Accidental Sire (Half-Moon Hollow #6)

Ben sneaked into my room just before sunrise more often than not, and we weren’t even having sex the majority of those nights. He just wrapped himself around me and fell asleep with his face tucked into my neck. It was an adjustment for me to sleep with someone else. Hell, I went on a camping trip with my boyfriend freshman year, and I made him sleep in a separate sleeping bag with a cooler between us. I’d never trusted someone enough to let him that close. It was nice being able to relax like that with another person, to be still with him, and to know that he wouldn’t hurt me.

Of course, on those days when he slept with me, Ben woke just before sundown to haul ass back to his room. Jane was cool and slightly scared of us, but she still had the power of yelling really loudly.

Before we knew it, it was Thanksgiving week, and Jane was going into a cleaning frenzy, getting the house ready for Jamie to come home from school. Of course, Jane was hosting a meal, because no one else seemed to have a house large enough to accommodate everybody. To my surprise, Ophelia was planning to stay here at River Oaks, rather than at the house in town that she’d shared with Georgie. I was pleased to see my friend again, but I noticed that talking about her made Georgie a little . . . edgy. Edgier than usual for Georgie, like “cut off from her Nintendo DS for twenty-four hours” edgy.

We sat on the porch, waiting for Jamie’s pickup truck to roll down Jane’s gravel drive. Georgie was rocking on her heels, biting her lip, and unbraiding and rebraiding her hair. I tried to ignore these tells for as long as I could, because I didn’t know if we had the kind of relationship where we had heart-to-heart talks. But honestly, I could only watch her pigtail herself so many times.

“Hey, Georgie, can we talk about whatever’s bothering you before you braid yourself bald?”

Georgie scoffed. “I’m not bothered. You’re bothered.”

“Georgie, you’re braiding my hair now, and I don’t think you even realize it.”

She yanked her fingers out of my hair and grimaced. “It’s difficult,” she admitted. “I feel like a different person when Ophelia is around. With Jane and Gabriel, I’m allowed to be the child I never was as a human. Ophelia always treated me as an equal, which I appreciated, but . . .”

“It’s a lot of responsibility to put on a kid, asking her to be a grown-up before she’s ready,” I said, nodding.

“Exactly,” Georgie said. “And Ophelia and I tend to feed off each other, egging each other on to be more cruel, more threatening. With Jane and Gabriel, I’m . . . reserved.”

“This has been a filtered version of you?” I asked, frowning at her.

“My point is that I don’t want to slip back into that pattern with Ophelia, but I don’t want to hurt her feelings by behaving differently around her. I’m not sure what to do.”

“Has it occurred to you that Ophelia may have changed while she was away at school?” I asked her. When Georgie’s little brow crinkled, I added, “Oh, yeah, undergrads coming back home for the first time? They make a point of being as obnoxiously different as possible. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ophelia came back with a nose ring, drinking soy blood substitute.”

Georgie cackled, bending at the waist and propping her hands against her thighs. “Is it wrong that I’m hoping for that now?”

“No, and here she comes,” I said, nodding at the headlights bouncing along the driveway. “Jane! They’re”—a Jane-shaped streak whizzed past us as Jamie’s truck slowed to a halt—“here.”

Jane had her arms around Jamie before he was fully out of the car. He was lucky his seatbelt didn’t get caught around his neck as Jane let loose her nonsensical joyous squeals.

Ophelia emerged from the truck in full eye roll. I laughed and hugged her lightly. Georgie hesitated a bit but eventually wound her arms around her sister’s waist.

“I missed you.” Ophelia sighed, bending her head into Georgie’s hair.

“I was promised that you’d have a nose ring,” Georgie said.

Ophelia looked up at me, and I shook my head.

Ben and Gabriel emerged from the house for manly shoulder pats.

“It’s good to see a familiar face,” Ophelia told me, putting her hand on my shoulder. “I have a feeling that after this ‘holiday’ dinner, you and I will be hiding in the basement with a bottle of scotch.”

“You are really overestimating my ability to handle my liquor, even when I was alive,” I told her.

Ophelia wrinkled her nose. “Yes, Morgan and Keagan told me about the Jaegermeister incident.”

“I still contend that the mascot should have moved out from under the balcony when he heard me say I felt sick. Also, having a Jaegermeister incident in college is practically a rite of passage.”

Jane had finally stopped squealing long enough to coolly greet Ophelia. She sighed, wiping at her wet eyes. “OK, welcome home! We’re all set up for you. Ophelia, I have you in the extra twin in Georgie’s room, first door on the left. Jamie, I just put fresh sheets in the yellow room across from the bathroom.”

“But that’s my room,” Ben said, frowning.

“Yeah, I thought you would double up with Meagan, seeing as how you sneak into her room most mornings anyway and then hustle back into your room as if we don’t know what’s going on,” Jane said.

Ben turned a whiter shade of pale. “Sorry, what?”

Gabriel shrugged. “Yeah, we’ve known for a couple of weeks.”

I made a weird death-rattle noise in my throat, like that chick in The Grudge. “Oh, that isn’t good.”

“Wait, they get to share a room, but we don’t?” Ophelia asked.

“Yes, because I just made things so awkward they will never have sex under my roof again.” Jane turned on us, smiling. “Didn’t I?”

Ben could only grimace.

“I know I should be upset about this because I have these confusing maternal feelings, but I also know that you’re technically not related and can’t get pregnant,” Jane said. “So I’m just going to ask you not to do anything that I will walk in on. Because there is not enough therapy in the world.”

“Maybe this wouldn’t seem so weird if we lived out on our own,” Ben noted.

“Don’t push it,” she told him.

“If it makes you feel better, we’ve never had sex sex under your roof, mostly just—” I said as Ben stared at the sky. Jane shook her head. “Right, not helping. Never mind.”



I woke up to the smell of turkey roasting in Jane’s kitchen . . . and it was awful, like hot herb-y garbage. There were only a handful of solid-food-eating guests, but Tess had spent the afternoon preparing a full Thanksgiving feast. There were werewolves coming, and they counted as three or four guests each.