I waited as she lost track of her sentence, scribbling purple into the mandala on my arm, and finished the last bite of my avocado toast.

“...Because everybody should have friends,” she finished, at long last.

“Your daddy doesn’t?”

“He has friends,” she said, in a tone of voice that suggested otherwise. “But a lot of them is grandma and grandpa and uncles and aunties.”

“You have a lot of those, huh?”

“Lots,” she said, her little eyes wide for emphasis — then right back down at her art. “Are you a wolf?”

“Yup.”

“So are we.”

It pleased me to hear her so unashamed to ask. She seemed to be warming up to me pretty quickly, but sometimes wolf kids were taught not to be so proud of their species. It was a safety measure, since not all humans were one hundred percent tolerant, but I was willing to bet it did some damage to the self-esteem to hide away like that. Our pack had never bothered. Even now, we turned away humans that seemed uncomfortable with us away from the parlor door.

“That’s good,” I said. “Do you get to be in your fur much?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not allowed at school.”

“Who says? Daddy?”

“School,” she said, shaking her head. “But we go at grandma and grandpa’s house. Everyone runs in the yard.”

“That sounds great.”

“I’m really fast,” she insisted, talking down at my arm. It was almost as if she’d forgotten I was real, and was just talking aloud. That suited me well enough. Was this how clients felt when I inked them up for real? “And I can jump.”

“Cool.”

Nothing made me feel more ancient than saying ‘cool’ to a six-year-old. Luckily, Dylan and Brandon made their appearance then, stepping through the doorway to watch her doodling on me.

“How’s that new tattoo shaping up for you?” said Dylan.

“Pretty great. I could use a color expert at the shop when she grows up.”

“What shop do you have?” she asked, looking up at me. All that shyness had definitely vanished now, but I guessed that was pretty much how kids operated. Terrified one second, and all in the next. “Daddy has flowers.”

“Yeah, I saw,” I said, grinning over at Dylan. “My shop sells tattoos like this. I put them on people.”

“Did you do it?” she asked, in awe.

“On myself? Not most of it.”

Dylan blinked. “Wait. But you did some?”

“Sure. Gotta learn somehow. It’s on my leg; I’ll show you later.”

In the short pause that followed, I distinctly saw Brandon elbow Dylan in the side.

“Oh. Uh...” He gave Brandon a hard look before turning back to me, cheeks freshly flushed. “We’re having a family dinner on Friday, at my mom and dad’s place. I mean. We have one every Friday. So, uh. If you… if you want to come this week, that would be nice.”

Part of me wanted to torture him just to see that blush spread, but I didn’t have it in me. I nodded, trying to keep still as Josie kept coloring on my arm. I needn’t have worried; a moment later, she moved her spare hand to pin me down.

“Sure,” I said. “Sounds fun.”

In truth, it wasn’t as simple as that. By the sounds of things, this ‘family dinner’ wouldn’t be just a couple of wolves and pups. If even a six-year-old described her family as ‘lots’, with very little context to help her understand what was average, then it had to be pretty extensive. It had been a very, very long time since I’d been around such a big pack atmosphere. And who know how many pups would be running around, if I really was some kind of carrier of Lunitis?

I felt guilty that I couldn’t say ‘no’, but I knew I would have felt guilty if I had said no, too — especially in front of his brother and his daughter.

Unaware of my uncertainty, Brandon clapped his hands together. “Great. I’ll tell Mom and Dad.”

I hadn’t had a biological brother for years, but I was close enough with Oscar and Mark that I recognized that look on Brandon’s face, and the tone of his voice. I’m making sure you can’t back out. Brotherly teasing aside, I was looking forward to getting to know Brandon, too. It seemed like he and Dylan had a good relationship.

“I’m going to make tracks,” Brandon continued. “Just wanted to drop Josie off before church, since that’s not her thing. I’ll see you all on Friday?”

“Sure,” said Dylan, sounding tired, and fixing his brother with a stare. “Thank you, Brandon.”

Of course, that was sibling talk too. It just wasn’t the kind of translation you could share in polite company.

I heard the door close, and Dylan reappeared to lean against the table, eyes moving between Josie and me. He was still blushing a little from inviting me to dinner, but there was a warmth in his smile. When he rested a hand on my shoulder, it felt natural. It didn’t feel like the first time.

“What are you going to do if that doesn’t wash off in the shower?”

I shrugged. “Look pretty?”

“Yeah, okay.”

He took his seat again at the table, tucking into his own breakfast. Feeling the harmony between the three of us in that moment, I couldn’t wait for Friday.

No matter how it turned my stomach.