“Here.” Bryce urged him into the porch chair.
“Drink!” Stryker shoved an energy drink into his hands.
Hudson wasn’t normally a fan of the drink, but he took a long sip and winced.
“You’re not supposed to be drinking those,” Bryce said to Stryker.
“Well,” Stryker drawled. “As my Papi is currently circling the state park, I don’t think he’ll know. Unless someone tells on me.” He pointed off in the distance where lighting lit up the sky.
“I’m dreaming, right?” Hudson didn’t feel like he was dreaming. He had been pretty tired earlier though.
Bryce knelt in front of him. “The paranormal world exists and you just found yourself in the middle of it.”
Hudson blinked.
“Your mate is a shifter. A margay, in fact. Mine is a dragon shifter. Stryker’s is a thunderbird. Lawson’s is a vampire, Sam’s is a wolf shifter, and Ansley’s is a panther shifter. We’re the human partners.”
“Uh.” Hudson stared at the can in his hand. Had he been drugged? Maybe the food that Bastian fed him earlier was bad? Meat went bad and could cause hallucinations. That was something he’d read, he thought.
“This is real, buddy.” Stryker patted his shoulder. “It’s difficult to process. Well, it was easier for me since I’d been kidnapped by a group of evil witches.” He gave a careless shrug.
Real? Like the man who’d made love to him for more than half the night had actually turned into the same cat that Hudson had rescued from a tree? “Dragons, shifters, and vampires are real.” He tested the words out loud.
“More than that!” Stryker said. “Axel and Anton dragons, Craig equals bear shifter, Nate bobcat shifter, and Bo is the Alpha hellhound. It is just as cool as that sounds, by the way. He turns into this big, massive beast and can talk to the other hellhounds. Drake vampire and when he mated Lawson, our buddy here received some unique gifts. Now Anton gets two mates like Nate and while River is human, Rainier is the king of the fae.”
“A king,” Hudson repeated.
“Yes, a freaking king! That’s why Rainier, River, and Anton don’t live here with us. They have to be in the fae realm. Although they use a portal to commute here,” Stryker said.
“A portal because why wouldn’t they,” Hudson commented. This was getting ridiculous.
“Isn’t magic awesome?” Stryker questioned.
Hudson didn’t have an answer for that.
“He’s new,” Lawson said with a laugh. “It still excites him.”
“To be fair,” Ansley said, “it still excites me too.”
Sam nodded.
Stryker huffed. “Where was I?”
“Me.” Sam raised his hand.
Stryker rolled his eyes. “I already did you. Sam is mated to Shawn, a wolf shifter, and Ansley to Trevor, a panther shifter.”
“Now that it’s laid out like this, I feel like we have the more normal of the mates,” Sam commented.
“True,” Ansley agreed. “Imagine trying to tell someone you’re a dragon or a demon.”
“Demon?” Hudson squeaked out.
“I’m getting there.” Stryker waved his hand around. “So Seb is River’s twin and Lawson’s younger brother. Have you met him yet? He’s awesome and way smart. Anyway, he’s mated to Ash, who’s a reaper. They live in the hell realm so we don’t see them a lot but they come for family dinner or we go to Adam’s.”
“Don’t forget Ari and Atom,” Sam said.
“Ari and Atom are demons, like pure demons, and they’re awesome too. You should just think everyone is awesome at this point, because we are,” Stryker told him.
