Chapter 308 Book 2 ~ Chapter 73
Chapter 308 Book 2 ~ Chapter 73
Leo’s POV
“No, seriously, humour is my thing,” Callen says enthusiastically.
“True,” Ryder nods.
"Aww, thanks, Rye. It's nice to finally be appreciated."
"Last week you got stuck in a camping chair," Ryder continues. "I have to admit that was pretty funny."
Callen's face drops immediately. “That wasn’t my fault.”
Ryder raises a brow at him. “You sat in it backwards.”
“The instructions were unclear.”
Poppy’s shoulders relax a fraction as amusement flickers through the bond.
“An alpha that needs instructions to sit on a chair?” I snort.
“You can’t say much.” Jake laughs. “You walked into a glass door a few weeks ago.”
I glare at him. “It was too clean.”
“Then you apologised to it.”
Poppy makes a choking sound, and the forest lightens, the shadows slowly receding. We all turn to face Bastian, and he just stares back expressionless.
“Why are you all looking at me?”
Callen points at him, “It’s your turn.”
“No.”
“Come on, tell us a joke or an embarrassing story, literally anything entertaining.”
There’s a long pause, then Poppy finally lifts her head to look at him, and the words suddenly spill out of him.
“Alaric once got stuck in a dog flap.”
Poppy laughs, fully this time, and the tension lifts.
“You said you’d never tell anyone!” Alaric whines.
Bastian shrugs. “We were eighteen, we’d only just had our first shift the week before and when we’d left our clothes in a bush to go for a run, a human had picked them up and taken them home.”
“I’d left a watch my dad had given me in the pocket of my pants. So, when it was dark, we tracked the scent to a house that had a dog flap...”
“And he decided to shift and go through it,” Bastian snorts.
“I didn’t realise how small it was, and I got stuck, ended up taking the whole door off.”
“Did you get caught?” Poppy asks.
“No, luckily, but I did have to run into the woods with a door around my chest until it was safe to shift,” Alaric shakes his head.
“It was the talk of the town for weeks.”
By the time they finish the story, Poppy is wiping tears of laughter from her eyes.
“There she is,” Callen grins proudly, pointing at Poppy before turning a look at Alaric. “See? This would have gone a lot smoother if you’d stopped growling long enough to listen to me.”
“I listened.”
“And then completely ignored every word,” Ryder grumbles.
“That only happened because…”
“Nope,” Callen holds up a hand. “I’m not interested in excuses.”
To my surprise, Alaric doesn’t argue. His gaze settles on Poppy instead.
“I’m sorry.”
The teasing atmosphere fades slightly.
“What?” Poppy blinks.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, his voice quieter this time. “I shouldn’t have come at you like that.”
He runs a hand over his hair and groans.
“I caught your scent and then saw the marks and…” He exhales sharply. “I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s one way of putting it,” Callen mutters.
Alaric ignores him.
“You were already overwhelmed, and I made it worse. That wasn’t fair to you.”
For a moment, nobody says anything. Then Poppy tilts her head.
“You did kind of burst into my day screaming about who marked your mate.”
A horrified look flashes across Alaric’s face.
“When you say it like that, I sound insane.”
“Because it was insane.”
To my surprise, he nods, and a laugh escapes him.
“Fair enough.”
“Look on the bright side, firecracker…” Callen pauses, glancing at the fallen branch lying in the damp earth behind us. “Or maybe I should change that to tree cracker now.”
Poppy points at him. “No.”
“You don’t even know what I’m going to say.”
“I know you.”
“Fair,” Callen grins.
Alaric looks between them suspiciously. “What bright side?”
“At least she didn’t pass out this time.”
Poppy groans. “Callen.”
“What?” he shrugs innocently. “That’s personal growth. I’m proud of you.”
“Pass out?” Bastian frowns.
“Yeah, when she found out Leo was her mate, she tried to run. But she ran right into Jake, who immediately told her she was his mate too. She passed out right there in his arms,” Callen laughs.
Alaric’s gaze flicks briefly between me and Jake, and his shoulders loosen slightly. As if he’s finally accepting that we aren’t going anywhere.
“That’s a slight exaggeration,” Jake says, but he doesn’t quite mask the humour in his tone.
“I was overwhelmed,” Poppy protests.
“You were unconscious. I thought Paige was going to string the lot of us up by our balls and display us outside as a warning to anyone who messed with her sister,” Callen half laughs, shaking his head.
"She still might after today," Ryder sighs.
Jake rubs a hand over his face, already losing the battle not to laugh.
“You fainted?” Alaric asks.
“I’d only just found out shifters existed a few hours earlier,” Poppy defends. “And there were two of them claiming I was theirs!”
A slow smile spreads across Alaric’s face. “There’s two of us.”
Poppy points at him. “Exactly! This is madness.”
The laugh that bursts out of her is loud enough to echo through the trees; it’s so infectious that even Bastian’s mouth twitches.
Callen looks proud. “See? Progress.”
Alaric looks entirely too pleased with himself, Callen is already demanding more stories, and Bastian looks like he’d rather be mauled by bears than have Alaric tell a story about him.
I don’t like how easily she’s already smiling at them, but the most irritating part is that I can’t really blame her.
There’s obviously a story here. The way Poppy groaned when Alaric called her Crazy Coffee Girl, and the way the twins keep looking at her as if they’ve found something they thought they’d lost.
Questions burn at the back of my mind, but now isn’t the time to demand answers. Not when we’ve only just pulled Poppy back from the edge. Whatever happened between the three of them can wait until she’s ready to tell us. And somehow, despite everything that happened today, that is the moment I realise peace is never coming back to my life.
I don’t need to ask Ryder, Callen, or Jake what they’re thinking. I can see it written all over their faces. In the way Ryder’s smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and how Callen keeps cracking jokes a little too fast. In the way Jake quietly watches Poppy whenever she isn’t looking.
They’re all doing the same thing I am… trying to come to terms with the fact that me and Jake loving Poppy might mean letting go of the future we’d imagined. Because if this is real… if Alaric and Bastian really are her mates, then everything is about to change.
Phoenix already has its Alphas, and a pack can’t have four. If Poppy is the Mountain Ridge Luna… if that’s where the Moon Goddess intended her to stand… then that’s where she’ll have to be. Which means Jake and I will have to be there too.
The thought should bother me more than it does. Leaving Phoenix, the only family I’ve ever known. Leaving the pack I’ve given my entire life to. But when I glance to my side and find Poppy laughing at something Alaric has said, I realise there’s only one thing that actually matters.
Wherever she goes, we’ll follow. The rest is just details we’re going to have to figure out later.