I anxiously wait at the train station. There's quite a few people here, probably due to the fact that it's the summer holiday.
I keep my eye out for the beautiful black hair she got from my mate, probably looking like a lunatic, but not caring in the slightest.
Stop looking like a lost puppy. You're attracting attention. I hear my mate laughing in my mind.
I turn around, feeling him approach behind me, and feign being shot in the chest. My hand moves to my heart and I stumble backwards dramatically. Raph laughs out loud, in the process waking up the toddler half falling off his shoulders.
'Dad?'
'Hmm?' It comes in echos as both Raph and I immediately answer. We kind of got the memo of different names for us too late, so we're just both dad now. Convenient for the kids, not so much for us.
My youngest holds out both of his still slightly chubby arms, reaching for me, so of course, the only logical thing to do is to run up to him and squash him - and by extension Raph - in a death grip.
'Both of you are so cute, I can't deal with it!' I say, squeezing a bit harder. I am well aware that I am completely wrinkling Raph's perfect suit. He's taken violin back up after I'd gifted him one a few years back and now he plays concerts on and off, one of which we just came back from.
By now, most of everyone in our proximity is either watching us with amusement or exasperation.
'Let go, you oaf!' Raph's hands push on my chest, 'You're squashing the little one.'
Immediately I step half a step back, not before taking Toby with me though. He is now squashed between me and Raph, rather than both my arms. My free hand immediately goes to Raph's slight bump while I look at him proudly. He smiles back at me. I carried both our other kids, so this is the first one Raph carries himself again. When we realised he was pregnant again, he had a whole lot of doubt and it took a long time for him to relax. While I was pregnant the first time, he struggled even more. He was overprotective to the max, barely even letting me leave our room in the pack house that was now ours for whenever we were pregnant again.
'Where's Sam?' I finally ask, not seeing him around even though he was probably the most excited about today - after me of course.
'Just getting a drink I think. Should be here any m-oof!' Raph is forced to take a step back when I fall into him after something tackles me from behind and latches onto my back.
'DADDY!!!!' A squeal I haven't heard in person in this magnitude since sending off my daughter to university a year ago penetrates and almost shatters my eardrums. This is followed by a wet kiss onto my cheek and then a mouth full of hair as she leans over my shoulder to kiss her younger brother all over the face.
I of course endure all of it, trying to hold as still as possible with both little monkeys climbing all over me to get to each other and their other dad, who is still wrapped in my arms as well.
Another squeal interrupts everything once again as the weight on my back leaves me and instead runs towards her new goal.
It takes all of two seconds for her to go from my back to Sam's arms, almost knocking him over if he wasn't as buff as he is. The kid tried so hard to keep up with all the wolves around him, he's been training non stop, like an idiot thinking he had something to prove. It made him happy though, so we left him to it.
Monkey number two in my arms starts squirming as well, so I let him down softly, watching him paddling over to his siblings. They lift him up immediately, so they're all wrapped up in a super cozy looking sibling group hug.
'We made some pretty amazing miracles, didn't we?' comes Raph's soft voice from next to me, hand securely in mine.
'More than amazing.' I say just a quietly, too engrossed in watching my kids.
Before long, they notice we're still here as well and the hugging galore continues as it makes it back to us, followed by Amanda inspecting Raph's baby bump as if it was the next world miracle. Which, of course, it is.
'Let's get back to the car.' I eventually say, having enough of having to look weirdly at everyone that looks at us weirdly.
'Oh! I almost forgot. Wait here!' Amanda commands before running off into the crowd. I almost hoped she would lose some of that energy going to university, but I dare say it got even worse. I chuckle to myself.
We stand around once again in everyone's way.
She comes back a few minutes later, pulling a guy behind her and my mood is spoilt immediately. A resounding No lies on my tongue, when my mate elbows me hard. I rub my side when Amanda suddenly speaks.
'This is my mate. Say hi!' Her innocent little smile is turned my way and I know exactly why. She knows I'd hate this. Raph of course, smiles like it's the best news ever and Toby claps as if it's something to celebrate. I eventually get hit in the back of my head by Sam as I refuse to react. I roll my eyes and mumble: 'Congrats' in the hopes of no one hearing. Everyone starts laughing. Great.
'He's name is Dean by the way.'
'Come on then, let's go.' Raph eventually says, grabbing Dean's arm before walking off with him, 'And don't worry about Donny. He's just sulking because he has to let her go now. He'll come around.'
'Hey!' I say loudly, but bringing up the end with Toby on my shoulders.
The ride home is filled with lots of chatter about what everyone's been up to, loud and not a second of silence as usual. I pretend to be annoyed, but really I love it when everyone gets together like this, even if this weird Dean person is here too.
It's a relief that at least when we make our way to our tree, Amanda has the good sense to make Dean wait by the car. The five of us slowly walk up to the tree that has become a part of every family reunion. I no longer struggle walking up to it, no longer struggle to face it and I have a smile on my face as I do so this time. My left hand is occupied with Amandas, my right one holding on to Toby's tiny one. On his other side is Raph, who is holding on to Sam. We sit down as we usually do, the grass reaching all our shoulders and swallowing up Toby completely, but at least it's not damp today. We never really talk here, at least not out loud. Instead it seems more of a mediation, a more personal, yet familial, connection. The little mound that was once there has vanished long ago, leaving our important spot to blend in perfectly with its surroundings. You'd never know this place was ever special, yet none of us ever stagger on our way. Even Toby, since long ago, instinctively knew where to go and what it means. We sit there for a while longer, huddled together in a bundle of family and love and then we eventually get up, back to the car, and Dean has the good sense to not ask questions. I'm left assuming that my daughter must have filled him in, so he doesn't get any credit for that.
We have food at the pack house with everyone. Marc, Randy, Elif, who is now the official pack doctor after being endlessly trained by her proud fathers, Clarissa, Mary, who's moved into the pack lands a few years ago, Zac, who still lives nearby, now with his new found mate, and sometimes stops by here, and my proud mother, finally happy in a family she can call herself a part of again. Looking around the table is like looking at happiness itself. All of these people have given so much to me, have enriched my life in ways hard to imagine. They have helped me accept the fact that we never got revenge for what happened, that Raph's biological mother simply disappeared never to be seen again and that, even without a definite ending to this, we could still move on and find this happiness. I owe these people my life, each in their own different way.
After dinner at the pack house we all decide to go to the lake, just us. And, well, Dean.
'Can I get you guys to sit down for a second?' Amanda says suddenly, her voice uncharacteristically serious. She almost sounds like the time she told us she'd go off to university. I shiver.
We all sit in a circle, Toby in Raph's lap like the daddy's boy he is and everyone's eyes on Amanda as she sits down herself, right next to Dean.
'So I've already met Dean's parents.' she starts, nervously fiddling with her hands, which is definitely not like her. That girl never gets nervous.
'Turns out his mum knew me.' Now I'm paying attention. We strictly raised her on pack grounds, with very few exceptions. Anyone she would know, we would know. My eyes quickly drift over to Raph's, finding his on me already. He looks just as confused as I am, so I turn back to my daughter.
'Now don't freak out,' I hate when the say that, 'but I invited them here.'
My face must have been the visual representation of What the fuck!? because Raph starts to calmly pat my arm immediately.
Only seconds later, two figures appear from behind a tree and I'm immediately shocked. Raph's hand stops patting my arm and instead grabs my hand in a death grip.
'Sheila..' her name leaves Raph's lips like a whisper and I can see the entirely misdirected fear in his eyes. Immediately I pull him closer to me, my arm on his waist.
'Hi Raphael.' A small smile appears on Sheila's face as she says his name. 'Hi Donovan.'
For some reason, I don't know how to respond as she looks at me and both Raph and I end up sitting there like statues.
The next few minutes pass by us without either of us properly registering anything. Amanda invites Sheila and this guy she came with to sit down, my kids look at us confused, not understanding what is happening and Sam stays close to us, but glances at Sheila every once in a while. I haven't seen him this insecure in a while and it worries me.
'What are you doing here?' I ask, even if just to disperse the weird atmosphere.
'Your daughter invited me.' She answered, seemingly not at all bothered by the situation.
'I can see that.' I grit out through my teeth. I'm on edge and I just want to know what's going on.
Calm down. I look down at Raph as I hear his voice in my head. He seemed to have calmed down himself, now looking just slightly suspicious, but otherwise curious.
'Alright. I apologise. And I also want to apologise for what happened. I-'
'It's alright' Raph says, a small, fake smile on his lips. He clearly doesn't want to talk about all the details of our messy past in front of the kids. I'm with him on that.
'Right. When my son Dean came by with Amanda, I recognised her immediately. She looks like both of you.' A small nostalgic smile plays on her lips and I have to close my eyes for a second to compose myself.
'After..., well after you left I eventually found Trevor.' she takes the hand of the guy next to her and gives him a small smile before continuing. 'I decided to do some research and kind of got nowhere. Right until Amanda showed up on our door step. I remembered something I'd read a while ago. It had to do with strong mate bonds.'
She takes a break there, watches for our reactions before continuing. I don't really know how to feel, or even where she's taking this, so I don't think my face gives much away.
'Apparently if a mate bond is strong enough, it is felt through generations beforehand. It's not really been proven, so I don't know if I'm right, but it's happened before. It's in one of my family's memoirs, about a mate bond of a family friend. I wanted to come so we can get proper closure. What happened ended too messily.'
She stops again, letting her words sink in, but i struggle. Somewhere in my mind, I know what she's trying to say, but somehow, I don't quite know what to do now.
'What-what does that mean?' I finally manage. I can hear Raph's erratic heart beat next to me, asking the exact same question.
'It means that we were never really mates. Trevor is my mate. You're mates to each other. But at no point was I a mate to either of you. The reason we felt a mate bond was because our children were to become mates. Their mate bond is strong enough to have affected us as well.'
My eyes close for a second as I take a deep breath. It takes a second for all this information to properly process in my head and the moment I do, I feel Raph shift next to me, leaning his head on my shoulder.
We were never wrong. We were right. Since that first kiss I shared with Raph, both of us have been convinced that what we were doing was wrong, even if it was right by our feelings. At one point we came to accept that that is simply our reality.
In truth, we had been right all along. Somehow, we felt our truth.
'That's all I came to say. I'm sure you don't have any more desire to stay in contact than I do. I will leave you with your family now.' Sheila says as she stands up, ready to leave.
She briefly stops after taking a few steps.
'For what it's worth, Samuel, I apologise on behalf of my pack.' Even though she can't see him because she has her back turned to all of us, Sam nods. Somehow, though, she knows, because only when he does give this acknowledgement does she continue walking.
Neither Raph nor I have moved yet, but before we know it, we have a pile of children on us, all happy and laughing, even Toby, who really doesn't understand any of what's going on.
I can't help but laugh along with them, especially once I see Dean's shocked face when Amanda pulls him into the so-called family hug and no one complains. Not even me.
In the midst of all that, Raph pulls me to him, places a chaste little peck in the corner of my mouth and Toby decides that that deserves a loud 'Ewww'.
And even though my youngest hates any affection shown between his parents, my daughter has now a - granted, not as bad as expected - mate and my oldest son slash younger brother is squashing my nose to the point it feels like it's breaking, right now I am the absolute happiest I ever remember being. Crushed between family.