"I guess. Thanksgiving at my grandmother's always was horrible. It was more than not being allowed to eat all day until the turkey went on the table, or having to watch the dog show or my grandfather's endless collection of bad pictures. It always seemed that no matter how hard I tried, my grandparents and aunts and uncles always acted if there was something wrong with me. I always felt worthless by the end of the day."
Seth didn't know what to say. He couldn't imagine a life where everyone stood against him, including his family. It was hard enough when it was just Isaiah and a handful of the Thane.
"The last few days have been great. Thanks for driving up early." The puppy jumped from the bed and landed a boy. "Alright. Let's do this. Deep breath!"
"Are you sure?" Seth asked.
Joshua laughed. "No. I'm good, but my wolf? I'm not sure about him. I'm still trying to make peace with him. We're happy though that Bethy came to see me. She might have planned to take me home but I don't think she'll try to drag the wolf to her car. Although I wouldn't bet on it; she's kind of fearless."
"I gathered that."
"I think my wolf can handle Bethy. I mean, I don't think he'll hurt her and certainly he's not going to let her drag us back home."
Seth floundered for something constructive to say.
"I miss talking with my folks," Joshua said. "But really it's like I've just gone to college a few months earlier than planned. I wanted to move away. I couldn't wait until I could. We're not going to let anyone move us out of this house. We like it here."
Seth looked away, feeling guilty. He'd been debating for days if Joshua should be moved to New York for his own safety. He thought that Joshua needed him nearby. Teaching him. Protecting him. Healing him.
This wouldn't be an issue if the king merely let Seth move back to Boston.
Joshua needed Seth, but moving him to New York would be the same as the king refusing to let Seth move back to Boston.
It was a weird and uncomfortable feeling for Seth to realize that he felt the same as Alexander. That the king was keeping Seth close at hand to teach him, protect him, and possibly heal him. At the time, Jack had seemed like an adult to Seth when they lost everyone they loved. In truth, Jack was only a few years older than Joshua was now. It would have been unfair to the grieving man to strand him alone in Boston with a newborn prince. Nor could Jack fully be Seth's "father" because he had to obey Seth, not the other way around.
Seth felt like he'd just taken a giant step sideways mentally to view the world from an entirely different angle.
"Hey." Joshua put a hand on Seth's head. "Are you okay? I feel a little guilty dragging you here to Boston instead of being with your foster dad."
Surprise forced a laugh out of Seth. Dad? The king? "He's still in Belgrade. Bishop says that the new prince is having trouble carrying the alpha." It was probably going to kill the man in a few years. The king was setting up a marriage to guarantee that the bloodline continued. "Besides, he doesn't do Thanksgiving. Most holidays to him are artificial things, made up by men to support a culture he doesn't see himself as part of."
"So I didn't take you away from anything?"
"No." Just a horde of people gathering outside the Castle to watch the Macy's parade, reminding Seth that he no longer had a family. That wasn't really true. He had family. He had Jack and Joshua, and a wife that he'd never bothered to contact. He wasn't even positive he knew her name. Come to think of it, Alexander would probably bring her east in a year or two, so Seth could father children. Was he ready to be a father? He didn't feel ready. He didn't even know how to be good brother to Joshua.
One thing he was sure of: forcing Joshua to move to New York would make him miserable. It was obvious that much of his happiness was tied to making this place his home. Since his safety at the Castle was questionable, it wasn't worth the tradeoff.
Besides, with Joshua in Boston, Seth would have a good excuse to visit the city often. He could keep the bedrock that the king provided him while using the trips to start to rebuild everything he'd lost.
It was a tiny baby step and yet it felt like a giant leap. Joshua gave him a base camp to finally move forward. Tomorrow, he could show his older brother the city and they could lay plans to rebuild their pack.
"Great!" Joshua grinned. "Let's go make sure we have a dinner to eat tonight. And I'm making an official house rule: snacking is allowed."
48: Elise
Bethy's reunion with her brother could have gone better.
Elise sighed as she thought of a dozen ways she could have prevented the disaster from happening. She'd let own emotions distract her. Nothing could be done to change the past. She could only hope now to salvage the future.
"There, you saw him, we should go." Elise caught the other woman by the arm. She triggered some automatic defense reflex and ended up on the floor. Oh yes, black belt in judo. Elise was batting zero today.
"What the hell!" Bethy danced away from Elise. "What the hell! What---what---what was that?"
"That was Joshua." Elise didn't add in that he was Bethy's brother, not with Cabot looking so pissed off. She wasn't sure if he was mad at her or the unruly turkey. She got off the floor and distanced herself from both of them.
"That was a-a-a..." Bethy sputtered, looking for a word to describe Joshua's wolf.
Don't say monster! Don't say monster!
"...freaking big...something! What was that?"
"A werewolf." Cabot picked up the turkey, glared at it, turned in a full circle and put it back down. He glared harder at it. "Joshua is a werewolf. It's what he was always supposed to be."
"What?" Bethy cried.
"Joshua was born to a long line of werewolves." Elise really hoped that this was the right thing to do. Telling the woman the truth might get messy. Elise couldn't imagine any other way to recover from Bethy seeing Joshua transform, not if Joshua wanted future contact with his adoptive family. "Cabot is Joshua's cousin through his birth father and he's also a werewolf."
"Wait," Bethy cried, holding up a finger. "He's the talking wolf that tore the ginger-haired jerk apart?"
It took Elise a moment to remember that the warlock in Utica had been a redhead. Bethy had seen Cabot kill a man. Maybe Elise shouldn't answer that question.
Unfortunately, Cabot answered for her. "Yes."
"And Porsche boy?" Bethy pointed upstairs.
"Seth is Joshua's younger half-brother." Cabot picked up the turkey, started for the sink, stopped, and put it back down on the counter again. "And yes, he's a werewolf too."
"So all that craziness back home, that was because Joshua has always been a werewolf, which is why he's always acted so dorky growing up?"
"That's a fairly accurate summation," Elise said.
"Ooooooooookay." Bethy stared at the floor, apparently rethinking Joshua's entire childhood. "That. Makes. Sense."
It did?
"Right." Bethy took out a scrunchy hair tie. She twisted her long blonde hair up into a bun with practiced ease. "I came here to make sure my brother had a good Thanksgiving dinner with his family, and that's what is going to happen. Not the family I expected but his family nonetheless. You." She flicked a hand at Cabot. "Get out of the way. Shoo. Shoo."
Which of course confused Cabot. "What?"
"You obviously have no idea how to cook." Bethy whipped a santoku blade out of the knife block. She picked up one of the onions and reduced it into thin, equal slices. "If you want to be useful, rinse out the turkey, pat it dry and put it in the roasting pan until I'm ready to stuff it."
Cabot gave Elise an odd bewildered look.
"I have never cooked a turkey." Elise didn't want to cook this turkey, despite having spent the last twenty-four hours bracing herself for the possibly that she would need to. Wrestling with a naked dead bird was not on her list of fun things to try.
"I thought I wanted to go to culinary school so I spent a year working at the Tailor and the Cook. We started doing all organic turkey dinners in Oc
tober. Two months of turkey. I never wanted to see one again. I decided to go into pre-law like my grandmother wanted me to."
Cabot picked up the turkey and carried it to the sink. Good man.
This might not be a total disaster after all.
"What can I do?" Elise asked.
Bethy snorted as she diced celery. "Find out what else needs to be cooked. Turkey and stuffing is obvious by what Joshua has out on the counter. Knowing my brother, he has detailed lists someplace."
The emphasis was impossible to miss. Bethy wasn't giving up Joshua as her brother simply because his birth family was present nor because he was now a werewolf. It was a determination that Elise couldn't help but admire.
Elise found the lists beside the refrigerator. She read it with growing dismay. "He planned the turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes casserole, green bean casserole, corn on the cob, peas, biscuits, baked macaroni and cheese, baked beans, cranberry sauce, pickles, black olives, three types of pies and 'mom's mystery Jell-O salad' but that has a question mark beside it. All that for four people?"
"You've seen us eat." Cabot came to murmur in her ear.
She blushed hotly as she remembered him eating bacon and wanting to lick his fingers afterwards. "Did you bake the pies already?"
"Yes and no. We've baked six pies so far but we ate them all. There's nine more in the freezer."
"Six pies? Six?" Bethy cried. "And you've eaten them all? This morning?"
Cabot laughed. "Since Tuesday."
"Okay." Bethy pointed at Elise. "Pies need to go into the oven immediately. After we get the turkey stuffed and in the oven, we can work on the side dishes."
The prince and Joshua came downstairs as they were stuffing the turkey.
Bethy greeted Joshua with, "Hey, dumdum, you could have at least asked me for money and a ride to the train station instead of just disappearing."
"Yeah, yeah, that would have gone over so well," Joshua said. "You probably would have sold me to a circus or a zoo or something."
"How much do you think I could get?" Bethy asked.
Joshua twiddled his nose at her, which seemed to be the end of the jibes. "You got the pies in? Good. According to the cooking bag instructions, it will take three hours to roast the turkey."
Elise expected Seth and Cabot to bristle at Bethy acting like a drill sergeant but they cheerfully followed orders. It dawned on her that the wolves never had to cook anything in their lives. They'd gone from their mothers' house to the Castle. It made her wonder how the wolves had expected to actually make all the dishes. None of the recipes were complicated but the sheer volume of food was daunting. Sweet potatoes needed to be washed, boiled, mashed, and mixed into a baking dish with brown sugar and butter. The giblets needed to be cooked, cooled, and readied for the gravy. The Jell-O salad recipe needed to be investigated and debated since Joshua didn't know exactly what was in it. He'd bought boxes of nearly every flavor of Jell-O and planned on winging the salad. (The mystery flavor turned out to be apricot mixed with crushed pineapple, cream cheese and Cool Whip. Most of the recipes they could find called for diced dried apricots but their mother never used them nor had Joshua bought any, so that ingredient was ignored. The recipes all stated "refrigerate until firm" so it was questionable if it would be ready for dinner but they made it nevertheless.)
The kitchen held endless surprises for Elise. She knew perfectly well that less than a month ago it had no appliances, dishes, pots, pans, or cooking utensils. Judging by Joshua's lists, he'd spent the last week buying every imaginable item for the dinner down to multiple serving platters, utensils, and pre-printed place cards.
Surprising too was that Joshua, Seth and Bethy accepted Elise as part of their oddly-joined family. Joshua apparently saw her as Decker's niece or something. Seth appeared to be happy for Cabot. Bethy seemed as immune to jealousy as she was to Wicker's power. For the first time in years, Elise felt like she belonged. It was a joy to be with people, to hear the warmth of their laughter, to be working on a feast that they'd eat together. Despite her misgivings about eating Thanksgiving with the werewolves, she was glad that she came.
49: Decker
Decker decided that the saying about old dogs and new tricks had to apply to him. It was the only way to explain why he found it so unsettling to wake up to a house full of people. He should find it normal since he once had servants that lived with him. The fifty years of isolation had marked him deeper than he thought.
Everyone was carrying bowls and platters from the kitchen into the dining room. The table had been set for six, obviously with much thought put into the sitting as there were place cards to make sure people sat in the proper seat. The cards were in Joshua's careful handwriting.
As Decker stood in the shadows, he watched people come in, put down the bowl they were carrying, and rearrange the cards. Cabot shifted Seth to the head of the table and put himself next to Elise. Seth moved Joshua to beside him. A girl that Decker didn't recognize flipped a card with "Bethy" written on it, wrote Elizabeth, and switched places with Seth. The mystery guest was Joshua's adoptive sister Elise came in, eyed Cabot's card beside hers and went back into the kitchen.
Joshua came in carrying a bowl filled with steaming mashed potatoes. "Oh geez guys! Who messed with the name cards?"
"I didn't," Elise called from the kitchen.
Bethy carried cranberry sauce and thumped it angrily on the table. "You sound like Grandma. Let people sit where they want. And why do we have six place settings? Who is Decker?"
"I'm Decker." He put a hand on her shoulder.
It turns out that Bethy had the same reflex as her brother.
"Bethy!" Joshua helped Decker off the floor and then gave him a suspiciously snuggly hug---as if he was moments from becoming a puppy. Joshua had been fine early in the morning, before sunrise forced Decker to his sleeping chamber. Apparently the addition of his sister had him rattled again.
"I'm Silas Decker," Decker introduced. "Welcome to our home."
Bethy frowned as she glanced at first Joshua and then Seth. "Wait. I thought---who exactly are you?"
"He's my friend!" Joshua growled. "And I live here with him."
"Decker is a trusted friend of our family," Seth said quietly.
"He's not a werewolf then?" Bethy asked.
The silence was deafening.
"No," Elise said finally.
"What?" Bethy picked up that something was loudly not being said. "Didn't he know?"
"He knows!" Joshua cried. "Can you just stop asking questions? My life is weird now. I don't want to talk about it. It's one of the reasons I didn't want to go home for Thanksgiving. You know how they get! Do you have a boyfriend yet, Bethy? What are you going to major in? Culinary? Why would you want to do that? Oh, pre-law now, I'm so glad you came to your senses. Which law school have you applied to? When are we going to get our great-grandchildren?"
"All right! All right!" Bethy cried. "I get it. Fine, I'll stop asking."
"Can we just eat?" Joshua still hadn't let go, keeping hold of Decker like he was a lifeline. "I'm hungry."
There was a silent agreement among everyone (but Bethy) and the sitting ended up with Joshua at the head of the table with Seth to his right and Decker on his left. It meant that everyone but Bethy was mostly happy with the arrangement. Joshua filled up a plate but when Bethy was distracted, placed it in front of Decker.
Decker eyed the plate. Did Joshua really want him to eat the food? He would, but he was not looking forward to how sick it would make him feel. Joshua caught his eye and shook his head. Okay. So the plate was just to make it look like he was eating. Werewolves were fine for big sister but vampires were not. Or more likely the puppy was out of the bag, but Joshua was desperately trying to keep everything else hidden.
Decker had forgotten how to hold forks and knives. As he fumbled with the utensils, someone tangled their legs around his. He glanced across the table at Seth. The prince gave him a warning look.
Decker realized it was Joshua maintaining his contact with him while seemingly focused on filling his plate with food.
Bethy proved to be determined. "Am I not allowed to ask any questions at all or can I at least ask what you think you're going to do about school? You wanted to go to college. You scored amazing on your SAT. You're just going to give that up?"
There was an uncomfortable silence as the prince communicated with his cousin via eye contact.
"His father left me as trustee to his estate and legal guardian of any children that survived him," the Thane finally said cautiously. "I plan to enroll Joshua in a private school here in Boston."
The Thane was shouldering the responsibility of possible broken promises. Unsaid was what the prince planned and what the king allowed might be two different things. Still, it meant that the prince intended for Joshua to stay in Boston. Decker felt like leaping to his feet and bounding about the room, shouting with joy. He controlled the urge and merely grinned with happiness.
The conversation shifted to the weather which apparently worsened during the day. Bethy would need to sleep over; the question was where.
Decker sat grinning, pushing food around with his fork. He could not remember being this happy for a long, long time. He thought he could live by himself, but that had left him alone with death. This is what he needed: other people to surround him with life.
50: Joshua
Best. Thanksgiving. Ever.
The evil turkey was reduced to bare bones. His mother would have immediately cooked it down for soup. Joshua happily stuffed the picked clean carcass into a bag and took it out to their garbage cans. Once the dishwasher was stuffed to the brim and all the pots scrubbed, they collapsed in the living room to take turns playing a party video game. Decker was hopelessly lost, unable to follow the frantic motions on the screen. Elise had never played the game before, and thus was not much better. Bethy and Seth squared off as if they had something to prove. They laughed and laughed and laughed until Joshua's wolf popped out in sheer joy, like some weird furry jack-in-the-box. (Bethy jumped and cursed each time the wolf appeared. It made her, however, admit that Joshua couldn't attend his old school.)