"However, I'm content to continue letting you live as you are now, if you'll let our sons mate in peace."
"You'd take me in?" He blinked up at her. "Do you have any idea how hard it's been, trying to make ends meet since Carl left? My apartment is too big for one person, now that Gabe moved out, and I'm never home, always trying to earn enough to pay rent."
Mom met my gaze, and I shrugged. Humans were supposed to be all independent, but if he would rather live with us at the compound, I wouldn't stop him.
"Take me in," he said. "I won't cause any problems. Hell, I might meet my own fated mate."
"Anything is possible," she said. "I'll run it by the family tomorrow at dinner. You're welcome to join us. Gabe will be there, right, Mika?"
Her sharp question caught me off guard, and I coughed into my hand to regain my composure. "Hmm. Yes. He'll be there."
"All right, it's settled. I need to find my mate before he thinks I've abandoned him completely."
We stared after her. I wondered if she even sensed our eyes on her back anymore or if she was used to it as head of our meerkat clan.
With her gone, I was painfully aware of the man standing beside me in awkward silence. I should have said something, but I was still reeling from how quickly he'd flipped from saying I wasn't alpha enough for his son to glomming onto Mom's offer of rent-free living space.
"See you tomorrow at family dinner," I said.
"What's the address?" he asked.
"I'll have Gabe text it to you. I'll find him now, so we don't forget."
"Do that. He's always so forgetful."
I mustered what I hoped was a polite smile and strode away, ignoring his continued muttering about his "ungrateful son." Part of me wanted to excuse his negativity on account of social anxiety, but Gabe merely rolled his eyes as I recounted our conversation.
"Dad's being Dad." He sighed. "What's the address?"
With the text sent, I followed Gabe as he made the rounds to the caterers, waitstaff, hotel front desk, and back to Becca's dad, now seated at a round table a few feet away from the bridal party's rectangular table. The glass in his hand looked dark enough to be straight cola, and he laughed with several older gentlemen I didn't recognize.
Despite everything going exactly according to plan, Gabe looked more agitated with each passing moment. "Where are they?" he asked. "They should have been here by now."
"They said to start without them," I reminded him. "It'll be all right."
"But the toasts!"
"You can toast them after folks get some food in their bellies. Believe me, people will forget and forgive many faux pas, but starving them at a wedding is not one of them."
Gabe nodded. "You're right. Some of Mr. Newcomb's friends look like they could eat the waitstaff."
I laughed. "Most of them are prey shifters, not predators."
Gabe blinked at me. "They're shifters? That's so unfair! Mr. Bartleby was my tenth grade English teacher." He pointed to the man with long brown fringe beneath his bald crown, hunched over his cocktail. Though the room was full of shifter scents, I singled him out.
Before I shared his shifter animal, Gabe slapped his hands to his mouth. A high-pitched laugh escaped, anyway. "Turtle?" he whispered.
I nodded. "Turtle. The guy next to him is a ferret, the most predatory of the group. The next two are bunnies, and the guy sitting closest to Becca's dad is human." I pointed to the empty chair to his right. "Your dad might want to sit with them."
"Good guess," Gabe said. "That's his assigned seat."
I'd missed the folded paper placeholders around each of the round tables.
"Where's yours?" I asked.
"I tried to convince Becca to let me sit between her and Bruce, but she said no." He waggled his eyebrows at his joke. "Your mom insisted I sit by her, so I had to do some last-minute rearranging." He led me to the table on the opposite side of the room, but just as close to the wedding party's table. "You'll sit there," he pointed to the right side of the table. "And I'll sit here." He sank down onto a padded folding chair and kicked the one next to him, angling it away from the table. "For now, we can sit together."
Our peaceful break lasted only a moment before the caterers found us. "We're ready to start serving."
