Page 28 of Fractured Fang: Omega

“Have you told Levi?” I asked.

Morgan shook his head. “I thought you might want to do the honors. And I may have arranged for a movie night in the main hall with everyone so he can go ahead and go home with you tomorrow, and you’ll both have a proper send-off.”

“What if I was going to stay here and not go with Macs?” I asked. “If I still wasn’t sure I had a place to bring Levi?”

“Is that what you’re going to do?” Morgan asked.

“No, of course not. But, when I left, I wasn’t even sure I would be staying with Fractured Fang.”

Morgan gave me a soft look. “I knew. I trusted that the healing you needed to have happen with your family would come to pass. I see it isn’t quite there yet, but it will be. Now, go on, tell Levi.”

Macs continued holding my hand as we stepped out of the office and back into the fresh air. I turned and threw my arms around his neck, and held him close.

“Is this real?”

He kissed my neck. “Very real.”

“You’re sure about this? We can’t just decide today that we’re going to take Levi in and then next week change our minds.”

Macs snorted. “Of course, I’m sure. You love him. I love him. We’ve got a big enough territory he can run and play in. He’ll have friends. Your nephews are just his age. He’ll be very happy where we are. I will have to learn sign language—Levi said he’d help.”

“Is that what you two talked about?”

“In part, yeah.”

I chuckled. “I’ll teach you too, I promise. It doesn’t take long to get strong enough to communicate. I’m still a long way from fluent, but I get by.”

“And if I can’t get something across, I can always wolf out. Having him talk to me in my fur will be quite handy.”

“It really is,” I said.

Levi’s class was just getting out when we walked past. He and the other kids were running to and playing in the little playground Asilo had. I clapped my hands above my head to get his attention. He couldn’t hear it at all from this distance, but he could see the huge motions out of the corner of his eyes.

He came over.

“Are you leaving?” He spoke as he signed.

I shook my head. “No, we have news.”

His brow furrowed.

“Would you like to come to stay with me at a Fractured Fang?” I asked.

“How long?”

I grinned. “Forever.”

His eyes lit up, and he bounced on his toes. “For real? No lie.”

“For real. No lie.”

“Yes, yes, yes,” he said, and he launched himself into, not my arms but into Macs’s, and I laughed. Oh, how quickly I was replaced.

“How soon can we go?” he tried to say it at first, but it got jumbled, and he stood back and signed it instead.

“Tomorrow morning. There will be a farewell party tonight in the main hall—with a movie.” I made the sign for popcorn at the end, and he licked his lips. He did love popcorn.

And there was a celebration like no other. How Morgan threw it together at the last minute, I’ll never know, but it was delicious and fun. First, there was cake and pizza, which was always a hit with the kids, and then a movie played on the projector.

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