Chapter 21 Meeting the Family #2
This Sunday would be moderately calm in the Harbinger household, with only the closest family present.
Two of my brothers were here with their husbands and younger kids, then my parents, and my pops.
Had we done this in my grandparents’ mansion, there’d be more than thirty people, and I couldn’t do that to Lothair. Not yet, anyway.
I told my parents and brothers last weekend.
It had been a loud affair, with loads of excited yelling, back-slapping, and hugs, then a barrage of questions and more hugs.
I suspected my pops might have prepared them somehow because I hadn’t received a single remark on the fact that my mate was a shifter alpha and not a nubile human omega halfway in heat already.
As we neared the house, the main door opened, and Badger shot out like a rocket. Tongue lolling, he sprinted straight at me. I crouched to receive the most enthusiastic greeting of the day.
“Hello, sweetie. I’m so happy to see you. Hi, little baby. I missed you too.”
Badger wriggled and twirled around, not knowing whether he needed me to rub his head or his butt. After sniffing at Lothair’s legs, he made a fluffy donut with his lanky body and spun in circles as I did my best to pet him everywhere.
“Lothair, this is Badger. The best dog in the world. He belongs to my pops, but I’m his second favorite.”
“I can see that.”
“Badger, this is Lothair.”
Lothair stretched out his hand. “Can I?”
“Sure. He’s a slut. Rub his ears, and he’ll love you forever.”
Grinning, Lothair bent over and combed through Badger’s long fur. “He’s gorgeous.”
“And spoiled!” came my great-grandfather’s raspy voice. He walked down the stairs toward us.
Lothair shot up, spine straight. I’d never seen him so scared before, not when he was jumping on motorbikes, or tumbling down cliffs—not even racing through the city streets to escape a lunatic. He looked terrified.
“Mr. Harbinger, sir,” he stammered.
Badger seemed to pick up on the tension because he sat at our feet, gazing up at us on high alert.
My pops looked Lothair up and down. “Mr. Courtemanche,” he said in an equally formal tone. Then his tanned, wrinkly face split into a mischievous grin. “Welcome to the family, Lothair.” He slapped Lothair’s arm. “This is great. My friends at the club won’t believe me.”
“It’s not public yet, Pops,” I reminded him.
“Oh, I know. But it’ll come out sooner or later. You’d better brace yourself, Terrance.”
Lothair’s smile was strained. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Harbinger. Terry told me a lot about you.”
“I bet. I bet.” My pops leaned in conspiratorially. “Did you visit old Conrad? Learn anything interesting?”
“Um. We have. Yes. Thanks for that.”
“Good. Did you meet his omegas?”
I gulped, remembering the scene in Conrad Roche’s garden. “Um. We only saw them briefly.”
“The youngest one was with them at a party last week. Highly pregnant. Gorgeous young man.”
Lothair gave me a bewildered look.
“Pops…”
Before I could come up with a suitable way to end this line of conversation, my pops grinned and whispered, “I’ve heard there’s this club called Priapus where alphas like you can go and meet boys. Maybe you can try that.”
I gaped.
Pops winked at Lothair and turned to the house. “Come on. They’re all nervous as hell that we have a celebrity guest. They’ve been insufferable all day. Let’s get this over with.”
Lothair let out a squeaky sound that might have been a combination of a sob, laughter, and a hiccup.
I caught his hand and squeezed.
“One down, six more to go,” I murmured.
Once the door closed behind us and we were in an enclosed space with my boisterous family, Lothair seemed suspiciously calm. He must have been employing his acting skills.
My pa and dad were all over him, inundating him with compliments and offers of various refreshments.
Dad praised the last two movies Lothair had made—which he must have watched just because Lothair was coming—and my pa proceeded to gush over Paris Olivier and what he called the “gorgeous romance” with his bodyguard husband. If he only knew about all the kink.
The only people in the room behaving sensibly were my brothers-in-law, who observed the scene, probably remembering their own eventful introductions to the Harbinger family. They gave Lothair sympathetic looks.
During the two-hour lunch, Lothair barely got three words in. My brothers began talking about stunt work, and Lothair just sat there with a soft, if somewhat bewildered, smile on his face.
“There’s no way they did that without CGI,” Hale said, waving a glazed rib around. “I’m telling you, even if a shifter could hold up that amount of weight, he wouldn’t be able to do it in front of a bunch of humans.”
“It wasn’t CGI,” Joe protested. “They gutted the truck, taking out the engine and everything. Then he lifted it.”
“You can see the thing land on the concrete and shatter. How would they do that? I’ll tell you how.” Hale pointed the rib at Joe. “CGI!”
Lothair watched them like a tennis match.
“Boys, please,” Pa tried in a soothing tone, but Hale and Joe were on a roll.
“Then ask the man.” Joe gestured to Lothair. “He’s sitting right here. Ask him!”
Hale turned to us. “CGI, right?”
Lothair opened his mouth and closed it, blinking rapidly. “Um. Which movie are we talking about?”
My brothers leaned in close, crowding him.
“Furious and Deadly,” Joe said.
“Two,” Hale added. “The scene where you throw the truck from the garage roof onto the street.”
“Oh. That was a while ago. But I remember throwing something from a garage roof.”
Joe fist-bumped the air. “Told ya!”
“I think I threw like a metal pole with wheels on the ends. They added the rest of the truck in post-production.”
Hale waggled his eyebrows at Joe. “C-G-I,” he singsonged in a way that would have led to a wrestling match a few years back.
Being older and wiser, Joe simply flashed him a finger.
“Joseph! Hale! That’s enough,” my pa snapped. “We have a guest!”
“There are children at the table,” my dad added.
My brothers looked contrite, glancing at their toddlers in highchairs on both sides of the long dining table.
Hale turned to his husband, Louis, who was looking at him with a mix of patience and annoyance.
“I was right,” Hale hissed under his breath.
Louis smiled sweetly. “Enjoy it. Doesn’t happen often.”
Hale gasped with mock outrage, and Joe laughed.
“See, Lothair, you lucked out with the most reasonable brother,” my pops said, pointing at me.
That prompted a series of stories about how very unreasonable I’d been during various stages of my life.
Listening to my family dish the dirt on me would have been irritating as hell, but Lothair finally relaxed.
He laughed with them, hugging me around my shoulders, and I decided that the revival of childhood humiliations was worth it.
Lothair never used the code words we’d agreed on. We stayed until four, and it was me who said it was time to go.
When we drove back to Lothair’s place, my mate looked content and relaxed as he navigated the sprawling suburbs.
“So,” I began. “You’re not going to run now that you know where I come from?”
He smiled at me before checking his blind spot and changing lanes.
“No. You’re stuck with me.”
“Phew.”
“They’re nice, Terry,” Lothair said in a serious tone. “They’re really nice. Your pops is incredible. How old is he?”
“One hundred and eleven.”
Lothair swallowed, then he asked quietly, “What happened to his omega? Your great grandpa?”
“He passed away nearly a decade ago.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was ninety-nine when he fell asleep. We worried about how Pops would deal with it, but he… I don’t know.
They had an amazing life together, eighty years of marriage, and it’s as if Pops still lives off that happiness.
He says he’s not alone because his mate stays with him in his heart and in his memories. ”
Lothair was quiet. Maybe his mind went to his omega dad or maybe to our future.
“Can we do a sauna when we get home?” he asked after a while.
“Sure. Sauna and a swim.”
“And a fuck.”
I chuckled. “Of course.”