“Yeah. I’m just tired. Was up late last night online,” he shrugged.
“Be careful with Pheromone Swap. They don’t have a box to check if your parents are crazy,” Preston teased.
“Anyone crazy shows up, I’m running over here for you two to ice them,” Lero laughed and I nodded, taking his joke more seriously than he had. He was Preston’s family and that made him my family.
“It was a joke. I’m not going to have you freeze my carrier,” Lero laughed and started toward the door. “Hope you two enjoy the pizza!”
Over the next few days, the Lero weirdness mostly faded from my mind. We didn’t leave the house and the only guests we had weren’t guests at all. Mori dropped by with Baby Andy every day for lunch. It might’ve been our matingmoon but no baby should be without their carrier for days on end when it could be helped. I didn’t want Baby Andy to grow up thinking of me as the guy who got between him and his dad. I hadn’t said it aloud but I’d much prefer for him to grow up and think of me as just ‘Dad.’ Maybe that was a bit evil. I had frozen out the ‘competition’ and all, but Venal had left me little choice and I wasn’t going anywhere. Even if Venal was sire of the year, I’dstill be as invested in the baby’s happiness and wellbeing as I was now.
As days passed Preston and I adjusted to mated life and the snow kept falling. Every morning after we had our coffee out on the back porch we padded over to check on him in bear form. So far, he hadn’t wiggled away or been dug up by a wild animal. I wasn’t sure if someone could be thawed out but he wasn’t the guy I was going to try it out on. Some problems were best put on ice.
One of the wolves from the pack who lived down the mountain from me used to put her brother’s name in the creek before it froze whenever he was annoying. She claimed that a witch once told her that was a spell to get someone to chill out. From the little I observed it seemed to work. My spell was just that magic on steroids. Venal had no choice but to chill his balls out now.
After checking on Venal, each day we’d come back to the house and make love. We romped in the kitchen and the bathroom. We romped in every room in the house except the nursery while we had it all to ourselves. After our lunches with Baby Andy and Mori we did online shopping for Yule for things that would be delivered via drone and spent hours talking about our pasts and our futures. We wove our dreams of having a big family one little conversation at a time.
One afternoon, we went over and visited Mori’s shop, Mori’s Mementos. It was a bid morbid and taken from the old human language latin. Memento Mori.Remember that you too shall diebut it fit the shop’s vibes with all its enchanted and cursed things. So many antique things that were once touched by true-mates who loved each other very much. Usually, Preston ran theshop when Mori wasn’t home, but it wasn’t officially reopened after closing for their trip to Europe a while back. That was the day that I decided to reach out to Rune about gathering up my important stuff and bringing it out for me. I wasn’t so crunchy about him ‘outing’ my existence anymore. How could I be now that I had Preston and Baby Andy?
The next afternoon before the tree decorating party over at Preston’s parents’ house, we had a video call with Rune while he packed everything up and got it ready for the drone. There wasn’t much I missed but having the rest of my stuff here would make it feel official. If I needed more ice, I’d have to travel back myself but that was a problem for future me. Present me was as content as a bear could be.
We heard the party before we ever reached Barry and Xenos’s home. Yuletide music pounded cheerily from the walls and a few shifters sat on the porch drinking what smelled to me like spiked eggnog. We wouldn’t be drinking tonight because Preston planned on it being the first night the baby was back home with us. Besides, with my mate around, I didn’t need to get drunk to have fun.
Xenos had dressed Baby Andy and his own little toddler, older but still as cute as Andy, like little winter helpers in green outfits with pointed little hats. Andy was already trying to eat his when we arrived and he nearly bowled over someone I didn’t know by crashing through their legs to get to Preston and then proceeded to shift into his bear cub form to climb his carrier like a tree. Preston kissed his baby all over his furry face before we made our way further into the party.
“Not that way!” he said, grabbing my arm. “The tree’s in there but he’ll have laid all the ornaments out too and if you break them… Well, he won’t be happy.”
I didn’t say I was probably more graceful than most of the alphas here, but Preston heard it in my thoughts over our mating link anyway. He laughed and gently elbowed me. Lero and Mori sat on the sofa and Lero kept glancing out the window again. Mori had dreamt of his almost-encounter with his true-mate recently. One of their younger, but still adult brothers would meet his true-mate on a cruise this summer, and Xenos was thinking about how much he wanted a few days alone with Barry. I shook my head. I usually didn’t encounter this many people at one time. So, all the knowledge flooding into me at once was a bit overwhelming. I buzzed with energy and the cold started to seep from my pores. I shook my head. Not everyone had my level of cold tolerance. Preston probably did. Probably with the horns and all. The baby… I wasn’t so sure. And no one else had any reason to have my protections from it. I shook my head again and took Preston’s hand in mine. The cold wouldn’t help anyone but my breaths still came out in icy puffs.
“Wess! Come help me in the kitchen!” Xenos called out to me, and I was grateful for the excuse to be around a few less people even if being in the same house was enough to pick up more ‘visions’ on the way to the kitchen. Xenos wasn’t alone in his cooking but there were definitely less people in the kitchen than the rest of the house. He pointed with a big wooden spoon to a spot at the table and I sat down looking for something to do but nothing stood out. Had he called me in here for a time out? Had my magic reached him before the others even had an inkling of what was going on?
“Clear out, you guys,” Xenos said. “Go enjoy the party. Not you,” he looked at me. “You need to take a load off.”
Slowly, the kitchen cleared out until I was left alone with my carrier-in-law. He poured two big glasses of apple cider and slid one in front of me as he took his normal seat at the table. He flashed me a sad smile and nodded for me to drink. I hated to be that asshole, but I sniffed it first. I wanted to trust my new family, but I’d seen how hunters and farmers used poisons to get rid of animals they thought were nuisances and let’s face it, I was never the most trusting guy in the room.
The apple cider smelled delicious. Xenos and Barry stayed up late one night to peel the apples and start the whole process. I let out a long, slow breath and took a sip. It tasted even better than it smelled as it slid across my tongue.
“So, is it the visions, the peopling, or the spirits of the dead you see now that has you over stimulated?” Xenos asked, cutting to the chase. “Yeah, I know about that. Have always known about that. It’s the reason I worry more about Preston than his twin. Mori’s loud about what he does but Preston, he keeps to himself.”
“Uh… Were some of those dead people?” I whispered, leaning over the table in hopes that made my question less likely to be overheard by other party guests.
“Yeah. Some of them. Some of our ancestors have moved on. Others like to show up to parties.”
“Uh…. I want to say stuff but don’t want to be interrogated about what I say,” I said.
“Well, lucky for you, I’ve grounded Barry from launching any investigations until after New Years,” he chuckled.
“So many of your kids are going to meet their true-mates within the next few years. One is going to meet his on a—”
“Cruise,” Xenos filled in the blank before I could and shrugged. “I got those type of eyes too. I see wider but I think you see deeper since most of your visions focus on true-mates. I’m not telling you what to do but unless you want people showing up at your door all hours of the night and day, I’d not tell any of them what you see about them.”
“I didn’t plan on it,” I admitted.
“Smart man,” Xenos nodded and took a long swig of his apple cider. “And just so you know, I did tell Barry he shouldn’t have tested you like that. Between us, Venal got off easy being turned into an ice sculpture. I know Preston thinks he has the right to be the ‘missing dad’ but I don’t know that I feel the same. Make a baby, contribute to the baby is how I see it. Plus, well, they tried to save him from his mother but he doesn’t want to be saved. So, thank you for saving me that trouble. So, what’s the plan for when Sharon Claudis shows back up?”
I looked around the kitchen to see who was watching us. We were alone. No people. No animals. No spirits of either. He wasn’t putting on a show for someone, but it felt as if he was picking up in the middle of a conversation that I hadn’t been privy to the first half of.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought it through, because you have. I know your type. You know sooner or later, she’s going to show up. Mori seems to think it’ll be later despite Venal’s little unplanned visit, but I don’t think you’re that naïve. Mori is naïvestill because he believes Dern. Preston believes his twin – sort of. You’ve probably found at least one of his weapons by now. They can’t help it. They want to believe the world is a good place and that the bad guys can become good guys and some of them are good guys. Don’t tell me you believe that crap?”
“Uh…. I thought everyone could be redeemed,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck.
