“Daddy, I counted to a hundred today.” Chloe, at five, was our oldest. She and her polar bear brother Luke, also four, held hands.
Luke said, “I counted to ten.”
“Daddy, screen time, please.” Our little wren, Rylee, looked up at me with wide blue eyes, a tablet in her tiny hand. She was our third four-year-old. It had only been a week, and she already had me wrapped around her little finger. Automatically, I would say yes. I would give her anything.
I looked to Freid for guidance. He knew the schedule and had been with the kids all day. He’d taken early paternity leave so Penn and I could keep our jobs. After that, he’d be a judge. We were all so proud.
Freid walked toward us. “Rylee, you already watched cartoons, remember?”
“Wanna watch with Daddy.”
“She’s right. I haven’t gotten the chance to watch anything with these beautiful darlings today.”
The judge stood before us, ready to hear us plead our case.
“Please, Papa?”
Freid frowned. “Maybe after dinner.” He sounded serious. “Then we can watch something with the family together.”
“You heard the judge,” I said.
Squeals and clapping. Bouncing. Rylee ran up to Freid’s legs and crashed into them. He picked her up and swung her gently over his head. She laughed and screeched. Miles clung to my leg, and I picked him up. He pressed the side of his head to my shoulder.
Freid and I headed to the kitchen with the polar bears following.
“Where’s Penn?”
“He’ll be home in a few minutes. He’s picking up dessert. We’re having cake. Which I did not have time to bake myself, and please don’t ask me the four reasons why.”
All the kids yelled, “Yay! We love cake.”
Penn and I had kept our jobs. Penn wanted to work until the baby came. Then he would take a year off to decide if he wanted to go back or not. By then, Freid would be a full-time judge with a great salary. He’d already made good money at the law firm, with a salary that was more in one month than I made in a year, so thanks to him, we were financially solid. Plus, I had savings, and my own house was on the market.
The kids were settling in fast. It was as if they felt the fated reality as well, fitting into the household as if they’d been here all along, knowing it was right. And final.
Freid was Papa. Penn was Dada. I was Daddy. I melted every time one of the little ones used the term. It only took them a couple of days to understand we were their forever home and weren’t ever going to leave them. Only Chloe had questioned on their first night with us.
“Are you really our daddies now?” she had asked.
I had been the closest to her, tucking her into the top bunk. “Really. For real. We’re a family now, and we’ll never leave.”
“That’s our promise to you all,” Penn said from the lower bunk where he was tucking in Luke.
“Fate sent you to us,” I said.
“Did you know we were coming?” she asked.
Freid came to her and handed over her teddy bear. She took it and hugged it tightly to her chest. It was a white polar bear. We’d gotten them all lots of toys, which they’d spent their first day exploring, but the bears were the most popular. Luke and Chloe got polar bears. Rylee and Miles got brown bears.
Freid said, “We did know. We were expecting you. You were all meant to be here with us. and now you are.”
“No more moving days?” Miles asked from the other bunk.
“No more, sweetie,” I said. After giving Chloe and Luke a kiss on the forehead, I went to Miles and Rylee, giving them each a kiss.
After that first night, they always used our daddy names and never got them wrong. Foster to adopt was different in the shifter world than humans. We were checked out and approved for forever the moment they came into our home. We just had to wait out the days to finalize the paperwork.
When Penn came home with cake, we all sat down for dinner. Afterward, Rylee got her way. More screen time. We watched cartoons together for an hour then insisted on real live games before bed. We playedCandyland, and Freid won.
