Page 38 of Their Princess

My three mates turned wide eyes on me at the same time my fathers and Jol laughed.

“Challenge accepted,” Trey said. “I’m going to make you a meal tomorrow that you’ll beg me to make weekly after.”

“We should learn some new recipes now that we have Elrith,” Mason whispered and tapped his finger on the table in thought. “We need to introduce him to healthy foods early.”

“Or he might end up picky like Kayden,” Mom teased.

“I’m not picky!” Kayden argued.

“You’re the pickiest person at this table,” Caleb argued. “Which is saying something since Lily is here.”

“I just prefer meat,” I countered.

“And sweets,” Branson said.

“You’re the one who always spoiled her by giving her sweets,” Nana Jolie countered.

“He was just trying to win her heart, and he did so with the power of sugar that he carried around in his pocket,” Triston said with a smile. He turned to me, his tiger striped hair flopping over one eye. “You’d start crying and he’d pull out a candy from his pocket.”

“It was the quickest way to calm her down,” Branson countered.

They argued back and forth a bit and Jol leaned over to whisper, “I can see why you turned out the way you did. You have a wonderful family.”

I smiled and nodded. “I do have a wonderful family.” And now it had grown with the addition of Elrith.

“When do I get to see my great grandson again?” Nana Jolie asked.

“Wait, what?” Great Aunt Leona asked. She looked at me. “Are you pregnant?”

“I adopted a hybrid demon boy,” I explained with a smile. “Sorry, I didn’t exactly have time to send out announcements yet.”

Great Aunt Leona gasped, stood, and walked to Caleb. “Take me to him!”

Laughing, I said, “You can meet him after dinner, Great Auntie. You can give him the cheesecake slice I ordered.”

With a resigned sigh, she sat back down. “Very well, I accept your offer.”

“So, it is the boy who can shift?” Jol asked.

“Yes,” I admitted. “He was worried about telling you.”

“It isn’t something our kind can do, so I understand his hesitancy. I think you are correct, that he is like you, a hybrid demon. That could be where his shadow powers come from as well.” He frowned. “I wonder if he could be related to you, since the shadow power is so rare.”

“Related to me?” I asked.

He nodded. “Perhaps your demon parent found a family to raise him, since he looks more demon than hybrid? Perhaps they knew he would face many hardships in this world versus ours.”

My brows furrowed as I considered it, but my parents had died when I was Elrith’s age.

“What if your missing mother was Third to Reign’s daughter, a demoness, and she went back to the demon realm? What if she left you with your hybrid father here, because you lacked horns and demon features, so she knew you would do better here and after returning to the demon realm, she found a new mate who she had Elrith with?” Mason suggested. “It’s not unheard of for women to have babies so far apart.”

“But, if she was alive so recently, then why did she allow the Grand Advisor to cause such havoc?” I asked. No, I didn’t think that made sense. Shaking my head, I said as much.

“It was just a theory,” Jol said. “He could be a cousin or some other type of relative.”

It was an interesting theory, though. And it made me wonder what had happened to my biological mother.

Shaking my head, I cleared it of the thoughts. It was best not to go down that thought path.

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