Page 52 of Enticing the Elf
“It’s not stupid to trust your boyfriend,” I snap. “He’s a malicious prick.”
Jared points at me. “What he said. The cheating was bad enough, but the rest just makes him a bad person. I’m glad you trashed his car. Too bad he didn’t have a boat too.”
There’s a stunned silence as Felix and I process that decidedly violent statement from our pacifist friend, and then he snorts a laugh. I bite my lip, not wanting Jared to think we’re laughing at him.
“What?” he demands. “Just because I live by the edict to do no harm doesn’t mean I can’t recognize when other people deserve to have their boats trashed.”
That does it. I laugh so hard, I fall backward into the clover, while Felix sounds like he’s choking. But the time I can breathe again, my eyes are wet with tears. I swipe them away and stare up into the endless blue of the sky, still chuckling lightly, letting go of the painful knot of memories. Alan is in my past and no longer merits my hurt. My concerns about Eoin don’t have anything to do with him cheating or deceiving me.
Something nudges against my arm, and I roll my head to the side and smile. “Hello, sweetheart,” I croon to Elsking, scooping her onto my chest and stroking her soft fur. “Did I startle you? I didn’t mean to.”
She doesn’t seem upset at all, sniffing around my shirt for a moment before she jumps back down and heads for the sage plants nearby. I sit up so I can keep an eye on her, and my gaze lands on Jared’s self-satisfied smile.
“You said that on purpose,” I accuse, and he shrugs.
“Of course. How would I have said it accidentally?”
That’s not what I meant, but I let it go. He’s a natural caretaker, so I shouldn’t be surprised that he wanted to lighten our moods.
Felix must agree, because he says, “On purpose or accident, thanks. I needed that.” He seems to have let his guard down, making him look a lot younger, and I remember what he said earlier and do a quick calculation.
“You’re only forty-two?”
He blinks at me. “Yeah. Why? How old are you?”
I shake my head. “More than a hundred times older than you. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude—I just thought you were older, for some reason.” I try to remember what I know about shiftermaturity. “Were you even considered an adult when all that shit happened with your ex?”
“Why wouldn’t he have been? He was… what? Twenty-eight or so,” Jared says, frowning, then glances at Felix. “Right? That’s what you said. You met when you were twenty-five and were together three years.”
He nods. “Yeah, I was. Dáithí might be confusing adulthood with reproductive maturity, which happens when we go through our second puberty.”
The way Jared’s jaw drops makes me wish I’d been recording. “What?”
“Shifters don’t go through puberty until they’re around forty,” I tell him. I can’t even remember how I found that out, so it’s not surprising that Jared, who only learned about the community this year and has been focused on us elves, not the other species, doesn’t know.
“Reproductive puberty,” Felix corrects. “We go through puberty at the same time as the other species, too, as we develop into adulthood, but it’s less intense. The theory is that learning to control our shift is already hard enough without adding reproductive hormones. That happens in our late thirties or early forties, when we’re adults and better equipped to handle it.”
“Wow. That’s… wow.” Jared’s eyes narrow. “Is that why you’re so aggressive on the ice? Hormones? Has your puberty finished yet?”
I cough. “Whoa, Jared. That’smelevels of nosy.”
His expression turns apologetic, but Felix waves him off. “I don’t care. No, it’s not finished yet—I’m a late bloomer. It’s made things really hard lately.”
It’s an effort to keep a straight face and not say, “That’s what he said.” Things being hard during puberty? It’s the perfect time for a dick joke.
But I’m proud of my mature restraint when he continues, “I’ll admit to being more annoyed than usual lately, but I’ve always been an aggressive player, and I just dialed it up when I realized it was the only way to hold my own against the bigger guys on the ice. When I was a teenager, my coaches encouraged it—there’s only so many spots on a team roster, and if the bigger guys have talent, they get picked first. If I wanted to play pro, I needed to bring more to the table than everyone else.”
“But you’re a great player,” Jared protests. “You have tons of talent! And the Warhammers is the only team in the league that doesn’t have a more even mix of player sizes. You’d still be able to play based on your talent and skills alone.”
Based on Felix’s face, that’s not true, but I don’t know enough about hockey to have an opinion. Maybe I should learn about the sport. If Felix and I are going to be friends—and I think we are—I should know a little about what he does. It’s friend law.
“Thanks,” he says, not sounding convinced. “But I don’t want to move away from here, and Coach would cut me if I stopped playing rough.”
“He’dcutyou?” I demand, outraged, and then my knowledge of sports terminology reasserts itself. “Oh. From the team.” It’s been over a decade since I learned to speak English, but sometimes I still get tripped up. “Would he really? Even if you were still scoring… points?” I’m guessing on that last word.
“Goals,” he corrects. “And yeah. He pushes us all to play rougher. It’s right on the edge of encouraging us to play dirty—in fact, I’m pretty sure he’s crossed that line with some of the guys.” Disgust mixes with misery in his tone.
Jared’s appalled. “That’s disgraceful!”