Page 4

Wrecking Ball

Aubrey

I wasn’t lying when I said assisting my mate gave my dragon immense satisfaction.

He preened the entire time we worked on her packing, despite it being such a little thing.

Rennie is much less amenable to that sort of thing, and his frenetic vibes were exactly why I sought our adorable bunny.

She soothes him differently than the gargoyle, which I needed after watching him zip around muttering in French while ignoring my very useful commentary.

It might have been snarky, but it was still helpful—a fact he did not appreciate fully.

“Are we going to see if Rennie is done now?”

Dolly looks over her shoulder at me, the long rainbow ponytail bouncing just above her curvy ass.

I adore that she’s not breakable—even more so since she’s embraced her body healthily.

When she first stepped into our lives almost three years ago, it was plain to see her mother and friends had bullied her into hating damn near everything about herself.

Mentally and physically, her self-esteem was decimated, even as she put on airs that she was fine.

Now, she’s so confident that she wears whatever she wants, does what she wants, and stands up for herself, not just others.

The transition has been absolutely stunning to witness.

My proud thoughts make the dragon rumble happily again, and I have to clear my head so I can answer rather than focus on that damn swinging hair I want to yank.

“Uh… Yes. I mean, we definitely should check in on him and the others. Since you and I are so efficiently taken care of, it would be selfish not to see if they also would like us to help.”

Her brows furrow as I fumble over my words.

After she sets the last bits of the things she packed for Jinx’s mini-vacation with the nurses, she comes over, standing in front of me.

I’m sitting on the bed so she’s looking down at me for once, combing her hands through my annoyingly lengthening hair.

“You know, just because the others grew their hair out doesn’t mean you have to.

It seems to irritate the hell out of you, big guy. ”

I give her an unimpressed look. “Bite size, I don’t do a damn thing I don’t want to, and you know it. I like that you enjoy longer hair and as such, I am committed to getting mine in line with that. Do you not wear things we like or groom yourself in ways that we enjoy?”

Her face turns bright red at that statement, and I grin wickedly as she sputters. “I-I… Well, I do. I mean, of course I do. You all have different quirks and no one asked me, but I?—”

Reaching up, I bop her nose with a fingertip.

“Exactly. You’ve let your hair get even longer because some like to wrap it around their fist. You buy underwear in bulk because everyone enjoys destroying it.

You wear things to show off your delectable ass, especially when you’re feeling saucy and let your cottontail out. ”

“Stahhhhp,” she groans as her flush spreads to her neck and shoulders. “Okay, okay, I give up! I just didn’t want you to do something you hated because of me.”

I wink at her playfully. “It’s in the ‘grow out’ stage, lunchable. Rennie tells me this will pass once it’s past the point of being longer than the tops of my ears. Not too much longer now, I think.”

The beautiful bunny steps back, holding her hand out. “Well, I love it no matter what length it is.”

“That’s not something any male wants to hear from their mate,” I grumble as I stand.

She blinks, her hand flying to her mouth as she giggles. “Aubrey! That is not what I meant. Oh, my fucking goddess!”

Her amusement makes me grin even when the point of humor rankles the dragon’s pride. “I couldn’t help myself. It was a perfect opening, as Fitz would say.”

“Fitz says that about a lot of things,” she counters with a smirk. “However, I don’t think any of my mates need to worry about my opinions on that. You’re all more than above average.”

Snorting, I grab her hand to tug her to the door. “And you haven’t even gone full dragon yet, you know.”

Dolly stops, turning to look at me with a shocked face. “Um… full.. you guys are planning to… uh…”

Oh, fuck. Her damn friends and Zhenga haven’t touched on that situation .

I face her, cupping her cheeks as I look into her blue eyes. “Many shifters do actually do that, yes, snack size. Full shift, half-shift, humanoid… it’s all the same, especially with your mate. I guess your class with Zhenga didn’t get that far, mm?”

“Our time at Apex was fraught with distractions and cut short, so no.” Dolly dips her chin, mumbling. “And I didn’t have that class at Cappie, plus Cori and Rufus got really focused on their dating life, and…”

“Mmmhmm.” I smile fondly, lifting her chin so she’s looking at me again. “Packing isn’t the only thing I—or the others—can teach you. Fitz and Felix have been doing so for a while, yes?”

“Yes.” Her response is breathy as she smiles shyly. “And I trust all my mates to show me new things that I will love. It’s worked out every time so far.”

“But if it doesn’t, you know what to do?”

“Say the word and everything stops,” she says without thinking.

I chuckle softly, kissing her lips lightly before I let go so we can leave her room. “Very good, lunchable. The tigers have done an excellent job.”

And I take advantage of it far less than I should—something I will remedy on our vacation, I believe.

“ Mais mes amours ? 1 , I cannot travel that distance without enough entertainment,” Rennie says mournfully as Dolly pulls two more books out of his bag. “This is impossible!”

How am I the one least angry about not being able to take an entire library with me?

“Rennie,” our mate says cajolingly. “We have my e-reader, plus Aubrey and I packed a few print copies. If he’s trimming the load so we can be less weighted down, you can, too.”

“She’s not wrong.” I add my two cents as I stride past them to re-fold the pile of clothes he’s definitely taking into smaller, manageable squares.

“And our brilliant bunny pointed out that if we need more, we can buy them at stores in stations, then donate them to someone rather than carry them once we’re done.

We have options, even if giving away books makes my dragon want to rage. ”

“Aubrey, mon cher , your dragon hates giving away anything .”

“Not to me,” our girl sing-songs as she prances over to the closet to hang up discarded clothes. “I get to pick whatever I want.”

“A fact I’m still salty about.” Rennie pouts and I stop my task to walk over and kiss the lip sticking out. “You don’t take me to pick fun hoard gifts.”

“ You don’t need anything from them.” I smile at him fondly. “Everything you want is bought and delivered by a crew of adoring prey animals. The lunchable barely even admits she needs things, much less goes on shopping sprees.”

Dolly turns around, putting her hands on her hips. “How did this become about me? This is about him insisting on taking half his worldly possessions on our trip. More than I wanted to, even!”

The gargoyle turns red at her words and I let go of him to go back to fixing his outfits. “It is not fair for you to gang up on me, you know. I much prefer it the other way around.”

“When we torture Aubrey?” she chirps cheerily as she eyes his shoes thoughtfully. “That’s fun, too.”

“Somehow, I believe our mate has kept herself out of the ring,” I say as I smirk at Renard. “We should attend to that this summer, eh?”

He doesn’t answer as he heads for the bathroom to retrieve his toiletries. This will be much easier than the clothing part; he shares most of them with me, so what we need is already in my bags. When he comes out with an armful of things, my eyes widen. “Rennie, what the hell?”

“ C’est nécessaire ? 2 ! ” His tone is plaintive and I curse internally. I must have ignored a glut of new shit in our bathroom, which made me think we wouldn’t have to fight him on this shit.

“Help?” I look at Dolly hopefully.

She walks over to our mate, looking at the pile of stuff he just dumped on the bed. Her foot taps as she turns over bottles and various things, then she sighs. “Rennie, I hate to tell you this, but… half of this stuff is a dark-colored duplicate of things I’m bringing with a woodsy scent.”

I frown in confusion. “What?”

“Just like girls have things we say have a ‘pink tax’, men are marketed women’s shit—or really, non-gendered products given an artificial gender by packaging and scents.

” Dolly grins and holds up a navy colored bottle with a weird nozzle.

“See this? It’s fucking mousse. Your bottle is ‘boy’ colored and smells like ‘eagle spirit’—which is not a thing—and my bottle is pink and purple with a floral scent. You’re being scammed.”

Rennie and I look at one another, then back at her before he says, “You will have things that are the same, then?”

“I have over half the things you just dumped here in my bags. As long as you can deal with them smelling girly….”

Our mate snorts, shaking his head. “ Ma cherie , I am French. Don’t be ridiculous.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, I nod at Dolly. “Remove anything you packed and put it back in the bathroom. Ren, you need to decide on shoes from the pile she set out for you—only from those.”

“Don’t let him choose over three pairs!” The shout over her shoulder makes me grin. My lessons seem to have taken well, and that means we’ll be much more streamlined when we set out for the trip into the mountains.

His eyes narrowed, my mate looks at me for a moment, studying my expression. “This is your influence, Flames. I feel it in my bones. You’ve put her through your travel boot camp and now she’s acting like the ‘spark joy’ woman. I’ll get you for this, mon ami .”

“Love, we’re going to head into the mountains after the train trip. Yes, we’ll be in a hotel beforehand, but can we trust anything left in the room not to be tampered with? No, we cannot. So it all has to come with us, and that limits what can be taken.”

“Yes, yes…” he sighs as he flops on the bed and looks up at the ceiling in grumpy annoyance. “It’s the fault of my relatives for hiding so far in the countryside. I’m aware.”

Dolly leans out of the bathroom. “That’s not why. Aubrey says we have to be honest about this stuff. Say the real reason, Rennie.”

I arch a brow, pride swelling in my chest. “The bite size bunny is correct.”

He throws up his hands, covering his face as he growls loudly.

“Okay, okay! I’m pissed that my actual parents didn’t even take a moment to respond.

They didn’t dictate a personal missive, either.

They tasked someone with telling me, and I know that’s because no one gives a rat’s ass that I’ve been gone for centuries. ”

“Better!” Dolly calls from the bathroom. “I mean, Lucille doesn’t give a shit if I live or die, Rennie. I know how you feel. It’s okay to be angry about it.”

My gaze finds the mournful gargoyle again as she pops back into the bathroom.

“Wisdom from the youthful, my mate. But you know my clash doesn’t care, either, nor does the Khan patriarch.

You are not alone, nor should you hide being upset by the way this was handled.

They may not deserve our emotions, but that does not mean we can simply stop having them. ”

And that’s about the end of the advice I can give him that I’m not using myself—hopefully the others will have some to share, too.