“Tell him when we went to Spain and he slept with that bear guy that I decided to play slap ball in the shower and the guy didn’t appreciate it because he had no sense of humor about his dangling bits. It’s not my fault that you all walk around with your bits dangling to the ground and expect me not to whack them,” Caster said from beside me.
“Uh, when you were on holiday in Spain, he swatted a delicate area of your – um.. company while he was in the shower,” I said.
Era blinked. That wasn’t the sort of thing you posted about on social media. He might not have told any other shifter about it. Though, if it had been me, I’d have told everyone because I would’ve laughed until I exploded.
“How did you know about that?” he asked.
“Caster just told me.”
“You’re not funny!” he said, his fingers curling into fists at his sides.
“Can we start again? I’m not trying to be humorous. I was more than willing to leave you alone and let you howl yourself hoarse but your cat’s not having it. In my experience, cats are little jerks like that. Can I come in or do you want to come to my place?”
“Give me the cake,” he said.
I handed it off and he stepped back and shut the door.
“We’ll just have to try again tomorrow,” Caster sighed. “Maybe if I eat enough, he’ll be able to see me. Then he’ll have to believe you.”
A howl tore from the other side of the door, and I couldn’t help but feel in the pit of my stomach that I was making everything worse.
Chapter 11
Beryl
The Guardians of Glitter Bomb Territory
I’d tossed out probably a hundred rocks and twice that many pebbles from the pond but none of them had faces. At least not faces I could discern. Each rock tossed onto the muddy bank made me a little bit more pissed off. I was out here spelunking for a rock that looked just like every other rock in the world.
“Maybe we can give the kid all the rocks and it’ll make up the difference,”my dragon chimed into my thoughts.
I didn’t think Jade would go for that but I had a bloody good mind of where to tell Jade to stick all these rocks. We hadn’t even had a proper conversation and he was already making demands. Bree didn’t demand Mum to go on some fool’s errand when they met. Medwin didn’t have Clarence spelunking around in a pond for some trinket without so much as a proper hello.
I hadn’t realized I was muttering to myself until a little voice reached my ears.
“I thought you were looking for my rock,” the kid from the night before said. “Not a trinket.”
“I—” I took a deep breath and let it out. Whatever was going on between me and Jade wasn’t the kid’s fault. He stood by the pond with his arms crossed and I was about to tell him that Iknew what I was looking for when it hit me that this little brat probably snuck out again. “Does your daddy know you’re out here?”
“No,” he shook his head. “My daddy left and my uncles are asleep. I’m hungry. So I came to look for my dad.”
“Wake your uncles up then,” I said.
“They need their sleep. I can wait. Daddy said he was coming to talk to you and never came home,” he said, his little eyes narrowing on me. “Did you eat him?”
“No, I most certainly did not. I amnotFerrick.”
“I know. You’re an alpha,” he said and rolled his eyes. “Why are you so mad? You were mad when you were watching me too. I smelled it.”
“That’s complicated,” I said.
“What’s that mean?” he asked.
“Means there are many complex reasons – that means—hard to explain. Many hard to explain reasons as to why I was mad. I wasn’t mad at you,” I said. “I thought you were a wild otter having fun while all us nutjobs were in bed.”
“It’s not nice to call people nutjobs,” he frowned at me.
“It was a joke,” I frowned back at him. “Anyone ever told you that you’re way too serious for a kid?”
