Page 155 of Falling in Love with My Chihuahua Shifter

“Is Cael going to help Alana?” she asks.

“Alana will be more than fine.”

“You’re sure?”

“I trust she will find her place just as you have helped me find mine.”

Brittny’s breath runs through my hair as our legs tangle. Soft moments slip between us, then she yawns. “Sorry. What…did you say?”

“Don’t worry.” I graze a kiss against her neck just to feel her squirm closer. “Alana’s story will be perfectly normal. Just like ours.”

Knock, knock

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Child Protection Services…

Two weeks earlier

Pollux sat, nursing the faerie wine Cael had brought as a gift. It hit differently than the human stuff. For one, it wasn’t rotten. Faerie wine came from fresh sources of sheer insanity, grown in the darkest parts of forests better left alone.

As a being born of emotions also better left alone, it soothed something in him—like medicine.

And, yet, while he peered across his parlor coffee table at his prince and Andromeda, he wondered if he was setting a bad example on how to cope with existence.

“They’re really calling her my daughter?” he grumbled.

“Is she not?” Cael held the girl’s small hands and bounced her in his lap.

Pollux droned, “Where’s the resemblance?”

Cael’s eyes flicked up, and could Pollux know fear, he may have felt it then. “In the scent, naturally.”

Screw good examples. Andromeda was a monster. A very lovely little monster that he would die for. But still. A monster all the same.

Just like he was.

He took another swig of his liquor and averted his eyes.

Seconds later, Andromeda dove off Cael’s lap, skidded across the coffee table, and latched onto his leg, cheering, “Daddy!”

“I will bite you,” he grumbled into his bottle.

She took that as permission to sink her own sharp teeth into his thigh.

“Ow.” He downed another mouthful of the sweet substance and ran his fingers through her curls. “Is there any reason you’re here, Your Highness?”

“When Zy told me what Brittny told him concerning the possibility you had a child, I responded that I would look into it. To say such a thing, I had to have every intention of doing so.”

Pollux rolled his eyes and couldn’t comprehend how, or why, Cael kept the company he did. “Do your friends regularly assume you tell them everything?”

“Clearly, something I’ve done has left them to assume I don’t keep track of the spooky scary skeletons hiding in my closet. I do wonder what.”

“Flipping a light switch on and off for three hours probably wouldn’t have anything to do with swaying your people’s opinions of your capability.”

Cael’s eyes sparked as he smiled. “Come now. That’s just mean.”

“Is it?” Pollux needed more wine.

The adelidae wholly darkened, becoming a sight that was chilling to behold—even for Pollux. “Naturally,” Cael said. “After all, innocence is as effective a weapon as ignorance. Wielding both well is how I’ve made it this far, don’t you think?”

Pollux really needed more wine. All the same, he grunted.

Lifting a hand, Cael sighed. “I am ever the articulate one between us, it seems. How dreadfully difficult it is…to be an unseelie prince.”

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