His eyes softened and new tears filled them. “I am now.” He leaned over and kissed me softly. First on the forehead, then on the tip of my nose, and then on my lips. “Don’t you ever let anyone hit you on the head with a metal pipe again, d’you hear me, Sully Cleary?”

I could tell from his voice that he was far from okay. “Sorry, Jules. I didn’t mean to scare you. I won’t let anyone do that again, okay?”

“I want you to swear it.”

“I swear I won’t let anyone hit me on the head with a metal pipe again.”

“Actually, don’t let anyone hit you on the head with anything, okay? I think that’s the main thing. More important than the weapon, all right?”

I nodded.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“Yeah, I remember it all. The Brothers. Dalton. My mom. I even remember some weird shit she was saying about the White Wolf,” I said.

Jules eyed me strangely. He’d stopped crying, but his eyes were still red.

“How long was I out for?”

“You’ve been asleep for twenty-seven and a half hours.”

“Jeez, what did I miss?”

“Well, I kind of had to come out to all four of our parents on my own.”

“Shit, how was that?”

“It was fucking weird, Sully. That’s how it was. I had to tell them everything while you were unconscious, and I was lying crying on your chest.”

I started to laugh. It came out as a dry cough that made the left side of my head pound. “I don’t suppose you thought about getting off me for that particular conversation?”

“Nah, didn’t even consider it.”

I laughed again. I could feel Jules’s good humor being restored through our bond. Soft amber light sparked and flowed between us.

“Are your folks okay with it?”

“Yeah, they were shocked, but I think that was more by everything that happened than by us. Us being mated seems like small potatoes compared to the whole killing and carnage thing that went down. They’ve seemed a little odd since Dalton, you know, died. A lot of the pack is acting strange. They kind of seem like they’ve had a bucket of iced water poured over them. It’s like they’re awake for the first time in a long while.”

I heard a commotion at the front door as my mother and father both tried to barrel into the cottage at the same time.

“My God, Sully, are you all right?” cried my mother.

“My boy, my boy, my boy,” sobbed my father as he fell to his knees beside my bed.

“He’s fine,” said Jules, yet to abandon his post on my chest. “He’s the same as he’s always been. He remembers what happened and everything.”