Where The Ice Gives Way (Charlotte and Blake) novel Chapter 168

Chapter 168 Our Pack

Emily

“Do you need anything else, Sandy?” I ask. The woman I’ve been sitting with for the last hour shakes her head and grips her mug a little tighter, giving me a small smile that makes the wrinkles around her eyes fold softly.

“No, I’m okay, sweetheart. You go on and see if anyone else needs you.”

I squeeze her shoulder before I stand, and she leans into it for the smallest second. I carry my mug to the sink in the communal kitchen and turn on the tap, letting the warm water run over my fingers. Sandy was one of the hardest cases today.

She didn’t deserve to be rogue. None of them did, really. But Sandy should have had people with her. At seventy–three, after fifty–one years with the same mate, Gerald died from a heart attack while she was making tea in the kitchen. Their children had moved to other packs, and her neighbours stopped coming after the first few weeks. Her Alpha sent one formal condolence and nothing else. So Sandy sat alone in a house full of Gerald’s things until the silence got too big. Then her wolf took the grief somewhere her body could survive it. I told her a little of my own story, and she quietly told me that if no one else wanted me, she would happily adopt me, and we could be

each other’s family now.

I rinse out another mug and place it on the drying rack, blinking too fast. The amount of love in this place feels impossible sometimes. It comes from everywhere, from everyone. The water blurs in front of me. “Emily?”

Theo’s voice comes from the end of the bench, worried and soft enough that it doesn’t startle me. I look over my shoulder to where he stops. “What’s wrong?” he asks. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I sniffle, giving him a very embarrassing, watery smile. “I just…” I wave one hand, forgetting it’s covered in bubbles, and little flecks of soap fly straight onto his face. We both freeze, my eyes going wide, his blinking rapidly through bubbles. I snort at the sight of it, before quickly realising I should apologise. “Oh my gosh. I’m sorry.”

Theo blinks a few more times and then wipes his cheek with a dish towel, his mouth twitching. “Attacked in my own pack house by

bubbles. Tragic.”

I press my lips together, but another laugh slips out anyway, and his eyes soften so much I have to look back at the sink.

“I’m just overwhelmed,” I admit quietly, rinsing my hands under the tap. “With how much your pack is willing to do for everyone.”

The dish towel lowers to the bench beside me, and then Theo says, gently, “Our pack.”

My fingers still under the stream as I feel my pack bond that sits warmly inside my chest now. “Our pack,” I repeat, turning off the tap and reaching for another mug.

“Let me help,” Theo says, stepping in closer.

My wolf lifts her head inside me, sleepy and calm and urging me to breathe him in.

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10:57 Fri, Jul 10

Chapter 168 Our Pack

“Okay,” I say.

He picks up the towel and starts drying the mugs I rinse, and for a while we stand side by side at the sink without talking it should be strange, too close, too much, but he keeps his body angled slightly away from mine, his hands busy and his eyes mostly on the mugs. does everything like he is letting me decide how much of him exists in the room beside me. I don’t know what to do with that Sy

another mug. Then another.

In the common room, Sandy laughs at something Charlie says. It’s a soft little sound, cracked around the edges, but it’s there. I through the doorway and see her sitting beneath a knitted blanket, a bowl of soup in her lap, while Mara talks beside her.

“She likes you,” Theo says.

I glance up. “Sandy?”

He nods. “She told my dad she’s adopting you.”

Heat crawls up my neck as I laugh. “She said that to him?”

“She said it to the room.”

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