Page 16 of Have a Bear-y Little Christmas

“Y-y-y?—”

I was almost there, and I was nearly beside myself. I’d never heard my even-keeled, matter-of-fact daughter sound so truly terrified, and it was making my inner bear stand up andbellow.No one hurt our babies!

“Addy, what’s wrong?” Eva asked, growing increasingly beside herself. Fuck, had I just ruined Christmas with a terrible idea? I thought I was getting the hang of this single-dad thing, but had I just put my children’s safety at risk?

“It’s okay, I get scared about things too. Here, you close your eyes, okay, and I’ll put a Band-Aid on it. I think your daddy is coming, so he can kiss it all better.”

The boy reached into his pocket and pulled out a box of bandages, then pulled his glove off with his teeth. I reached them as he finished putting one on a fairly large gash on my daughter’s shin.

He grinned up at me. “Hey there, Mister! You the daddy?”

“I’m the daddy,” I said, offering him a grin even though I very much didn’t feel like smiling. “Addy, you okay? I’m here now.”

She opened those gorgeous, green eyes of hers and looked up at me. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “It’s sored!”

“I know, baby, I know,” I said, getting down on my knees and opening my arms up to her. This was the part about being a shifter parent that wassohard. I wished that my babies had the same healing ability that I did, that their pain could be whisked away just as quickly. But no, that wouldn’t happen until they gained their animal forms. “It’s okay, Daddy’s here now.”

“Big man, is everything okay?”

Normally, I would have turned to address the speaker, but my balance was tenuous on the ice, and I was on my knees. A moment later, the owner of said voice came into view. All that was visible of the short, bundled-up woman’s face was her hazel eyes and wavy blonde hair under her knitted cap.

“Everything is okay, Mama. This girl here fell. I was helping.”

Oh, so this was the mother? They were both quite short, but while the boy was barely a waif of a figure even all bundled up, the woman was significantly thicker in a way that was hard not to notice—and appreciate.

“Goodness, did you have a fall, sweetie?” she asked.

Addy nodded into my shoulder.

The corners of the woman’s eyes crinkled like she was smiling before her gaze flicked to me. “Would you like a little, uh, help getting over to the sidelines?”

I flashed her a smile, grateful for her help, but my mind was still in panic mode. The way both of my girls were sniffling was sending my bear into a tizzy.

Protect. Protect. Protect. Protect!

“How could you tell?” I said after a hard swallow. I was aiming for humor, and thankfully, the woman chuckled.

“To start, you don’t have skates on. Also, I came from the bleachers on the other side of the rink to here in about the same amount of time it took you to get here fromthere.” She pointed at the closest exit, and for a moment I was baffled. It had seemed so much farther away when I was slipping across it in my boots.

“Jeez, rub salt in the wound, why don’t ya?” I joked as she offered me a hand. I was a bit reticent about a much smaller person hauling my six-foot-one frame off my knees while on the ice, but clearly the woman had some strength to her because she managed just fine.

“Do you want to get on my back, Miss…?”

“Addy!” Eva offered bravely.

“Miss Addy? Or do you think you’re ready to skate if we do it real careful-like?”

“I…” Addy sniffled some more and glanced down at her leg, where the Band-Aid had stopped the flow of blood. “I didn’t like that. It was…”

“It was scary, wasn’t it?” the woman said, sounding so much like her son. “I understand. I don’t like blood, either. It gives me the heebie-jeebies!”

“What if I attract a vampire?”

Oh shit.

That was another thing about being a shifter in the human world. My girls were part of both worlds, and would continueto be for the rest of their lives unless they chose to separate from the human one, so they knew that some magical things were real. I supposed I’d forgotten to mention to them that those kinds of bloodsuckers didn’t exist—as far as we knew—but I hadn’t even been aware theyknewabout vampires beyond Count Chocula.

Lesson learned. We needed to discuss vampires, mummies, and perhaps the Loch Ness monster at another time.