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If I can get everyone back in the living room.
Not having any clue where they disappeared to, I follow my connection to Dawsyn and realize they’re in the kitchen.
Oh, no. The oven.
I race through the pack house and start to smell smoke. I didn’t burn the turkey. It’s not possible. I need to make four of them to feed all these supernaturals. I had to start early. I don’t have extras. I can’t lose a single one of them.
As I enter the kitchen, Lucinda is opening the back door and Dawsyn coughs from the rising smoke while pulling out the nearly black turkey.
“Um, Mom?”
My face falls when she sets the crisp bird on the counter. “I swore I set a timer.”
Lucinda points at the clock on the stove. “You did, and there are still forty minutes left.”
I check the settings and want to scream when I realize I accidentally set the heat too high this morning. It was early, but damn it! I shouldn’t have screwed this up.
“When did this pack house turn into Satan’s kitchen?” a familiar voice sounds from the back door.
“GiGi!” Dawsyn says with an excitement I can’t seem to muster for our favorite matriarch.
Beatrix hugs her granddaughter and glares at Lucinda then me. “You asked for magical help and then didn’t wait for it to arrive?”
The fae points at me. “She wants to do things…normally.”
Beatrix’s face scrunches, forming deep wrinkles around her green eyes. “Are you having a midlife crisis? Isn’t it a little early for that? I didn’t have mine until I was like eighty. Gods, that was an orgy I—”
“Don’t you finish that sentence in front of my daughter,” I practically snarl.
She rolls her eyes and flattens her lips, making the lines around her mouth more prominent. “She’s mated. To a dragon no less. She’s getting better sex than all of us.”
“GiGi, seriously?” Dawsyn’s face is ten shades of red. “Please don’t talk about my sex life. Not today, not ever.”
The witch flicks her long silver braid behind her back and waltzes past the rest of us. “A bunch of prudes. All of you. I thought with a few decades of being mated, you’d have wiggled the sticks out of your asses, but clearly, I was wrong. Such a rare occasion.”
Her words grow fainter as I assume she heads toward the living room, then I turn to Dawsyn. “Do you think you can figure out how to get the next turkey in the oven and set the temperature better than I did?”
“Sure thing. River will be here any minute, so I’ll be late decorating the tree,” she tells me, and I try not to let my disappointment show.
“Tell him to join us,” I suggest, but she’s already working on the turkey and rushing along, not listening to me.
Lucinda loops her arm through mine and pulls me away. “Don’t worry. My kids are barely half her age and they already don’t like to spend time with me. Be grateful you get as much of her attention as you do.”
“Dom and Raven love you,” I tell my best friend, and not for the first time. Fae grow up faster than most other supernaturals. Dom was leaving their realm without his parents when he was only twelve and has no problem reminding his mother that she did much worse at his age.
I’ve felt for her, but I also know everyone, including the kids, is just trying to figure out if there’s anything we need to be worried about with the boy’s white wings.
While it would be nice to believe that no news after all this time and effort is good news, something tells me that’s not the case.
Our kids are strong, though. They’ll have each other’s backs just like we always have for one another.
“Don’t look, Cait,” Lucinda warns me. “Just turn around and go back to the kitchen.”
We’re almost at the living room, and I do exactly what she’s told me not to.
“Beatrix Jacobs, what have you done to my house?” I screech, my voice echoing through the house.
The old and ridiculously obnoxious witch turns around and grins. “You asked for help, and you got it. Don’t complain just because it’s not what you wanted. The decorating is done.”
