by Eva Chase
I supposed I shouldn’t be surprised they’d decided to coordinate so their presents matched. That was the only way they could make sure none of them managed to top anyone else’s in appearance. Saying feline kin were image conscious was something like saying fish enjoyed living in water.
My people weren’t big on public spectacles, though, at least not ones done in an overt way that outright demanded their attention. As the next song wound down, I didn’t make any big announcement. Instead, I found Ren in the crowd and peeled her away from the bear shifter. “Time for a little break from the dancing,” I said with a grin.
Ren raised her eyebrows, but she followed me. I didn’t have to say anything—my kin around me noted my passing and that of our dragon shifter, and their gazes automatically tracked us to the front of the room. Without my calling any direct attention to what was about to happen, the dancers had already stilled and gone quiet by the time we reached the dais where the eight waiting figures stood.
I wasn’t sure I could say that everyone in this room respected all of them, being the finicky bunch our audience was, but certainly there shouldn’t be anyone here who respected none.
“Dragon shifter,” the male cheetah shifter said, pitching his voice loud enough to carry but not so loud it was obvious he wanted all eyes on him. “To pay tribute to you and your young one about to arrive, we hope that you will accept these gifts. Each was chosen with the most careful consideration.”
His wife offered their wrapped box to Ren with a respectful bob of her head. Ren’s hands closed around its glossy surface. She glanced to me as if for guidance, and I gave her a hint of a nod.
The paper peeled away with a jerk of Ren’s thumb. She opened the box inside, and a delighted smile crossed her face. She held up a red woolen coat and pants, the same shade as her dragon scales.
“It’s the finest lambs’ wool you’ll ever find,” the cheetah woman said in an eager voice. “Soft for your daughter while she’s still so delicate—and thick to keep her warm through the winter of her birth.”
“Thank you,” Ren said, running her fingers over the fabric with an expression of wonder. I wasn’t sure whether she was more amazed by the quality of the gift or the fact that my people where gifting her anything that had taken much consideration in the first place.
I bundled the clothes back into the box and set it on the table so that Ren could receive her next gift. The tiger shifter gave his own small bow and held out his offering.
“Mine comes with much the same thought,” he said. “My whiskers tell me we have a cold winter coming—as cold as it ever gets down here. Our littlest dragon shifter will need protection from chills. And she can dream of her first flight in the meantime.”
Ren unfolded a blanket more than half her height from the opened wrapping paper. “It’s lovely,” she said a little breathlessly. The blanket was velvet edged and made from the same soft wool as the coat and pants, woven with an image of a dragon in flight.
The mountain lion shifters stepped forward next. Ren unwrapped their present and lifted out a mobile of animal figures, each of them carved with the finest detail out of ebony and mahogany. They bobbed on their glittering strings as Ren turned it.
“To hang over her crib and keep her entertained,” the mother said. “Because any dragon shifter child will have an active mind in need of stimulation.”
Ren smiled, her gaze going distant for a second. “I know exactly where I can set it up. I’m sure she’ll love it.”
The leopard shifters handed over their box, the contents of which required a little more explanation. I could tell Ren was fighting a puzzled expression as she examined the silky rectangle of fabric with its loose strips on either side.
“It’s so you can carry her with you wherever you’d like,” the wife said quickly. “Light material so neither you nor her will get too hot and you won’t be weighed down. I thought you might want to always have her close by, even when you’re on the move. Let me show you.”
With lithe fingers, she demonstrated to Ren how to arrange the carrier’s straps over her shoulders and around her waist. Ren let out a pleased laugh. “I’ll definitely be getting a lot of use out of this. It’s wonderful.”
Coreen was the last to offer her present. The box was small, but Ren’s face lit up when she opened it. She drew out a silver rattle and mirror.
“Those belonged to my own son,” Coreen said in her resonant voice. “They were his favorite things to play with when he was a baby.”
Ren’s eyes widened. “Coreen,” she said. “Are you sure you don’t want to keep them in your family?”
The lion shifter’s lips stretched with a smile. “Your daughter will be part of my family—part of all of our families. It has been too long since a dragon shifter was born into our people. She will be our kin as much as you have proven yourself to be.”
For the second time in as many days, my mate appeared to be on the verge of tears. She blinked hard as I slipped my arm around her.
“Thank you, so much,” she said, and then turned to the watching crowd. “Thank all of you for being here today, and for working with me since I came back to you, even though you weren’t sure of me yet. You know… We can have more time for dancing, if you’d all like, but first I’d like to show you something else. Would you all come with me to the greenhouse?”
I tucked my hand around hers as she led the way into the hall, my kin following us with murmurs of retrained excitement. I was a little excited myself to see what our dragon shifter had cooked up. A couple of my attendants darted ahead of us, I supposed to get some part of the surprise in order.
Ren bent her head toward me. “Be honest—did you tell them what presents to get, or was that all their own initiative?”
“I suggested it might be a worthy gesture to present you with something,” I said. “The rest I left up to them. They did rather well, didn’t they?”
“Yes. Yes, they did. I wouldn’t have thought—” She stopped herself with a smile. “I guess we really have come a long way.”
We spilled past the greenhouse doors into the vast treed space. I drank in the floral perfume from the vegetation all around us. The lynx shifter next to me eyed the rock ledges along the glass walls as if he were itching for a climbing session.
“I know Christmas in Florida isn’t the same as the Christmases I grew up with up north,” Ren said to the shifters assembled around her. “But I thought you might enjoy a little taste of my kind of Christmas too.”
She motioned with her hand, and a whirring started from somewhere deep in the brush. A burst of glinting white dust shot out into the air over our heads—
No, I realized as the first few flakes hit my cheeks. Not dust. Snow. She’d brought us a white Christmas.
“Watch it, play with it—whatever you want,” Ren said, grinning. “Let the celebrations continue!”
The lynx shifter at my side had already scrambled out of his clothes and leapt forward in his feline form. He swatted at the tumbling flakes and spun around in their midst like he was returning to his kittenhood.
The growing flurry had stirred something inside all of my kin. Some of them hesitated, but as the first few dashed deeper into the greenhouse as their furred selves, others shed their clothes and joined the romp. My own jaguar urges tugged at me to spring into the artificial snowfall.
Ren was looking my way. “Go ahead,” she said, affection shining in her gaze. “It’s for you too. I’ll get plenty of snow to play with later.”
A chuckle broke from my throat, and then I was shifting into my jaguar self, muscles lengthening, tail swishing behind me. I bounded across the now-slippery surface of the path and swiped my tongue at the falling flakes. A giddy sensation swept through me.
It was strange, wasn’t it, to feel so childlike when I had a child of my own almost here? But maybe that was the real gift my mate had given me.
CHAPTER 8
Ren
“DO you think this is enough
wood?” I asked Kylie, cocking my head as I studied the heap in the courtyard of the canine shifter estate. A pungent pine scent rose off the chopped logs.
My best friend laughed. “Ren, it’s almost as tall as I am. Unless you’re planning on roasting a giant on that thing, I think we’re good. And maybe even then.”
I mock-glowered at her. “I am going for epic here.”
“Somehow I don’t think West is going to appreciate it if you burn down his estate in the meantime.”
“Not going to happen,” Felix said easily, coming up beside Kylie and slinging his arm around her shoulders. “This place has seen lots of fire, most of it thanks to our dragon shifter here, and we all came out okay.” He grinned at me.
I had to smile back at the fox shifter, but at the same time a twinge ran through my chest. Not everyone had come out okay. Shifters had died during our battles with the vampires and the rogues. Entire villages had been razed to the ground. Nate had almost died just a short drive from where we were standing right now. If we ever faced another war like that…
I shoved those thoughts aside and spun on my heel. “We should get the tokens and the pencils ready—Felix, do you know where those ended up?”
“I saw the boxes over in the storage shed,” he said. “We can get ‘em for you.”
He gave Kylie a little tug, and she offered me a thumbs up before ambling off with him, tipping her head toward his shoulder. Funny to think that when she’d first shown up here, Felix had been skeptical of the idea of even having a human on the premises. Now I was sure he’d have been baring his teeth at anyone who suggested similar. I’d bet he’d gotten a bit of hassling from some of his kin over his choice in girlfriend, but I’d never seen him show the slightest doubt in that choice.
Which was good. I’d pulled Kylie into this dangerous world of supernatural creatures and unpredictable magic accidentally, and she didn’t have dragon fire or claws to protect herself with. The rogues had already nearly killed her once. Even if I still felt a jab of worry every time we had to part ways, it was a relief knowing she had at least one shifter by her side most of the time.
I checked that everything else we needed for the bonfire was in place, tugging my coat tighter around me against the wind. The air had a touch of ice to it now, but there wasn’t any sign of real snow yet. It’d be nice to get at least one properly white Christmas. The one I’d manufactured on Marco’s estate didn’t really count by my standards.
The smell of roasting meat and vegetables was starting to carry from the estate house. I hurried inside, following that smell to the kitchen and poking my head inside. The staff were bustling around, pots clattering and dishes clinking. The head chef caught sight of me and dipped into a quick bow.
“Dragon shifter. Did you need something?”
“No, I just wanted to make sure—we’re on track to have dinner ready at six?”
She smiled. “Everything is on schedule. No one will go hungry, I can promise you that.”
“Okay, great. Thank you.” My own stomach rumbled, my mouth watering at the smells. How long had it been since I’d eaten lunch? Had I even eaten lunch? Suddenly I couldn’t remember. I’d had too many other things on my mind since we’d touched down here.
Well, it’d be dinnertime soon anyway. I hustled from the kitchen to the dining room with its stone-lined walls and crackling fireplace.
West’s home was the least posh of the estate houses, but I’d always found it comfortingly cozy. Most of my childhood memories came from the modest two-bedroom apartment my mother and I had shared in Manhattan, not the sprawling dragon shifter estate amid the mountains where I’d spent my first five years. Sometimes, even now, the fancy mansions that belonged to the alphas made me feel a little overwhelmed.
It might have been nice to drop into a chair by the fire and soak up that wafting heat for a few minutes. But our guests would be here soon, and I wasn’t going to slack off on this final celebration. The canine kin deserved as great a party as much as the other kin groups had gotten.
The thick wooden tables were already set, but I’d known that, because I’d been here helping make that happen an hour ago. I bit my lip as I scanned the room. Was there anything I was missing? I couldn’t ignore the itch nagging at me that there had to be something else I needed to get done.
“There you are.” The canine alpha stalked into the room, slowing as he reached me. West wrapped his arms around me from behind and tucked his head close to mine. “It’s getting hard for even a wolf to track you down, the way you’re running all over this estate.”
I made a face at my mate. “I just need to get everything ready. It’s almost time for people to start coming in.”
“I’m pretty sure everything is as ready as it can be, Sparks.”
My pulse hiccupped as a sudden thought occurred to me. “Aaron and some of the staff set up the lights in the trees, but I didn’t check to make sure they’re working.”
I started to pull out of West’s arms, but he tightened them around me, holding me in place. “Hey,” he said, his throaty voice as gentle as I’d ever heard it. “I can get one of my attendants to check. You don’t need to do everything.”
“It’s not everything,” I protested. “The celebrations were my idea—it’s my responsibility if anything goes wrong.”
“And what would be so horrifically wrong about a few lights not turning on?”
When I couldn’t think of a good answer to that right away, he shook his head at me. “You know, I do enjoy a good meal and holiday cheer in the air, but I’m starting to be glad Christmas will be over soon.”
I could tell from his tone that he was mostly joking, but a lump of emotion filled my throat anyway. “Do you really think— Has it been too much? Am I just being ridiculous?”
“What?” he scoffed. “You can be a lot of things, Sparks, but ridiculous isn’t one of them. Why does all this matter so much to you?”
“It just—” I started, and the lump swelled, choking me. My eyes felt abruptly hot. I dragged in a breath, and it came ragged.
“Ren.” West turned me toward him and cupped my cheek. His dark green eyes searched mine. “What’s wrong? You’ve been pushing yourself to the limit all week. These are just Christmas parties. People will have a good time—they aren’t expecting perfection. So why are you? What’s really going on?”
I swallowed hard. Tears I didn’t want to let fall burned behind my eyelids when I blinked.
West had been the last of my mates to trust me, for the same reasons that made him the hardest to brush off when he wanted an answer. And now that I had his love and loyalty, I knew I had every shred of them he had to offer.
It couldn’t hurt him to admit the things churning inside me. The real problem was I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge them to myself. But I didn’t think he was going to let me sweep this topic aside now.
My voice came out quiet. “Staying busy getting things ready for the celebrations—it’s kept me distracted. So I don’t have to think about—” My voice caught again.
“About what?” West said softly.
My hand went to my belly, to the shape of my daughter—our daughter—that I could feel in increasing detail through my own flesh. “I want to meet her. I’m so happy she’s coming. But I’m also—I’m scared for her, West. The last year has gone really well: no major conflicts, everyone getting along reasonably well. But what if that doesn’t last? I’ve never been able to count on keeping the things I care about. I don’t want to take the happiness I feel right now for granted, and then have it be taken away.”
“Oh, Sparks.” My mate trailed his thumbs over my cheeks to ease away the few tears that had managed to seep out. I made myself meet his gaze again and saw nothing but love and compassion there.
“I don’t think we should ever take our happiness for granted,” he said. “But I don’t think you need to be scared either. The last year has gone well because of the work you’ve done, the decisions you’ve made. You�
��re the best dragon shifter any of our kin could have hoped for.” The corner of his mouth quirked up. “Hell, you even managed to win me over, so clearly you’re doing something very right.”
I couldn’t help snorting in amusement. “The biggest challenge of my rule.” The knot inside me hadn’t entirely released, though. “There are so many things I don’t know. I’ve never been a mother before. I haven’t even been a dragon shifter, really, for all that long. What if I do end up screwing something up?”
“Then we’ll set it right again. We all start somewhere. Look at how much we’ve figured out as we go already. Life’s thrown a hell of a lot of challenges at us so far, and we’ve met them all.” He bowed his head until his forehead touched mine. “You don’t have to tell yourself there’ll be nothing but happiness from here until forever. Just trust that whatever comes, we’ll find our way through it. You can believe that, can’t you?”
When he put it like that, his reassurance didn’t seem so hard to accept. My next breath came a little easier. I raised my head, seeking out West’s lips. He kissed me intently, as if he were pouring all the feeling he had in him into that embrace. I lost myself in it, in him, just for that minute.
“Better?” he asked afterward. “I know I’m not always the most elegant with my words. If you need to talk to the others too to feel more secure…”
I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I think I’m good now. Maybe I’ll want to talk to the others later, but you said just the right things.” Or maybe it was also that I’d said the right things. My chest felt lighter with those worries no longer unspoken.
West smiled. “Come on, then,” he said. “Someone told me there’s some lights we really need to check.”
I elbowed him, and he chuckled as we walked out of the dining hall.
An hour later, as I sat with West and the rest of my mates at our table, filling my hungry stomach and watching so many of my kin doing the same, a sense of satisfaction spread through me in a warm glow. Laughter and upbeat voices carried from all the tables. Kylie and Felix had scooted close together, him offering her a bite of something off his fork. There was nothing in the air right now except the enjoyment of good company and an excellent meal.