The Things We Water

“I think you’ve gained at least two pounds this week,” I told Duncan as I carried him down the stairs, positive I was straining more than I had the night before when I’d done the same thing. My right arm was getting tired, and I was huffing. Huffing!

When he’d shown up in my life as a newborn, he’d weighed a little over a pound. Over the course of the first year of his life, he’d reached twelve pounds and stayed at that weight for the next year. He’d had a little puppy belly, a soft innocent face, and he’d been all paws and preciousness.

But in the month since we’d arrived at the ranch, he’d gained six pounds.

Six!

He was taller, his feet were definitely bigger, and the boy had been asking for more food after meals. There was no doubt about it, my donut had thrived over the last four-ish weeks, physically and emotionally.

Me? I wasn’t exactly blossoming into a new person, but I hadn’t been unhappy. Things were going okay at the ranch—as long as I didn’t take into consideration how I still spent almost as much time alone as I had when it had only been the two of us in our RV.

It was all right, and that was exactly what I’d told Sienna when we’d video chatted a couple of days ago. “We’re good,” I’d promised.

She’d just blinked at me.

But it was the truth. Since dropping her and Matti off at the airport, I’d started working again, and when I wasn’t doing that, I volunteered at the nursery slash summer day camp, as I liked to call it. Shiloh and Pascal had gotten an early release out of prison—being grounded—and were now spending a few hours a day with me. When I wasn’t with the kids, Duncan and I did a lot of walking around the property at night. Mostly, we spent time in our room, doing the same things we’d done in our RV—playing tug, we did nose-work games around the clubhouse, we watched television, Duncan did puzzles, and then we headed outside for our midnight games of tag.

Which was what we were doing at the moment.

“I’m going to need to start lifting weights at this rate,” I kept talking to him as we went around the short landing before the other half of the staircase. I peeked at his face. “It’s all right. I’ll start bodybuilding if I have to.”

The cutest puppy in the world blinked ruby red eyes at me.

“Yes,” he told me.

He was worth lifting weights for. Having denser bones would just be a bonus.

“I’ve been thinking about it, Dunky, and I’m pretty sure you know you’re some kind of rare magical prince who has lived a hundred other lifetimes having people cater to you, and this time, it’s my turn, so you don’t expect any different. Say yes if I’m right.”

Duncan put a paw on the arm I was using to support the top half of his weight. “Yes,”he communicated, and I laughed.

That was another change, other than the weight gain, his telepathic abilities had gotten stronger.

He’d been communicating with me a lot more often, and his “voice” was louder and clearer. That part, I loved.

“I’m glad you know your worth.” I snickered as we came to a stop on the first floor. Leaning forward, I peeked around the staircase, down the hall where Agnes was usually standing—trying to scare the crap out of me, I knew it in my gut.

But she wasn’t there.

That was another of the biggest changes in our lives over the last month—Agnes had turned into the third member of our Musketeer party.

To be honest, she was mostly in it for Duncan—only in it for him—but it had been almost two weeks since the last time she’d snarled at me in her puppy form.

The little girl, who stayed in her wolf form 80 percent of the time, had joined us for the first time the day that Matti and Sienna had left. Since then, she went out with us every night we played tag. She was still as quiet and moody as she’d been on day one, but Duncan had worked his magic on her, and she’d turned into his poofy bodyguard. And even if that hadn’t been the case, I would’ve been nice to her, but her devotion to my donut made me like her so much more.

She was the person from the ranch I spent the most time with, since Franklin was still on whatever trip he’d taken that no one seemed to ever talk about. The three of us had breakfast together every morning, dinner almost every evening, and then our midnight playtime. Some days after the nursery, she went home with a different pup and their family, but she was back before we started eating most evenings. Then Duncan and I hung around in the kitchen until Liddie, one of her nighttime caretakers, showed up to get her, or the other one got there, and Agnes went to her room to find her, before we reconvened later on.

Deep down in that tough little body, she was a good kid. And right then, she was a missing one.

Hmm.

From the way the hallway was illuminated, it seemed like the light in the kitchen might be on. That had to be where she was. In the time since we’d started our post-dinner adventures, she hadn’t missed a single one. We could check the kitchen and then knock on her door to see if she was okay. That sounded like a good plan to me.

With Duncan Donut still in my arms, we headed in that direction first.

Half the lights were on, I realized soon afterward. I hadn’t been able to hear voices while we’d been making our way over, and if Duncan had, he didn’t give me a sign, but I wasn’t totally shocked to find Henri with a hip against the counter beside the range. Leaning against his leg was Agnes. Henri’s gaze was already on the doorway when Duncan and I walked in.

And just like I’d told myself every other time I’d been in his vicinity over the last few weeks, I did it again: Keep it together, Nina.

I hadn’t seen Henri much since our trip to the airport. When I had, it’d been in the mornings during breakfast on his days off, and a couple of times I’d seen him at a distance when Duncan and I went for walks. He’d sensed me and waved, but I could tell he’d been busy and hadn’t wanted to bother him. Unfortunately, that had been all the time we’d spent together.

I wasn’t going to say it hurt my feelings, he was a busy man, but… in my truck, he’d said we were friends. He’d even joked with me. I didn’t want to second-guess it. In my heart, I knew Henri wasn’t the kind of person to say something he didn’t mean. He was too serious, too polite, too used to having to say what he felt because there was no other choice when everyone around him at the ranch had a BS meter, but… it would’ve been nice to see him more.

Now though, Henri was out of that body-fitting uniform, and in black sweatpants and a dark gray T- shirt that said LOBO COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT in faded black letters.

At least they weren’t light gray sweatpants, I thought with a silent prayer of gratitude to the universe.

If I’d thought that I’d get used to the impact his face and body had on me, I would’ve been wrong. If anything, he got more attractive every time I saw him, and I’d been trying my best to wrap those thoughts up tighter than my ponytails.

“Hi,” I greeted him as Duncan wiggled in my arms, the universal sign to let him down.

I did, and the puppies ran toward one another like they hadn’t eaten dinner together. Or been within twenty feet of each other in the nursery for most of the day. Two tails—one dark and very fluffy, and the other light and slightly less puffy—wagged.

“Hey,” Henri finally said.

“I told you to marry him because he could use someone like you in his life,” Matti had told me on the phone a couple of weeks ago, after he’d purposely ignored my texts regarding the comment he’d dropped on me outside of the airline terminal.

“That makes no sense,” I’d argued, sitting on the step leading up to my trailer. I had wanted to keep an eye out on who was around so my chances of being overheard were smaller.

“I always make sense.”

We were both silent for a minute before we’d laughed.

“When he’s not at work, he’s still at work. He’s always fucking working. I’m not exaggerating. I don’t think he’s ever taken a real vacation. The times I’ve seen him in Denver were because he took days off to handle ranch shit because he only does business with people he meets in person. He has no chill. Think of it like this, Nina, he’s the principal, and you’re summer vacation,” he’d explained. “I think he’d be good for you too. He’d be loyal. He works hard…. I know he’d take care of you.”

He’d take care of me. That had done something interesting to my insides. The point was, it had been a long conversation, and one I couldn’t get out of my head weeks later.

I could feel eyes following me as I circled the island and went for the fridge, opening the freezer and pulling out a few different popsicles. I’d found some naturally sweetened, organic popsicles at the grocery store in Lobo Springs that the kids liked. Agnes came over first, and I smiled as I crouched to offer her a choice.

I held out the popsicles, and the mini wolf nudged the one in the middle. I looked at Henri as I got up. His facial hair had grown in a little, and a light scruff covered his throat, jaw, and upper lip, making him look like the borderline mountain man I’d met when we’d first gotten here. “Want one?”

Short, thick eyelashes fell slowly over his eyes, and it took a moment for his shoulders to go up. “I’ll take whatever flavor you don’t want.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, thought about arguing, and picked a pink one—watermelon—to spice it up. Then I held them out again as Agnes pounced on Duncan, and he tried to nip her tail. Henri picked a green one—a surprising choice—and I kept the red one for my pup. I hesitated. He hadn’t been around before for our nightly expeditions. I knew he knew about them, but….

“I was going to take the kids outside. We usually play a little while and then have our popsicles…. Can I still take Agnes?”

He tilted his head to the side. “You don’t need to ask.” He wiggled the popsicle in his fingers. “I’ll go with you.”

“You sure?” I paused. “You’re not too tired? I heard you’ve been working a lot.”

“No.” He palmed the back of his neck. “I’m not too tired to play.”

He was going to play too?

I couldn’t do anything but smile at that idea as I nodded at him.

He just looked at me.

Was he being weird? Had I made him uncomfortable after all with the cinnamon smell and the cuddling before? That had been on my mind the last few weeks. Dealing with people was so complicated,especially when I didn’t have a magical nose. Because you could say whatever you wanted, but your body couldn’t lie about what it was feeling.

But I was the one who couldn’t hide anything, so too bad for me. I didn’t mind him coming. It’d give me an excuse to get a feel for him without the hectic pressure that came with breakfast. Just because we’d been in the same room together during that time hadn’t meant we’d gotten to talk a whole lot. On the mornings he was around, he’d been on his phone the majority of the time, sometimes answering his calls with “Blackrock,” but the majority of it being “Henri.”

Randall, the security guy I’d met in the woods right after we’d gotten here, hadn’t had a problem telling me all about how busy Henri was. The strawberry blond, I’d learned, was the only other person, apart from Henri, Agnes, MIA Franklin, and the other elders who were away, living in the clubhouse at the moment. We didn’t see each other often because he worked different hours almost daily, and he had family living at the ranch who he ate with often. He was a really nice guy, and my favorite part was that he gossiped as much as Matti did.

These freaking werewolves. There was a reason I loved them so much. I might not be willing to dig for details directly, but if they wanted to share that Henri hadn’t had a girlfriend in over a decade, I wasn’t going to tell them to shut up. But that was a thought for later.

For the time being, I decided to focus on the most important person in my life, not the one I wasn’t sure about. “Dunky, want me to carry you outside?” I asked as I put the popsicles into Agnes’s lunch bag, like we did every night. It had a unicorn on the side of it.

Red eyes met mine, and I felt that brush of consciousness touch my own. “No.”

I winked at him and focused on the little girl towering over my donut.

It was a shot in the dark, but I went for it anyway. You didn’t get anywhere in life unless you put yourself out there. Because my friendship with her might not have improved much yet, but she wasn’t someone I was giving up on, even if I was pretty sure she weighed about fifty or sixty pounds. “Agnes, would you like me to carry you?”

Her dead-eye glare said no, and I didn’t take it personally. What it did was make me smile. She was a tough cookie, but that was all right. Tough cookies didn’t crumble as easily.

If she let me, I was going to be one of the eggs that helped this snitch cookie stick together, because the little girl had gotten me appreciating who I’d turned out to be.

My story might not have been one that took place in an animated movie, but that was all right. I knew that my story was more of a gothic fairy tale than one with a castle in a sunny state, and I was okay with that. None of those princesses had puppies who could light someone on fire for them.

“All right then, come on, Donut and Mini Wolf. There aren’t too many clouds tonight, and maybe we’ll get lucky and see some shooting stars,” I told them before meeting Henri’s eyes and smiling a little again, just in case he was feeling awkward.

I turned and walked out of the kitchen, sidekick at my feet. Henri and Agnes followed behind us, the little girl carrying her lunch bag. The building was as empty as always. I led us down the hall and out the front door, warm fingers grazing mine on the doorknob when Henri almost beat me to it, gesturing for us to go ahead. I did, bending to pet both pups—Agnes only side-eyed me—before we kept going, through the yard and toward the familiar clearing where we’d had our snacks before.

Agnes set the insulated bag down, and I felt the tension radiating from the kids, who were used to our schedule, ready to play. We had our routine by now. It was Agnes’s idea to have popsicles afterward to cool off, and who was I to say no? Her bag kept them from melting.

I pointed at myself. “Eenie.” Next I gestured to Duncan. “Meenie.” Third was Agnes. “Miny.” Now we had a new player, and I pointed at Henri. “Mo.”

“Are we seeing who’s going to be ‘it’?” he asked.

“Shh,” I hushed him as I kept pointing at a different person with every word. “Catch a tiger by its toe. If it hollers, let it go. Eenie, meenie, miny, mo!” I hadn’t even finished pointing at Henri when the kids took off in opposite directions. Cheaters.

I made eye contact with him and winked. “You’re it, Fluff.”

That neutral face brightened just slightly, his eyebrows going up a fraction of an inch, but he knew what to do. He looked at me standing there, light-colored eyes glittering under the navy sky, and he went after Duncan.

“This one is for you, and this one is yours. Donut, give me a second and I’ll get you yours,” I said, handing popsicles out. We hadn’t played for very long, just enough for me to get out of breath.

And that was how we’d found ourselves sitting in a loose circle around Agnes’s lunch bag. I had my legs crossed, and the length of Duncan’s ribs were pressed against my thigh, while an arm-length away was Henri, with Agnes beside him.

I wasn’t sure why it hadn’t ceased to surprise me how good he was with the kids, how much he genuinely seemed to like them. It was more attractive than the biggest biceps.

Henri had been smiling too.Grinning, even, while he’d been running circles around a tree, “trying” to catch Agnes, then attempting to avoid being tagged by Duncan’s paw. I’d heard him laugh, his happiness so soft and sweet, if I’d had slightly better senses, I was sure I could have tasted it.

But it was that little, joyous smile that took him from being handsome to unbearably gorgeous. Dang it.

So what if I thought he was attractive? Who could blame me? I mean, other than Sienna. Non-magical people were all I’d ever dated before, and when I’d thought about settling down, it had always been with one. But then came all the other BS. I would have to lie, and we wouldn’t be able to have kids because I wouldn’t be able to tell my partner why his child could do the things they could do.

I’d known enough beings who had avoided having children, and it wasn’t difficult to understand why. It was a sacrifice you had to make unless you were willing to explain things that you shouldn’t. That you couldn’t. Each culture and species had their own tales about the truth going so wrong.

They were handed down every generation.

There was an old story that Matti’s mom had told us once, how her great-grandfather had married a human and they had a child. At the age of seven, the child turned into a wolf one night without warning, and when the husband had tried to explain to his wife that it was safe, that the child wasn’t evil, it had gone horribly wrong for the woman. Her heart had failed out of pure shock, or fright, probably both.

Stories along those lines could be found everywhere.

It was why keeping the truth a secret was the one universal burden that everyone could agree on. It was necessary because no one knew how to keep things to themselves, not unless their own butts were on the line.

Life was complicated, or at least it could be.

Fortunately, it wasn’t at that moment, and I was grateful for it.

I took the wrapper off Duncan’s treat, then started opening mine, holding the stick of his between my teeth. Just as I was about to lay flat on the ground to take in the stars that were brighter than usual, something in Henri’s body language changed out of my peripheral vision. Before I could begin to guess what was going on, he murmured, very, very quietly, so low I barely heard him, “Do you see them, Cricket?”

I turned my head just enough to face the direction he and Agnes were staring in. There was an awed look on both of their profiles. On my lap, Duncan’s body went rigid after he moved around to look too. He must have been too focused on his treat to smell everything else around us, but I could tell the moment he noticed them.

Gnomes.

The size of a box of macaroni, if not shorter, one small figure after another were coming out from little caverns along the bottoms of trees in the distance. There was no way I would’ve been able to see them if my night vision wasn’t what it was. But I could, and the scene stole the breath from my whole body.

Gnomes with tiny multicolored hats were coming out of trees. A few of them held torches with green fire burning from them, their skins were wrinkled and various shades of brown, their noses large in comparison to their bodies. Covering their limbs were clothing in shades of browns, reds, and a bluish purple that reminded me of blueberries. And they were marching straight for us.

Where in the world had we moved to?

Sure, I hadn’t seen anything out of the normal in a month, but gnomes?

“I didn’t know there were any here,” I whispered, straight shocked. The gnomes moved effortlessly around wide tree trunks. “I’d heard they existed, but….” I couldn’t believe it. A quick peek told me that I was pretty sure Henri couldn’t either.

Gnomes.

I wished I had something to offer them. Back home, our ogre neighbors had been the ones who told Matti and me about them. I knew all about the offerings the ogres left them in return for their mining efforts in nearby mountains. The gnomes were hard workers who used what they needed of the gems and minerals they excavated and shared their excess with the other magical beings nearby.

They were rare and wonderous, and I couldn’t believe they were here in person.

“Look, Duncan,” I whispered. “They’re gnomes. I read about them to you, remember?”

His “yes”even felt like it had a touch of awe to it.

Henri shook his head slowly, as if doing it too aggressively might scare them off. “They haven’t been seen in these mountains in fifty years,” he explained. “We thought they had left.”

Duncan didn’t move an inch, eyes trained on the small people, his tail a candlestick in the night. I stroked a palm down his spine. “It’s okay,” I assured him. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.” I thought about it. “Or Agnes or Henri.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I could’ve sworn Henri glanced at me.

“Yes.” Dunky’s trust all there, heavy in my heart.

None of us could keep our eyes off them. They were so small!

“I can’t believe it,” the man beside me whispered in definite wonder.

Caution came at me out of nowhere, and I suddenlydidn’t know how I felt about these mythical beings reappearing. My body made a decision before my brain did though, and I wrapped a forearm around Duncan before scooting to the side. Closer to Henri.

Maybe this was a coincidence.

But maybe it wasn’t.

Maybe this had nothing to do with Duncan.

But maybe it did.

What I knew for sure was that I wasn’t taking any more chances with his safety.

Not even around people less than a foot tall.

I would grab Agnes after I got Duncan and run, then I’d leave Henri to fend for himself while we got away, I decided at that moment, feeling only a little guilty but not enough to change my mind about that plan.

He’d be fiiine. I’d come back after hiding the kids and help him. I doubted he’d be in mortal danger.

Henri’s knee bumped into my hip when I got close enough to him. I wasn’t the only one moving around either, Agnes crawled around on her belly, hiding behind him. She had faced off against a cannibal river crone but was hiding from a gnome? What did she know that I didn’t?

I tried to remember any other details or information I could about their kind, but with them in person, coming over, with their little green fires, I couldn’t do much more than watch, torn between being absolutely awed and being really overly unsure.

A weight touched the middle of my back, and I looked over my shoulder. Fluff was palming my spine. There was a serious expression on Henri’s features, those amber eyes were still directed on the creatures making their way. They literally almost looked identical to the garden gnomes I saw at the store, only smaller. I noticed then that they weren’t focused on the white wolf or the huge one in human skin.

Every single gnome had their attention on Duncan and me. And when the first of them got to within three feet of us, they started to line up in rows of six. One after another until I was pretty sure there had to be close to fifty of them.

I held Duncan a little tighter.

Henri’s body shifted beside my knee, and I didn’t imagine that his voice took on a different tone as he said, with a strength and that deep-knit presence that had me glancing at him, “It’s an honor to have you here.”

He sounded the way I’d imagine a king greeted another visiting monarch, all grand and certain.

“We have returned,” one of the gnomes in the front replied in a voice that crackled with grit and a depth that was at odds with his size. “This has been our home nearly as long as it has been yours, Great Wolf.”

I peeked at the “Great Wolf” beside me and slowly turned back to our visitors. I was coming back to that title later. Yes, I was.

“I speak for everyone here when I say that I’m pleased you consider this your home. Is there something I can help you with?” Henri asked, still using that commanding voice. “We closed your mine off decades ago, but it’s there for you whenever you choose.”

In synchronization, every single one of the gnomes turned to the donut and me, and the beings stared as the green glow of their torches somehow brightened enough that I had to squint until the light wasn’t so blinding.

They kept looking at us.

This wasn’t exactly making me feel better.

I didn’t know what to do. No one was saying anything. Henri wasn’t doing anything other than watching them watch us.noveldrama

So I did what felt right, what my ogre friends had brought up before. I reached into my unzipped fanny pack and pulled out a packet of almonds I’d been saving for a snack and held it out to them. It wasn’t a proper offering, but something was something.

The green torches flared even brighter. The gnome closest to the package took it; it was almost as big as he was. He turned and passed it to the gnome behind him, and that one did the same, and they did it again until someone in the back row held the almonds.

Still unsure what to do, I stuck my hand out to the being who had originally taken the almonds, and without missing a beat, he wrapped a hand much bigger than I would have imagined—his skin was really rough—around my index and middle fingers, shaking them.

“I’m Nina, and this is Duncan,” I told him. Them.

The gnome to the right of the original one stuck his hand out just as his neighbor let go, and I stifled a smile when he shook mine too. I was so surprised when the whole front row put their hands out and wanted a shake as well. In my lap, Duncan stretched his neck out maybe half an inch, his little nose twitching hard. He wasn’t tense though. His tail stayed the same safe shade of blue the whole time, reassuring me.

“We rejoice in your presence,” the main gnome, the one who had taken the packet said, adding a word or a name that sounded so gurgled in another language, I couldn’t recreate it to save my life. It sounded like he’d hacked up a phlegm or two getting it out.

I smiled cautiously at the serious faces standing there. “Forgive me, but I think you might have the wrong person. I don’t remember ever meeting any of you.” I’d remember meeting a gnome before.

They didn’t reply.

What they did was keep staring, until, as a unit, the gnomes pivoted toward Henri again and said, “We thank you for your greeting. No assistance is needed at this time.” Then they all took a step back and said, “May the moon guide your way.” In the reverse order of how they had arrived, each and every one of them returned to the trees where they had come from, disappearing into the gnarled caves inside them that shouldn’t have been deep enough for so many of them to go into.

I’d watched satyrs become humans and humans turn into majestic wolves, but nothing had ever blown my mind like their tree system just did.

Henri didn’t say anything else until the last gnome was gone. “You’re safe, Ladybug. No need to shake.”

That got my attention. The white wolf was huddled against Henri’s back. She was trembling, and it made affection bloom in my soul. She was just a little kid, after all.

“We would never let anything happen to you, Agnes.” I tried to make her feel secure too. Safety in numbers. Plus, I was so close to Henri that she could use my body as a shield if it came down to it.

He said who knows what else to her, and soon afterward, her shaking eased for the most part.

And that’s when I finally exhaled like I’d been holding my breath for half an hour. That encounter didn’t make sense or make me feel any better. I didn’t get kidnapper vibes from them, and neither did Duncan from how easygoing he’d been, but you could never be too sure. I wouldn’t.

I turned to Fluffy. “That was weird and amazing, wasn’t it?”

The last thing I expected was for him to look troubled as he palmed the top of Agnes’s furry head. “Yeah….” He trailed off.

A nudge at the hand holding a half-melted popsicle—when had I dropped the other one?—had me lowering it so Duncan could lick it since he had already moved on from the experience of meeting magical gnomes. “Why are they back?” I asked, like he’d heard something I hadn’t.

The question got Henri to snap out of it. “You tell me. What did they say?”

I glanced in the direction they’d gone. “What do you mean?”

“I heard them, and I understood what they said to me, but whatever they told you wasn’t for my ears,” he answered, narrowing his eyes the same way he’d done when we’d first gotten to the ranch.

“You couldn’t understand them?” I was so confused.

Henri shook his head.

“What? You think they spoke in a different language?”

He did that head shake again.

What the…? “My Spanish is excellent. But that’s it. I don’t know any other languages.”

His head turned back toward the trees. It took him more than a moment to say, “You know more than that.”

How was that possible, and what did it mean? I wondered as Duncan licked at the remainder of the popsicle, like rare magical beings coming in and out of his life was no big deal. I was glad someone was resilient.

I looked around the clearing like I was trying to find a clue that would help me understand what had just happened and what it meant. But the only thing I found was what was left over of the popsicle I’d dropped on the ground before we’d scooted closer to Henri. It was covered in dirt and pine needles.

Something nudged at my hip.

Henri was holding out what was left of his. He lifted it an inch higher. “You can have two bites.”

I met his eyes.

“Only two,” he specified with a straight face.

We’d just been approached by rare gnomes, and Duncan had acted like it was no big deal while Agnes shook like a leaf, and Henri and I were in shock, and the gnomes had spoken to me in a language that he didn’t understand…

And this man….

This man….

“Two whole bites? That’s how much you’ll let me have?” I cracked up.

One corner of his mouth went up a millimeter. “Half,” he compromised.

That made me snort. “That’s so generous, but I’m all right, thank you.”

I was the only one still stuck on the gnomes, it seemed from the way he’d moved on. “Take a bite. There’s not much left anyway,” he egged me on.

He would share with Agnes if our roles were reversed. It was a pack thing. Sharing. Community. It was great and exactly what I was familiar with and used to. How many times had I shared food with every werewolf I’d ever cared about?

I leaned forward and winced as the cold hit my teeth, the faint taste of lime slipping over my tongue. “Thank you,” I mumbled around the ice.

He kept holding it out. “Take another.”

I shook my head. “That’s perfect, Fluff, thank you.”

He shot me a look as he bit into the rest, savoring it as Agnes started in on what was left of hers too, even while her eyes flicked around nervously, especially in the direction of where the gnomes had gone.

“They won’t hurt you,” I told her, even though I didn’t know that for sure. I did,but I didn’t. “It’s okay, Agnes.”

Her eyes slid to me, but I was pretty sure I saw a sigh leave her lungs after a minute.

Everything was good, and there was no reason to think the gnomes were going to sneak out and kidnap Duncan. Henri would be able to sense them, and so would Agnes and the donut himself, if he wasn’t too focused on a treat nearby. I needed to tone it down.

I wasn’t weak or defenseless. And Henri was here. Every instinct in my body told me he’d protect the kids. He’d stood up for me in front of Spencer before, hadn’t he? I winced thinking about the sasquatch.

But I still didn’t need Henri if it came down to it. I forgot that part sometimes. It wasn’t that I was alone here, but I also couldn’t expect to rely on anyone else, not when we lived with hundreds of people and I’d only met handfuls of parents, who were polite but kept us at a distance—or kept me at a distance.

Matti had mentioned again during our last call that they hadn’t been that friendly when he’d first moved to the ranch, and I reasoned with myself that they were more than likely doing the same.

But that didn’t change the fact that until we were accepted by more than Maggie, the nursery teacher, and Phoebe the satyr and her husband, who had been very, very kind, and the children I spent so much time with, that we were on our own.

Hopefully only two months longer.

I couldn’t expect Henri to have time for us. He had a lot of other people that relied on him. Take a number, right?

Rolling down to lie flat on my back, I stared up at the sky as Duncan relaxed enough to trample over me, paws going places that had me huffing and puffing and groaning until he settled, lying across me, still having access to my hand. The stars werecrazy bright, brighter than any other night so far. The Big Dipper was there, as well as the little one, the Milky Way a line of sparkles that split one part of the sky from another.

I’d always loved looking at them. If I could take a spaceship, I would, I used to think. Now, the thought of leaving my boy was unfathomable, and I was okay with that. The weight of him on me was a reminder that things might be changing, but he still needed me, and I was going to drain that well dry until he didn’t.

My one hope was that it was decades from now.

Two shooting stars later, when Duncan finished his popsicle, he wedged his way between my arm and the side of my body, rolling onto his back so he could look too. I could hear Agnes and Henri moving around too, and from the way the leaves crackled, I figured they were doing the same.

What had to be a comet, it was so bright, shot across the sky. “Did you see that one?” I asked the puppy tucked in next to me.

“Yes,” he told me.

I reached for his back leg and wrapped my hand around his paw. “Love, love, love”filled my heart.

As much as I liked the gnomes, they better not even side-eye Duncan if they knew what was good for them. And that thought led me to another one. A less stressful one. “Henri,” I called out. “Why did the gnomes call you Great Wolf?”

He didn’t reply, and I slowly sat up. He was already looking at me with a deceptively blank expression that I knew was BS.

“You know who I was raised by,” I reminded him, knowing he was aware that my parents had been descended from nahuales—shapeshifters. “And they taught me allll about wolf mythology. I know what that means, Mr. Wolf God,” I whispered as a grin took over my face.

The tale of the Great Wolf was one handed down throughout North America, of a monstruous but noble wolf who roamed the plains. A protector. A shield for the weaker. There were stories of great battles it faced in centuries past, against epic thunderbirds, who it ripped from the skies, and giant pumas who preyed upon villagers at night, to name a few.

The Great Wolf was a hero and a legend.

And I couldn’t help but grin with freaking glee at the fact I was sitting inches away from the man recognized with that title.

Henri’s jaw ticked to the right instantly. He even blinked twice. “I knew you were going to give me shit for it the second they called me that.”

Was he blushing?

I laughed. “I didn’t know I was in the presence of royalty.”

He groaned and looked away, which made me laugh harder.

That was definitely a blush on those cheeks. Too bad for him, it was adorable.

“I’ll keep that in mind when addressing you from now on, sir,” I joked, watching as he shook his head… but there was a slight, slight smile on his face. Feeling generous, I decided to give him a break for now. “Was that an ancestor of yours?”

The way he shrugged bordered on embarrassed… but he nodded.

I smiled and laid back down, pleased and surprised and… a thought came out of nowhere. “Wait, does Matti know about that?”

“Does Matti know that he’s related to him? Yes, he does.”

And that son of a turd had never hinted at it before? It hadn’t occurred to me that Matti could be related to him too. I guess I had automatically assumed that the Great Wolf would be on the other side of Henri’s family, not the shared one.

Like he could sense my outrage, Henri added, “It’s not something we advertise. Matti never met the… original one, and I think his dad might have met him only once.”

That made me slightly feel better, but I was still going to give him shit about it the second I had the chance. I couldn’t believe he’d never even dropped a hint. But maybe it’s because that is actually a big secret and not something most people should know.

Hmm.

His voice rumbled unexpectedly through the dark. “You really don’t know anything about your birth parents?” The question was so delicately laid out, it was like he’d set it on eggshells. Was he trying not to hurt my feelings?

It wouldn’t, but how would he know that? He and I had never discussed my family situation before, other than my comments in front of the elders. I never really talked about those people, period.

I took a deep breath of mostly Duncan’s scent and winced. He was going to need a bath soon. “Not much. Not enough to mean anything,” I answered, keeping my voice light so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea that this was a devastating conversation for me.

“Tell me what you know.”

I hugged Duncan a little closer. “I know that I was left outside of my parents’ house as a newborn.” I thought about it. “All I had on me was a blanket. I didn’t even have clothes on. The doctors guessed that I was less than a month old.” I took another sniff of Duncan. “You know that though, don’t you?”

His grunt echoed throughout the trees, and I thought about what he’d said before about how grunting didn’t get things across.

I tipped my head. He was on his back too, the part of his face that was visible looked tight. Concerned? Maybe just thoughtful? Despite his silence, maybe he was still worried about the gnomes too… and why they’d spoken to me in a different language and how I’d understood it.

Sneaking my forearm under my head, I propped it up as I focused on the sky again. My breathing was loud in my ears, so I kept talking. “That’s pretty much all I know for a fact. No one has ever recognized what I am, not for sure, you know? Some people just… know they don’t like it.” Hated it, more like, but there wasn’t much I could do about that other than wear a bracelet that almost made me invisible.

Like I was telling the world that they could like me, but only when I was someone else.

I scratched behind my ear before I thought about something. “My parents had their guesses.”

“What did they suspect?”

“My mom’s family can trace their roots back for generations. Back to the days when the Mayans built their pyramids, did you know that?” I didn’t wait for his answer. “My mom is a devout follower of a few of their gods, and so was her mom, and her mom before that… the list goes back centuries. Anyway, because of my fertility gift, she thought there was a chance that I might be…” Her superstition of saying their names out loud almost kicked in. She used to spell them out instead. But I tamped that urge down, thinking, Let her hear me say her name. “Ix Chel’s.”

Ix Chel, the Mayan goddess of midwifery. Some lore referred to her as the goddess of the moon, of love and medicine, among other things. The Aztecs, they had revered Cihuacóatl. And I was sure, I could’ve gone back in history or gone to another continent and found other fertility gods that maybe, just maybe she might have been known as.

It would explain a lot of things, internal stuff and external stuff… if she was my DNA mom.

I peeked over to find Henri side-eyeing me.

I gave him a small, flat smile.

“If a god was going to leave something as valuable as a child with someone, it would be a devoted follower,” he agreed steadily, his face a neutral mask that really made me assume he was still attempting not to hurt my feelings.

“That’s what my mom said, that it would have been thought of as a gift to raise her child.” I shrugged. “Who knows though? She didn’t leave a business card with me.”

Henri didn’t seem to like that response much.

I didn’t want to talk about her anymore though. I turned my attention upward again. There were other things to spend my time and energy on. “Anyway, there is one other thing that might mean something, but might not.” I might be dumb for bringing it up, might be oversharing after everything else I’d already admitted, but he was asking, and there was no reason not to bring it up to him. “I don’t think anyone has ever believed me, but I’ve never been able to explain it either.”

The way he asked, “What is it?” made me smile. Somebody was nosy.

“I don’t really ever dream.”

“Dream?”

Maybe he didn’t believe me after all. “Yes, dream. I’ve never had normal dreams. Not really. Not like everyone else,” I answered, half expecting him to give me the same lines other people had. You just don’t remember them. I’m sure you do. Everyone dreams.

Sure, everyone probably did, but not as rarely as I did. The thing was, I wouldn’t call what I did experience “real dreams.” I never had some epic fantasy while I slept. Never woke up terrified after being chased by zombies. I’d never been naked in front of people or been lost in a maze of my own imagination or met a celebrity while I slept.

But Henri was listening, so I kept going. “When I have, there’s been someone talking to me in the dark. Every single time. Whoever it was, whatever it was, I remember thinking it felt familiar. I can’t tell you what they looked like, but I’ve always thought it was a man. And there was something in those dreams that felt more real than… not. I’d wake up and feel like I’d spoken to someone I should know.” Then I told him the same thing I’d only mentioned to Sienna and Matti before. “When I was little, I used to think it was my dad talking to me, but I don’t remember why I thought that, and it’s been at least ten years since the last one.

“Chances are it doesn’t mean anything. Who understands how the brain works anyway, right?” I bit the inside of my cheek. “It isn’t like anyone ever came looking for me. If my biological family wanted to find me, I’m sure they could have. But they didn’t.”

Silence crept its way between us. Pity had that effect on people. What did you say after that? I wouldn’t know what to do either, to tell the truth. Say I was sorry? Give someone a hug?

“Anyway,” I told him, “everything turned out great. I’ve got the most handsome boy in the world. My mom and dad are the best, even though I don’t get to see them or talk to them that much anymore, but they’re happy. The weather is nice. It smells so good out here….”

“But?” he asked.

“But what?”

“There’s something off.” Henri made a sniffling sound. “You don’t smell as happy as you did when you first got here.”

There was no hiding anything. I lifted a shoulder. “I’m fine.”

“Are you though?”

I hesitated for a second, knowing he’d pick up on anything other than honesty. “I’m a little lonely, I guess, which doesn’t make sense since I’m not used to having a lot of people around normally. And when Duncan’s around, I’m fine. I can’t be lonely with my boy close by. It’s just that so many things still feel up in the air? Maybe? I’ll be okay.”

“You’re being given time to settle.”

That had been what Matti had implied. “I know, that’s what your cousin said too.”

There was a long pause where the only sounds around us were the kids’ loud breathing. “It’s more than that, Cricket,” he tried to explain. “Most people who come here don’t stick around. Nobody mentioned that, did they? New residents rarely make it the three months. Half of them leave before the first month. Almost all of them are gone by the end of the second. Our residents don’t want to invest in people who aren’t going to stay,” he said very matter-of-factly. “Three years ago, a giant came with her three children, and they were gone two weeks later without saying anything to anybody. A year before that, a goblin made it six weeks before he left and tried stealing a UTV while he was at it. People being distant right now has nothing to do with you personally. I should’ve explained that before, I’m sorry.”

That made so much sense it was annoying. It was my turn to frown. “Well, I’m not planning on going anywhere or stealing anything. Maybe it’s wishful thinking but, for some reason, this place feels… right. This forest, I mean. But I might be magic-high.” I snickered, hoping I didn’t sound defensive. My hands were feeling less jittery now, but on the inside, I was still hopped up on magical energy. “Has anyone else ever said that before?”

“We’re family at the ranch. All of us,” he told me. A little grumble rolled at the base of his throat in the stretch of silence after that. “There’s no reason to think you aren’t supposed to be here, Nina. Maybe you are. Maybe… this is where you’re supposed to be.”

Rising onto my elbow, I watched him do a crunch, his head angled just the perfect amount to make eye contact with me. He’s so handsome. “I needed to hear that. Thank you, Henri.”

Amber eyes moved slowly over my face, his expression a deeply guarded one that I wanted to understand. For the millionth time, I wished I could smell what he was feeling. Maybe one day, Duncan could speak more telepathic words, and he could give me the inside scoop.

“What is it?” Henri asked after a moment.

“I was thinking I wish I could smell what you’re feeling right now.”

The slow smile that came over his face made me blink. I might’ve even braced myself a little. “I’ll tell you what I’m feeling if you tell me what Matti said that day at the airport that had you looking like you’d seen a ghost,” he offered.

MFer. Why did he remember that a month later? Didn’t he have better things to do? And how bad did I want to know what he was thinking?

Pretty bad. I wanted to know pretty bad. I nodded before I could think twice. “Deal.”

Was I going to regret it? I hoped not. He was an adult. I was an adult. Maybe he would laugh.

And maybe there was a .001 percent chance he might surprise me.

My money was on a side-eye though.

“What are you thinking?” I asked, half expecting him to tell me to go first.

He didn’t, and I thought that said everything about him. “I was thinking”—he wiped his face clear—“that whoever your biological parents are, they really missed out on knowing you.”

It took me two tries to say, “That’s a beautiful thing to say, Fluff. Thank you for that,” without croaking it.

“I mean it,” he said in that serious voice, watching me closely.

And now it was my turn. I was almost tempted to try and cover myself with leaves and hide so he could forget I was there, but nooo, I’d agreed. Worst case, he’ll roll his eyes. “Don’t be weird, all right?” I warned him.

“I’m never weird.”

Maybe not, but I wasn’t betting on that after I told him what he thought he wanted to hear. I squinted. “I wasn’t planning on telling you, but you asked for this,” I went on with my caution.

He tilted his head to the side, holding on to that crunch so long it would have been impressive if I wasn’t just about to say what I was going to say. “Nina, I know what Matti’s capable of.”

The snort came out of me, because there was no way he knew Matti as well as he thought he did.

He had the nerve to make a face. “There’s nothing he could say that would surprise me. I had to deal with him when he went through puberty.”

I shrugged. “All riiiight,” I sang. “Don’t be weird.”

“I’m waiting,” he grunted.

No matter what happened, I wasn’t going to let him be too awkward about this, I decided. He’d asked, and we both knew his cousin was nuts. Mostly, he’d asked.

So I looked him dead in the eye, smiled a little, and said, “Matti told me to marry you, Fluff.”