Claws & Cocktails (Midlife Adventures of the Fae Realm #1)

Chapter 1

Zera

Zera fidgeted with the collar of her white button-down top as she sat on the play mat where her little half pixie, half wereling worked to stack brightly colored blocks on top of one another.

She hadn’t anticipated it being this hard to leave him for the evening while she went on a date—her first date since her asshole ex left her for some new little thing to head off into the mountains with the rest of his traitorous biker gang.

Bloody werewolf packs sucked. The alpha would always win.

But at least he’d had the decency to leave her the house before abandoning them.

If she were truly being honest, though, their relationship had been over long before he’d cheated and run off.

She’d been too invested, following him to a new town and supporting his interests.

Then, when she found out they were going to have a baby, she knew her life would be changed forever. And it had. Just not with her now ex.

Thanks to that bloody wolf, she’d given up her dreams and quit school in order to get a job to support herself and her child.

Not that it mattered anyway. She was done with men.

She didn’t need the drama. The only male she wanted in her life was right in front of her, trying to gnaw his way through a plastic block.

For him, she would do it all over again.

She had no regrets. She loved her son more than anything in the world.

She smiled down at her son when he finally made a dent in the toy. His werewolf incisors were coming in, and it made her glad she was done with breastfeeding.

She hated the idea of not being here with him.

To leave her little monster and face the real ones who hid behind masks of pleasantries and charm until they moved on to the next victim.

She ground her teeth, swearing to despise whoever it was that waited for her at the fancy restaurant up in the city.

She wasn’t about to go through all that again and leave Cole fatherless. Again.

“Are you excited?”

Zera jumped, and her hand flew to her chest. “Jade! Don’t sneak up on me like that.

” She shot her half sister a wary look before gazing back down at her little baby.

She couldn’t believe how much he’d grown.

It seemed like only yesterday she’d heard his first few cries, and now he was crawling and cooing. Even talking some.

She swallowed the sudden ache in her throat at the thought of going, realizing she still needed to answer her sister. “And no. I’m definitely not excited. I might not even go.”

“What? Why not?” Jade asked, tousling Cole’s big head of brown curls before plopping down in the chair next to the crib placed in the middle of the dining room they’d converted into a nursery.

This home hadn’t been meant to house all three of them plus a baby, but she couldn’t imagine going through those early months without the help of her half sister and her wife.

So, together, they’d transformed the dining room into the baby’s nursery.

She had to admit, her sister was good at making do.

“Because he’s probably just another asshole and not worth my time.” Zera stood up and, in an elegant, practiced motion, fluttered her fingers at a few creases that marred her black dress pants.

A stream of shimmering purple pixie dust poured out from her fingertips and sank into the fabric. The wrinkles vanished, as if they never existed. She was one of the few pixies left who was still able to use magic.

But now, since drug lords discovered that pixie dust could be used as a potent high, their powers were greatly diminished.

Pixies had been hunted to near extinction, to the point that those who still had magic lived in fear of using it, allowing the glands within their spines to dry up altogether and causing future generations to be born without magic.

It was a wonder she even had the pixie dust to perform such a small task. But she kept hers hidden from everyone, knowing that it was dangerous to let anyone see what she was capable of. Except for her family, of course.

It was one of the main reasons she’d worked so hard in school, to learn everything she could about faeology and alchemistry so that one day she could work in a lab somewhere and develop a cure for the addiction.

Or even experiment with a synthetic option, though she’d have to do that on the side, since it would fall under the illegal umbrella in the Fae Realm.

Though ingesting pixie dust had been decriminalized, the process of hunting pixies and creating the drug to begin with was still, fortunately, very much illegal.

Perhaps one day she’d go back to school, but until then, she’d put her dreams of working in a lab on hold.

Instead, she was a bartender at the local tavern and used what she’d learned from school to try to figure out a synthetic drug on her own.

She wouldn’t let her knowledge, or her dream of a world where pixies weren’t hunted for their pixie dust, go to waste.

“You have to give this guy a chance.” Jade’s voice pulled her from her thoughts.

“Do I?” Zera asked and arched her brow. “I don’t need another man in my life, Jade, and I don’t know why I let you convince me otherwise.”

“Because you deserve to be happy,” Jade said, her face softening. “Seriously, Zera, you need to move on, and FaeMatch has never steered me wrong. I mean, look at this hunk of faen beauty. I’m even a little turned on by him, and he’s not my type.”

Zera snorted.

Jade pulled the app up on her faestone—a six-by-three-inch rectangular piece of quartz—and showed the man she’d matched Zera up with.

Maverick Harris, a tall, dark, and handsome sales engineer with stormy gray eyes, stared up at them.

His brown hair, trimmed into a sharp crew cut, accentuated his high cheekbones and strong jawline with a hint of scruff.

He was sexy as hell—she’d give Jade that—but that didn’t mean she would let herself get swept up. Looks had gotten her into too much trouble before, and she wasn’t about to make that mistake twice.

She shrugged. “I don’t need a man to move on. I have a healthy son, a good job as a bartender, and a happy home, and I’ve got you and Sloane. What more could a mom want?”

“Maybe not as a mom, but as a woman, you’ve got needs. I want you to have the same kind of happiness that I have with Sloane. You have to take care of yourself sometimes.”

“I do… sometimes,” she said.

Jade gave her a “don’t lie to me” look, and Zera bit her cheek.

She hated to admit it, but she really hadn’t gotten a night to herself since giving birth to Cole.

Even with Jade and Sloane to help. Between long hours at Haven Wolf Tavern, motherhood, and her at-home science experiments that were, so far, a complete bust, she barely had a moment to run a brush through her hair.

“Come on, it’s nearly time to head out,” Jade said, standing up to shoo her out. “You’ve got a thirty-minute drive, and you haven’t even gotten ready.”

“I am ready.”

Jade made a face. “You mean you’re going to a restaurant looking like a waiter?”

“I don’t look like a waiter.” Zera looked down at her white button-down and black pants and sighed. She was right again. “Well, maybe a really, really cute one.”

She laughed. “Cute, yes, but not for a date night. I can’t let you leave in that outfit. How do you expect to get any action looking like that?”

“Jade!” Zera’s cheeks burned.

“What?”

“I don’t even want or need to go on this date, and I definitely won’t be sleeping with the guy.”

Jade arched her brow. “Really? You aren’t even just a tiny bit tempted by this tall, dark, and very muscly man with the dreamy eyes?”

Zera bit her lip. The thought of being wrapped in his muscled arms and feeling his breath on her neck sent a shiver of desire down her spine. She quickly shook her head, trying to push the image of their bodies intertwined in her bedsheets out of her mind. That would definitely not be happening.

“Not in the slightest.”

Jade shook her head. “Okay, okay. I believe you. But still, let me help you. The pants are good, but the shirt must go.”

She hopped up and headed down the hall past Zera’s room on the right and to the primary bedroom that she shared with her wife.

She returned moments later with a bright-red top with no sleeves and a plunging neckline.

It obviously was one of Sloane’s, since Jade owned only jeans and plaid shirts.

Maybe she could borrow one of those instead?

Zera gulped. “Nope. I can’t wear that.”

“Why not? It’s perfect and would complement your waves if you’d ever let your hair down.”

She checked her bun at the nape of her neck to make sure it was still intact and rolled her eyes.

“The bun stays. Now, give me that.” She grabbed the blouse and marched to the bathroom.

“You’re welcome!” Jade called after her.

She knew her sister was only being nice, and there was a tiny part of her that agreed with Jade. It was more than time to have a little fun, to escape for a few hours and forget about to-do lists or sleep schedules.

But it was only a very small part of her, luckily. The rest of her was dead set on rushing through this date and getting home to snuggle up with Cole as soon as possible.

A wave of unease washed over her when she slipped the silky red shirt on.

It fit okay, even though it clearly was a size too small for her, but it showed off way too much skin.

Her boobs practically spilled out, not in the sexy fae-model way but in the “I’ve stopped breastfeeding, and now they’re deflated” kind of way.

If only her pixie dust or Sloane’s witchy spells could do some cosmetic-surgery magic. Unfortunately, there was no magical shortcut to fixing body issues. At least it was loose around her middle section.