Page 38 of Veil of Shadows

No one was getting to my Bumblebee without a fucking fight.

12

BEXLEY

“Merida, I need four more gallons of wine before we stock up other things. We ran out at the last celebration.”

“Miss Gausier! I need you to do your orator time before we eat this time around. I want to see if that opens up more time for the kids to participate in the family activities.”

“Voss, hey. Real quick: do I need to send out a hunting crew for another couple of deer? We’ve got a boar we’re going to smoke, and we’ve got a buck Ronyn snagged earlier this morning. But, that’s it for now.”

“No, no, no, no. This is our autumn solstice. I want reds and oranges. Yellows. Evergreens. The whole nine.”

“Do we have the meat marinating? If we don’t, they need to be marinating!”

Dom’s voice pulled me out of my slumber. My brow furrowed in confusion as I tried to make sense of his rapid-fire words. It sounded like he was right there in the room with me, barking orders like a damn madman. But as my eyes fell open, I realized he was beneath me.

His voice just carried that much.

“Jesus, Dom,” I said breathlessly as I rolled over onto my back.

“If we’re going to make our own beer for the celebration, we have to start that today!” Dom barked from below.

“Morning,” Ronyn’s gruff voice said beside me.

“Ah!” I exclaimed, whipping around in bed.

I blinked away the sleep from my eyes and found the towering man standing next to the bed. He had a tray clasped in his hands, and the second I sat up to figure out what was on it, he dropped it into my lap.

“Hold this,” Ronyn commanded.

I was too tired to do anything else other than what he asked. So, with my crooked body still trying to wake up, I held the tray at both ends on my lap. I heard Ronyn slamming his hands into something before plush pillows descended behind me, and he helped me lean forward.

“Oooooh, yeah,” I groaned as I leaned back. “Thank you.”

He chuckled as he smoothed my hair out of my face. “Enjoy your breakfast.”

Dom’s voice filtered through the floorboards again. “What? No! Why would we use winter solstice decorations for the autumn solstice. That’s unheard of!”

I slowly looked up at Ronyn and found him grinning down at me. “Your best bet is to stay out of his way today. Otherwise, he’ll run you over.”

Dom yelled out across his house. “Hey! Voss is heading up a hunting crew to go get us another couple of deer! We need the marinades ready for when they come back!”

“Yikes,” I whispered as I picked up the coffee mug.

Ronyn perched on the edge of the bed, making it groan beneath his weight as it shifted. “Like I said, just leave him alone today.”

I sipped the coffee and hummed with delight. “You cleaned his coffee maker, didn’t you?”

Ronyn’s face fell. “Of course, I fucking did. The nasty fuck.”

I barked with laughter before I took another long pull from the mug. “Thank you.”

His smirk filled me with white hot electricity. “You’re welcome, Bumblebee.”

“So,” I said after taking another sip of my coffee, “you guys celebrate every solstice, right?”

He nodded. “We do.”

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