by Holley Trent
“Well. Okay,” Lanie said with hesitation. “So, what are you going to do with all the stuff inside?”
“I haven’t decided yet. It’d be one thing if some of this stuff was completely garish. I’d give it all away without a second thought.”
“But some of it is valuable.”
“Not only that, but it’s actually usable, you know? Maybe when I grow up and get my shit together, I’ll have a credenza to store it in and could actually invite people over to eat stuff that isn’t take-out.” Her laugh was self-deprecating.
Lanie didn’t see anything funny about the dream.
“You’ve got room for a credenza, Diana.” Lanie gestured toward the space where the dining room could have been, had the place had walls. “You’ve got room for a credenza and a dining table that seats twelve.”
Diana stared at the space Lanie indicated, brows knitting. She didn’t say anything, just stared for so long that Lanie wondered if she were having one of those unusual conversations in her head with her inner beast. She wondered what they might talk about, and grinned at the prospect that it could be something entirely inane—like whether or not Wile E. Coyote was a fair representation of the race.
And then Diana snapped her stare away and resumed her exploration of the trunk.
“I’ve got to go, Diana.”
“Huh?” Diana turned quickly back to her, obviously taken aback.
Lanie understood. She hadn’t wanted to give Diana a warning because she hadn’t wanted Diana to spitefully rush her out the door. It was getting late and Lanie had waited longer to leave than she should have.
Lanie got to her feet and took one last, long draw on her coffee. “I’ve got to get to Albuquerque. I’ve got meetings there, and I’m supposed to fly to Africa this weekend.”
A litany of expressions tracked so quickly across Diana’s face that Lanie couldn’t be certain she’d correctly identified any of them. The last one, though, was a contrived blankness. It was the face she always wore when she had to pretend she didn’t care about something. Lanie had seen it plenty of times, but Diana had never used it on Lanie before.
“I…won’t bother telling you to be safe and all that,” Diana said in a flat tone. She examined a tiny swatch of dining room upholstery fabric from the trunk that was probably as old as she was.
“Of course I’ll be safe, but I wouldn’t mind hearing you tell me, anyway.”
“Be careful, Elaine.”
And that was all. Diana wouldn’t even look at her when she said it.
Okay, love.
Lanie rinsed her mug and set it inside the dishwasher. She put her clothes on and her boots, tidied her hair in the bathroom, and found her bag in the kitchen.
Diana was giving her a curious sideways look as she strolled to the door—an I’m not really looking look. It was the behavior of a predator who didn’t want her prey to realize yet that she’d been seen.
Fortunately, Lanie had expertise in the ways of predators, and Diana had never been a very good one where Lanie was concerned.
Lanie let herself out. She walked to her rental car, smiling at the chastened-looking owners of the bike shop as she passed their door. She sent a text message to Blue when she reached the car.
She’s still doing that thing where she pretends that she doesn’t care.
But she obviously does, Blue responded.
Very obviously.
I wonder why she’s doing that.
I don’t know. We’ll figure it out. I’ll be back next week. I won’t bother her again until then.
I’ll see if she says anything.
She won’t.
I know. But wouldn’t life be so much easier if she did?
*
“I know I could have waited for the baby shower, but I wanted you to have these before then,” Diana said to her brother and sister-in-law. She rocked back on her heels and waited for her Coyote hired hands to finish setting the trunks down in the living room. “They’re identical and made really well. The kids could hold on to them indefinitely.”
Willa let out a little gasp and trundled over to the first of them. “Such a perfect color. It matches all the trim.”
“So…you like them?” Diana asked timidly. She thought she’d scored an excellent find, but doubts had been plaguing her. She worried the pieces were too much her taste and not enough Willa’s or Blue’s.
“I think they’re wonderful!” Willa exclaimed, sliding her hands over one of the smooth domed tops. “There are so many things we can store inside, and they’re much prettier than anything we’ve seen in furniture stores.”
Diana exhaled with relief.
“Diana’s got an eye for that,” Blue said. “She’s always been good at finding value in pieces nobody else would think about.”
Diana waved a dismissive hand at them. “Aw, I’m just big on storage furniture, that’s all. Everything should have a place.”
“Maybe so, but that doesn’t make the gift any less thoughtful. If it’d just been about the storage, you could have bought any old thing. You went out and found something special.”
Diana shrugged.
“Don’t shrug at me. Come here.”
Diana sighed and let Blue pull her into a hug. She hated when Blue got emotional, because when he did, she cried, and she hadn’t worn waterproof mascara. She didn’t want to prance around Maria looking like a bedraggled Hela. She got that comparison too much already. That likely had something to do with all the leather.
Or perhaps her cloak.
Diana was trying to singlehandedly drag cloaks back into fashion. They were terribly useful on chilly, windy days.
“Don’t make me cry,” she whispered. “I don’t have the endurance for it today.”
“What’s wrong?” Blue squeezed her tighter.
Her nose began to run.
“Nothing,” she blubbered.
She caught Willa moving in her periphery and her quiet directions to the Coyotes to go ahead and take the trunks upstairs.
“Something,” Blue said. “The animal in you is restless.”
“Don’t do the alpha thing on me. My inner coyote doesn’t respect you one little bit, you dork.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Leave me alone.”
“No. Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“Doing what?” she asked feebly.
“You know what you’re doing. If you want me to say all the words and embarrass you, I will, but why should I have to?”
“I hate you.” She sniffled and tried to rub her nose on the shoulder of Blue’s pristine white shirt, but he held her back just in time.
“This is why after you were born, I always begged for the stork to take you back to wherever he’d gotten you,” he said drolly.
“Shut up.”
“You’re falling apart.”
“I’m not.”
“You are, D, and it’s your own fucking fault. You chose to abandon your mate. Congratulations. It’s biting you in the ass.”
Diana gaped at the well-targeted accusation, having not known he’d been aware of Lanie’s mate status. He’d never said anything about it, but Blue was inscrutable, even on the best of days. Somehow, she managed to quickly fix her face. Being an alpha shifter, he could certainly smell when she was lying or when she was stressed, but she wasn’t going to make reading her any easier than she had to. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You really want to have that argument?” he asked.
She sure as shit didn’t. She already knew who was right. That didn’t mean “right” was “final.” Sometimes, people had to ignore what was right for them and do what was best for others.
That didn’t really make sense to her, but she was certain the pieces would come together in her mind eventually.
“I’ll…be fine,” she said with forced lightness.
“You won’t.”
“I hate you,” she repeated. Her sinuses burned from the tears
she tried to hold back and her nose started running again.
Sighing, Blue scooped up a box of tissues from a side table and tossed them at her. “Why are you doing this, Diana? It’s not the Coyote shit. Lanie couldn’t give a damn. You know that. I know that. Hell, every Coyote in Maria knows that. She navigates that stuff just fine. So what is it, really?”
“I don’t know if I can—”
Blue held up a hand when his phone buzzed somewhere on his person. He dug it out of a back pocket, squinted at the screen, and then answered without any further hesitation. “Everything all right?”
“Yeah, just had a question for you and wanted to see if you could answer it fast. Sorry for the bad connection. I can’t guess what it’s like with me being all the way over here.”
Lanie.
Diana’s stomach fell straight through her feet and down into the basement. Blue didn’t have to turn on the phone’s speaker. Diana could hear her just fine at regular volume.
“What’s up?” Blue asked, cutting a quelling gaze to Diana.
She was fidgety—distracting him, perhaps—but worst-case scenarios kept playing out in her head. If Blue thrust that phone at her, for instance, she was going to either babble into it or bolt. Diana was through with having that woman witness her embarrassing herself.
“Got done with work a little early,” Lanie told him. “Puttering around with something else right now, but honestly, it’s not really my bailiwick. I remembered that you studied Phoenician stuff a little more than I did. I’ve got this—”
Diana tuned out whatever Lanie said after that, opting to pace in front of the stairs that Willa and the Coyotes had just gone up.
Then she decided to follow. She didn’t want to catch scraps of conversation that weren’t meant for her to hear and that would only make her more anxious.
She poked her head into the nursery where the Coyotes were sliding each trunk into position in opposite corners of the massive space. The room was perfectly symmetrical. Each half had its own crib, dresser, changing station, rocking chair, and trunk.
Willa waved her in. “Can’t figure out what to do with all those tiny socks. They seem to vanish, or else multiply.” She giggled and twined her fingers beneath her big belly.
Diana loved hearing Willa laugh. She’d had such a tough time before Blue arrived, and she was still trying to get used to things being easier—and safer. Relaxing was difficult for her.
Blessedly back in her organizing element for the moment, Diana dried her eyes completely and then plopped her hands onto her hips. She scanned the room. “Well, as a temporary measure, you could get some of those cheap-o plastic shoe hangers and hang them behind the closet doors. Put the identical pairs into each pouch. That way, you’ll know what’s missing come laundry time.”
“Ooh, I like that idea. Deb thought we should color-code the kids so folks could tell them apart. One kid would wear green everything, and the other yellow.”
Diana’s upper lip quivered in distaste. “Oh, no. As much as I love my mother, sometimes her plans aren’t completely thought through. Honestly, if I were you, I’d keep both kids in whatever I could bleach the hell out of until they’re not such persistent stain magnets.”
“When’s that gonna be?” Marco asked, pointing to a red sauce stain on his shirt.
Diana ignored him and said to Willa, “You get my drift.”
“I do. What about this?” Willa waddled to the changing table and opened the storage compartment beneath. “We stashed all the diaper stuff down here, but—”
“But you’d have to fetch everything before setting the baby down. Yeah.” Diana rubbed her chin and checked both sides of the room for space. “I understand the compulsion to hide all that stuff out of the way, but that’s not practical. Put a little shelf right here.” She gestured to a spot on the wall that was level with the top of the changing table. “Just large enough to hold a basket that has a few diapers and wipes. Then you can keep one hand on the baby at all times. When you’re done with changing, you can replenish whatever’s in there.”
“Like replacing the toilet paper roll for the next person,” Dirk said, smiling broadly.
Sighing, Diana dragged a hand down her face, but Willa laughed.
“I’ll get them out of your hair,” Diana said.
“Oh, I don’t mind. I don’t see folks nearly as much nowadays. It’s nice to see what the pack’s up to.”
“I got my ear pierced.” Marco pointed demonstrably to the little stud in his left earlobe.
Of course, Willa smiled at him, and probably even meant it. “Very suave.”
He gave Dirk a little punch to the arm. “See. Told you.”
“Whatever,” Dirk muttered.
Diana shooed them out and said over her shoulder to Willa, “And you need to get some of those stuffed animal nets that can be hung in the corners. I assure you that the stuffy population will explode from two to dozens once you bring the babies home. Netting them keeps them off the floor, and you can swap out their little friends as moods change.”
“I’ll order some today.”
“Nah, don’t bother. I probably have six or eight in storage. One of the last projects I did in Nevada was a nursery. Yours is way bigger.”
“Anything else useful in that storage unit of yours?”
Diana couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like there was actual anxiety in Willa’s tone. When she backtracked to her, still standing in the doorway of the nursery and wringing her hands, Diana murmured, “Oh, Willa.” She pressed her hands to the demigoddess’s shoulders. “You’ll be fine. You’ve got this.”
“I just want to do it right. It seems like…it’s going to be hard. I’m worried I won’t be able to stretch myself enough between the two.”
“You’re going to do the best you can, and you’re going to have a lot of help.”
Willa looked doubtful. She looked like there wouldn’t be enough help in the world to get her through those first few months. Diana knew she’d be fine, though. Diana had excellent instincts for knowing what people needed, and Willa really didn’t need her interference.
“What if Blue has to go away?” Willa whispered.
Blue was still on the phone downstairs. He might have been able to hear, but he probably wasn’t paying close attention.
“You’ll still be okay,” Diana whispered back, just to keep Willa calm. “Mom will be around a lot, as will your aunt Artemis. And I’m certain lots of the Coyote girls would be thrilled to come and just be an extra body in the room if you’re feeling outnumbered.”
“And you?”
Diana snorted. “Oh, you couldn’t keep me away, even if you tried. I’ve got to start building my reputation as the eccentric aunt early on, right?”
Willa laughed. “Not so eccentric compared to some.”
“I guess you’ll see.”
Diana bounded down the stairs, still smiling. She was planning to take off before Blue ended his call and pounced on her again.
No such luck.
She passed by his office on the way to the front door, and he called out to her, “Diana, wait,” and then switched right back to talking about spreadsheet formulas. And databases. And academic journals Lanie should look into. And alumni networking this and that.
In that instant, something broke in Diana. Some small thread that had already been frayed and chewed up, but that had still been managing to remain intact.
It came apart, and the things the string had been holding together crashed down.
So did she.
She fell to her knees in the foyer, hung her head, and sobbed.
She couldn’t stop. Not when Willa hurried downstairs and put her arms around her—actually, that made things worse.
Not when those Coyotes doubled back to the door and poked their heads in and looked at her with such concern.
That definitely made things worse.
But what made things worst of all was Blue kneeling in front of her, phone in hand,
the MUTE icon clearly engaged on the screen. She was still on the other end—Lanie, somewhere in Africa, where she was being paid to think about important things.
“You don’t even get it,” Diana said, sounding pitiful, even to herself. “You don’t even understand what it’s like to live with her. To be sitting next to her and to feel so left out when she starts talking about things I don’t understand, like it’s all so normal. It’s one thing to have a genius as a brother. I can gloat about that. It’s another thing altogether to have to be with someone like that and not be able to keep up. And people look at me like—”
“Stop,” Blue whispered.
“It’s true,” Diana insisted and glowered at him. She didn’t care if her makeup was smearing and that her nose was running. She just didn’t care. Everything was falling apart, anyway. Everyone was going to find out that even on the best of days, she was only pretending to be competent. The best she could do was not embarrass Blue. He had done so much good work in Maria, and she didn’t want to recklessly and accidentally undo any of it.
“You never had to go to one of those events and have people look at you like you’re some kind of bauble because you’re younger and obviously so much dumber,” Diana said. “It starts to grate, and I can’t change anything about it. I’m never going to think the way the two of you do. I’m never going to—”
“Stop,” he repeated, but that time, he put some force behind his words—the kind of force he’d never used on Diana before. It was a quelling, suppressing touch that had the animal energy inside of her rising up and filling in all of her gaps so thoroughly that she couldn’t breathe, much less provide any added defense of herself. She wanted to explain, but Blue wouldn’t let her.
He just knelt there, brown eyes dark with worry. His magic swirled around her, caging her in.
“We take the mates we need,” he said after long moments of silence. “When we’re in our right minds, that’s what we do. We pay attention to what the wild parts need, and yours said that you needed her.”