“Why?” Costin grinned at Titus. “I think that’s a brilliant idea.”
Okay,we can just make upfor this poor parenting skill by teaching him to help old ladies cross the street and to eat his vegetables. Is it okay to weigh bad parenting tactics against good as long as the good came out on top?She mentally shrugged. Hell if she knew. She was just trying to survive the holidays without Jen permanently maiming Fane and Costin and without her son slipping roofies into people’s drinks. Just another day in the Romania pack.
*****
“Maybe you’re taking this celebration thing a little too seriously.” Decebel sat Thia in her highchair and poured some cereal on the tray. Jen stood across from him in the main kitchen of the pack mansion. She grunted and muttered but didn’t look up from the pad upon which she was scribbling. She paused to tap the pen on her teeth, then went back to work on her notes. Decebel tried to frame his words as carefully as he could. “Babe, this can be a … laid back … casual thing, and everyone will still have a good time. The important thing is that we are all together.”
“Of courseeveryone is going to have a good time,” she practically growled, stillwithout lookingat him. “Obviouslythey are going to have a good time. Any idiot can throw a celebration where guests have agoodtime. I want them to have agreattime. No, I want them to have a stupendous, colossal, rocking-out-party-of-the-century time. I want this to be—”
Decebel put the sippie-cup down he’d been filling with milk and grabbed Jen’s shoulders. She sucked in a breath and finally looked up, her beautiful blue eyes meeting his. For an instant, he thought she was going to growl some more. Then her face softened, and her shoulders slumped. “I justwant it to be special,” she admitted softly. “This year has been complete crap.” She laughed and then shook her head. “Who am I kidding?The last few years have been crap.”
“Ouch, Jennifer. I’m trying not to take that personally considering we met, mated, and had a child together during those complete crap times.”
“Therehavebeen moments of awesomeness.” She set the pen down and wrapped her arms around him. “I didn’t mean thatallof it’s been crap. I just mean—”
“I know what you mean,” he interrupted. “Since Fane met Jacque, we’ve all been trying to survive from one bad guy to the next.”
“Exactly.” She nodded. “There’s barely been time to breathe, let alone celebrate the amazing things that have happened while the crap was literally falling on our heads.”
“I’m proud of you for saying crap and not the other word,” he teased as he nuzzled her hair. He treasured the moments when she let herself be vulnerable. They were few and far between, and when they happened, like now, Decebel soaked them up like they were the first rays of sunshine in months.
She snorted. “Yeah, well, turns out mini-me likes potty words as much as her momma. For some reason, she never repeats things I say like ‘that’s adorable’, but”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“if I slip up and say, ‘life’s a bitch,’ she’s suddenly all miss vocabulary and throwing that shit around like it’s confetti.”
Decebel had to agree. It was as though Thia specifically listened for words she knew she wasn’t supposed to say and then latched onto them like her favorite toy. “Maybe we should tell her not to say a regular word, and then she’d want to say it all the time instead of her current favorites.”
“Reverse psychology?” Jen narrowed her eyes and looked over at their daughter, who was currently holding up a circular piece of cereal and staring at them through the middle of it. “I don’t know. I think she’s too smart for that. And she’s creeping me out with thenon-blinking stare. Thia, blink your eyes, child. You’re being weird.”
Thia seemed to think this was hilarious. She laughed and said, “Momma weird.”
“You’re not wrong, mini-me, you’re not wrong.” Jen shook her head at their mischievous girl.
“So,” Decebel said carefully, “about this celebration. Is a committee—”
“Yes, B, it’s necessary. It’s a big freaking house, we’re inviting the whole freaking pack, and if nothing is planned, then we’ll run out of food, have rooms that aren’t festive, and it will be a Christmas dud party. I don’t do duds.”
“Well, obviously, you mated me.” He couldn’t help himself.She’dwalked into that one.
“Ha, ha,” she deadpanned.
He could see his mate had good intentions, even if she tended to go a little overboard on some things. He paused. Okay,a lotoverboard. But he also thought this was part of her grieving process. It was as if she needed to do Alina’s memory justice by making this first“holiday”as special as their former alpha female had been. Decebel wouldn’t rob her of that if it was what she needed. He’d lay the world at her feet if he knew it would help her heal. “Okay, baby, you just tell me what to do and it’s done.”
Her plump lips turned up into a smile that lit up her face. That alone was enough to make him drag in fifty Christmas trees and put a thousand ornaments on every single one. Anything to make her smile at him like that.
“As soon as everyone is here, I’ll assign each person to their squad. Then we can lock and load,” she said with the pep back in her step.
“Squad?”
“Or we could call them teams.” She tapped the pen against her lips. “Or crews. Ohh, brigades.” She nodded with a grin. “Like the elf brigade, the wolf sleigh brigade, the tree brigade, the—”
“Wait. Did you say wolf sleigh brigade?”
She nodded again, this time even more enthusiastically. “Yes, and the tree brigade. Come on, babe, you’re going to have to keep up if you want to be a brigade leader.”
“Uh…”He decided to pick one battle at a time.“Or we could just say groups.”
She scrunched her nose up. “‘Groups’ is boring. ‘Groups’ is for duds. We aren’t agroupof duds. We’re apackof badass, Christmas celebrating, lights shining, ornament hanging, sleigh pulling, boughs of holly dancing, holiday furball cheer. Does that sound dud-like to you?”
“I like the sound of that.” Zara sauntered into the kitchen, tapped Thia on the nose, and then turned to Jen and Decebel. “And no, it definitely doesn’t sound dud-like. It sounds like the Christmas of the century.”
