Page 53 of The Werewolf’s Study Date

CHAPTER 13

MAISIE

Thursday morning is a full-blown military food operation.

By six o’clock, the kitchen smells like sage, roasting poultry, melted butter, and spiced cider. Three twenty-five-pound turkeys occupy two different ovens and a massive outdoor smoker on the patio. A twenty-pound brown-sugar-glazed ham sits on the sideboard, and Thomas is currently carving up a whole smoked venison haunch on a butcher block near the sink.

I stand by the coffee pot in my oversized sweater, staring at the sheer mountain of protein in utter disbelief.

“Linda,” I say slowly, watching her stir a pot of turkey giblet gravy the size of a laundry basin. “There are sixty pounds of poultry on your counter.”

Linda doesn’t even look up as she cracks fresh black pepper into the pot. “Wolves, sweetheart.”

“Right. Forgot the metabolic burn rate.”

“If we don’t cook three turkeys, the boys start eyeing each other’s biceps by four in the afternoon,” she says cheerfully, wiping her brow with the back of her forearm. “Grab that bowl of cranberries and mix in the orange zest, will you?”

“On it.”

While I stir the cranberries, I keep an eye on Boone, who’s been acting like a complete lunatic since he woke up.

He isn’t hovering over me like usual. Instead, he’s pacing the perimeter of the kitchen like a caged tiger, jumping slightly every time someone drops a spoon. Every four minutes, his right hand twitches, sliding down to pat the front pocket of his heavy wool trousers.

He checks the pocket. Pulls his hand out. Looks at me, clears his throat, and looks away.

“Boone,” I say, narrowing my eyes at him over the cranberry bowl.

He snaps his head toward me. “Yeah?”

“Are you smuggling live animals in your pants, or are you having a neurological episode?”

“Neither,” he says quickly, his voice an octave too high. “Just... checking my keys.”

“You don’t need keys in your parents’ kitchen.”

“You never know,” he mutters, immediately turning around to inspect a loaf of cornbread with intense, scholarly interest.

Linda walks past him carrying a wooden bowl of mashed potatoes. She catches him checking his pocket again, stops dead in her tracks, and suddenly her hazel eyes fill with massive, shimmering tears.

I freeze, the wooden spoon halfway out of the cranberries. “Linda? Are you okay?”

Linda sniffs loudly, waving a hand in front of her face. “I’m fine, sweetheart. Just... the onions.”

I glance around the spotless, polished granite island. “Linda, there isn’t an onion within ten feet of you.”

“The microscopic aerosols linger in the air, Maisie,” Linda says with a watery, triumphant sniff, giving Boone a look of pure, fierce maternal pride that makes his entire neck flush bright crimson. “Carry these potatoes to the dining room, Boone. Now.”

Boone grabs the bowl and practically sprints out of the kitchen.

By noon, the front door bangs open every five minutes as the house fills with thirty-six people, three dogs, and enough noise to rattle the windowpanes.

And it isn’t just pack werewolves, either.

The Kinkaid Thanksgiving is Creature University’s integration charter brought to life in a single living room. Uncle Dennis arrives with Marcus, his mated partner—a centuries-old vampire who brings three bottles of chilled vintage blood wine and politely compliments Linda’s linen napkins. Cousin Sarah shows up with her human husband and three toddlers who spend the afternoon shifting between fluffy wolf pups and shrieking, juice-stained kids chasing a tennis ball across the heated wool rug. There’s a witch named Evelyn who keeps the pie crusts from getting soggy with a tiny flick of wandless magic, and two gargoyle brothers from the neighboring ridge who sit near the fireplace discussing timber prices in low, gravelly rumbles.

Nobody treats me like an outsider. Nobody looks at my round, human ears with pity or skepticism.

When I sit on the couch with a glass of spiced cider, Aunt Claire settles beside me to ask about my veterinary classes, genuinely fascinated by how human surgical techniques compare to shifter tissue regeneration. Cousin Sarah hands me a chubby, sleeping four-year-old in a dinosaur onesie, trusting me completely to hold him while she grabs a plate.