Chapter 569

Nina

The warm summer breeze brushed across my skin as I stood on the patio, clutching my robe tightly around my body. Laughter and splashes echoed up from the pool below, where our friends were already gathered for our big end-of-summer party.

I should have been down there too, soaking up the very last rays of the season. But something was holding me back—a nagging sense of self-consciousness that had only grown more intense as my baby bump had blossomed into full view over the past couple of months.

Letting out a shaky breath, I slowly undid the sash at my waist and shrugged off the robe, revealing the vibrant red bikini beneath. My hands automatically moved to cover the taut swell of my belly, my fingers brushing over the stretch marks that had begun to form on my skin.

It wasn’t that I was ashamed, necessarily. Pregnancy was a miraculous thing, a journey I knew I was blessed to experience. Still, putting myself on display like this in front of all our friends felt...

Daunting.

As if sensing my hesitation, a pair of strong, familiar arms suddenly coiled around my waist from behind. Enzo’s warm chest pressed flush against my back as he nuzzled against my neck.

“Everything okay over here?” he murmured, keeping his voice low so only I could hear.

Tilting my chin up to look at him, I managed a thin smile. “Yeah, just… I think I should probably go back in and change into my one-piece bathing suit.”

Enzo blinked at me and cocked his head to the side. “Why? You look hot in your bikini. Especially…” His hands wandered over my belly, and he shot me a wink.

I worried my lower lip between my teeth, trying not to seem too bothered by it. “It’s just… I don’t know,” I muttered.

Enzo sighed and shook his head. “If you change, I’ll be upset. You don’t really want to hide your beauty from the world, do you?”

“Alright, alright,” I finally said, turning in his arms to meet him face-to-face. “But if anyone says anything—”

“Who here do you think would say anything?” He gestured to the lively party; our friends and pack, some other friends from around town and campus, and even my brother had made a visit from the werewolf realm.

He was right. No one would bother me. And if they did, I knew that Enzo would put an end to it before the words even left their lips.

“You’re right,” I said. “Let’s—”

Before I could finish, a loud whoop from the pool cut me off as Matt came barreling up out of the water, showering us both with a spray of droplets.

“Hey, lovebirds!” he called out, leaning on the side of the pool and pointing to the cooler. “Beer me?”

Enzo rolled his eyes and laughed at the same time, gently disentangling himself from me to grab a beer from the cooler. He popped the lid off and handed it to Matt. “You’d better not spill it,” he said. “Not like last time.”

Matt smirked. “No promises.”

The rest of the evening passed in a whirlwind of splash fights, juvenile chicken contests, and stories swapped over lukewarm beers and wine coolers. More than once, I caught myself thinking of the Schreibers, only to quickly distract myself with another slice of pizza or a joke. I wouldn’t let myself worry about that right now.

No, for tonight we would just… be.

For too long, it had felt like we were all just stumbling from one crisis to the next, always waiting for the other shoe to drop. But here, hanging by the pool in the rapidly cooling twilight with Enzo’s arm looped securely around my waist... everything else just faded away into a blissful sort of background noise.

Eventually, as the paper lanterns began to glow to life around the pool’s perimeter, I found myself drifting to the shallow end of the pool and hoisting myself up to sit on the rough ceramic edge. Leaning back on my palms, I let the balmy ocean breeze caress my damp skin as I watched our friends milling about nearby.

A wistful sort of melancholy tugged at my heart, then—not sadness, per se, but more like... nostalgia? For this moment, for the simple pleasures of life before destiny had upended everything and thrust so much turmoil upon our shoulders.

I was so lost in my reverie, in fact, that I didn’t immediately notice Enzo swimming over to join me until his calloused palms skimmed up the length of my thighs beneath the water’s surface. My breath hitched at the contact as he settled between my knees, his brown eyes gleaming like liquid gold in the lantern light.

“You disappeared on me for a sec there,” he murmured gruffly, trailing a path of lingering kisses along the underside of my jaw.

I hummed in contentment, combing my fingers through the damp strands of his curly hair. “Just savoring the moment, I guess. Who knows how many more quiet nights like this we’ll get before…”

My voice trailed off, not wanting to sully the tranquility with talk of the ever-present threats looming on the periphery. Enzo didn’t need me to finish, though—he simply cupped my face in his palms and peppered a series of kisses across my nose and cheeks until my eyelids fluttered closed.

“Hey,” he whispered against my lips, his warm breath fanning over my skin and raising goosebumps in its wake. “No more thinking about any of that tonight, okay? Tonight, it’s just you, me, our friends… and this beautiful belly of yours."

A breathless giggle escaped me at that, because only my mate could make such a corny sentiment sound equal parts adoring and molten hot at the same time. Before I could call him out on it, though, he ducked beneath the water’s surface—only to reemerge a moment later with his lips pressed to the rounded outline of my stomach.

I watched in silence as he showered the taut skin there with a series of worshipful, open-mouthed kisses, his tongue trailing paths along each gentle curve. A shiver ran down my spine at the sensation, and I let my earlier worries slip away.

Eventually, as dusk finally faded into the inky darkness of the night, as the brilliant white disc of the full moon rose above the horizon and left scattered reflections on the quiet ocean below the cliff, I let the stresses of the world fade away one final time.

While the others headed in for a movie and more snacks to finish off the evening, I called out that I would be in in a minute. I quickly grabbed my cover-up and quietly padded over to the cliff’s edge, where the fence stood in the shadows.

The wind gently ruffled my hair as I leaned over the railing then, closing my eyes against the familiar glow of the moon. I felt my wolf stir, content and powerful and at rest.

And then I felt a familiar, warm pair of arms slip around my waist, and a pair of lips brush across my neck. I couldn’t help but smile.

In that singular moment, everything was perfect. Nothing else mattered: not the Crescents, Mila, the uncertain future or the Schreibers.

All that mattered was that I knew…

I knew that we were exactly where we were meant to be.