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“I’m glad too,” the fae monarch said, her tone unusually soft. She bowed to the dragon shifter a little more deeply than the first time. Serenity dipped in return, and the fae woman blinked out of sight like a flash of light, here and then not.
I blinked as a murmur of surprise carried through the crowd. I was never going to get used to the way the fae could travel like that when they chose to.
My mate turned on her feet to take in the revelers. “To our past, our present, and our future, and all the strength we’ll carry with us!” she called out. “More eating, more dancing. This is a celebration, isn’t it?”
A cheer rang out all around us. The music started again, leaping across the light-strung field. As my kin launched back into their rejoicing, Serenity stepped closer to me. I moved to meet her, looping my arm around hers and squeezing her hand.
“You didn’t tell me you were planning that,” she said, chiding but only lightly. Her face glowed like the crystal had.
“Christmas is a time of surprises, isn’t it?” I said. “Consider it my first present to you.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You’ve gotmorethan that? I think that’ll be hard to top.”
I laughed. “I think my fellow alphas might give it a try. We’ll have to wait and see.” I leaned closer. “I thought you should know you haven’t taken anything away from our people by claiming that power. You accepted the gift that was there, and now you’ve passed it on.”
Her expression went momentarily serious. “Let’s just hope our people don’t need that gift again for a long long time, if ever.”
“If that’s our goal, I think we’re well on our way.” The melody swept around me, and I reached for her other hand. “May I have this dance?”
My mate’s smile came back. “Please do.”
Chapter 3
Ren
Lookingat the table only half covered with platters, I couldn’t restrain a groan. Nate ambled over with a frown. “What’s wrong?”
“It looks strange. Maybe this was a bad idea.” I turned to take in the rest of the disparate alpha’s estate house dining hall: the polished wood tables dotted with tall candles, the exposed brick walls hung with evergreen boughs to add that Christmas-y smell to the air, the silky red and green streamers that crisscrossed the high ceiling. The dry breeze that traveled through the open windows was warm, because it was never going tofeellike my kind of Christmas here in southern California, but I’d tried to recreate some of the atmosphere I loved.
“Are you sure they didn’t think the request was weird?” I asked Nate.
He set his brawny hands on my shoulders. “It’s fine, Ren. Everyone I talked to loved the idea. It’s not as if you put them out. We gave them a stipend to cover ingredients or just buying something outright—and everyone who joined in volunteered. We didn’t put them in any hardship.”
“I just… I’m still figuring out the best way to relate to your kin.” In some ways, Nate’s people were the trickiest, because they were all the shifters who didn’t fit into the neat little boxes of avian, feline, or canine. They’d come together not out of what they had in common with each other but what theydidn’thave in common with any of the other kin groups. That wasn’t the best recipe for cohesion.
“I want to make sure I’m recognizing them for themselves,” I added.
“And I think, like I thought when you first talked to me about it, that this was a perfect approach,” the bear shifter said. He dipped his head and nuzzled my cheek with a brief kiss. “You’re doing a lot this week, Ren. You’ve done a lot all year. None of our kin expects that the five of us will never make the slightest slip. Not that I can see any you need to worry about.”
“Okay,” I said, closing my eyes for a second and trying to convince my nerves to settle. “Do you have the list? I want to put out labels for each dish so they know where to put them—and so everyone else knows who to thank.”
I’d just finished arranging—and rearranging, and re-rearranging—the labels when the first of the disparate kin Nate had reached out to arrived. A petite couple I recognized as rabbits from their scent set a sweet carrot-beet salad in the place I’d designated and gave me a shy bow. “Thank you!” I said. “It looks delicious.”
Next came minks and then voles, grizzlies and then boars. All in all, thirty families representing thirty different shifter animals had volunteered to contribute to our sort-of potluck meal. From the way they all deferred to me, you’d have thought I was doing them a favor by letting them help feed the party, not the other way around.
More than one glance dropped to my belly. I’d been resting my hand on it again, just out of habit. My daughter kicked lightly against my fingers. Could she feel my touch already? The thought made me a little giddy.
“Best wishes and safe arrival,” more than one of the kin murmured, as much to her as to me. A couple of the women were growing round themselves and shot me an extra knowing smile.
More and more of Nate’s kin poured into the room. He must have told them they weren’t supposed to eat yet, although I saw a few shooting longing glances toward the platters and serving bowls. I shifted anxiously on my feet.
To distract myself, I mingled, welcoming all of our guests and accepting their good wishes with a grin, making my way slowly to the table at the front of the room with just five place settings, reserved for my alphas and me. Aaron, Marco, and West were already waiting there, the eagle shifter and the jaguar shifter chatting about something that had Aaron looking amused and Marco sly, the wolf shifter standing a little stiffly at the other end. Nate turned up just as I reached them, with a nod to me. That was my cue.
I came around the table and picked up my glass to tap my spoon against it. Nate loomed beside me with a meaningfully cleared throat. The shifters milling around the tables closest to us picked seats and quieted, and then the ones just beyond them followed suit, until the whole room had fallen into a hush. Hundreds of eyes fixed on me.
“Disparate kin,” I said in the queenly voice I’d had lots of chances in the last year and a half to practice. “It’s wonderful to have you all here today as we celebrate the Christmas season and our first full year of peace since the long-ago tragedy that claimed my family.”
Heads lowered respectfully at the mention of the attack that had left my alpha fathers and my two sisters dead, and my mother and me on the run. My alphas and I had taken down the leaders of the rogue group that had orchestrated that attack, and in the months since then, a steady trickle of their followers had come to rejoin the kin groups. Any others who still refused to live under an alpha’s authority hadn’t stirred up further trouble, which I’d take as a blessing.
