“I came to talk about the boy,” he said. “I brought the cider, because it isn’t an easy conversation.”
Oh.
“I’ve come to ask you to let him go.”
I thought as much. “Why isn’t Ascanio here to speak for himself?”
“Because you took him in when nobody would have him. Aunt B sent him to you because he was impossible to handle, and she knew that sooner or later he would do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing, and someone would rip out his throat. You gave him a job, a place he belonged, you trained him, and you trusted him. You turned him into someone who is now an asset to the clan. He understands all of this. He’s loyal to you.”
He paused. I waited for him to continue.
“But he also wants things.”
“What things?”
“We can start with money. He can earn money here, but he wants more. He wants wealth.”
He and I both knew that Ascanio wouldn’t get wealth working for me. Cutting Edge paid the bills, but it wouldn’t make anyone rich. I had no interest in expanding. I liked that we were small.
“Also, he wants acceptance, responsibility, and power. He wants to climb the clan’s power hierarchy. At his core, he’s a bouda, and he needs other boudas to acknowledge how good he is.”
“Okay.”
“Both of these are means to an end.” Raphael leaned forward. “What he really wants is . . .”
“Security,” I told him. “I taught him for almost four years, Raphael. He grew up without a male role model in a hellish place, so when he went to the clan, he fixated on you. He wants to be you. A respected, successful, dangerous alpha. I figured all this out a long time ago.”
“He’s been working for me for the last six months,” Raphael said.
“Aha.”
Raphael chewed on his lip. “There is no point in trying to be diplomatic, so I’m just going to come out and say it. Male nineteen-year-old boudas think with their balls. Andrea and I spend half of our time fighting to keep them out of Jim’s rock-hauling camp.”
Like Curran, Jim constantly improved the Keep, adding on towers, walls, and escape tunnels. A good portion of those improvements were built by boudas between ages twelve and twenty-five performing the Pack’s version of community service for various infractions. The boudas couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble, and Jim always welcomed free labor.
“Ascanio is different from his peers,” Raphael said. “He thinks with his head, and he’s strategic in his decisions. When we sent him down to Kentucky, he ran into h . . .” Raphael paused. “. . . into trouble. He handled it. Better than I did.”
“I have no doubt he did.”
“We need him, and he needs us. And I realize that my mother dumped him on you, and you spent four years stabilizing, teaching, and hammering him into what he is today, and now that he’s useful, we want him back and it’s unfair. I’m sorry. I owe you. Our entire clan owes you.”
“You don’t owe me anything. I did it for him, not for you.”
“But you did it and someone has to appreciate it. I’m here to say that we acknowledge it and we won’t forget. If you leave it up to him, he will never walk away from you. He can’t. His sense of loyalty won’t let him. But he won’t be happy here. He wants recognition and acceptance from the Pack. Like it or not, you’re not just anyone, Kate. You are the In-Shinar. The longer you keep him with you, the harder it will be for him to be seen as separate from you.”
He just had to throw it in my face. I sighed. “Do you see any chains around here, Raphael?”
“No.” His smile was sad.
“Okay then. He isn’t an indentured servant. He’s free to do as he wants. I’ll take him off the payroll as of today. He is welcome to come back anytime, but I will stop calling.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“It’s not about you. He should do whatever makes him happy.”
Raphael nodded again. He looked miserable.
I let him off the hook. “How is Baby B doing?”
He grinned. “A wolf boy tried to steal her toy at the picnic last week. She chased him down, took the toy away, and beat him bloody with it.”
“You must be so proud.”
“Oh, I am.”
“I’ll see you around, Raphael.”
“You will, Kate.”
He left.
Well, that was that. I felt oddly hollow. No more funny one-liners. No more tortured Latin. No more off-color jokes. It had been moving to this moment for a while, but it still made me feel empty.
Derek walked into the office. “What did Raphael want?”
I shook my head. “Nothing important.”
Derek eyed the bottle of cider and pulled two small paper bags out of a larger paper bag. The delicious aroma of Mexican spices filled the air. Chicken soft tacos. My favorite. The closest Mexican place was about two miles off. He’d gone to get them for me.
I got up, got two glasses, opened the cider, and poured some for us. He landed in the client chair and bit into his taco. I chewed mine. Mmm, delicious.
“I’m going to go back to Serenbe tomorrow,” he said. “I want to do a wider search. See if I can pick up a trail.”
“Okay,” I said.
We chewed some more.
“Do you ever want wealth?” I asked.
Derek paused his chewing. “No.”
“I mean, do you ever want more money?”
He gave me a one-shouldered shrug. “My bills are paid. Got enough for food, got enough for tools of the trade, can buy Christmas presents. What else would I need?”
I nodded. We drank our cider and ate our tacos, and it was nice.
CHAPTER 3
TWO BIG GRAY eyes regarded me from a round face, lit up by the morning light filtering through the kitchen window. Conlan pushed the oatmeal away. “No.”
“Yes.”
“Huny.”
I crossed my arms. “Did Grandma give you honey muffins yesterday?”
His eyes lit up. “Gama!”
“Grandma isn’t here.”
My son made nom-nom noises.
When I was pregnant, I tried to avoid doing dangerous things, which left me with a lot of time on my hands. I’d spent it reading baby books. Those books made it crystal clear that giving honey to your baby before he was a year old made you a terrible mother. The moment a spoon of honey would touch his lips, the words “Awful Mother” would appear on your forehead, forever branding you as a parenting failure. I had explained this to Mahon and Martha. They listened, nodded, and agreed, and then proceeded to ignore me. They’d been giving him honey and various honey-infused sweets since he was able to hold them in his tiny hands and then lied to my face about it. Werebear parents-in-law came with their own challenges.
“You’re not getting honey. You will eat oatmeal.”
“No.” He pushed the cereal away.
“Okay. Then you’ll go hungry.”
“Huny!”
In baby terms, my son was developing at the speed of light. At thirteen months, most babies had a vocabulary of three or four words. Mama, dada, bye-bye, uh-oh. The experts called this phase passive language acquisition. My sweet dumpling was making tiny sentences and arguing with me about honey. At this point, I wasn’t sure if I was proud or frustrated. Probably both.
“I have to do a lot of work today,” I told him. “And neither your grandparents nor your aunt can watch you, because they have clan business. So, you’re stuck with me.”
“Huny.” Conlan sniffled.
“I don’t negotiate with terrorists. Oatmeal or nothing.”
I put some oatmeal into my own bowl from the pot, added salt and butter, and spooned it into my mouth. “Mmm. I’m going to eat all this and be nice and full.”
Conlan watched the spoon travel to my mouth. One. Two . . . Three . . .
He pulled the bowl to him and dug in with his spoon. Hunger won again. My son wasn’t a shapeshifter, but he certainly ate like one.