Page 31

Mila

“Rissa couldn’t make it, but you know Harper and me,” Maddy said as Mila sat at the crowded table. “That’s Briar, Imani, and Cora. I thought we—”

“What’s in the box?” Briar asked, interrupting Maddy.

Without asking, she stood up, reached across the table, and grabbed the pastry box Mila set down a second ago.

She dragged it over the table so it was right in front of her when she sat down.

“I mean, nice to meet you, Mila. Did you bring Danishes? I was promised Danishes.”

“Briar, you’re being rude!” Maddy scolded the turquoise-haired woman.

“Often!” Briar said with an unrepentant grin, then opened the box. “Yassss! Danishes!”

Mila laughed at Briar’s antics. “I was told they were your favorite.”

“Friends. For. Life!” Briar declared before grabbing one and taking a big bite. She moaned with pleasure.

Harper hooked a finger in the box to slide it in front of her. “Oh, you’ve got the flaky pastry that Tag likes.” She picked up a palmier. “Can I take one over to him?”

“Of course,” Mila agreed. Harper got up and rushed over to where a massive muscular man was sitting at another table with Mikey.

Silas had the much smaller, delicate Tag snuggled on his lap.

Harper leaned over to give the pastry to Tag and then gave him a soft kiss.

The moment Harper turned away, Tag broke the pastry in half and shared it with Silas.

It was so sweet Mila almost said “awwww” out loud.

“I’ll make sure to include them at least once a week in your bakery box,” Mila said to Harper as she retook her seat.

“Bakery box?” Harper asked, grabbing a cookie to pop in her mouth.

“The Pack House is my first customer. I’ll be delivering baked goods to you five days a week,” Mila explained, proud to declare it to everyone. Gio had only finished working the details out with Jesse yesterday, but now it was official.

Mila’s Sweets was a business!

“Congratulations!” Imani said. Most of her long, bright pink braids were twisted in a neat bun at the top of her head with several of them free and artfully framing her face.

She was lithe and elegant, which should’ve made Mila feel dumpy and uncomfortable.

Except this woman had the most open and genuine smile that Mila couldn’t help but like her!

“Thanks!” Mila said, flushing with happiness. “Gio did all the paperwork for me, and Carter helped me buy and haul ingredients around. He’s also going to help me deliver, even though he claims 4:00 a.m. is an ungodly hour to be awake.”

“He’s not wrong,” Harper said. “Silas, Tag, and I are lucky that we ended up together and not a member of a flock. Not that I have anything against–ow! Imani, why did you kick me?”

“What’s a flock?” Mila asked.

Harper blanched. “Um, well, it’s, uh…” Floundering, she looked around the table.

“How long have you been with Gio and Carter?” Cora asked. Her expression looked mildly concerned.

“About a month,” Mila said. “Why?”

“Because that’s a long ass time to be together and kept in the dark,” Briar said, then flinched. “Maddy, what the fuck? Don’t pinch me like that.”

Maddy and Imani exchanged a look Mila couldn’t interpret.

“What’s going on?” Mila asked, all her earlier happiness melting away as anxiety took over.

“You need to sit down with Gio and Carter and ask them to tell you, um…” Cora’s sentence trailed off as she searched for the right word. “Stuff.”

“Stuff,” Mila said with a shake of her head. “Can you be more specific? Are they in the mob?”

Cora's mouth dropped open at her question at the same time Briar barked out a laugh. “That’s the best guess ever!”

Mila flushed, feeling dumb. “Please don’t laugh at me. My other guess was way more stupid, so I went with one that was slightly plausible."

“She’s not laughing at you,” Imani said. “She’s laughing at the situation, I promise!”

Briar sobered. “I’m sorry Mila, I’d never laugh at you! Well, unless you got drunk and decided to go swimming in a fountain or something. But I think it’s fair to laugh at drunk people being cute.”

“Drunk swimming in a fountain isn’t cute, it’s a public menace," Maddy said. “And I don’t think you were finding it so funny when you almost drowned before I fished you out.”

“But I laughed later,” Briar responded, making Maddy’s expression go from unapproving to a reluctant smile.

“What was your other guess?” Harper asked. “My imagination sucks. I’d love to know what a creative person can think of.”

The sting of being laughed at diminished with Harper’s compliment. That gave Mila the courage to share the truly insane thoughts that were popping up more often lately.

“I thought Gio might be a vampire,” she admitted with a chuckle. “And Carter was his hellhound protector.”

The way everyone at the table went silent and stared at her wasn’t flattering.

“I know,” she said, filling the quiet with a forced laugh. “Very stupid!”

“Not stupid,” Harper said slowly.

The way everyone was exchanging looks made Mila suspicious. All the times Gio and Carter’s eyes seemed to glow came to her in a reel of images. And there was Carter’s growling and when his canines seemed to be a little too long. “There’s no such thing as hellhounds, right?”

“Carter isn’t a hellhound,” Harper said firmly.

That wasn’t a denial of hellhounds, only assurance that Carter wasn’t one. If he wasn’t a hellhound but people kept referring to him as a wolf…

“Carter’s a werewolf!” Mila blurted. Harper jerked, Briar choked on a bite of Danish, Cora wouldn’t meet her eyes, and Imani sighed.

Maddy rapped the table with her knuckles. “This isn’t something we should be talking about,” she said firmly.

“No!” Mila said. The need to know gave her courage to demand answers from her new friends. “Tell me right now!”

“Mila,” Imani said. “It isn’t our place to say anything.”

“I can’t believe the guys aren’t over here,” Briar muttered, looking at the table where Gio and Carter were sitting and talking.

“It’s the spell Mikey bought for the place,” Imani said. “I got the same one for the bar section of my club. It makes it so the sound doesn’t travel well past a certain distance. That way, people can talk without the dance music drowning them out. They literally can’t hear us.”

Mila grabbed the half empty pastry box and slammed the lid shut, squishing the box a little.

“Tell me!” she demanded. “Or no one gets any more pastries.”

For some reason, everyone looked at Imani. The statuesque woman sighed. “Why do I have to decide?”

“Because you’re the only one without skin in the game,” Briar pointed out, casting a longing look at the pastry box. “Trust me Imani, that Danish was the best I’ve ever had. I can’t live my life without them now that I’ve tasted pastry paradise."

Imani met Mila’s eyes. “I’m only doing this because this is better than you finding out because a fight happens right in front of you.”

“Or kidnapping!” Cora interjected. “We both had to go through that.”

Mila looked back and forth between the two women. “Fights? Kidnapping? Are you sure this isn’t a mob thing?”

“Not the mob,” Imani said. She pulled back her lips and opened her mouth a little. Mila watched as her canines slid down, sharp and glistening. Then she closed her mouth, and it all disappeared, and she went back to looking like a normal person.

Mila went perfectly still as she processed what she’d seen.

“Fangs?” she whispered.

Imani nodded.

“Vampire?” she asked.

Imani nodded again.

She moved her gaze to Cora sitting next to Imani. “You too?”

Cora shook her head. “I’m human, but I’m soul bound to a vampire.

That makes me a member of his flock.” She pointed to a table where a massive man sat with a slightly smaller man.

Both were looking at a phone and laughing.

“They’re watching cat videos. Pike is addicted to them and makes Kimble watch them all the time.

The bigger one is Pike, he’s a black bear shifter. Kimble is our vampire.”

Mila stared at Kimble and Pike, but to her, they looked as human as everyone else. Except maybe everyone else wasn’t what they seemed either.

She felt strangely calm, probably because they couldn’t all be crazy, so either she was in the middle of a psychotic break or this was all true.

She moved her gaze back to Imani. “There are vampires and people who can turn into bears. What else?”

“I’m a wolf shifter,” Harper said, holding up a muscular arm as if volunteering for something. “Silas is also a wolf, and Tag is a druid.”

“Wolf,” Mila murmured. “Is that what Carter is?”

“Yes,” Maddy said. “Like Mikey.”

“What about you?” Mila asked Maddy.

“I’m human, like Briar and Cora,” she said. “But I’m not soul bound to a vampire. Up until Briar and Memphis mated Tobias, Mikey hated vampires.”

“Yeah, he tried to take on Tobias,” Briar said with a shake of her head. “That almost ended badly.”

Maddy grabbed Briar’s hand. “He was only trying to protect you. We were all worried.”

Mila might have stumbled into a strange world where vampires, animal shifters, and soul bonds existed, but she couldn’t fault the genuine love and support these women had for each other.

Even now Maddy was telling Briar she wasn’t angry or hurt about keeping Tobais a secret at first.

Cora was thanking Imani for revealing herself to Mila.

Harper was busy explaining to Mila that wolf shifters, especially alphas like her, Silas, and Carter, were only violent when they felt their pack was being threatened.

“Most of us just want to spend time with the ones we love,” she concluded, casting a glance over at Silas and Tag.

She couldn’t help it, she looked over to where Gio and Carter were sitting. Something Carter said made Gio roll his eyes and take a sip of wine.

“That’s not wine,” Mila whispered. All the talking at the table stopped again as everyone glanced over to see what she was looking at.

Imani spoke first. “No, that’s not wine,” she agreed, holding up her own glass.

“But it’s not stolen either. This is blood that would've been destroyed by the blood bank. There’s a company owned by a vampire that takes that blood and sells it to us.

We aren’t monsters. Well, the vampires here aren’t monsters. ”

Mila nodded thinking of all the mugs of his special drink Gio would sip. The bags of blood in the small refrigerator on the third floor. The time she thought she saw a hint of fang when they made love…

“I’m an idiot,” she moaned, dropping her head down on the pastry box, flattening it with her forehead.

“Hey now, you’re not an idiot!” Maddy said, rubbing her back.

“I agree with Maddy,” Briar said. Then Mila felt a tug on the box. “Please don’t punish the pastries!”

Mila lifted her head and let Briar take the box. “How did I not put it together?”

“Because it’s fantastical,” Imani said. “If someone came to you and started spouting off about these things, you’d think they needed to up their meds. If you saw a video, you’d assume it was CGI or AI. We don’t see what we don’t think is there.”

Imani’s words made her feel better. All the movies with angry villagers attacking vampires or scenes with werewolves being killed by silver bullets filled her with fear.

“Is the sun deadly to your kind?” she asked Imani.

“Yes,” Imani said. “Other than that, we’re pretty hard to kill.”

What if something happened to the house during the day? Like a tornado or fire? Wait, were there tornadoes in Southern California?

It didn’t matter, there could still be a fire!

“Gio needs a fireproof safe room,” Mila announced, making all the conversations at the table come to a screeching halt. To her surprise, no one asked her why she said that.

“Oh, she’s one of us now!” Cora cheered.

“I’ll drink to that!” Briar said, holding up her mug of beer in one hand and a Danish in the other.

“Welcome to the family,” Imani said, raising her wine glass. “It’s not always easy, but it’s worth it.”