“Come and sit down for breakfast, Faith. You’ve lost so much weight; you haven’t been looking after yourself,” Grace said as she fussed over her child.
Faith rolled her eyes but smiled as her mother led her to the kitchen island and placed a plate of steaming food in front of her a second later.
“What may I get you, Luna?” Sandra asked as she turned around to face her and Hope.
Her cheeks were reddening, and she sensed the older woman’s mortification. She fussed over her child before attending to the Luna like any good mother was supposed to. There was no need for her to feel like that.
“Don’t worry about me. I was just coming to say we will have breakfast with my sister in my room this morning. You can lay out the dining room for everyone else,” she answered with a smile.
There was no point in everyone skipping a meal again. She would take Jax’s suggestion and ease everyone into things.
She told Faith not to forget to say goodbye and left the uncomfortable Omegas to their duties. Jax said it would take some time until they opened up to her like Faith, but at least they weren’t afraid of her anymore.
Jackson was just coming down the stairs when she returned to the lobby. He looked tired. Even after he’d made love to her, his thoughts kept him up longer than they should have. He hadn’t even woken up when she’d got up for training.
He smiled when he saw them and kissed the top of Hope’s head before he kissed her lips.
“You should have woken me,” he said.
“You needed the rest. Maybe we should take a break today?” she offered.
“I have a lot of—”
“Come on,” she urged, putting her free arm around him. “Everything is fine. There’s nothing urgent that you need to do. We could spend days in bed; no one would notice.”
“Pretty sure this young lady would notice,” he said as he took Hope into his arms when the little girl demanded his attention. She squealed when Jax blew raspberries on her chubby cheek.
Jax was right; the little girl always looked for him. Hope was a daddy’s girl through and through. Just as she had been before her mother left, before Gerald became a shell of himself. In times like these, when she watched the two of them together, her heart twisted with thoughts of her father. She would never understand how anyone could have a child and discard them so easily. He’d sold her to pay off debts. That was how little she meant to him.
Her mood lowered. Jackson stopped kissing his daughter and met her gaze over her head.
“You’re right,” he said after a while. “Everything is perfect right now. We have our health, we have our little family, and we have peace in our territory. Everything is fine. There’s no reason why I can’t take a few days off and just relax with my girls.”
A small smile formed on her lips as his words pushed her father out of her mind again.
“You’ve just jinxed us,” she teased. “You’re not supposed to say things like that, or everything will go wrong.”
Jax chuckled as he put his arm around her and then turned to go back up the stairs.
“Don’t tell me I mated with a superstitious woman,” he teased. “Before that witch, we were pretty much the happiest, safest territory in the world. I doubt anyone will mess with us now that I have you by my side.”
“Imagine if they came here and found out I’m actually pretty useless because no one is training with me,” she snorted.
“Are we going to fight about that?” Jax grinned. “Because I have a stack of paperwork on my desk...”
She didn’t know if Jax chose to be that dense about that subject on purpose or if he genuinely thought she was happy with the crumbs he threw her when he did train with her. But she didn’t want to fight about that at all.
“I’ll get Brit for breakfast so we can hang out together. I need you to make more of an effort with her,” she said.
“Yes, dear.”
He didn’t hide his grin this time.
But she had to admit that arguing about the little things was much better than constantly fighting for their lives and wondering if he loved her. Perhaps this was the ‘happy ever after’ part of things, after all.
Chapter 5
Jax watched his mate nervously sipping her cup of coffee while she watched Britney fuss over her niece.