Page 73 of Reaper's Pack

“Yeah,” she murmured. “It seems like a pizza sort of night, doesn’t it?”

Reaching out, I snatched her hand and tugged her back to the bed, where she plopped down beside me in a flourish of silvery-white hair and a whoosh of the sweetest dates. Gunnar joined us a moment later, the pair of us like sentries on either side of our reaper. As we scrolled through the online menu, Knox abandoned his precious fire, and soon enough loomed over the three of us, arms crossed.

Not a hint of a scowl anywhere.

In fact, when I peeked up at him—stealthily, briefly, not wanting him to know that I was studying him for a change—I swore I saw a smile. It was faint, barely there through his coarse black facial hair, but real.

And in that moment, our pack felt whole.

Complete.

Comfort pulsed through our bond; the others must have sensed it—that feeling of belonging. A piece had always been missing, and now we’d found it.

Now we’d found her.

“I think we should make yours an extra-large,” Hazel mused, dragging a delicate finger across the tablet screen, oblivious to the moment unfurling around her. “And we should probably get a couple… Four at least.”

“I rather like cheese,” Gunnar said as we built our own pizza through the website—the first of many, it would seem. “Can we double it?”

“What is Brooklyn pepperoni?” Knox demanded, reading it all upside down, totally invested for once, his head cocked to the side and black brows furrowed.

Gunnar snatched up the tablet. “Fuck me, we can put cheese in the crust?”

“Is it different than the regular pepperoni?” Knox huffed, his question still unanswered.

“Hazel, are anchovies what I think they are?” I asked, hesitating over the little button that would add them to our pizza. Fish, were they not? Blegh.

“Oh my God, you guys…” Hazel giggled, the sound sweeter and more beautiful than anything in this realm or the next. Warm, raw affection thrummed through our bond in response. “One at a time.”

An eternity later, Knox, Gunnar, and I had eight extra-large, extra-cheesy, extra-meaty, Brooklyn-pepperoni-laden pizzas to split between us, while Hazel had a single small, thin-crust, cheese-and-onion pizza to her name. Then, for the hell of it, because no one—including Hazel—had sampled a molten chocolate mud cake before, we tacked four of those onto the order as well.

What followed felt so… natural. Hazel and I venturing into Lunadell, strolling along the human plane to the pizza shop—hand in hand. Paying for the enormous stack of boxes, boxes that I insisted upon carrying by myself. Slipping back onto the celestial path to steal four eight-packs of beer for all of us to share. Laughing. Talking about anything so long as it had nothing to do with reaping or that creepy fuck from earlier today.

Coming home to find Gunnar and Knox had set the dining table with plates and cups—which were forgone immediately for the chilled cans of beer. For the first time, Hazel sat with us for a full meal, Knox at the helm, the rest of us bunched around him at one end of the long table. Sharing slices. Clinking beer cans for a toast. Rehashing the day’s huge reaping—gossiping about Alexander and his pack of stuck-up hellhounds.

Hazel’s rare and beautiful laughter filling the room.

And as I polished off my tenth slice, nowhere near full, I realized that in all my long life, I couldn’t remember a time I’d been happier.

22

Gunnar

I had never seen so many humans in one place before.

Sure, the tower had been crawling with humans, dead and alive, but this was something else entirely. Wall-to-wall people packed into the dimly lit space, music pounding to the point of pain, its bass reverberating in the red brick walls. Sweat mingled with the vast and varied scents of alcohol—both of the sweet and acrid varieties—and then the perfumes, the body odors clashing and colliding, blending and growing into something pungent. How anyone came here for fun was beyond my understanding, but that was the purpose of tonight.

Fun.

To celebrate Knox’s first successful reaping—an incident that had been so standard, so pedestrian, that even Hazel hadn’t all that much to say about it when they returned. An old woman had died in her bed, and there was Knox and Hazel to escort her safely and comfortably to Purgatory. Apparently, she had been a dear, sweet and uncomplicated, greeting death as a friend with a peaceful smile on her crinkled features. The one tidbit that had sent Declan and I into fits of laughter was the fact that this old soul had had the audacity to grab Knox by the face—red eyes, huge teeth, and all—and squish it, then kiss it like she did with her tiny Pomeranians.

Hazel hadn’t been able to contain herself either when she’d shared that delicious moment with us, much to Knox’s chagrin.

Still, our alpha had completed an important part of his training—and we as a household had bonded deeper over the last few days than we had in the last two months. Thoughts of abandoning our reaper were becoming faint, few and far between, yet Knox still wasn’t ready to drop it completely. He would. As soon as he tasted her, he’d never want to leave.

I would have thought the turn of events sinister, witchcraft of the highest order, if Hazel wasn’t so fucking sweet. And personable. And perfect for us.

She was wearing red tonight.

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