Somewhere, someone was crying…

The sound was distant, echoed and muted as though it were coming from the end of a tunnel.

My head was swimming as I tried to process what my senses were feeding me.

Everything hurt. My chest, my leg, my neck. Fragments of memories flashed in my mind like a video buffering and stuttering as it tried to play.

There’d been a fight.

The rest of the pack and me…we’d gone somewhere.

The auction.

Marcellus!

I’d fought him, the ugly son of a bitch. He’d bit me all over, crushed me against the stone floor of the estate and almost killed me.

But I beat him!

He tore at my throat but narrowly missed a killing blow. I had spun around and showed him how it was done, tearing the life from him and leaving him dead on the floor outside the auction.

I thought I was done for. My wounds were deep and I was losing blood, but my pack had helped me to my feet before I bled out. Kitchi had gone ahead to alert Osana.

The lodge…They’d taken me back to the lodge by car – someone had stolen one of the luxury sports cars out front, thrown me in and driven me back to the lodge.

That’s where I am now, I thought as I started to be aware of the sensations around me. Something soft was beneath me – a bed – I knew that much. The fabric was soft against my skin and it was warm here. But my body still felt foreign and the pain was the feeling most present in my mind.

I heard the cry again, and my heart leapt as I remembered.

My child!

With all my strength, I forced my eyes open. The world was blurred, fuzzy like I was trying to look through a window screen that was soaked with raindrops. Grunting, I wiped at my eyes, trying to clear my vision.

“Aiden!”

It was Billy’s voice beside me, and I heard him move to my left and turned my head to see him standing there with something wrapped in his arms. Something…someone…

Our child!

He’d given birth! I’d gotten back at the last possible second. He leaned forward and when I saw what he was holding, the feeling in my heart was impossible to describe as I saw the little face poking out from the bundle of blankets my mate was holding.

“Oh, Billy!” I gasped as I felt a surge of life within me. “Our baby!”

Billy smiled and brought his arms down to show me. A little pink face, eyes closed, wrapped in white fabric.

“It’s a boy,” Billy told me.

“A boy…he’s beautiful!” I gasped, reaching out to touch him. I felt a sting in my arm and looked down to see an IV in my hand. I must have lost a lot of blood.

“Here,” Billy said, coming around the other side of the bed. I was in Osana’s room and the events of last night started to come back to me, but I pushed them out of my mind. None of that mattered right now. All that mattered was the baby in Billy’s arms. “Hold him. You’re his father too.”

I struggled to sit up in bed as Billy lay our newborn child down against my chest. Cradling him with my shoulder, I gazed down on the most beautiful sight of my life. The feelings running through me were too intense to even seem possible, but there he was, my baby, sleeping in my arms.

A father… I thought. I’m a father now.

“Billy, he’s beautiful. What should we name him?”

We hadn’t even discussed names or the sex of the child. Neither of us wanted to know. The whole thing was exciting and we wanted to keep it that way.

“What do you think of Chuck?” Billy asked me, a hopeful look in his eyes. “The name of my friend who tried to help me escape from Marcellus. I don’t know what happened to him, but he wasn’t at the auction tonight…Marcellus probably killed him.”

“That’s a great name,” I told him, nodding at just how appropriate his choice was. “We wouldn’t have met without him.”

Billy’s smile could light up a room, and it sure as Hell lit up my heart with a fire for life I’d never had before. As I stroked little Chuck’s head, I started to picture all the things we would do together.

What would he be like?

I’d have to get him a little bike like his dad, without a motor of course. We’d move onto that later when he was older. He was an alpha and I knew he would be big and strong like me, but caring like Billy. And we were welcome here, and it was finally a home I didn’t want to leave.

“I can’t believe we did it,” Billy said as he lay his head on my chest beside our new baby. “It felt like the whole world was against us.”

“Everyone but the Scarlet Mountain pack,” I said softly, my eyes fixed on Chuck. “We’re lucky we found them.”

“I feel right at home here,” Billy told me.

“So do I,” I replied. Chuck was like a little furnace against my chest, and I chuckled as the image of a baked potato entered my mind.

The lodge was bound to be overflowing by now. Tate was right – he was definitely going to have to build an addition or another house completely if we were going to grow any more.

“Did the omegas come back here?” I asked Billy. “The ones we found at the auction?”

“No,” Billy replied. “The ones there that night were all from one pack down in Vermont. They left together after you guys freed them.”

“Lucky,” I sighed. It felt good to know I’d been part of something so noble as freeing those poor omegas from the clutches of those evil men. I’d have to get all the details of what happened at the estate from the other alphas later. But right now, I was content – beyond content – to lie here with my mate and my newborn baby, and just bask in the glow of happiness surrounding us.

I’d never felt more lucky to be alive.