I’d growl, but I was too hungry.
For a few minutes nobody spoke. Shapeshifters worshipped food with a singular devotion and I was too starved to make conversation. We chewed, got more food, and chewed some more.
If I ate another bite, I would explode. I sighed, decided I did not need another roll, and drank some iced tea.
Martha was smiling at me across the table. Older, plump, with medium brown skin, she looked a lot like her daughters. She usually said little, at least to me, but I had watched her knit several sweaters and shawls during the Pack Council sessions.
She smiled brighter. “You’re getting married.”
Mahon grinned next to her. “Three out of four.”
Reminding him that he was adamantly opposed to Curran and me getting married would ruin the mood.
“Now if only we could find a nice boy and marry that hellion off . . .” Mahon said.
The hellion stuck her tongue out. “Maybe I’ll marry a girl.”
“That will be fine,” Mahon said. “As long as she loves you.”
Natalie rolled her eyes.
“Are you thinking of children?” Martha asked.
“Mom!” George and Natalie said in the same voice.
“No,” Curran said.
“Yes,” I said at the same time.
He turned to look at me.
“Thinking,” I said. Please don’t ask me anything else about children.
Martha grinned even wider. If we turned off the lights, she and Mahon would probably glow.
“Are you thinking of children?” Mahon asked George.
Eduardo choked on a piece of bread and coughed quietly.
“Dad, keep your paws out of my marriage,” George said.
Curran frowned. “I’ll be right back.”
He got up, brushed my shoulder with his hand in passing, and went outside.
“Someone’s pulled up to your house,” Eduardo told me.
Shapeshifters and their hearing.
“While he’s gone,” Martha said. “Come with me.”
I followed her into the back room. She took a small box from the night table and gave it to me.
“Something old.”
Something old? Oh! The rhyme. Something old, something new, something I didn’t remember and then there was blue in it somewhere . . . I opened the box. A dark chain lay inside.
“Go on,” Martha said.
I picked it up. Heavy for its size. The chain kept going and suddenly a bright green gemstone emerged, about an inch and a half wide. I held it to the light. A bear, carved with painstaking precision, down to the fur.
“When Mahon and I met, there wasn’t a lot of him left,” Martha said. “Even when he was human, he was full of bear rage. But I knew there was a man in there somewhere, so I went and found him. Before we got married, he gave me a set of jewelry: a ring, earrings, bracelet, and a pendant. He said it was because I was the stronger bear.” She smiled. “Back then we didn’t have the fancy shapeshifter-safe alloys, so it’s steel. But the stone is the real thing, peridot. I want you to have it.”
Oh my God. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. I gave one to each of my girls when their weddings were coming up. Marion has the ring, George has the earrings, and Natalie is getting the bracelet. I want you to have the pendant. You don’t want Curran to wear it instead of you, do you?”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
I opened my mouth.
“Yes?”
“Mahon doesn’t even like me. He barely tolerates me.”
“Of course he likes you. I like you, too. Now, he didn’t always think you were a suitable wife for his special son, but he always liked you.”
Could’ve fooled me. “What changed?”
“We saw you carry the djinn,” Martha said. “We were both there and we saw you give it up and hand it to Curran and then we saw him give it back to you. What the two of you have is a rare thing. We don’t love Curran like a son. He is our son, one of our children. Mahon may be an old stubborn bear, but he isn’t blind or stupid. He knows Curran won’t do better. We are lucky to have you for a daughter-in-law.”
It was the stupidest thing, but I felt like crying.
She took the chain and put it into my hand. “You wear it. I want you to.”
? ? ?
THE CHAIN FELT nice around my neck. I liked the weight of it. I helped with the dishes. Curran came back in at some point and helped me put the plates away. Then we said our good-byes and stepped outside.
If I could’ve hugged this evening, I would’ve, and I wasn’t the huggy type.
“Who came to visit?” I asked as we crossed the road to our lawn.
“Jim.”
I knew that tone of voice. That was his Beast Lord voice, neutral and calm right up to the point when it exploded into a roar.
“What did Jim say?”
“What did you say to him?”
Careful. Thin ice, proceed with caution. The last thing I needed to do was explain to him why I wanted to take Erra’s bones out of storage or what I would be doing with them. “About what?”
He stopped in front of our house. “Don’t play with me. What did you say to him about us getting married?”
“Nothing. We didn’t discuss it.”
“You said something, because he dropped everything and drove all this way to tell me not to marry you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because he’s concerned my feelings might not be my own.”
Jim, you jackass. I knew he was paranoid, but this was completely crazy. “Whose feelings does he think you’re having?”
“He thinks I’m being influenced by your magic.”
“Oh. Good to know. The magic that I’ve never been able to use on anyone else to make my life infinitely easier? That magic?”
Gold rolled over his eyes. “What did you say?”
Oh, so the lights came on. Someone was fussy that his best friend came over all worried. “Such concern for Jim. So touching.”
And we have a full-on alpha stare. Good to know where I stood on his ladder of important people.
I moved, circling Curran. My magic trailed me like a mantle in the night.
“He told me that he would kill me if I decided to use my power for my own gain. I told him the truth.”
Curran moved with me. Anger flared in his eyes. He was still giving me the alpha stare. So it’s like that, huh? Alright. Let’s play.
“I told him that if I decided to use my power for myself, he would pledge his allegiance to me and he would like it. He would trip over his own feet to proclaim his devotion.”
“Why the hell would you say that to him? He’s the Beast Lord.”
Oh noes. I paused. “Yes, how could I forget? What was I thinking? What do you suppose he will do?”
The magic waited, all around me. As if the entire ocean of life that was my land had taken a breath in anticipation.
“Do you think Jim might punish us? Or do you think I would kill him and laugh afterward?”
He raised his hand and motioned to me. “Okay. Come back to me from wherever you just went.”
“I remember one time Jim and I did a job and he left me in the middle of a cage of live wire because the Pack needed him. I sat in there for eight hours, until the magic wave ended.”