“Pami hasn’t gotten back out has she?” I asked. Out of all them she scared me the most because I couldn’t figure out what her game was. Power? What villain goes for generic power? It was too cliché. If that was her MO whoever the elven ‘Frost’ was needed to drag her away and eat her or whatever Frost did to bad people. Spank them? Make them pick up trash on the side of the highways?
“Juda spanks them and he watches,”my cat laughed inside my thoughts.
Yep. Once Bernard and Nashen were settled into their new home I needed to get laid. It might be time to whip out Pheromone Swap again.
“Ya think? You’re daydreaming about some old ancestral fogies spanking bad guys. That’s a really big paddle and Juda’s wearing a corset!”my cat chimed off into my thoughts. He was the one who added Juda in a corset but I didn’t point that out.
“Eran?” Bernard turned to face me.
“Huh?” I said.
How much of the conversation had I missed?
“Will you go down and help Dad and Pop set up the truck ramp? I’d go but Nashen gets extra hissy when I’m not around,” Bernard said.
“Yeah no problem,” I said. “I guess my brain cell hasn’t come back after being squashed out.”
After the ramp was set up we formed an assembly line to get the boxes and items down quickly. As more shifters showed up it became even faster. Nashen and Bree stayed on the sofa because neither Bernard nor Diamond wanted them lifting anything heavy. Bree protested a little but was happy to keep Nashen company and share his pastries.
I stayed down on the street handing off the boxes to Bernard’s sire who stacked them neatly inside the truck. It kept me far away from Nashen. I didn’t know what about me upset him so much but stressing out a pregnant carrier wasn’t on my to-do list.
“Everyone is having babies. Bree. Nashen. Medwin. When do we get to have a baby?”my cat asked as if we had a line of omegas waiting for us to knock them up. I got what he meant, though. I’d been extra careful not to conceive out of mateship. I didn’t care what other people did. Some folks like my friend,Jade, even made it a habit of adopting children who needed homes to fill the void, but single parenthood wasn’t for me. Not that I didn’t want to spend all my free time rearing my kittens. I would when the time came. I just wanted to share that with my true-mate. Plus, I’d seen how badly chosen mates could go. Then again. Plenty of people had been murdered by their true-mates.
Once everything was in the truck, I went back up to double-check things. Yeah, Bernard could’ve done it, but we’d made pretty good roommates before Nashen was pregnant. That worked because we’re both independent but also considerate.
I didn’t take my car out of the parking garage if I was going somewhere local. Walking was good exercise and most of the places I wanted to go were within walking distance for me. Going out to the farm was different. Though, I almost hated to take my cherry red Frost Pickup out to that place. It was always so dirty. I’d already booked a morning appointment at Franny’s Fur Salon because just thinking about it got dust in my white fur. The truck cost a pretty penny when it was new twenty years ago but had held up well with routine maintenance. It wasn’t a Moonscale Talon or anything like that, but I wanted a vehicle to last forever. Mine already smelled like me and a new one wouldn’t.
I was about to pull out onto the street after waiting for everyone else to clear out when the passenger door opened and Jade slid inside.
“Didn’t bring the Wing today?” I arched a brow.
Jade drove a green Wing Minivan. Folks teased him a bit, but it fit his personality, though. He usually always had a kid at home, and he ran the only ‘flyers only’ indoor playground for winged kids. When it first opened some ‘unwinged’ parents werepretty pissed off that he would create a place that didn’t cater to their kids, but in the end, everyone shut up. Most kids had plenty of indoor play places. At most of those places there were no flying signs. Jade ran into those a lot as a young, winged lion. It stuck with him. So he fixed the problem when he got older. It was winged kids only because a lot of the platforms involved weren’t safe for those who couldn’t fly.
“Eh, don’t want to have to go to the car wash,” he shrugged.
“Is Jondi still afraid of it?” I asked about his five-year-old adopted son.
“Yeah, and by the time the party’s over it’ll be time to pick him up from school,” Jade nodded. “He still doesn’t like dirt either. Still won’t go out onto the playground. They’ve stopped calling me on it. Doctor Harmel wrote him a letter excusing him for sensory issues. I don’t know that it’s sensory but that got the school to shut up. Thought I was going to have to cover Feral with mud and lock him in the room with my kid to get someone to pay attention.”
“I’d have paid to see that from behind a mud shield,” I laughed.
Jondi was a kindergarten-aged otter shifter who washed up by the Moonscale Lake as a pup. The search for his parents went on for months until it was decided either he was orphaned, abandoned, or wild born. Over the years he’d been fostered by seven different families, most of them with at least one water dragon parent, but it never worked out. It was hard not to be angry at the parents who couldn’t figure it out but I had never fostered a small child. I had ‘fostered’ a set of teenage twins for a year until they were old enough to go to Hemlock Academy. Both Sem and Jeo died when they went to fight Clarence’s war againstthe hate group. I was barely out of college when they moved in with me and we were more friends that anything else. I still sometimes wanted to kick Clarence while wearing a shoe made from his own scales.
“I feel that,” Jade nodded. Even this far away from Moonscale London almost everyone lost someone in that war or knew someone who did. “We have to cheer up before we get there.”
“Eh, cheerfulness is overrated,” I managed a chuckle.
“And you need to find a new roommate.”
I hated that he was right. I was a fully functional adult but sometimes that function included getting lost in my work and doing nothing else for days at a time until I realized I was a starving matted mess. I didn’t need a particularly involved roommate. Just one who made some occasional noise to bring me out of the crafting zone.
“You could come and stay with me and Jondi,” Jade suggested.
“I’m sure he’d love that,” I laughed. “Kid finally has some stability and you bring home a cat.”
“He likes his ‘Uncle Cat.’” Jade shrugged. “More than I can say for Bernard’s guy. He looked at you like you were going to eat his kittens.”
“I don’t know what I did to him in a past life for him to hate me like that but I hope it was worth it,” I said as we pulled out onto the highway. “Honestly, I think I’m going to play with Pheromone Swap for a few weeks after I’m sure Bernard is settled in the new house.”
