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I put my arm around Cam and tug him against my side. He immediately looks up at me. “He’s not speciesist.”
“Why don’t you tell me exactly what happened?” I suggest, wondering how this became my mess. “Zac, not a word until he’s done, or I swear, I’ll tell Garrett’s cousin Alistair you want to go to karaoke with him.”
Garrett perks up. “Karaoke?”
“Not right now,” Asher tells him.
Cam explains exactly what happened while I was gone, then adds on all the reasons why he thinks Ronan is just a miserable person, and not a bigoted one. I can’t help frowning. This is an all-around shitty situation. There’s no way to resolve it without talking to Ronan and potentially offending him. Scratch that—definitely offending him. I don’t care so much about that if it turns out heisa bigot, but I’m inclined to agree with Cam on this. Which means we’re about to tell a man that the village thinks he’s a bigot and wants him gone.
“Garrett, this is really your department, as the project coordinator and liaison.” I look at him hopefully.
“I hate you,” he says. “But fine. I’ll talk to Ronan. The thing is… what outcome do we want here? If he’s speciesist, I can make a case to everyone else that he’s not the best person to be working on this project. But if he’s not… I can’t tell them the village decided he’s not welcome here because he’s not a happy person.”
We all wince at the same time. It would be funny if the situation wasn’t so fucked-up.
“Let’s talk to him first,” Zac suggests. “He’s a miserable bastard and I bet there’s a decent chance that’s because he thinks he’s better than us, but let’s find out for sure before we do anything drastic. Maybe he’s just having a bad week and can make an effort to improve his mood.”
Cam huffs. “That’s what I’ve been saying! Micah never has to worry about me running away with you, because I could never handle the mood swings!” He tosses his head, setting his curls to dancing.
“Um… what?” He and Zac have talked about running away together?
“Never mind,” Zac tells me with a roll of his eyes.
“I don’t know why I married into this family, but since I did, we’re having karaoke night tonight. You all have to participate.” Garrett points at each of us in turn to emphasize his point, and dread curdles in my stomach.
“Karaoke? Really?” I protest weakly. “I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t even here.”
Cam gives me big eyes. “You don’t want to do karaoke with us?”
“I…”
His eyes widen even more, and he pouts.
“Fine. Karaoke.” I glare at Asher. If he hadn’t married Garrett, I wouldn’t be in this position. “There had better be alcohol.”
“Believe me, there will,” he says fervently.
Garrett claps his hands. “Great! Asher and I are going to talk to Ronan. Zac, you’re cooking dinner.”
“Why me?”
“Because you were half of the pain in my ass today, and the other half doesn’t know how to cook.”
There’s a pause. “Does that make me the other half of the pain in your ass?” Cam asks. “That’s so unfair. I was just trying to prevent an interspecies incident. Imagine how bad it would be if the village kicked out the representative of the dragon wing leader for no reason.”
That wouldn’t be good. Especially when this is a three-way project with CSG. The last thing we need is angry government representatives demanding to know why we’re fucking things up.
Although, that angry rep would probably be Gideon.
Which reminds me… “Nobody’s said anything about this to the council or Grandmother yet, have they?”
“Arne was pretty clear that they didn’t want to make it official yet,” Zac confirms. “We have time to sort it out.”
I nod. “Good. Hopefully, she never has to know.”
* * *
Maybe it makesme a bad person, but I was really hoping Garrett and Asher would come back with bad news. Either that Ronan is, in fact, a bigot, or that he’s so offended by the suggestion that he’s leaving in a huff and we created an interspecies incident with the dragons. Because as horrible as both those things would be, they would also get me out of karaoke night.
