Page 11 of A Kitten for Alpha Kenny

“I’ll take you home,” I blurted. “No need to drag Aspen away from the event. Looks like it will be going on for a while.”

“I should be going, too,” Aspen said, “but if Mulder accepts your invitation, I’ll hang out anyway. I don’t get here often, and there are a lot of people I would like to connect with.”

That had been my intent as well, but my omega came first. His daughter needed him at home. As soon as he thanked me and said he’d be glad for the ride, we said goodbye to Aspen and headed for the exit.

Chapter Eight

Mulder

“I should warn you…” I buckled my seat belt. “When we get to my house, the pack beta will be there.”

“Okay.” What did he mean by that?

Was it anokay, thanks for the heads-upor anokay,I was half listening and didn’t fully hear you? Or maybe something else altogether.

“Wait, does your pack treat you poorly because you are a cat? Or is he there to keep you safe?”

Whoa, that was a leap and a half.

“No.” I hadn’t even considered he would think of it that way. “It’s nothing like that. In fact, when I asked for Madeline to become pack so she would have one of her own, they were more than welcoming.”

Cat shifters didn’t tend to have a pack, but given we had no family or friends here, and they had become my second family, it only made sense.

“That’s great. Because I wasn’t really in the mood for fighting off a bunch of wolves. For you.”

He chuckled and turned on the ignition. I strongly suspected there was no actual joke in there, and that he really would. I more than liked that.

“Yeah, no fighting needed. Grandpa Swale has on his babysitting hat tonight.”

“Grandpa? You said your husband was human, right? So your pack beta is a feline?”

“No.” Now it was my turn to chuckle. “Everybody just calls him Grandpa Swale. His official title is Beta Swale, but he’s everyone’s grandpa.”

“This pack is a lot different than mine.”

“In a good way?”

“Yeah. Very much.”

I stayed quiet as he navigated through the parking lot, avoiding drunk shifters and moving cars. We were leaving at probably the worst time as far as that went. Once we were out on the main road, his hand settled on my knee.

“That’s better.” I hadn’t meant to say it out loud, but out the words came.

During most of the drive back, I told him about my first day here—how I met Alpha Aspen and how my life became intertwined with Wolfe Enterprises. It was easier to talk about all that than about us, about our connection. Because, honestly, all I wanted to do was beg him to pull over and kiss me already.

But I needed Madeline to meet him first. Because as much as I wanted him, as much as I knew Fate placed him in my path just for me, she had a say in this. In fact, she had the biggest say. And if she told me she didn’t like him for any reason, that was that.

I couldn’t see that being the case, but I refused to take the choice away from her.

We walked in to find Grandpa Swale pulling cookies out of the oven.

“I wanted to bake a cake,” he said, in all seriousness, “because finding your mate is something to celebrate. But you didn’t have the ingredients. Seriously, how do you have so little in your house?” He pointed to the cookies. “These are from a mix. A mix!”

There was nothing wrong with a mix, but I’d had his homemade cookies, and they were miles above anything out of a box.

“I don’t bake much,” I said. “And how exactly did you know that I had met my mate?”

“Because Aspen told me someone else was gonna be dropping you off. Someone special. Someone you scented. He didn’t quite say mate, but I connected the dots.”

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