Page 81 of Myths and Shifts

Wren blinked for a moment. “None taken. I learned from a human, so you might be right. He was my first crush, so I had to do a good job.”

I didn’t need to know that.

“Don’t tell your mother that.” The age difference alone would give her a heart attack…much less the fact that I was pretty sure he was talking about one of our older, slightly distant cousins.

Wren’s grin made me roll my eyes. “That’s why she tried to send me to thatbehave yourselfcamp.”

Ignoring that, because he’d won on that front too, I turned back to our Alabama Florida Man. “He’s actually an expert in his field and the best choice unless we want to bring in a full human.”

Everyone winced.

Drama queens.

Merritt’s shoulders shook but he managed not to laugh out loud.

“They’re not contagious.” Or weird just because most of them didn’t seem to be as colorful as the rest of us were. “There are a lot of them that would be very proficient in this situation and having a backup expert would not be a bad decision.”

I wasn’t sure I wanted to send them through a portal to another world with only one person who could find water or help figure out what to eat just in case. Wren’s mate didn’t scream wilderness expert even though he’d done a good job of blending in.

“That explains some of it.” Our resident Florida Man nodded but he didn’t look away. “I’m pretty sure we’re missing a few details, though.”

Since he wasn’t stupid, just strange, I nodded. “You are. That was going to be one of the first things on the agenda.”

Shockingly enough, we had things that I thought were more important. “We can rearrange that list, though, but after this I’d like to narrow down which of the medics will be going and a few things like that.”

Merritt had been filling me in, but I knew with Wren’s drama I’d missed some of the details. We had to iron them out, though, because people had lives they needed to get back to. “I want to give the locals enough time to complain before the team starts planning.”

We also still had to figure out who was going to be monitoring the portal. Everyone agreed that it was important but they were playing hot potato with it, as Merritt liked to say. The only thing we had agreed on was that the locals would not be primarily in charge. There weren’t enough actual grown-ups in town to make that work.

“As you can see, the council group has expanded to include Wren’s new mate. They met recently and he’s also here about the portal.” Understatement of the universe right there.

I was planning on explaining that when one of the Canadian group members spoke up. “I don’t remember where he’s from.”

One of the Scottish contingent decided he had questions too. “Or his name? He was at that weird birthday party wedding thing. I remember that.”

Everyone started looking around, trying to decide which group was going to claim him, and it got even more interesting when they realized no one was speaking up. Alabama was, surprisingly enough, the first to make the leap. “Well, fuck.”

“That’s what I said when I first met Daddy Manny.” Wren grinned and leaned into his mate, who’d already learned the fine human art of rolling his eyes. “But I meant something different.”

It seemed likeDaddy Mannyknew he had his hands full.

Smart man.

No matter what he was.

Dragon, right?

Giggles and sighs went around the room but it gave the rest of the group time to catch up with us. Eyes went cartoon sized except for the Canadian group. They sighed and mumbled something about Americans always having to upstage everyone.

Since they weren’t wrong, I just ignored that part.

Merritt looked like he was going to hurt himself holding back his laughter and Kenzie didn’t seem to understand why it was a bad thing. I had a feeling he was going to have questions for his Daddy at some point, but Wren simply smiled wider. “Being special is hard sometimes.”

Our meeting was devolving quickly.

“So I’m sure we all understand why Wren will be included in the group.” There were several logical reasons, so everyone had to nod begrudgingly.

“Okay, I don’t know if this is a dumb question or not, but I’m going to ask anyway.” Florida Man shrugged. “If he’s…come to visit…why are we going?”

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