“I said, stay out of it, all right?”
They didn’t answer. Instead, Katalina crawled onto Bass’s lap, kissing him. “I missed you,” she whispered.
“I was only gone an hour,” he whispered back.
“I still missed you.”
Bass grazed his mouth over her ear. “I missed you, too.”
“Will you two get off each other?” Jackson growled.
Katalina moved her legs and curled up against Bass’s side, resting her head on his shoulder. She looked up at Jackson. “Will you stop being a grumpy ass?”
“Who’s a grumpy ass?” Toby asked as he took a seat next to Nico, his plate piled with enough food for two.
“Jackson,” Katalina confirmed.
Toby burst out laughing, spitting food everywhere.
“The youth of today,” Bill muttered, as he approached them, shaking his head.
“Yes, they have no respect,” Jackson agreed, shaking Bill’s hand.
“Everything all right?” Bass asked Bill, his second.
“Yes, all running smoothly so far.”
Katalina slapped Bass across the chest. “No work talk. You’ve clocked off.”
“An alpha never clocks off,” Jackson stated.
“In your world maybe,” Katalina said countered, glaring at him, daring him to respond.
“And which world do you live in, daughter of mine?”
“The real world,” she said with a smile.
“The real world?” he repeated.
“Yep, you should come try it out sometime,” Nico added.
Jackson shook his head, looking to Bill. “You have any idea what they are talking about?”
“Not a clue. Bass?”
“Oh, it’s a real thing, and once you’ve been there, you’ll never want to go back,” Bass told them, and then he added for Katalina’s ears only, “You’ll find the most exquisite things in the ‘real world’, and once you’ve found them, you’ll never let them go.”
He kissed her with a lazy hunger, dragging her onto his lap. The others around them whistled, and grumbled, but they didn’t care.
Pulling away from their searing kiss, Katalina linked her hands around his neck and surveyed those around her. Nico was stealing food from Toby while Jackson and Bill stood with their arms crossed, looking serious, but she was convinced they were secretly having fun; things weren’t simple here, and she still felt the sharp pain of her parents’ loss, but this was home and she was happy. “We did it, you know,” she murmured against his neck.
“Did what?” he asked her.
“Carved out our own little piece of the world.”
Bass looked at the smiling faces around him, the most unlikely of friends.
“Yeah, we did, didn't we?”