“Hey, Chiga,” I said.
The man was dressed in a crisp blue suit with silver accents. It was a bit more dressed up than many of us were, but it suitedthe giant mercenary. I smirked at the color, and he gave me a sheepish grin.
“Sorry, the honey picked it out for me. He didn’t consider the faux paus of silver to a wolf shifter gathering.”
“Eh, that’s all right. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.” I stood, tucking my speech away and clapping the large man on his shoulder. “When am I going to get to meet this special love of yours anyway?”
“Actually, he’s here now if you’d like to meet him.”
“Hell yeah, I’d like to meet him.”
I knew it was my own bias, but it was so hard to imagine the giant, muscled moose shifter as a doting boyfriend. But I’d seen a softer side of him when he and Ven had their heads together in the downtime.
“Ah, there he is,” Chiga said, pointing at a small group of people before striding across the clearing. “Benny! Benny, I’ve got someone here to meet you.”
I wasn’t sure what I expected, maybe another equally tall shifter to turn, or perhaps a petite, more-femme man, but instead it was a portly fellow of average height, and even whiter than I was. His cherubic face was basically alabaster, with a smattering of freckles to match his ginger hair. His eyes were a vivid blue, and I didn’t miss the way they crinkled at the corners the moment he saw Chiga.
“Oh? Who is this, honey?” Even his accent was Midwestern, with a longer drawl that indicated he was more south than west.
“Leo. I told you about him.” Chiga radiated a prideful energy. It was very sweet, and I hoped people could tell I felt the same way whenever I was around Ven.
“TheLeo?” Benny offered his hand, and when I took it, I wasn’t surprised that his grip was firm but not crushing. “I have indeed heard so much about you. I had to admit, I was dubious when my darling told me he needed to go off and fight in whatsounded like yet another war, but thanks to you, we’ve already been able to relocate three lost children from our area back to their tribes already. You have no idea how much this means to us.”
For some reason, the passion in the man’s voice surprised me, and I almost felt a little bashful. Everything we had done would have great significance in the shifter and magical community and was likely to spread out for quite a while, but it had only been a week since our victory with Katarina, so some of the practicalities of that were still seeping in.
“I’m happy your communities were able to recover their little ones. There’s a lot of healing in store for all of us.”
“You’ve got that right.” There was a spark in the man’s eyes as he drew closer and, goodness, the fondness on Chiga’s face seemed almosttoopersonal. Like I was intruding. “Actually, that’s something I wanted to talk to you about. You see, I’m a certified child psychologist with a specialty in trauma, and I’ve been working with a couple of therapists who are either magic folk or familiar with our world. We want to help these victims recover from this trauma, and I’d love to interview your pack sometime. Once things are more settled, I’d love to get some of you, or hell, even all of you, into our program.”
I blinked at the man. I wasn’t against therapy, but I’d never really thought of it as an option for shifters. Naturally, the pause was a bit awkward, and Benny cleared his throat.
“Not that any of you have to. It’ll take at least a year before we get anything off the ground. I didn’t mean to offend?—”
Chiga tensed, and I could tell he was ready to defend his partner if needed, but I wasn’t alarmed.
“No, no. No offense taken. I just need to reframe my mind. I’m sure you can understand that most of us are orphans so, uh, that kind of thing wasn’t exactly on the table for most of our lives.”
Benny let out a nervous chuckle, and Chiga draped an arm around his shoulder. Oh, Ven was going tolovehim.
“Right! Of course. Chiga has told me y’all come from pretty dire circumstances. I gotta admit, I come from a huge family with seven brothers and three sisters, so I can’t even imagine. It really is miraculous what you’ve all managed to accomplish.”
Seven brothers and three sisters? Now,thatsounded like a pack and a half.
“We’re just happy to be alive and able to celebrate together,” I said, inclining my head. “Lovely meeting you.”
“And you as well.”
I left them with the cluster of people. I had about two minutes to myself before Ricky and Andromeda found me, one with a bottle of water, the other with a small packet.
“Drink up,” Andromeda said, flicking off the cap for me. “Don’t want your mouth to get dry.”
Although she hadn’t gotten a ton of time to bond with Ven like Ricky had, Andromeda had made it plenty clear she was fond of the dryad. Part of it was their mutual love of cats, and part of it was that Ven had orchestrated my rescue. They were on genuinely friendly terms, which made me beyond happy because Andromeda was like a sister to me.
“And this is for luck,” Ricky said, handing me the packet.
I frowned down at it. Why was he giving me lettuce seeds? “What’s this?”
“That’s Ven’s favorite lettuce.” He grinned. “Figured if she can sense such things, it might be a nice bit of comfort for her, given how she’s not the biggest fan of the spotlight.”
