Page 42 of Star-Crossed
They both gave her thewhat’s the big dealshrug. “She’s a good milker,” Gemma said, as if that were bloody obvious this whole time.
“Well, excuse me for not assuming Randall was a lady goat who could be milked.” Lyra crossed her arms over her chest, wondering why she felt defensive and a little left out.
Maybe because of the way her twin was eyeballing her. “I thought you knew better than to assume gender these days, Lyra.”
Grunting, she crafted maybe the weirdest defense of her life. “There isn’t any social precedent that dictates I should extend goats the courtesy of a gender identity. Like if you can milk them…they’re ladies. Randall should be named Rhonda or some shit.”
Both women gasped, and Gemma mimed clutching her pearls. “OMG, Lyra! You’d never say that about another human!”
“Yeah,” Cady chimed in. “Maybe we should send you to Kiki’s to borrow Randall. You can apologize to her while you drive her back.”
Gemma shook her head. “No, Lyra has to stay here for Full Moon Sabat.”
“The what?” Lyra was so lost. What fresh level of hell was this?
A plaintive yowl filtered down from upstairs.
Lyra frowned and stepped away from her sister and Cady. “Don’t go anywhere. I need to check on Larry. She might be having kittens.”
Was it the same asshole misgender-naming all of these pets?
She ran up the stairs two at a time and stopped in front of the door to her bedroom. Inside, Larry was attempting to settle in a cardboard box full of paperwork.
Lyra scooped the fat black cat into her arms, soothing her as she squirmed and complained against her chest. “It’s okay now, girl,” she whispered as she stroked the cat’s back.
After retrieving blankets from her closet, she laid them in the box for Larry to settle in and tucked a clean towel around the makeshift nest.
Immediately, Larry wound into a ball, breathing hard but purring louder than Lyra had known was possible.
Not that she cared, but she had read eleven articles on how to assist in a kitten birth and was glad to learn that basically you did nothing but make sure the mama was not in distress.
To be fair, Larry always seemed slightly distressed, but at the moment she peered over at Lyra with a hard determination that made her heart threaten to burst open.
“Don’t worry, Mama, I’ll be here.”
Planned or no, these kittens were coming, and she was going to make sure they were the safest, cleanest, comfiest goddammed kittens ever born.
As if on cue, a notification chimed from her phone, alerting her that someone had tripped the shop’s security camera.
“Who the fuck?” Someone was unlocking the door to the shop!
Lyra raced out of the apartment and down the stairs, snagging Gabe’s baseball bat on the way out.
Not today, Satan.
She thumb-typed in 911 and hovered over the send button as she charged down the stairs and into the shop, ready to do battle with the dark-haired man on the camera.
What she found when she reached the bottom floor was a handful of expectant faces peering over a stanchion of self-help books as ifshewere the interloper.
Lyra tucked the bat away when she realized the entire group looked like the rejects from a Renaissance fair.
This must be whatever fuckery Gemma had referred to before she abandoned her own twin to go ruin some lactating goat’s evening.
“Can I help you?” she asked in a tone that posed the real question,What the fuck are you doing here?
“Don’t mind us. We’ll set up over here.” A dark-haired man with—no shit—laces in his blouse sauntered toward the back corner with what only could be identified as a rucksack.
“Idomind.” She advanced through the aisles to cut off his progress.
