“I’m obviously not making this clear.” Fane stepped toward her and held out his arms. “Give me Thia. I’ll return her.”
Jacque raised a brow at him and took a step back. “I’m perfectly capable of carrying her back to her parents.”
“And he’s less likely to attack her,” Sally added, suddenly helpful after being no help to Jacque’s wordless questions.
“She’s got a point,” Costin said. “He’s much more likely to attack a male holding his female pup.” Then he tilted his head, much like a curious wolf would, and asked, “Why did you two take her in the first place?”
When Sally opened her mouth to speak, Costin quickly added, “No more talk of P’s and B’s, Sally mine. You know how it turns me on when you use dirty language.”
Jacque laughed as Sally blushed and glared at her mate. “I was going to say, it was Jacque’s idea.”
The smile was gone as Jacque’s jaw dropped open. “You just threw me under the bus,” she whisper-yelled while at the same time trying to dodge Fane who was still attempting to remove Thia from her arms.
“Now, we’re even,” Sally chirped.
“What in all of tarnation are you talking about?” Jacque asked. “I’ve never thrown you under the bus. Fane, stop it,” she added quickly as she slapped at his hands.
Meanwhile, Costin was digging in the baby bag, pulling out a bottle. “Would it be weird for me to handle Jen’s breast milk? That’s not weird, right? It sort of feels like the equivalent of handling her boobs, and that would be weird. Right?”
Jacque and Sally stared at him silently for several seconds before Jacque rounded back on Sally. “When have I ever thrown you under the bus?”
“Bobby Shultz. Fifth grade,” Sally began, but Jacque sliced a hand through the air, interrupting her. It was in that moment that Fane took advantage of her distraction and snatched Thia from her grasp. Hopefully, he would help Costin feed the girl because Thia was starting to make squeaky noises. Jacque focused on Sally.
“You’ve forgotten the girlfriend code,” Jacque said. “Jen clearly established in freshman year that grudges could only be held for a maximum of three years. Fifth grade is well past three years, for crying out loud.”
“She also established that you could add one year to the grudge for every day you ended up crying over it. I cried every day for a week. I get to add seven years.” Sally said, though she didn’t sound particularly upset at the moment.
“Well, your math doesn’t add up, genius. We were eleven years old. Add seven years, the grudge should have been dropped when we turned eighteen.”
A frustrated scowl crossed Sally’s face. “Oh, yeah.”
“And even if the grudge was still active, it was a stupid grudge to begin with. You mean you really cried for a week because I told Brody Shultz that you wouldn’t play with him on the playground because you got your period?” Jacque asked.
“It wasn’t true!” Sally bit out. “And he told everyone and they teased me. Brody called me Raggedy Anne, which made everyone laugh more, and I didn’t even have a clue why it was so funny.”
“They only teased you for a day. Then Jen called Brody a pussy and punched him in the mouth and yelled, ‘He’s bleeding now too. Why don’t you bitches laugh at him for a while?”
“That was awesome. The ‘P’ word has always been a favorite of hers,” Sally said, grinning, her grudge seemingly forgotten for the moment.
“And the ‘B’ word. She was grounded forever because of it,” Jacque said. “And even after she was ungrounded, she whined for the longest time about all the things she missed while she was grounded.”
“Even back then, she was getting up in some boy’s grill, using potty words.” Sally sighed. “Good times.”
Jacque glared at her. “You just blamed our baby theft on me because of those good times, you overdramatic, dumb butt.”
“Hey,” Sally snapped. “You know what it’s like being questioned by these Neanderthals. It’s stressful. I just said the first thing that came to mind to distract him from my part in the whole matter.”
“Next time, flash your boobs at him,” Jacque said dryly. “It will have the same effect but without your best friend’s figurative guts being splayed across the metaphorical asphalt from your verbal push of me in front of the bus.”
“Who’s being overdramatic now?”
“Oh, sort of random thought,” Jacque called out. “I just had an awesome idea for a T-shirt for Wadim. Babe, call Wadim,” she hollered over her shoulder to where she’d last seen her mate.
“Don’t leave me hanging. What’s the T-shirt?” Sally asked.
“Next time, flash your boobs at him.”
Sally frowned. “You already said that. I want to know what you are suggesting for the T-shirt.”
“That is what I’m suggesting. Although for Wadim to wear it, it would probably need to say ‘Next time, just flash your boobs at me.’ Fane, what do you think?” she asked her mate. When there was no answer, Jacque frowned.
“Why is it so quiet in here?” Sally asked.
Both girls turned their heads back at the same time to where their mates had been standing only a few moments ago.
Jacque’s eyes widened. “Where the crap did they go?”
Sally’s voice squeaked when she spoke. “They have the baby.” She paused and looked around the room. “Right? They do have her, right?”
“Fane stole her from me, so he’d better have her.” Jacque growled. She reached out to her mate through their bond and found his end of the connection tightly shut. “That fur ball has blocked me.”
Sally huffed as she plopped down on the couch. “Yep, Costin has me blocked as well.”
“They stole her.” Jacque said incredulously.
“To be fair”—Sally pointed a finger at her—“we stole her first.”
“Well, they could have come up with something more original to do, stupid copy-wolves,” Jacque grumbled.
Sally laughed. “Something original? What did you want them to do, bedazzle her?”
“Or dye her blue,” Jacque offered and then her eyes grew wide. “We totally have to steal her back so we can dye her blue. Can you imagine Jen’s face?”
“The only reason she’d be mad is because we thought of it before she did, and she’d be miffed we don’t have kids she could dye blue. Is it wrong we want to dye our best friend’s baby?”
Jacque waved Sally off. “It’s Jen. She more than likely deserves it for something she did that we don’t remember or something she will do in the future that we can’t prevent. Now, do a search on the internet for skin dye, and make sure it’s temporary. It’s bad enough the girl will one day start her period, but she also has the pesky furry gene. It would be doubly cruel to add being permanently stained blue to that list.”
“Not to mention, Decebel is her dad, so that’s a pretty significant suckage on her life lists of things that suck,” Sally pointed out.
Jacque nodded. “Yeah, I can’t wait ’til she’s a teenager, and Decebel has to deal with her teen hormones. That’s going to be awesome. Now, chop, chop.” Jacque snapped her fingers at Sally. “Less talk about Decebel’s tortured future as a father and more research about dying a baby blue.”
“I think they have medicine for people like us. We should probably look into taking it,” Sally murmured as she shook her head and pulled the browser up on her phone.
Chapter Seven
“To all the husbands of soon-to-be new mothers, listen up. I have some free advice for you. It might keep you from having your man parts kicked up into your throat, so you should probably pay attention. When faced with the hysterical mess that will be your wife three days after giving birth, choose your words carefully. And there are six words that you should absolutely, without a doubt, NOT say. Those words are, ‘Calm down, you are acting irrational.' If you screw up and say those six words, then there is nothing that can save you. Just run." ~Jen
“Would you please stop
calling me a pussy” Decebel growled as he attempted to calm himself. He had no clue what was happening. The man only knew his mate was an absolute mess. Decebel was careful to keep that thought to himself, especially since she kept twisting his words.
“If the shoe fits,” she snapped.
“But it doesn’t. It doesn’t even make sense in the context of which you’re using it. Can you just calm down for a minute and tell me why you’re so angry?”
“I have been telling you why I’m so angry.”
Decebel clenched his jaw as he forced himself not to say something he couldn’t take back. He reminded himself, multiple times, that not only had she just given birth three days prior, but that she’d lost a close friend and her doctor and had been trapped by a crazy high fae and Peri’s psycho sister. And from what he’d read in some of the books she’d bought on pregnancy, her body was going through some massive hormonal changes now that it no longer needed to nurture the baby inside of itself. With those things in mind, he proceeded carefully. “I feel like you’re trying to express yourself but, honestly, baby, I don’t know exactly what has you so angry. Can you tell me the main thing that has upset you?” There, that sounded reasonable. There was no way she could infer from that statement that he was accusing her of being a crazy, hormonal she-wolf.
“You feel like I’m trying to express myself?” she asked as she folded her arms in front of her chest.
Decebel nodded, but he could see from the look on her face that she didn’t agree with his assessment of the reasonableness of the question. She was definitely putting off a vibe of ‘you think I’m crazy, so I’m about to go crazy on you.’
“Well, bully for you, Decebel. You are an astute fur ball,” she said as she glared up at him. “But you missed something. I’m not trying to express myself. I AM expressing myself! You’ve been off doing your thing, hanging with the guys, living your life, and I’ve been stuck here … expressing myself.” She pointed toward their suite. “And I’m not saying I don’t love our daughter or that I don’t want to be with her, but I just feel like I’m going to be missing out on everything fun.”
“What fun?” Decebel asked. “I wasn’t having fun, Jennifer. I was working.”
“I just mean in general,” she huffed. “I don’t even know how to express it without sounding like a freaking nut case.”
“Can’t get much worse than it already is, baby, so don’t worry about that.” The words were out of his mouth before his brain could command his lips to stay shut.
“Can’t it?” she said in a cool voice that made a chill crawl up his spine.
“I’m really hoping not,” Decebel murmured under his breath and then waited for the storm building inside of his mate to be released.
Jen knew that what she felt was irrational. She got it. She totally, intellectually, understood that what she was feeling was not reality. Did that stop her from going full Bellatrix Lestrange on her man? Absolutely not. She could no more have stopped the words from coming out of her mouth than she could have stopped a hurricane.
“I just feel like my life is frozen. Like I’m going to be stuck here while everyone is getting to go do stuff.” Dec opened his mouth to say something, but Jen held up her hand to stop him. “Yes, fur butt, I do know how irrational that sounds. I do not need a Canis lupus Neanderthal telling me what a nut job I am. Regardless of the fact that I know it’s irrational, it doesn’t change that it’s how I feel.” Jen paused and took a deep breath. She’d begun to pace again and pulled her hair down out of a ponytail and twisted it up into a messy bun on top of her head. “Haven’t you ever felt something that you knew wasn’t reality but still couldn’t stop the fact that it felt real to you? It’s infuriating.” She stared at him, unsure of what else she could say to make him understand.
Decebel ran both hands over his face and let out a deep breath. His glowing, amber eyes met hers, and his wolf was the one who responded to her. “Why haven’t you let your wolf help you? You know she doesn’t experience the same emotions with which the human contends. She is better equipped to deal with some things.”
He sounded so matter-of-fact that it was hard to be irritated by his words. Jen knew he wasn’t trying to be condescending. That wasn’t how the wolf thought. Everything with their wolves was about survival, protecting, providing, meeting the needs of the pack. It made sense, and yet her human half wanted to be able to do it on her own. Prideful, yes, but asking her wolf for help at being a mom made her feel incapable. What is the wolf part of her was better at being a mother than the human part? Did that make her a terrible mother? Would that mean she was incapable of being a mom? Would it make her a failure?
“You are making the issue more complicated than it needs to be,” Decebel’s wolf said. “It doesn’t matter what would be if you didn’t have a wolf. You are Canis lupus. That is all that matters. You cannot remove that part of your soul. There is no reason to not utilize that part of yourself when it is the reason the Great Luna created our kind in the first place.”
“I hear what you’re saying,” Jen said. “And I agree. But the hormone stuff will still be there. I may be Canis lupus, but I am human too.”
Decebel looked as if he was going to say something else, but he stopped, and the eyes that had begun to return to their normal color suddenly glowed like the sun in their brightness.
“What’s wrong?” Jen asked, feeling herself tense up at the sudden change in her mate.
“I don’t hear our pup,” the wolf said, and a deep growl followed his words. He hurried past her into their suite and straight to the basinet. “Was she in her bed?”
“What do you mean was?” Jen asked as she hurried over to see that the basinet, where she had indeed laid Thia earlier, was now empty. Jen immediately smelled Sally and Jacque’s scent, and it was very fresh. They must have taken Thia while she had been attacking her mate. “My own infant daughter has more of a social life than me.” She sighed, sounding ridiculously pitiful. Jen chose to ignore the fact that she wasn’t letting her wolf deal with the issue. Mostly because she could already feel her animal half beginning to freak out over the fact that their baby wasn’t with them. But Jen’s human half understood that Thia was safe.
“Why is our daughter not in her bed?” Decebel growled, and Jen could hear both man and wolf in his voice. Now it sounded like he was the one being irrational.
“Sally and Jacque must have borrowed her,” Jen said, trying to sound as carefree as she could. Her mate was on a hair trigger anyway when it came to their safety due to her recent captivity. She didn’t want to add fuel to the fire that was already beginning to burn in her mate.
“How on earth do you borrow someone’s child? And why the hell wouldn’t you ask before just taking her?” he rumbled.
“Dec, it’s no big deal. She’s safe.”
He turned his eyes on her, and another wolf might have stepped back at the rage simmering in them, but Jen wasn’t another wolf. She was his mate. He would never hurt her, no matter how angry he became. “She isn’t safe unless she is with us, in our home. If she’s out there,” he slung his arm toward the door, “I have no idea if she’s truly safe. Who knows if those two females will watch her as closely as we do. Who knows if they will make sure she’s fed, changed, and held. What if they set her down and turn their backs for two seconds?”
“Well she isn’t going to walk off, B.” Jen snorted. “And Sally and Jacque will take very good care of her. They will treat her as if she is one of their own.”
Right? She hated that the thought slipped into her mind, but Decebel’s words were planting a seed of doubt … which was utterly ridiculous. Her friends would never let anything happen to her child. “Look, I’ll just call them. It’s not a big deal.” She picked up her cell phone from the counter and clicked on Jacque’s contact. Decebel was staring at her as though he wanted to rip the phone from her hand. She took a step back just in case he decided to act on that impulse.
“Hello?” Jacque
’s voice came through the speaker, and Jen was immediately on edge. Her redheaded friend sounded unsure, and that was not cool.
“Where’s my kid, Red?” Jen asked.
Jacque chuckled, sounding nervous. “Well, that’s sort of a funny story.”
Decebel took a step toward her and held out his hand. She shook his head at him, refusing to give him the phone.
“That’s not the answer I was looking for. And I have to be honest, Jac, Dec is looking like he’s ready to tear this house apart.”
“She’s safe,” Jacque blurted out loudly enough that Dec no doubt heard it loud and clear.
“She’s with you and Sally?” Jen asked.
“That’s not what I said,” Jacque replied slowly. “You see, Sally and I could tell that you and Dec needed some privacy, and we wanted to have some quality time with our niece. We didn’t want to interrupt what appeared to be a very intense conversation.” Jen snorted at the description of her argument with Decebel. “So we just quietly grabbed Thia and her stuff and brought her to Costin and Sally’s place.”
“Okay, so what’s the problem?”
“Fane and Costin acted like typical males of their race.” Jacque huffed. “They said Decebel would flip his lid.”
“They weren’t wrong,” Jen pointed out.
“They should be arriving at your place any second. They took her from us to return her to you.” Jacque sounded put out, like a child who hadn’t gotten her way.
Jen watched as Dec walked to the door, opened it, and stepped out into the hall. His arms were folded across his impressive chest, and his feet were planted wide as he looked in the direction of Costin’s suite. After a minute, he looked over his shoulder at her.
“Um, Jacque, there are no werewolves coming down the hall carrying a baby,” Jen said, trying to keep her voice calm.
“You know Thia’s safe with Fane and Costin,” Jacque pointed out.