-Rowan's POV-

The shrill bleating of the alarm clock jolts me awake, much to Perry's displeasure. He looks up at me, annoyed by the fact that my knee twitched under his chin, his big brown eyes sleepy.

"Sorry, buddy," I say, reaching to pet the retriever's soft golden head. He lays back down on my thigh, but Luis captures his attention away from glaring at me. Perry's tired gaze watches as Luis reaches to hit the alarm clock, still completely asleep. He manages to hit the snooze, but he also knocks the thing off the side table. It dangles toward the ground, held aloft by the slim black cord attached.

Luis doesn't notice or care that he might have broken our alarm clock. He rolls back over and buries his face in the side of my shirt. His movements unseat Cheeto, who prefers to sleep at our feet. Cheeto pads over and loafs on my shins instead.

A dog, a cat and a werewolf. I've got an entire mythological zoo currently dozing on me.

"Luis," I whisper, smiling as I stroke his hair. "Wake up, baby."

"Sh," Luis whispers, reaching up to rest his index finger against my lips. I reach to hold his hand up and press a kiss to his fingertip.

"It's Serena's birthday," I remind him. "Your dad's gonna want help with the cake."

Right on cue, I hear Jose on our mindlink. Rowan? Is Luis awake? Tell him he needs to come down and help!

I laugh. You can't mindlink a sleeping person, but it sounds like Jose's been trying. "Wake up. Go help your dad."

"Dad can bake the cake himself," Luis complains softly, refusing to pull away from my shirt.

"He's mindlinking me," I say.

Luis groans and rolls onto his back. He closes his eyes and I know he's mindlinking his father back.

My breathing catches. He's literally breathtaking, lying there, eyes shut in complaint, head pushed defiantly back into the pillow, the smooth bump of his Adam's apple on full display. The muscles of his chest and shoulders make the top of his tee skintight, giving me glimpses of the warm brown artwork beneath the cotton.

I yawn and sit up, reaching to pet Perry and Cheeto.

"He's having a crisis over the icing," Luis mutters, still not opening his eyes. He mutters a curse in Spanish and looks up at me. "You'd think he'd know how to do icing by now."

I laugh. "Go. Help him. I'll shower and be down in a minute."

"He still doesn't know how to make icing," Luis mumbles to himself, reluctantly pulling himself out of the covers. "How does he not know how to make icing?"

Still clad in a tee shirt and flannel pajama pants, Luis slowly shuffles toward the door, then stops and turns back to me as I scoop up Cheeto and set him in the warm space Luis just inhabited. Perry takes the hint and pulls his head off of my legs so I can stand up.

I round the bed and hug Luis. "What's wrong with you? You're not usually so sleepy."

"Yeah, usually you're the one who won't get out of bed," Luis teases, pulling me close. I smack his ass in answer. There's a satisfying jiggle above the tough muscle. We laugh together and he kisses the side of my neck. "I think it's because someone kept me up last night."

"I keep you up every night. You should be used to it by now," I whisper, hoping my voice is half as sexy as his. I can't imagine so, though. It's hard to beat the low, sleepy murmur of a bilingual Mexican man.

He leans back and looks into my eyes. In his crystalline brown irises, I see a million promises of love and tenderness from the man who treats me like royalty.

"If I like the cake, I'll do whatever you want tonight," I say delicately, running my fingertips up and down his spine. "Rough little quickie? Or a bath together? I could bend you over the bed? Or I can ride you until we're both breathless? Or..." I lean in. "I'll just take care of myself and let you get some sleep."

He laughs out loud, throwing his head back. I feel his laughter in his chest and tummy. "I'd rather die than endure that last one," he tells me, kissing my cheek. "I'll think of something. Wish me luck with my dad."

I pull him in for a long kiss, breathing in his smell. Ever since I became a wolf, I've been addicted to the scent of him. He smells like warm cotton and fresh moss. Each distinct scent is like him: Muted but incredibly powerful. Together, their blend is the thing I dream about when I sleep next to him and the thing I crave when he's away. The smell is unique to him, and as sweet as the man I'm proud to call my own.

Mine. That was another thing that surprised me when I came out of the flu-like stupor after Maria bit me. The territorialism. It was very disorienting for a few days. I wanted the world to know that Luis Delgado is mine, and that to challenge him was to challenge me, and that to desire him was to call into question my role as his soulmate. I found myself getting irritated at the fact that I was unable to mark him for a month and a half after I was bitten, until my first transformation. Looking at the bare space where I should have claimed him as my own made me feel silly and impotent.

But mark him, I did. It was incredible. When he marked me, Luis worried about my mark bleeding. When I marked him, I was too damn satisfied that he finally bore the scars of my bite to give much thought to the blood. The crimson was proof that I'd done it. I had let the world know he was mine. After the adrenalin faded I panicked about the fact that my mate was bleeding and felt awful that the sight had initially filled me with pride, but Luis talked me out of that as I gently cleaned and dressed the wound.

Even now, I reach to tug down the collar of his shirt so I can run my fingers over the scars. He smiles against my lips. He finds my newfound territorialism endearing.

Rowan, I don't care if you and Luis are fooling around, I will come up there and get him.

"Your dad threatened to come up," I say, pulling away. I give the scars on the smooth brown skin between his neck and shoulder a final satisfied look before I stop tugging on his shirt. "He says he doesn't care if we're "fooling around"."

Luis laughs. "Okay. Have a good shower. I'll see you in a bit."

He kisses me one last time before shuffling out the door. Perry follows him, but Cheeto stays loafed on the bed where I set him. I scratch his fluffy head before I choose an outfit for the day and undress.

As I shower, I think about today. Serena's eighteenth birthday. Today is the day we'll all discover the identity of the woman with the ability to keep Serena in check. I wonder if she'll be an even more obnoxious smartass than Serena or if she'll be on the other end of the scale, quiet and shy.

The mate pairings are funny like that. Maria and Jose told me they expected someone exactly like me for their son (albeit with a different combination of 23rd chromosomes), someone honest and loud to balance out Luis's quiet nature, but usually the pairings are unexpected. Everyone expected Jose to be an adventurer, an entrepreneur, a playboy of some sort to match Maria's logistical brilliance and sharp leadership skills. However, Jose is more of a domestic king. Instead of matching Maria's glow, he adds to her luminescence with his own wattage. He prefers to stay out of official pack business and instead cares for the other facets of maintaining the pack. He's the one baking birthday cakes and picking paint colors for an expansion of the packhouse. He doesn't attend meetings with Maria, but he massages the kinks out of her shoulders and puts rose petals in the bath for her after a long day. Maria has told me that she prefers this, that fate chose her mate perfectly because a headstrong, hands-on man would have driven her insane.

I often wonder if the perfectly equal dynamic Luis and I have established will change when he becomes alpha. I hope not.

I shake the thought away with the shampoo bubbles. That's a quandary for another time.

Living with him is a dream. I'm never too far apart from my soulmate. I visit my mother frequently, not used to living away from her. Moving out was hard, but I love living in the packhouse. Especially now I'm a werewolf, I can't ignore how good it feels to be surrounded by people like myself and Luis.

Most of my summer has been spent getting up-to-speed with the twice-weekly trainings mandated for every resident of the packhouse under the age of forty. Luis and Josiah run the trainings. Before Luis turned eighteen, Chris would watch over them, acting as a set of training wheels as they set drills and critiqued technique, but it's quickly becoming clear that Luis's prowess as a fighter is unparalleled by any in the pack, including the current alpha and beta. Even when we're just playing, Luis's knowledge of the physics of a fight is incredible. He wins without trying.

My strength and endurance were deemed fine by Luis and Josiah, so they've been focusing more on developing my fighting style. I'm an awful fighter. I never know how to anticipate what my opponent is going to do. Luis and Josiah quickly recognized that I would benefit the most from Serena's teachings, and she's worked me to a point that I can react quickly enough to keep myself from getting pinned within the first few seconds.

Serena. I'm so excited for her. She's been jittery and excited about meeting her mate for weeks. Normally just a bit sullen, it's been strange to witness her habit of ranting anxiously about nothing in particular, but I always listen. At her request, I've been helping her expand her wardrobe beyond the dark clothes she prefers. She even let Hannah teach her how to do a full face of makeup after years of only wearing eyeliner. She's taken to wearing gorgeous blends of purple eyeshadow that make her eyes sparkle like fireworks.

I'm excited to meet Serena's mate. I'm excited to go to Portland State University with Luis, Josiah, Serena and Hannah in the fall. Hell, I'm excited to go to bed every night and wake up every day. In a house full of werewolves with my true love at my side, every day is an adventure I'll treasure forever.

I feel like I've never known true happiness before now. Life was mechanical. Wake up, go to school, go to swim practice, find causes to support. I felt like I was grinding for resources in a video game, mindlessly collecting self-worth without stopping to consider whether or not I was happy.

Now I'm the happiest man in the world.

I finish showering and dress in a plain gray button-down and some jeans. As I do, I touch the rows of healed punctures just above my ankle from where Maria bit me and gave me a whole new part of myself.

Being bitten was weirdly traumatic. At first, everything was fine as I looked into the eyes of my alpha's wolf form. I wasn't nervous as I sat on the warm, dry grass, the sunshine falling on my skin. Luis sat behind me, his legs around mine, his arms around my waist. I petted the soft fur of Maria's face and kissed her forehead before I reached to pull my pant leg up to my knee. One of the packmembers with medical training knelt beside us, ready to clean and dress the wound. I smiled as Maria moved back and looked down at my leg before looking back at me one more time.

Do it, I told her.

I guess I expected her to move slowly, to gingerly push her teeth into my skin. Instead, she moved as quickly as a fork of lightning and sank her teeth into the skin and bone of my lower leg. I cried out from the pain and from surprise, my instincts kicking in as I tried to yank my leg out of her grip. But she held me firmly, not even struggling to keep me in place, all merciless muscle. I panicked in spite of myself and probably would've accidentally activated the Solar paranoia if not for Luis's arms around me. She held me for ten seconds, the recommended time, before she released me and quickly shifted back, her eyes filled with tears when she saw the water on my own cheeks. She and Luis hugged me as the nurse cleaned up the wound.

In retrospect, this makes sense. To turn a human into a werewolf, the bite has to be deep. It was better that she did it quickly instead of slowly biting down. Ripping off the bandaid instead of slowly pulling it away from the skin.

Luis told me afterward that Maria hadn't wanted to bite me because she knew I was far underestimating how terrifying it is to look down and see my limb clamped in the razor-edged bite of a fully grown wolf. She would have preferred it had been anyone else. My own fault for thinking the situation would be improved by my love and respect for Maria.

Thankfully, Luis and Maria are two of the smartest people I've ever met. In the miserable, sickened week that followed the bite, Luis never left my side. He administered ibuprofen for the fevers and held a bucket to my lips when I puked. He laid cool washcloths on my head and took baths with me when my body was aching too much for me to take a shower. But the best thing he did was curl up next to me in his wolf form as I slept, my body exhausted from fighting the symptoms. Maria checked on me regularly and also shifted a lot, planting wolf kisses on my cheek. I snuggled with the wolves, happy for the comfort they brought me. If not for their foresight, I think I might have developed something of an aversion to the wolf forms because now I knew just how easily any one of them could hurt me.

But I didn't. I love the wolves. All of them. I love them even more now that I'm one of them.