"Ariel!" Mark shouts, bounding across the room like the big puppy that he is and grabbing me in a hug.

"Baby!" I shout, dropping Luca's arm and laughing as I hug my brother back, my eyes pressing shut with the pleasure of it. Mark - he's not even the baby of the family, he's nearly two years older than Juniper, but he'll always be my baby, and he lets me fuss and cluck over him like a mother hen.

"I've missed you," my Markie murmurs, hugging me close and tucking his head down against my hair. "June's been so mean to me and there's no one to stop her -"

I laugh, pushing back a little so I can look up into my little brother's sweet face. Mark favors Rafe and my dad, of course, but he's more of a mix than Rafe and I are. While Rafe and I are our parents' twins, Mark has some of mom's softness in the curve of his cheeks, in the lighter highlights in his hair.

been like this,

our heads whip to the left, where five kids charge for Jesse the second he steps through the door. "No, no!" Jesse sounds, deliberately dramatic as they leap all over him. "Not the piranhas! They've got me! I'm being eaten alive! No, NO! They're taking me down!" All of Jesse's siblings grab onto him, shrieking and laughing, pulling

grab each of his siblings by turn, giving

missed their human jungle gym," Grandpa Henry says, wheeling up next to me and smiling over at Jesse's continuing scene, as I am. "It's been murder on me and my chair - they're always wanting rides up and down the hallways. Playing horsie and piggy-back-chauffer

whose eyes sparkle as he shifts his gaze up to me, and I bend down quickly to give him a kiss on the cheek, murmuring how good it is to see him. Grandpa

"Junie Junie!" I sing, dancing around Grandpa Henry's chair and reaching for her, taking two handfuls of her long now-black hair in my hands and holding it up like pigtails as

back away, though I keep

struggles against me, but Junie's even smaller than my mom and me, and I've spent a whole semester training at Alpha Academy, so she's got no chance. "I just missed my little sissy so much!" I plant a

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