Six months.

It’d been six months since I first escaped Bones’s grasp on me. Six months since I drugged his dinner with sleeping pills and fled with nothing more than the clothes on my back. All I knew was that if I didn’t run, if I didn’t get out soon, I would die at his hand. That terrible thought had grown roots inside of me, their thorny vines wrapping around my heart.

I couldn’t let my brother’s death be in vain. He’d come to save me. He’d come to plead with me to come home with him, where I might find solace in the den of his Alpha. I’d been too afraid of the consequences then. Too afraid of what Bones might do to me.

I wished I would’ve listened.

No. I closed my mind, and my heart, to that thought. The past was the past—I needed to focus on the future, because out of those six months of freedom, four of them had been spent in Huxley’s arms. It was hard to believe, but here I was. Four crazy months of being doted on and practically worshipped, because Huxley looked at me as if I was a god to be revered.

Four months, and I was in love with my Alpha. I was happy and for me, that was something special. Honestly, I couldn’t remember a time when I was ever this hopeful. Maybe the summer I turned sixteen, back when things were still okay. Back before everything went to hell in a hand-basket.

The four of us—Charlie and Lucy and Bruno and I—were determined to make that long, hot summer last. One balmy evening, we’d snuck out and drove over to the campgrounds and spent the night gathered around a crackling campfire. We laid in the grass with bottles of cheap beer in our hands and talked about our futures. How we were gonna graduate and go to college and party and fall in love.

Lucy had looked at me with a bright smile on her face, waggling her eyebrows. “So, Chance, it’s your turn. What are you gonna do once we graduate?”

I just grinned and lifted my bottle. “I wanna find some guy who’ll love every part of me. I wanna get hitched to some sexy-ass Alpha who treats me like a king, and I wanna have this huge wedding on the beach. Maybe later, a couple of kids and a dog or two, and every summer, we’ll go camping as a family.” I paused, tilting my head, aware of my friends’ stares. “Silly, huh?”

I laughed it off then, because it seemed so damn domestic, but it was everything I never got as a kid. That feeling of family, of being loved, completely and wholly. I clung to those plans, even though my first couple of boyfriends turned out to be raging assholes, but after Bones…

Well, I’d given up hope of ever seeing that dream to fulfillment.

Was it crazy of me to think that now, it might just happen?

Pursing my lips, I gazed down at the sketchbook filled with doodles and drawings in every color of the rainbow. No longer angry, cross-hatched lines, these pages were covered in bubbly pastels and floaty pictures of love. Sketches of wolves and foxes dancing through the wildflowers, with puppies at their heels.

Us. I placed my hand atop the page. I wanted that.

I shoved the chair back with the backs of my legs and stood. I left my art desk in a state of disarray—a lovely, messy space that was fully mine—and meandered down the hall in search of Huxley. Soren had volunteered to take Dresden to the splash pad in the park to meet with a friend of his, so the house was oddly quiet.

I found Hux lounging on the porch swing, his long legs stretched out in front of him as the bench swayed gently back and forth. He was reading a dog-eared paperback with poorly drawn space ships on the front. When I came out of the house, he glanced up with a smile. “What’s up?”

I drew in a quick breath and blurted, “If we ever got married someday, could we have a big beach wedding?”

For a moment, he stared at me. Then his brow quirked up and a pleased grin split his face. “You wanna get married, Chance?”

Heat rushed to my face. I hunched up my shoulders. “I—yes, someday,” I mumbled.

He stood, the chains on the swing rattling, and before I realized what was happening, he stole my breath away with a fierce kiss. My lips tingled. I reached up to touch them. It was my turn to gape, my pulse pattering loudly in my ears.

Huxley’s big hands smoothed over my stomach. “Baby, if it’s a ring you want, all you have to do is ask. I’d get down on one knee right now and give you whatever you desire, and if that’s a big beach wedding, then that’s what you’ll get.” His grin turned decidedly wicked. “But I think maybe we should wait till you pop, yeah? Tuxedos are expensive.”

I laughed and touched my protruding baby bump. My heart swelled. “I love you.”

“We’ll see if you’re still saying that in a couple of months, when you’re big as a barn and hating my guts for knocking you up.” He winked, then brushed the gentlest of kisses over my mouth. “But I love you, too,” he murmured, his voice warm and sweet as syrup.

I sighed happily. “Thank god.”