Chapter 18 #2
That’s how Ty finds us later, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the dining room in front of a bright and happy Christmas tree straight out of a holiday movie.
It’s covered in lights and decorations, most of them handmade.
All of them with stories that Winter has spent time telling me.
First haltingly, as if she was embarrassed. Then, laughing.
I don’t tell her that this is a kind of spell work too.
“What the hell,” Ty growls when I open the door to the pissed-off-sounding knock that I knew immediately was his.
He sounds grumpy, but his hand moves to find my face and his fingers track the line of my jaw.
It’s a while before his gaze moves past me to take in Winter and her tree. “Where the hell did that come from?”
“We’ve been decking the halls,” I tell him, smirking. “Obviously. Thinking of making it a den thing.”
Ty doesn’t dignify that with a response. “Your fae friend was walking alone,” he says.
“Briar?” Winter asks, like we have numerous fae wandering around the property. “She does that.”
I squint at the boarded-up windows but, of course, don’t see anything. “She walks everywhere. Always has.”
Ty looks incredulous. “How is that safe?”
I think about that night I know that something nearly got me. That someone was right there. “I don’t think anyone thinks it’s safe. It also hasn’t been a topic of conversation. She’s not a human.” I shrug apologetically at Winter. “She doesn’t smell like a snack.”
“Besides,” Winter says, not looking as taken aback by the snack comment as I think she would have been even a month ago, “she’s our friend. She lives here. She should be as protected as we are.”
“Did you ask her to come in?” I glare at him.
He glares back. “No, I fucking did not. I told her to get her pointy-eared ass inside her cottage before I had to clean up her entrails, and she took off running. Which, hate to say, would only make a predator with less self-control than I have chase her to the ground.”
Winter and I gaze at him with what I think are twin looks of dismay.
Ty folds his arms over his chest. “What?”
“I think she’s lonely,” Winter suggests.
“Everybody’s fucking lonely,” Ty retorts. “Not everybody prances around in the dark, begging something to eat them like an asshole.”
“Briar isn’t an asshole, she’s just a little awkward.” I shake my head at him. “I’m surprised you even recognized her. Have you ever actually met her? Talked to her?”
I don’t share that hanging out with Briar is pretty new on my end too.
“You probably terrified her,” Winter says, frowning. “I don’t think I’d like it if a giant werewolf reared up out of the dark woods and started barking at me.”
“A fae is a fae is a fae,” Ty says in that stubborn voice of his that is a lot like his high king voice, now that I’m thinking about it.
“Note that I’m saying fae, not defenseless kitten.
There was no rearing and no barking. I told her what was up and she took off.
The end. Why are we still talking about this? ”
“Maybe we have to approach this differently,” I say after a moment. “Maybe we need to get us all in one room.”
“Us all who?” Ty growls.
“She lives here,” I tell him, patiently. A little too patiently, even, and his eyes narrow on cue. “She’s one of us whether you approve of her or not.”
“Do you like sugary cereal?” Winter asks, then laughs at Ty’s expression. “I just thought maybe you two could bond over that if you do.”
“Christmas dinner,” I blurt out.
Both Ty and Winter frown at me.
The more I think about it, though, the more I like it.
“We should invite her to Christmas dinner. That’s a thing, right?
Savi and me too. And you and Ariel,” I assure Ty when he looks like he’s about to object.
“We can have a little found family time. The holiday version. Like people do when they all share spaces and lives, like it or not.”
No one breaks into cheers after this suggestion, though I think it’s genius.
The more friends Briar has, the better, as far as warding off Vin?a goes.
And it sure won’t hurt her to have friends who are also the three great powers in this valley.
I have to think that’s likely to keep the death goddess from messing with her—or at least make it harder for Vin?a to try.
“In this holiday version am I . . . cooking?” Winter asks skeptically. “Like in the sense of a dinner party in which I prepare and serve food to guests?”
“I could cook,” I tell her. “I cook all the time. It’s actually a life skill? But you’ve made it clear that you think my cooking is not actually cooking.”
“If your meat is raw after you cook it, you didn’t cook it, Maddox. By definition.”
“I like a feast,” Ty says after a moment. “And it wouldn’t hurt any to have a sit-down with the vampire and the sorceress that’s not based on an immediate crisis, for a change.”
That had also occurred to me, thanks to wolf week. Sure, wolves fight a lot. But first there’s a lot of attempts to bond better—especially among the males who call each other brother. None of which would hurt here in the Rogue Valley.
“I like this in theory,” Winter says, frowning, though the way she says it makes me wonder if she has some thoughts about the relationship between our big powers here. “It’s the part where I prepare a whole Christmas dinner that I’m having trouble getting my head around.”
“Your boy can get you whatever you want,” Ty tells her, probably just so he can be a dick and call Ariel, immortal vampire who was once an actual Spartan, your boy. “Or what’s the point of being a vampire king?”
“Something to keep in mind is that none of us will know what a Christmas dinner is supposed to look like,” I tell her. “You’re talking two werewolves, a vampire, a sorceress, and a dark fae. Not your extended human family, gathering to grade you on how well you made your grandmother’s pie.”
“Gran was not a pie person, though she sometimes pretended otherwise to be polite,” Winter says quietly. “Deep down, she was always suspicious of hot fruit.”
I don’t know why that makes my chest feel tight.
“We’ll assume it’s on unless we hear otherwise,” Ty says then, like it’s a done deal with invitations. “And to be clear, I also love a pie.”
He steers me out of the house, leaving Winter gazing up at the sparkling tree with that wistful expression I saw earlier. Out in the dark, he propels me along with his hard hand heavy on my neck. I snuggle into it.
We both pause in the yard, looking for movement in the shadows, but there’s nothing.
“I like the idea of this Christmas dinner,” I say when we start moving again. “It’s not like the solstice was all fun and games. Maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world to take a time-out and get to do a little community building outside the den.”
“You think that’s how this works? Time-outs and celebrations for shit that has to happen whether we celebrate it or not?” He’s not starting a fight. I can hear the difference in his voice. It’s a quiet question and not undeserved, either.
I stop walking. “I think that we’re going to have to figure out how to create space.
” I think about the week I spent in the den and how close it all is.
I think about the grand cavern and how so much of wolf society is how we perform in public, because everything is so public.
More importantly, I think about how little I’ve really seen of Ty since the solstice, and when I have, if I want to really talk to him, we’ve had to leave the den.
“Things are different now. In the den, you can’t take a step without everyone all over you for every little thing.
Maybe it’s time that we made it a little harder to access you. ”
“I grew up with that kind of king,” Ty says flatly. “It’s not going to be me.”
“I’m not talking about random hierarchies to keep people at a distance,” I say patiently.
I haven’t thought about this with everything else that’s been going on, but now that I am, it makes sense.
“You already have that with your lieutenants and all your biker roles, by the way. I’m talking about space.
You actually don’t need to know who’s being mean to who in the kitchen.
That’s not information you need to have as it happens.
People shouldn’t be able to simply run into you in a tunnel and unload on you. ”
I can feel his resistance all over him, but he doesn’t shut me down. “It’s worked fine so far.”
“We’re not the same pack that we’ve been all this time,” I tell him. “That’s a good thing. This is a time of transition. There’s a lot going on, and if you can’t figure out how to take some time away from it, you’re going to burn out. Then what use are you to anyone?”
Ty looks like he wants to say something then, but he doesn’t. He starts walking instead, still guiding me with that hand on my neck, so I walk with him. The moment we leave Winter’s yard and let the woods swallow us up, I notice that I can scent wolves—pack—as we go.
Those protection details I’ve been certain were canceled.
“Funny how there are people watching out for us now that you’re here.” I laugh as I say it. “There weren’t earlier, though there were the other night. The ass-kissing is on point.”
He gives me a sharp look. “What do you mean?”
We’ve made it to the path that snakes down and around to the den now, heading toward that same little tunnel that’s even spookier in the dark.
“I thought you canceled—” I begin.
But I don’t finish.
Because the scent hits us both at the same time, like a blow to the face.
Blood.
Ty snarls and crouches down, looking around like he expects an actual attack to follow. I shift in a rush, certain that if I can smell that much blood, it’s safer to be in wolf form. Where I have much bigger teeth and sharper claws.
I move forward along the path, and the smells are loud.
They hit at me, bold and hot, and it takes me a moment to parse them. To do more than simply react to them.