The celebration for Luna and Cole was not a formal event.
It was the compound's specific version of celebration — food appearing in the main kitchen from multiple directions simultaneously, the table expanding with the easy efficiency of a community that had done this before and knew how, the pack bond carrying the warmth of five hundred wolves who had felt the bond-shift in the herb garden and were glad about it.
Kira made something with spices she had been saving.
I made the complicated sauce — the full version, not the eighteen-minute version, the twenty-two-minute version that Darius had discovered on the fifth attempt and that I had now publicly acknowledged was excellent.
He stood beside me at the range and handed me things without being asked, which was new, which was the result
