Page 94 of How to Rescue Your Surprise Baby

It’s still... undecided.

Mav looked up from his phone, meeting Telos’ eyes.

“I’m not that easy,” Telos grumbled.

And yet neither of them had gone to Uriel to break the mental connection they shared, even though Uriel and his baby had temporarily followed them to Cartfalls.

“I didn’t say you were.” Mav gave a small smile and nodded at the elevator. “Shall we?”

They didn’t endup finding a shopping cart. By the time they reached the ground level of Telos’ penthouse, all the stray shopping carts in the area had swarmed after an ice cream van playing a coin jingling tune, and they’d disappeared from sight.

Mav did hurry home for fireproofed sheets, though, so Telos could sleep safely in his own bed.

Mav’s Embarrassing Childhood Story,as told by his Ma and Pa

Our little Maverick was seven years old when this happened. The three of us were at the market on a nice Sunday morning, looking at the produce. Maverick’s favorite shop was always the one with the live chickens. He kept asking to go back, and since it was his birthday, we indulged him.

What we didn’t expect was for him to crouch close to the ground and flap his arms, clucking at the chickens as though he was one himself. We let this go on for about fifteen minutes. However, when we tried to continue shopping, Maverick bawled and huddled close to the chickens, and told us that he wanted to be a chicken himself.

He said he wanted to lay eggs.

Now, dragons don’t lay eggs, but since it was his birthday, we bought a dozen eggs and let him crouch over them.

He must’ve been tired. He accidentally sat on his eggs, and they smashed.

For two hours, little Maverick was inconsolable. He cried and clucked at his broken eggs like a mourning mother hen, and tried to put the broken shells in his pockets so he could bring them home to bury them.

By the end of our shopping trip, he was covered in raw egg, and still waddling on the ground like a chicken.

“I want to be a chicken shifter,” he told us. “I want my name to be Mavvie Chicken.”

He didn’t get to shift into a chicken, but for his birthday cake that night, we had the baker write ‘Happy Birthday, Mavvie Chicken!’ on it.

Maverick was so happy, he cried. It’s a memory we still treasure to this day.

“You didwhat?”Mav bellowed, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Not that fucking chicken story!”

“Your boyfriend wanted a good story,” Hadley sang, dancing out of Mav’s reach. “I gave him the one that made me ugly-snort.”

Not too far away, in his penthouse, Telos clutched the letter to his chest and laughed until he cried.

Mav pickedup the innocuous envelope on his dining table. Hadley had sorted the mail, and there was only one that needed his attention today.

Hadley smirked when Mav opened it, which made all his alarm bells go off.

“What?” Mav asked.

His butler flounced off. “Nothing!”

It was some sort of colorful card. When Mav slid it out of the envelope, he stared.

Smiling dinosaurs peeked in from all four edges of the card. In the middle, two words filled the otherwise empty space:

Mavvie Chicken!

Mav froze in horror. He wanted to groan, laugh, and curl up in humiliation.

“Hadley,” he snarled.

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