I giggle as Koda nips at my neck while I sit in his lap at the giant dining room table. I may have gone a little overboard with all the food I cooked for breakfast, but I’m used to cooking for three shifters, and Koda’s kitchen has more than a cook could dream of.

I could cook for an army in here. A lot of the stuff had never even been used and I’d had to take the plastic off most of it. That just highlighted how much Koda needs me here. He keeps telling me he’s going to be taking care of me, but I’m going to care for him just as much.

“I made you all this food and you’re just going to eat me,” I protest half-heartedly as I lean my head to the side, letting him nibble at my neck.

His big hands run up my legs and under the shirt I have on, going to my ass and squeezing. “I want to eat you first.” This time, he licks me, and the sensation makes me wriggle on his very hard cock. I don’t know how we are still going at each other like this, but we can’t seem to get enough.

“You can’t live off of just eating me,” I tease back, shifting on his lap to rub against him.

“I could,” he grunts, then goes back to his neck assault, making me giggle again.

“Well I can’t.” He pulls back quickly, looking down at me with his big brown eyes.

“You’re hungry?” Concern shows on his face. He always seems so worried about me. Anytime I make the tiniest remark, he’s in action. I don’t even have to try the pout thing. I ask and he does. It’s sweet. It makes me feel important. Like he’s never going to let me go.

He pulls me from his lap and sets me in the chair next to his before getting up and working his way around the table, making a giant plate of food. He piles it with eggs, bacon, pancakes, and some little hash potatoes I made. Then he places it in front of me.

“I can’t eat all that.” I thought he was making the plate for himself. It’s piled so high with food that I’m surprised it hasn’t collapsed.

“You’re small. I’ll make you nice and big.” He nods like that’s that.

I snort, knowing if I eat all that I’ll be sick. “I’m just built small. Trust me, I eat,” I reassure him. I grew up with shifters and spent most of my time cooking. In fact, I ate a lot, but it never seemed to go anywhere. “But there is no way I can eat all this food.”

He sits back down in his chair, pulling the plate over in front of him, before picking me up once again and depositing me in his lap. It’s a habit he’s picked up over the last two days. When he wants me somewhere, he doesn’t really ask. He just picks me up and puts me there.

“I’ll feed you until it’s all gone.” He picks up some potatoes and brings them to my mouth. I open for him. A feeling warms me deep down. I know I can’t eat all the food, but I’ll give it a go.

I’ve always been the one to take care of my brothers. While they were good to me, this is different. I feel cherished as I sit in his lap while he slowly feeds me, bite by bite. I still like doing things around here, cooking and cleaning, but the way he shows me he cares makes my heart flutter. It makes me believe that maybe being mated to a human isn’t bothering him anymore.

I’ve been mulling over what would happen if our children were human. I don’t know how all that works and what happens when a human mates with a shifter. I know with me, he has the mating pull, so he has no choice but to want me. But would it be different with our kids? He wouldn’t have that special bond with them, and if they were human, he might not love them like they’d deserve.

I push the thought away, not wanting to think about it right now. I want to soak this up, enjoy every moment of being the center of someone’s world. It’s intoxicating, and I want more. For so long I felt like I was waiting for the inevitable, when I wouldn’t be useful to my brothers anymore. My future was so unsettled. All I’ve ever wanted is a real family of my own. One that wouldn’t leave me one day.

What would happen when the final one found their mate? Where would that leave me? I have no real skills besides keeping a home and taking care of people. That had never bothered me, and I liked doing it. But I always worried whether it would be enough to get me by once I was alone.

Koda brings another bite to my mouth, reminding me that I’ll never have to worry about that again. I have a mate to care for now. Maybe I could even make him fall in love with me. Guilt hits me at the thought. He’d probably hate me if he knew it was my father who’d kept him caged.

He’d told me his story late last night. How he came to Gray Ridge to live. That he’d tracked down his sister after being caged for years. He didn’t give me all the details, and I could tell from the look on his face that the memory hurt deep. He hasn’t been free that long. A few years. If I had been stronger, he could have been free years before that. He wouldn’t be carrying that sadness and hate I see in his eyes when he talks about being caged.

Looking around the room, I wonder if he even realizes he went from one cage to another. This one might be nice, but he’s still locking himself away. Even the windows are locked up tight, and I realize I haven’t seen the outside in almost two days. I wonder how my brothers are doing.

“Do you ever open the shutters?” I ask, nodding towards one of the windows.

“No,” he says simply, bringing another bite to my mouth.

“I miss the sun. Has the storm passed?”

“Yes. It’s gone. Stopped sometime last night, but you cannot go outside until I get you something better to wear.”

“But I can go outside? Maybe open the shutters?” A frown forms on his face at my question.

“I don’t think I’ll like people looking at you.”

That shouldn’t make me smile but it does. That makes him smile in turn. I shake my head, and the smile drops as his frown comes back. I laugh at his changeable mood.

“As much as I love being locked away with you, Koda, I have to go out sometimes. I want to. I’ve been kept away from town already for over a month. I’m going a little stir crazy.”

He studies me for a second like he’s thinking it over. “Okay,” he says reluctantly. I beam at him. “But you stay at my side at all times.”

I nod. I’m more than okay with that. I still get a little scared that someday my father might find me. I’ll feel safe with him next to me when we do decide to go out.

“But you still need to eat.” He brings some food to my mouth, and this time I bite his finger when he feeds me. He growls in response. “I like that.”

I slide my tongue against his fingertip before I release his finger from between my teeth.

“Your teeth feel good on me.” I turn a little so I’m straddling him. Leaning forward, I lick his neck like he always does to me, before taking a little nibble of him. His whole body jerks. A moan pours from him, and the sound goes straight to my core.

Pulling back, I look into his now-gold eyes. He reaches for my shirt, ripping it right down the center and leaving me completely naked on his lap. My underwear was long gone before I even got out of bed this morning.

“Fuck, you’re perfect. I didn’t even know something could be so perfect.” His hand starts to roam my body, and I can’t stop from moving my hips. Feeling bold, I lean up and reach between us, pulling his hard cock from his flannel pajama pants.

“Take me inside you, Snow. I want to watch you ride me.”

I bite my lip, and he grips my hips, steadying me as I guide his cock to my entrance. When he’s in position, I slowly slide down. Moans fill the room as I start to move on top of him. His hand goes back to greedily worshiping my body, touching me anywhere and everywhere before he slides it between my legs to play with my clit.

“Bite me, Snow, please,” he begs, something I’m sure he never has to do. I do as he asks, leaning forward and biting into his shoulder. A loud roar booms from him as I feel him erupt inside of me, sending me over with him and making me bite harder. I feel more of him flood into me, making me moan as I finally release him. I lean back to watch his face. He always looks so peaceful and happy after we make love, and I love that I put that look on his face.

“You’re perfect,” he says again, bringing his hand up from between my legs to his mouth, licking his fingers clean and making me blush a little.

“You taste perfect, too.”

Both his hands come to my hips and slide over to my stomach. “We might have made a cub,” he says smiling.

“What if it’s not a cub?” I ask, unable to help myself. I know mates tend to conceive fast, so the likelihood of me being pregnant is high.

He shrugs like it’s no big deal either way.

“What if it’s human like me?” I push, needing more from him. “I know you don’t like humans.”

“I like you.”

The word like stings a little, because I more than like him.

“Will you like our babies if they’re human?”

“I will love them either way. You aren’t the only human I like. Sheriff Dominic’s wife is human too, and she doesn’t bother me. If our babies are human, they will be perfect like you. Anything from you would be perfect.”

His words hurt way more than he could ever know, because they can’t be true. My father was his jailer. I’m almost a hundred percent sure of it now that he’s told me about his time in captivity. He only told me bits and pieces, but I recognized his descriptions and I knew he was talking about the same place I had run from.

Not only that, he had a clear hatred for humans. I know how much that hatred can eat someone up. I’d seen it with my father. He hated shifters. Thought they were science projects. Hell, I think he hated humans, too, if how he treated me was any indication. It was why I ran to begin with. He wanted to start running tests on me, too. I’d seen an opening to escape one night and took it. I ran for what felt like forever until I collapsed in the snow, where my brothers found me. I’d only been eleven.

I’d refused to tell them my name, so Snow was born that day. Pulling myself from Koda’s lap, I grab the discarded shirt from the floor and use it to cover myself a little as I exit the room. I hear his chair push back and his heavy footsteps following me down the hallway and into the bedroom where I start to look for clothes to wear.

He stands in the doorway, watching me get dressed, with a confused look on his face.

“We aren’t going anywhere. I like you naked,” he protests as I slide a shirt over my head and pull on socks. I ignore him as I find pants and slide them on next.

“What’s the matter? I can tell you’re sad. Tell me and I’ll fix it. We can go to town now if you really want. Maybe I have something that can keep you warm. It might be a little big but—”

“Koda,” I say, cutting him off. “You can’t think every part of me is perfect.”

“I can,” he growls, taking a step into the bedroom. I match him with a retreating step, making him growl again.

“The Denalis are my brothers because they found me in the woods one night. Covered in snow. It’s how I got the name, actually. I was eleven when they became my family.”

“I’m your family now,” he corrects, possessiveness coating his words. A half smile pulls at my lips. I love that he’s like that with me. But it’s not real. He keeps calling me perfect and it’s not true. Each time he says the word, it cuts a little deeper.

“Before I was Snow Denali, I was Angie Madden.” His eyebrows rise like he’s thinking. “That night I was running from a facility my father ran. That was the night the Denali brothers found me. His name was Dr. Jack Madden.”

I see the color leave his face before a roar of rage sounds though the house, making me jump. “See? Not everything that comes from me can be perfect, because I come from him.”

We stand in utter silence for what feels like an eternity before Koda turns, storming from the room. After a few moments I hear the front door bang open. Following the sounds, I enter the living room to see the door that’s always locked up so tightly is wide open.

I grab my shoes next to the door and my cape and slip them on, stepping outside onto the porch to see if I can see where he went, but I only see his tracks in the fresh snow. A sob hiccups from my chest, and I feel the tears start to slide down my face.

Stepping off the porch, I start walking. It’s clear that he wants me gone. He’s been so protective of me, but he just left the door wide open. It’s not long until I start to hear howls, and I start running towards the sounds, knowing who it is.

When I break through the clearing, I see them coming towards me at a dead run. When I reach them, I drop to the ground, petting each of them. I can tell they are inspecting me but won’t shift until we get back to their cabin.

“Lead me,” I tell them as I follow them through the woods for a good mile before I finally see their cabin. I push inside and sit on the sofa. I wait for them to shift and change, and then all three join me back in the living room. They pull me up from my seat and wrap me in hugs.

“We’ve been so fucking worried, Snow. The phones have been down, and we had to wait for the storm to stop to make it over to the Alpha’s house to find out where you were,” Flint says, a half growl in his voice.

“I’ve been with Koda,” I tell them.

“We know,” Forest says sternly, and I give him another hug.

“He wouldn’t fucking tell us where Koda lived. Said he’d go check it out, but then his mate started freaking out. He kicked us out of his house. Said he’d get back to us, but we’ve been searching anyway,” Flint finishes. I can see the tension in his body.

“I’m fine,” I try to reassure them.

“You’re not fine. You’ve been crying,” Finn says worriedly. My fair skin hides nothing.

“I…” I pause, taking a deep breath. “My mate wants nothing to do with me.” The last part comes out as a sob as Finn pulls me into an embrace, holding me tightly and trying to get me to stop crying. Suddenly, a roar sounds from outside.