Bethany waves off my concerns. “I made it a point not to raise a useless son. I taught him to cook, clean, and keep his own calendar. You’re his mate, not his servant. Besides, he’s a great cook, and he enjoys doing it, neither of which can be said for you, right?”
I grimace. “Right. But I would really like to help.”
“Well, then sit your butt down at the counter and keep me and Ellie company, and if you really insist on doing something, keep the coffee flowing. It’s going to be a late night!”
* * *
I pickat my ugly Yule sweater as I survey it in the mirror. I shimmy my shoulders and the little golden jingle bells tinkle merrily, reflecting the rainbow of Yule lights woven through the moose on my sweater’s antlers. By the saints, it truly is ugly, and it’s ever more obnoxious after Melissa’s help with the bells.
Simon emerges, grumbling, from the room he and Cassian share, and “eyesore” is about the only way I can describe the repeating pattern of neon Yule trees on his sweater. It clashes with itself, with Simon’s red hair, and with everything around it.
“It’s like a train wreck,” he mutters. “You want to look away, but you just can’t.”
I can’t even imagine what Ellie’s sweater looks like if she plans on winning this evening’s contest. I don’t have to wonder for long.
She greets us at the bottom of the stairs, bouncing on her toes in utter glee. Every bounce sends the plastic pine needles on her sweater swinging and, saints, there are actualornamentshanging from her sweater on little silver hooks, and lights and fake popcorn garland wrapped around her torso.
“It’s missing something,” Simon says, rolling his eyes.
“Something like this?” she asks archly, pulling a headband out and putting it on. A glitter-covered Yule star bounces from a long spring on the headband, and when Ellie flips a switch, it lights up just like the star atop the Yule tree that still graces the Leclerc family room.
“Cheater. It’s an ugly sweater contest,” Simon mutters. “Not an ugly accessories contest.”
Ellie sticks her tongue out at him and swans into the kitchen to grab a tray of appetizers from Bethany.
The first guests, Roman’s sister, her pack, her adult sons and their mates, along with their children, arrive a little after seven. A little girl shrieks out “Uncle Simon!” and throws herself into Simon’s arms, squealing in glee. “Where’s Uncle Cass?”
“He’s helping Auntie Bethany with the food. Want to come sneak a taste with me?”
He swings the little girl up until she’s sitting on his shoulders, shoots me a wink and disappears into the kitchen.
After that, the chaos truly begins. Family and friends arrive in groups, and I’m shocked to see that many take the ugly Yule sweater contest just as seriously as Ellie does. Cassian finds me after helping his mom set the food out and sticks to my side as more and more people arrive.
Everyone congratulates us on our mating, and Cass introduces me to all of his cousins’ children as Aunt Junie. I’m hugged more times in half an hour than I think I’ve been hugged in my entire life. I meet cousins, aunts, uncles, friends of his fathers who have known Cass his whole life, and so many little ones that I have no idea how anyone will keep them occupied until midnight.
A few of the older children convince Simon and Luca to play video games with them, and I don’t know what they end up playing, only that Simon very indulgently lets them win while pretending to be the sorest loser imaginable.
Another group of children surround my beleaguered ex-honor guard, only, he isn’t beleaguered atall. He listens intently as a young girl explains the rules of a game to him, and then gamely joins the children in a game whose main objective appears to be spinning around as fast as you can until you’re so dizzy you fall over. Marcus meets my eye as he’s spinning, and shoots me a smile that stops my heart, and then staggers dramatically before falling to his knees, riling them up with his antics. He’s tackled by the giggling children and, damn, I never thought about Marcus Haley as afather.
And if that thought doesn’t make me just as dizzy as he pretended to be…
“Aunt Junie?” a little girl asks, tugging at the hem of my sweater. “Would you play dinosaurs versus astronauts with me? I’ll let you be astronauts because they always win, and it’s your first time playing!”
“She’s pulling your leg,” Simon calls over his shoulder. “Astronautsneverwin.”
We find a quiet corner of the room and the girl shows me her bag of dinosaur toys and astronaut action figures—toys I never would have been allowed as a girl her age. Like aproperRose daughter, I played with baby dolls.
I’m getting my astronaut butt kicked when Douglas drops down beside us and takes up one of my defeated astronaut action figures.
“Uncle Doug,” the girl says flatly. “He’s sleeping in his spaceship. You have to be this one.”
He ruffles her hair and accepts a different figure from her. It’s clear he’s played this particular game before—and even more clear that he loves children. When the little girl scampers off to attack Simon with her dinosaurs, Douglas gives me a smile.
“I always wanted a big family, tons of kids. We all did.”
I swallow hard. “What… what happened?”
He searches out Bethany across the room, studying her fondly. “Beth got sick after she had Cassian. After meeting with a few specialists, I knew having another baby would have been too hard on her body. She was devastated—we all were—but we had Cassian and we loved that little boy as much as we would have loved a whole brood of kids. I’m really proud of him.”
