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Chapter Quote:
"I believe the answer that will not get me in trouble with you is: the happiest day of my life."
~Ren Laroche, Nightshade
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Chapter 52

Spencer

I woke up around eleven-thirty with Elsa curled up in my arm, her head resting on my chest. I kissed her on her forehead which didn't even make her stir. She'd always been a heavy sleeper but I guess after all we did last night, she was going to be more exhausted than usual. I was pretty sure neither of us meant for it to go as far as it had but knowing what we were going to be encountering in the next couple of days, I think the both of us knew we might never get the chance to be with the other again. After the end of the week, one of us may not be alive anymore.

As wolves, when we mated, we mated for life. When one of the mates died, it was rare that the other would ever remarry. As wolves, we knew when we'd met our soulmates. Deep down, we just knew. It was why Lily had been so attracted to Caleb when they first met, or how Hunter and Josilyn knew they were meant to be together. How Ren and Arya were near inseparable and with all the problems that they'd encountered, they'd still survived it together and had still stayed together.

Elsa was meant to be my mate; she was my soulmate. It was why we kept coming back to each other after even after I'd lied to her, after her family had tried so hard to prevent her from seeing me again, after my ex-girlfriend tried to kill her... She had no idea but I'd been thinking about proposing to her. But now that we were about to fight in a war, I figured I should make sure we both survived. If we got engaged now, and one of us died, the heartbreak would be that much worse.

"What's wrong?" Elsa murmured, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"Nothing, just thinking."

"Something's wrong with you, I can feel it."

"Just thinking about last night," I whispered, rubbing her shoulder gently.

She smiled. "I enjoyed it. What time is it?"

"Almost noon."

Elsa groaned. "We have a pack meeting at two and I need to shower because as much as I love you, if I smell like you right now, some people I know might go a little-"

"Berserk? Yeah, I know. I need to shower as well for the same reason."

"I'll see you in the dining hall?"

"Yeah, and if I get there before you I'll make us some lunch."

"I love you," she whispered.

"I love you too," I replied, giving her a kiss. Afterwards she got dressed and disappeared to her room. I went to shower, trying to scrub off her scent because if her dad or her brothers smelled it, despite them being relatively okay with me dating her, they wouldn't appreciate knowing our activities last night... they might actually have my head.

After convincing myself that Elsa's scent was off my skin, I stepped out of the shower and got dressed. After fixing my hair up a bit instead of having it plastered to my forehead, I left my room to go to the kitchen where unsurprisingly, I'd beaten Elsa. I was halfway through making some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when Hunter walked in.

"Hey," I said casually. The future Laroche alpha and I were on better terms now but that didn't mean I trusted him to know about what Elsa and I had done last night.

"Hey, what's up?" he replied, going to the fridge.

"Just making lunch for me and Elsa when she gets here. You?"

"Grabbing something to drink." Hunter walked past me, chugging a can of Diet Coke when he suddenly stopped, sniffing the air. "You reek of my sister."

"She slept in my bed last night."

"You two did more than just sleep. Listen, I don't mind, but you might want to avoid being near Caleb or my parents."

I squinted my eyes at him in suspicion. "Why are you being so calm about this?"

"Because even though Elsa and I haven't been on the same page a lot recently and even though we've practically been fighting constantly the past year, I still know Elsa. She doesn't do anything for just anybody. She wouldn't kiss someone for the hell of it like most of us would. She wouldn't do it with just anyone. They had to be special and don't let me scare you when I say this, but someone she saw as her future. That's why I'm being calm about this. Yes it freaks me out to know my little sister has done it but it was going to happen sooner or later, and you know what, I'm glad it was you. I've tried to kill you on multiple occasions, and it'll still take a while for us to be fully on the same page, but you're in love my sister, I can see that. Everyone can. And you treat her well. Just continue to do that, and you and I will have no further problems."

"This is going to sound like a weird question but... when do you know when you've mated with someone? And I'm not talking about marriage here. You know what I'm talking about, when Guardians and their mate reach a certain point in their relationship where you can suddenly feel each other's emotions."

"Do you think you and Elsa mated last night?"

"She's always been in tune to people's feelings but this morning when I woke up, I was thinking about a lot of things that were stressing me out and she woke up from a dead sleep asking me what was wrong. Am I imagining things?"

"Talk to her about it. See if she's feeling anything different. You two were extremely close before you two did it, so it's very possible it might've happened last night."

"I just don't want to freak her out. We're not even engaged or married or anything like that."

"Have you thought about it?"

I nodded. "Yes, but Elsa likes to take things slow when it comes to relationships and I want to make sure she's ready when I ask. She also has this nasty habit of finding rings. She found yours and found the one Caleb is going to use to propose to Lily."

"Caleb's proposing to Lily?"

"At some point. He hasn't told me or Elsa when. He hasn't told anybody."

"I'll talk to him about it if he'll let me near him. I swear the last time we talked was a dream because for once we talking like civil human beings. But back to you and Elsa, you want to propose to her?"

"Wolves mate for life. We know when we've met our mate. I know she's mine."

"What about Callie?"

"What about her?"

"You loved her too didn't you? I mean seven years of dating is not a small amount of time."

"I loved her but looking back on it, I never envisioned myself marrying her or being with her in the far future. And with all the fights we had near the end of our relationship, it was clear to me that no matter what, we weren't going to work out. With Elsa it's different. I hadn't even known her a year and I was madly in love with her and thinking about what we could be in the future together."

"Why don't you propose to her now?"

"Like I said, I want to take it slowly with her. Besides, we're about to fight in a war. If one of us doesn't make it back, I'm worried the heartbreak would be much, much worse than if I didn't propose now. That's actually one of the things I was thinking about this morning..."

"I understand where you're coming from but think of it this way: god forbid it was Elsa not to make it out of this war, you would live with the regret of not having proposed to her."

"I've thought about that too, but I know she'll make it out of this. Elsa is a survivor, her and Anna both. If anyone is making it out of this upcoming battle, it's those two. They've been surviving for most of their lives now."

"When this war is over, I want them to stop surviving and to start living. They're not even twenty and they've seen and been through more than most people do their entire lives."

"You know, you're actually really nice to talk to when you don't hate me," I remarked.

"I'm a surprisingly nice person when I like you. It took me a long time, which I apologize for, but I believe it or not, I actually like you now."

"Good, because you're going to see a lot of me when I come down to Estes to visit Elsa."

"Aren't you living with us?" Hunter asked, scrunching up his brow.

"No, I'm heading back to Canada with Caleb and Lily."

"Why?"

"Because I can't leave them. They're my pack. Elsa could come with us and we've given her multiple offers already, but she's loyal to you guys. It's the curse of betas. We do what's best for our alphas, not for us."

"You can take Caleb's room then, since he won't be using it again. Or Elsa's room if you'd like."

"Thank you."

"Hey you two," Elsa greeted, shuffling into the room. Despite having showered, put on makeup, dried her hair, and sprayed on perfume, there were two things that could not escape my notice: one, how tired she still looked, and two, my scent was still all over her."

"Speak of the devil," Hunter said. "Trying to get Spencer's scent off of you didn't go well I presume?"

"Damn it, I just spent thirty minutes in the shower trying to scrub it off!" Elsa groaned. With a sigh, she added, "Guess the wolf's going to be out of the bag now when we go into the pack meeting."

"Just stick close to each other and no one will suspect a thing. Except for maybe mom, dad, and Caleb. And Anna and Lily."

"Why are you being so cool with this?" Elsa asked dubiously.

"Glad I'm not the only one finding this weird," I muttered.

Hunter said, "Because you love him, he loves you, you make him happy, and I know you. I know you wouldn't give it up for just any guy. He's special."

"All right, well thank you. Now before this can get any weirder and more embarrassing, I'm going to go in the garden and eat my lunch with Anna and Dom and Josilyn, if the two of you want to join."

"I'm in," I said.

"Why not?" Hunter chimed in. The three of us headed into the garden where we proceeded to have a pleasant lunch where the girls mainly held the conversation with Hunter and Dom chipping in quite a bit. I mostly listened in as I was very content with not speaking. It was rare for me to see Elsa speaking so casually with her pack mates. It was usually some short discussion that turned into an argument or with some sort of tension. I'm pretty sure this was the first non-argumentative, no-tension conversation I'd ever been a part of with the Laroches. Suddenly they all seemed much more human and not so... god like. Everyone in the Guardian world- whether you be wolf, bear, or cougar- knew about the Laroches, about their strength, about their power, about what they'd been through. Everyone knew of them yet none of them knew them, or had actually seen them. Admittedly they'd all seemed like gods to me when I first met them because I was meeting the Laroches, the ones that Michael and Elaine had told me and Lily and Callie bedtime stories about. The more I got to know them, I thought most of them were assholes that were all on their high horses, but then I realized that they'd been through so much that they really just didn't want to risk anything that would make them lose more than they'd already had.

"Hey, we should head to the pack meeting," Hunter said. "It's almost two."

The six of us got up, cleaned our mess, and then headed indoors. Upon arriving at the dining hall, we found the room filled with our pack mates. Elsa, Dom, Anna, and I found a space where we could all stand next to each other. My girlfriend, standing in front of me, leaned back against my chest. It took me by surprise initially because she wasn't one for showing much affection in public, but I wasn't going to pass up this moment. I loosely wrapped my arms around her waist and rested my chin on top of her head.

Babatunde came up to the head of the table and began his speech. "After much deliberation and debating, we've come up with a date and time of our attack on the Hunters. They're location is in the middle of a Russian plain because it makes it difficult for anyone to attack them by surprise, but our strategy is one that involves us attacking at dawn, when they're shifting watches and have a blind spot in their security. Each team will have specific tasks but you will all be briefed together so everyone is on the same page. Does anyone have any questions?"

"When's the date and time we're attacking?" Elsa and Anna inquired simultaneously.

"In two days."
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