“Did you really think my grandma was going to miss this?” Thalia asked with a laugh, as she and the little old Greek she-wolf stepped off the dragon king’s private drone.
“Also, I never got to see you wear this strange dress of yours at your wedding, Queen Drákon,” Agda clucked, pinching my cheek.
I get so many compliments on the dress at the reception. Even Aunt Tu, who is, of course, wearing her IDGAF tracksuit, is impressed. “Dark Wolf MC on top, Viking on the bottom. You’re going to have to tell me where to get one of these dresses—wait is that Joey’s and Lauren’s daughter, Little Dy?”
Aunt Tu just about loses her mind when she finds out Max’s fiancée, Dyana, is the daughter of the most popular couple from Love, Essex, one of her favorite British reality shows from back in the day.
“But I guess this means you and Brandon are never going to ship though,” she laments in a classic case of Aunt Tu saying what she wants and not caring who it offends.
“No, ‘fraid not,” Dyana answers with a toothy smile. “But I’m more than happy to make a life with my Maxie.”
Yeah, I bet. If you ever wondered if reparations work, let’s just say Max was able to forgive Damianos a whole lot on behalf of himself and his paternal line after my dragon offered him a nine-figure Executive Assistant job and the guarantee that he’d never enthrall another member of the Kreft family again.
The wedding is beautiful, and the reception is a huge success for more reasons than one.
After some pretty graphic threats from Damianos about what would happen should his small drakki cousins be mistreated in any way, dragons and wolves alike play with our family’s first hybrid species kids in whatever form they choose to take.
Koko and Amaru, the dragon I’m still thinking might be a former Incan king, have been talking for hours on the couch in the living room. And her older sister, Sarah—the same cousin who’d bitterly warned me about how hard it would be to meet guys on my level if I didn’t lock one down before I took my throne—has like a line of dragons, waiting to talk to her. Hwedo is fuming. But I have a feeling he’ll be Sarah’s pick by the time this is all done.
She might be flirting with other dragons, but she keeps on glancing over at Hwedo to make sure he’s watching.
At one point during the reception, Rafes and Damianos disappear into a room at the back of the house. They’re there for so long, I go looking for them, afraid they’ve gotten into another fight. It’s the exact opposite.
When I open the door, I find the two mortal enemies shaking hands on a deal that will end all god speaking of North American wolves. It also gives dragons the same protections wolves receive under the North American Lupus Pact with the human governments of Canada, Mexico, and the USA. And to think, they’d never actually met before the day Rafes planned to give a shoot to kill order. Now they seemed like best friends.
“Cool!” I say after they break down the deal. “Maybe we can work on something similar with the European Federation.”
Rafes frowns at me.
“What? You don’t like the idea?” I ask him, bracing for another one of our fights.
“No, I’m just trying to get over the surreal feeling of actually agreeing with you for the very first time ever,” he answers. “Seriously, I’m dizzy. I think I’m about to faint.”
Unamused face emoji. Rafes doesn’t faint.
Instead, he, Damianos, and me end up dancing, drinking, laughing, and catching up with all the other wedding guests for hours and hours.
It’s one of those nights that refuses to stop until the morning comes. The kids never get tucked in they just fall out on the floor in a pup heap. Three of which have wings. The adults don’t fare much better, most of them ending up nodding off where they sit, instead of formally ending their conversation with long-lost, long-unseen, and newly-discovered acquaintances.
As rays of morning sun flow in through the window, I watch Damianos lay blankets on top of Grandpa Fenris and Grandma Chloe who are sleeping leaned up against each other on the never-so-appropriately dubbed loveseat. Wolves and dragons have higher body temperatures. None of us really need blankets. But they are one of those creature-comforts both of our species appreciate, like herbal teas and warm meals. But my dragon king’s care of my long-lost grandparents goes even further than that. I can sense over our mate bond that Damianos considers the two older people his responsibility now that he’s brought them back from the past.
He’s taking care of them, I realize. Satisfying a need to care for an elder that he’ll never have again with his own father.