Hot showers and fresh clothes — mine borrowed from Lirien — later, we stood outside Lirien and Jace 's room, eyeing the stairs. Neither one of us moved to actually go down them.
Loud laughter and cheerful conversation and the squeaks and howls of tiny werewolf children echoed through the house.
Apparently everyone had missed the pack matriarch, even if they hadn't missed John's incompetent leadership. Just in the half hour we'd been upstairs, the house had started to smell like pumpkin pie spices and apple cider and — was that what a home was supposed to smell like at Christmas?
I glanced at Lirien , standing there icing his lip and looking like he was two seconds from diving out the nearest window. Yeah, no point in asking him.
My childhood could've been a PSA about parental neglect, but his had been more like a horror movie.
A burst of static echoed up the stairs, followed by the scratchy but recognizable sound of Bing Crosby singing
White Christmas.
