Page 32 of Accidentally Wedded To A Werewolf

Luna looked over at Grandmother Musgrove. “Wolf lessons?”

She nodded. “Every second Saturday from the ages of five to thirteen, we get the children together and tell them of our history—Musgrove, of course, but also wolf. Family stories, rituals. What they should expect as they grow.”

“Aw! That’s sweet.” Luna beamed around the table. “You guys aresonice. I always heard werewolves were all, like,rowr!with each other.”

The table fell silent. Everybody looked at each other.

“Not, like…” Luna giggled nervously, making a clawing motion with her manicured hand. “Not, like,bad. Just…rowr!You know?”

“We can be,” Uncle Roy said gruffly.

“Oh, don’t be like that, Roy.” Aunt Barney took a napkin out of one of her million pockets and dabbed at her mouth. “Some of us are, dear. Just like any family.”

“What are yours like?” Aunt Althea asked, gold fang flashing as she spoke. She tucked her hand into a fake claw. “Are theyrowr?”

“We’re rowr-dy,” Luna said. It got her a decent laugh. “Yeah, we have tons of fun. We don’t do family dinners, though. This is so cute!” She gave them another smile, extra-bright to make up for the awkwardness. One lesson she learned young: if you acted cute enough, people let you get away with anything.

She snuck a glance at Oliver. He was chewing slowly, ignoring Ben who was trying to make pointed eye contact with him from across the table.

Sabine asked, “Are you close?”

“I mean… We work together, technically.” Luna poked at a stray piece of tomato, wondering why she felt so exposed. She talked about her family all the time at charity events. It was what everyone knew her for.Luna Stack, daughter of Henry Stack,who liked to introduce herself. Then they’d ask how he was, and she’d say he was great, even if they hadn’t talked in months. Which happened often enough. Not on purpose, obviously. They were just busy with their own awesome lives.

“Everyone has their own things going on,” Luna continued. She busied herself with slidingmore salad onto her fork, feeling weirdly exposed. The Musgroves lived together and plaited each other’s hair, and they went to the movies and ate dinner together every night. And Luna couldn’t be bothered driving forty minutes to her parents' place. Last year, she’d been in the neighborhood for a hen’s party and dropped in to say hi. Their first question when they saw her in the foyer waswhat are you doing here? Did something happen?

She watched Darren poke his big sister with a fork. Vida poked him back, scowling. It made Luna miss her own little brother, which was weird. She didn’t usually miss her brother. She didn’t miss her family, period—until she started watching the way the Musgroves fit together.

Luna gave her the biggest smile she could manage. Nobody knew she had designed that logo. Her dad had laughed in her face when she admitted she wanted to work in graphic design and marketing.

Don’t worry your pretty little head about it,he’d told her. He wouldn’t be happy if he found out she was “meddling,” as he called it whenever she tried to have a say in the company he’d built.

“Totally,” Luna said. “Um, thank… thank you.”

Leo spoke up. “Hey Grandma, is Uncle Ollie gonna be alpha this year?”

The table went silent again. Oliver’s grip went white around his fork, then forcibly relaxed. He didn’t look up at Grandmother Musgrove, who looked up from her steak to give Leo a warm smile.

“Maybe next year,” she said.

“But you said thatlastyear,” Leo pointed out. He gave Darren a knowing look, who frowned back at him like he was annoyed at Leo for saying it.

Sabine cleared her throat. “I like your hair, Aunt Althea. New beads?”

Aunt Althea gasped, holding up the beads she’d woven into her hair.

Luna stared at Oliver. He was nodding blankly, barely pretending to be interested as the others admired Aunt Althea’s hair. Luna always assumed somebody had to die to replace an alpha. Was it just like handing over a job? Had he been on track to be alpha, then something happened to make her change her mind? Everybody had gone silent, so what was the story there?

Darren shoved the last piece of broccoli on his plate and stood.

“Chocolate time,” he announced, heading over to a drawer and emerging with a paper bag that Luna had been holding only a few hours ago.

“That’s for guests, honey,” Aunt Althea reminded him.

Darren pouted. “But Uncle Ollie ate them!”

“We can buy more tomorrow,” Grandmother Musgrove said. “It would be nice to support local.”

Darren ran around the table, distributing wolf chocolates.

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