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Taavi shrugged. “She doesn’t really need me,” he replied. “Andres has everything figured out.” Andres Kark was Taavi’s replacement in maintenance and housekeeping at Hands and Paws and the Arc-Arcanid Youth Center—Taavi was giving up most of his hours and switching to two afternoons a week at the AAYC in January when he started taking classes at VCU. He suspected that his boss, Marilee White, was giving him hours because she liked him, not because she needed extra help.

I was pretty sure that wasn’t what was going on. She was switching Taavi from maintenance to supervising the afterschool program—he was really great with the kids, and I knew Marilee appreciated the fact that the kids loved him back. She got someone to help with the kids, he got a few extra dollars, and the kids got a great mentor. And Andres, who had only just managed to get a work visa, got a full-time job. It was win-win for literally everyone.

I also knew that Marilee would probably let Taavi take as much time as he wanted. Doc and Ward had already said the same to me.

What I didn’t know is if I’d survive spending a whole fuckingmonthwith my parents.

Don’t get me wrong—I love my parents. I really do. But there’s nothing quite like living under your parents’ roof as an actual fucking adult to make you seriously start to regress into teenagehood while being painfully aware that you’re becoming a dickish, self-centered Neanderthal, and there isn’t a goddamn thing you can do about it except watch your own descent into petulance.

I hated to think what I’d be like after a month of it.

Taavi might strangle me.

And with that absolutely horrifying thought, I was jerked back in my seat as the plane lurched forward, accelerating as it hurtled us into the air and toward my childhood home and all the fucking baggage that went with it.

2

I was tryingveryhard notto tap my leg while waiting in the back of the plane for the people at the front of the flying tube of death to get the fuck off the stuffy thing so that the rest of us could breathe some air that hadn’t been recycled for the past three hours.

I rubbed irritably at the straps that were cutting into the backs of my pointy ears. Taavi raised his dark brows at me.

“I hate shit on my ears,” I muttered into the sweaty blue fabric over my face.

Taavi—who, being a shifter, has excellent hearing—snorted. He seemed a good deal less bothered about wearing his gaiter than I was by my mask, though. Maybe I’d get one in that style—it wouldn’t rub on my sensitive ears, for one thing, and it would be a practical way to keep my face warm in the state we’d just landed in, where it was currently happily hovering about ten degrees below freezing.

That’s December in Wisconsin for you.

At least it wasn’t snowing. Yet.

The line was finally moving, and I stopped in the aisle to let Taavi scoot out in front of me, glad that I could at least enjoy the sight of his tight ass in his jeans if I had to shuffle down the center of an airplane into the crowded Milwaukee airport.

Taavi shivered as he moved through the door onto the gangway, shooting a look back over his shoulder at me that was a tiny bit concerned.

The poor thing already thought Richmond was cold. He was going tohateWisconsin.

We walked through the overly-bright building, headed toward the main doors that led out of the airport and toward the arrivals pick-up. We were surrounded by a decent-sized crowd of masked people and Nids, including an annoyed-looking orc with three kids—all also orcs—and a spouse who looked perfectly human. I wondered if the kids had all turned or if any of them had been born that way—and then felt bad for the human mother. Orcs are huge, even as kids.

For her sake, I really hoped she hadn’t had to carry them as orcs.

One of the kids was excitedly hopping up and down, asking whether or not it was going to snow.

I saw Taavi glance sidelong in their direction, a slightly nervous expression on the top half of his face. It might not have had anything to do with the temperature or weather, of course, since I was also extremely anxious about the fact that I was about to introduce Taavi to my mother. If I’d been him, I’d have been stressed, too.

But he was already wearing the warmest thing he owned, which was a long-sleeve t-shirt, a cardigan, and a fleece, and it was twenty-two degrees out, according to the helpful little monitors all over the airport.

I reached over, holding out my parka on my arm.

He tilted his head in a question, and I was hit by a strong sense of déjà vu—a doggy-Taavi with his head cocked and one ear flopped over.

“You’re going to freeze your ass off,” I told him by way of explaining the parka.

“Aren’t you?”

“I was born here. I can hack it until we get to my folks’ house and my mother breaks out the spare coat she keeps, just in case.”

“She keeps a spare coat?”

“Honestly,” I admitted. “I don’tknow, but I really wouldn’t be at all surprised. If she doesn’t have one for me, she’ll almost certainly have one foryou—” Taavi was short, so he was closer in height to my parents. “—so it amounts to the same thing.”