Her face lights up when she smiles, beautiful and bright. It lasts for a while, until a yawn takes over, splitting her face until she covers her mouth. When I look closer at her, I can tell she’s exhausted. It’s gotten dark around us, but there’s no mistaking the way she holds herself, like she might keel over from the long day she’s had at any minute.
“You should get some rest,” I tell her. “You must be in pain.”
“A little,” she admits. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
“I can put Cora to bed if you want. So you can just go get some rest.”
Harper hesitates, clearly debating that with herself in her head. I don’t take it personally. Any guardian of a kid should think long and hard about who they let watch them. So I just wait for her to come to a decision.
A few seconds later, she calls to Cora, and the little girl comes running over.
“I need to get some rest,” she says. “Is it okay if Lincoln puts you to bed? You can say no if you’re not comfortable with it.”
Cora’s little face screws up in thought for a split second and then she nods, smiling at the idea.
“That settles that, I guess,” Harper murmurs. She maneuvers herself up from the bench carefully. “Thanks, Lincoln.”
“Do you need help?”
She shakes her head. “Cash found some crutches for me. It’s just going to take me a while to get upstairs.”
I keep an eye on her as she goes, and then turn my attention back to Cora.
Half an hour later, Cora’s teeth are brushed, and she’s changed into her pajamas. I’m sitting on her bed, and she’scurled into my side while I read her a story from one of the books Everett dug out when they first came to stay with us.
It’s not lost on me that this little girl who has already lost so much trusts me like this. She clings to my shirt with one hand, her eyes heavy as she listens to me read softly. Her small weight against my ribs feels precious and fragile, and it makes something protective flare up in me.
There aren’t any threats here, but if there were, nothing would touch her.
Cora tugs on my shirt and then points to one of the pictures in the book. “That’s a kangaroo,” I tell her. “She holds her babies in her pouch like that, see? Do you know what kangaroos do?”
She holds one hand up, fingers pressed in the shape of an animal’s head and then bounces it up and down.
“That’s right,” I tell her, marveling at how much she knows and how quickly she starts to understand things.
I hear shuffling in the hallway, and look up to see Harper appear in the doorway. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t make a move to take over, just watches as I keep reading to Cora. I can feel her gaze on us like a physical thing, and before I know it, the story is over. I don’t think I retained anything that happened in the last quarter of it, but Cora looks sleepy and relaxed, and that’s what matters.
“Okay,” I tell her softly. “Ready to sleep?”
The little girl nods, and before I can move to get off her bed, she wraps her arms around me in a spontaneous hug.
I freeze, not used to being touched, especially by a little kid. But Cora doesn’t seem to notice. She just presses her face against my side, and after a beat, I squeeze her back lightly.
“Sleep well,” I murmur, brushing hair back from her face when she pulls away.
Harper has an odd expression on her face, somewhere between a smile and something wistful, and she nods at meas she steps in to say goodnight to Cora as well. I take the opportunity to go to my room.
It’s not much later when I hear Harper in the hall again, and I step out to see her walking down toward her room, wearing an old, faded t-shirt that definitely doesn’t belong to her. It’s faded, oversized, and carries scent markers from Alphas I don’t recognize.
Something about that sets my hackles up, and Harper looks at me like she can tell something’s off.
“That’s not your shirt,” I say, cursing myself for just coming out with it like that and not coming up with something less accusatory to say.
She blushes a bit, looking down at the faded design—a logo for a band I don’t know.
“It’s not,” she agrees. “It’s from. Well, it’s from the pack that rejected me.” Her hand comes up, like she’s going to self-consciously cover the marks on her neck, but she forces it back down at the last second. “It’s just another thing from my past I’m having a hard time letting go of.”
“Why?” I ask.