Dennis
Bjorn looked taken aback at that recital. “Uh…all of the above? But technically, I meant going to talk to Alpha right after we mated.”
“You and me both,” Bjorn said with a shudder. “Not least because Mom’s tea is always too weak.”
“Hmm.” Escalus didn’t stand, but he also didn’t object as they drew closer, eventually mounting the steps to the porch. Another two sips of coffee went down the hatch before he acknowledged them with anything more than his eyes. “You two look happy. Why?”
Escalus nodded as if this answer hadn’t surprised him. “Fair enough. Did y’all come for my blessing?”
“No,” Bjorn said immediately, expression stiffening.
“Our mating doesn’t depend on anyone’s blessing.
We wanted to inform you, because it’s respectful, but you don’t get a say in whether we mate or not.
” He looked like he was prepared to challenge the alpha to a knock-down-drag-out fight if he objected.
The alpha’s right eyebrow winged up, but he showed no sign of becoming angry at the harsh words.
“Well, ok then. But for the record, you’d have my blessing if you’d asked for it.
I think you’re good for each other. Bjorn, you’re too nice for your own good sometimes; you need someone to speak up for you.
And Dennis…I don’t know you well, but I think you needed someone to pull you out of your tough shell. Our Bjorn is good at that.”
He wasn’t wrong, about either of them. “Thank you,” Dennis managed to say in his most polite tone. “I appreciate -”
“Alpha!” came a strident voice from just inside the treeline. That voice sounded eerily familiar, and Dennis sighed.
As he’d feared, Bjorn’s parents emerged from the forest, his mom in the lead, dragging his more reluctant-looking papa by the hand. “Alpha, we must talk about -” she was saying before pulling up short at the sight of Bjorn and Dennis. “Oh.”
All three of the people on the porch were silent. Dennis didn’t know about his companions, but he was taken somewhat aback by their sudden appearance and, frankly, he was never sure what to say to this lady anyway.
“Well,” she went on, straightening her skirt – only this priss would be wearing a pencil skirt and kitten heels in the woods, honestly – “Ronald and I would like to speak to you, Alpha, about this ‘volunteering’ you are making us do.”
Escalus’s expression remained mild, but he raised his eyebrows. “I’m not making you do anything. You had a choice. You still have a choice.”
“But it’s not a choice!” she protested, stomping up the porch steps and pulling to a stop only a few feet from the rest of them. “We either work with those…people…or we lose everything! My poor Ronald had to…” She shuddered. “With humans!”
“Darling,” Ronald said hesitantly, “it was just inventorying a kitchen. It’s hardly a fate worse than death.”
The glare she shot him could have burned his hair off, then she whipped back to face the alpha. “We will not go back. You may assign us other work, but we simply cannot work with such base creatures.”
Escalus’s eyebrow went higher. “I don’t recall giving you a choice of tasks, Rowena.
You can ask at the community center to do something else there if you didn’t like the first thing they had you do, but you will continue volunteering there.
” He smirked. “The metaphorical beatings will continue until morale improves.”
“What does that even mean?” she snapped.
“Ro…” Ronald attempted, but that just earned him another glare.
“Focus on me, not him,” Escalus snapped, and Rowena looked back at him reluctantly.
“It means that you need to learn to live and work with humans, because your bad attitude about them is infecting my den and I will not stand for that. Thus, you will continue interacting with humans until you learn to act, well…humane.”
“But -”
“End of story.” Escalus wasn’t taking any more of her shit, and Dennis resisted the urge to cheer.
Rowena visibly regrouped, running an uneasy hand over her tightly coiffed bun. “Yes, well. Please register our complaint on this topic.”
The alpha just shrugged. “Registered and ignored. Anything else?”
“Well, yes, actually!” She glanced at Dennis and wrinkled her nose, like a petulant child. “We need to talk about my son’s…relationship…with that man.”
“I’m right here,” Dennis pointed out mildly. Bring it, lady. We’re a done deal and nothing you can say will change that.
“What about their relationship?” Escalus asked, sipping at his coffee with what Dennis was pretty sure was a deceptive calm.
Rowena glanced at her husband like she expected him to chime in at this point, but he just shook his head.
Was it possible Ronald was…coming around?
Or was he just a wuss when faced with the den alpha?
Rowena harrumphed and turned back to them.
“It’s inappropriate. My son can do better.
I want you to send the human away. Once you’ve done that, I can start introducing him to more appropriate mates. ”
Dennis couldn’t hide his smirk any longer. “Bit late for that.”
“Excuse me?” she said, looking down her nose at him and squinting.
Dennis shrugged. “I said it’s a bit late for that. We’re already mated, and the way I understand it, that means you could parade a bunch of naked twinks in front of him after feeding him Viagra and you’d still get nowhere.”
Bjorn rumbled quietly beside him. “Nowhere,” he reiterated firmly.
Rowena blinked, and then: “Excuse me?”
Grinning, Dennis pulled his collar aside so she could see his mark. “Biting done,” he said succinctly. “Mating finished. You lose.”
Her eyes widened in horror and she whipped around to face her son. “How could you, Bjorn? With a human?”
Bjorn scowled at her. “First, I have no problem with humans. I never have. That’s a ‘you’ thing. And second, you will speak with respect about my mate or you won’t speak to either of us at all.”
“Darling,” Ronald tried tentatively, putting a hand on his wife’s arm, “perhaps we should just -”
“No!” she burst out, actually stomping her foot. “No, this is not acceptable! I won’t have it.”
Escalus, who had been watching avidly over the past few minutes, broke in then. “You don’t have to have it, Rowena. It’s your son who’s choosing a mate, not you. As we all know, you don’t have power over who he mates.”
“I will not -”
“Enough!” burst out Ronald, startling every single one of them to attention. Possibly also some of the squirrels in the woods around them, and everyone else within a two-mile radius.
Rowena spun in place to stare at her husband. “Ronald?”
“I said enough, Ro. It’s done. They mated. We can’t undo a bite, and honestly, I’m not sure I’d want to even if we could.” He looked over at Bjorn, his gaze softening. “I think perhaps Rowena and I have been…short-sighted.”
“Short-sighted?” Bjorn echoed confusedly. “How so?”
“Well,” he said slowly, “perhaps that’s not quite the right word. Maybe I mean something more like ‘of limited sight’.”
Bjorn and Dennis exchanged a look, no more enlightened by this than by his last attempt, then looked back at Ronald. “What, exactly,” Bjorn asked, “have you been ‘of limited sight’ about?”
Ronald sighed heavily. “We have lived in this den our entire lives, and the den has always kept itself apart from the town. Yes, we went there to buy or sell goods, but other than that, we lived our lives here and the humans lived their lives there. We rarely mixed, and it didn’t help that when we did go into town, we were negotiating business in an often-adversarial manner. ”
“O…kay?” Bjorn didn’t look like he understood his father’s point any better with that, but Dennis thought he was starting to get an idea. Was it possible Ronald…didn’t suck as much as he’d thought?
“I thought of humans as very different from shifters,” Ronald went on, “and I know Rowena was of the same mind. Our priorities, our goals, our lifestyles…all different. A mismatch. Humans want money and power.”
Dennis couldn’t hold back a snort at that. Ronald, who held a powerful position he wouldn’t relinquish for love or money and who was trying to force his son into the same type of position, was standing here saying humans craved power?
Ronald spared him a glance, then steeled himself and went on.
“Humanity was very…foreign to us, I suppose. I wasn’t comfortable when I did have to do business with them.
I may have made comments to that effect around the den.
But…” He sighed. “Those children at the community center. They…they reminded me so much of Bjorn as a child. So very much. Playful, and sarcastic, and wanting the best for the world. And I started to think that…perhaps they weren’t actually so different from my son. ”
“They’re not,” Bjorn agreed.
“And,” Ronald went on, “if they’re not so different from my son, who I like to believe is very like me -”
Yeah, no. Dennis looked to the side and rolled his eyes but didn’t interrupt him. This was starting to get good.
“- then perhaps they are like me, as well. Even though they’re humans and I’m…
not.” He paused and drew in a breath. “And then I thought about what I’d seen of my son’s…
uh…my son’s mate.” He stumbled over the word, but he got it out.
“Dennis does not appear to be violent or power-hungry. He has cared for my mother while she was ill, even though he’d never met her before.
He has…well, he has tolerated my wife and me and the indignities we brought to the table.
I find it hard to dislike him, even though he clearly dislikes my wife and me.
Which,” he added hastily when Dennis opened his mouth, “I can’t blame him for. ”
“What, exactly, are you saying, Papa?” Bjorn asked, taking Dennis’s hand nervously.
Ronald straightened his back and looked at his wife, who scowled at him. He blanched a little, but determinedly went on. “I am saying that I think perhaps I was…I was wrong about humans. A bit. And I am saying that I can’t disapprove of my son’s choice of mate.” He heaved out a breath.