10

The next several weeks were some of the best in my life. The child inside of me was healed in a way I never thought she could be and my dad said over and over again how much better my soul looked.

Neldor had rented a different Six Flags Park each week for us to play all we wanted but also for the kids of Faerie and those helping them. It was a blast. It wasn't just the amusement parks, but the water parks too. He had one for each week of the full summer.

And that was just what he had completely rented out.

Fine, I forgave the idiot… After he promised no more surprises. Our lives were too crazy for that, and we were working hard to build trust. Don't undermine that.

Idiot.

But an awesome idiot. There was way more than that weekly huge outing. We did a tour of every Disney Park around the world and… Yeah, the kid inside of me was healing. I got to go with my friends, my dad, and people who loved me. I cried as we watched the fireworks and they just all hugged me. It was… Magical.

Ignore the pun.

I was still training and yes, there was some work we couldn't push off, but the first month of summer break was parks and food challenges. Mostly.

It was fucking awesome. Seriously.

And from what the royal healers and Professor Sontar told us, it was pushing our magic higher and higher. I believed them. I was only doing one huge awakening of fairies a week and putting all I could into Faerie.

So was Neldor… And the proof was in the pudding.

Not that I ever really understood what that phrase meant, but whatever.

The scientists and specialists in Faerie who were at the center of helping the planet and the animals were thrilled with everything Neldor and I had been doing to help Faerie. We'd been overgrowing forests and grazing fields to provide ample food for the wildlife.

And if animals in Faerie were well-fed, they wanted to mate. I was fairly sure it was more complicated than that and not a full stomach got them in the "mood."

I was from Faerie and it didn't work for me like that after all.

It was more that if they were well-fed and knew there was food for any young they had that they would nest or make dens and be drawn to find partners. That was what the very long and somewhat boring explanation boiled down to.

But we'd done an excellent job with what Faerie needed. The last count had us back to pre-war levels once the new animal babies born grew up. Basically, we had the head count but not the same percentages of adults and so on.

Though they were mostly estimates, those estimates were done with magic, so that helped. And Neldor and the commanders looked ready to throw a party when we got the numbers last week. So I took them as pretty damn accurate.

And it was all really important not only to help the world, but because of the idea Ronald Von Thann had wanted to discuss at the graduation dinner I'd hosted. I had let what Neldor said stand that it wasn't the time to discuss and we would have the right person contact him later.

That person was Lucca after taking on the official role as Neldor's right hand. He sat in a meeting and listened to the idea to help us, and while there had been holes and a lot his dad didn't understand about Faerie, apparently it had some merit.

Enough so that the idea grew, and by the time it reached me to approve, a few of the commanders were involved and Hudson's brother Connor as well. That threw me for a loop or ten.

Andthey wanted to grow it bigger to include several heirs of prominent Alphas to show the community and possibilities of working together in the future. Lucca wanted to turn the idea as a way to make it clear that the new generation of leaders wanted to move on from the past and a lot of the old bullshit.

I didn't know if that was possible, but no one would have ever have thought there could be peace between the light and dark realms… So I was open to a lot and trying to do better in the future.

I simply didn't know if this idea was the way to go about it.

So what was this idea?

Hunting. Specifically, hunting the animals of Faerie.

Yeah, I needed that one broken down for me too.

It started when word of Hudson getting to eat a shark in Faerie got spread around. It wasn't anything to hide, mostly it was an honor that he got to do it, especially in dragon form, and the story made the rounds. When it reached Ronald Von Thann's ears, the man—and apparently his bear—was jealous. It was something a lot of shifters only dreamed of.

Dragons too from what I'd seen from the people in Hudson's orbit and even comments from Juan.

The Alpha thought it was smart and motivating to tap into that emotion to be productive. I wasn't shocked since he was a bully… But others agreed with him.

Even Neldor.

Izzy had felt the same as I did when I told her about this and it seemed more playing with fire. The idea screamed to me as giving us the potential for new enemies that were pissed they weren't included or would try to get into Faerie for our rare animals.

Look how things had gone with our unicorns and dogs?

Fuck, even the hobgoblins. History taught us that supes did not respect Faerie the way others had said. The moment fairies were gone, they did anything and everything they could.

So yeah, this was opening Pandora's box to me, and I wasn't inclined to risk the ripples from doing that. Not when we were doing so well and getting a lot handled all on our own. We were way ahead of the original plans and projections.

Did I want more done? Yes, of course. I wanted it done yesterday so my people were in nicer housing and had better lives. Of course, I did.

But at what cost? Risking war and problems later?

No thanks.

I went to Katrina Calloway… Or really, I had seen her when we did another art auction for my paintings and she always got me to spill what was worrying me. When I told her my concerns, she immediately knew the way to handle it.

A third party.

Yes, that sounded like it would benefit her, but she didn't actually mean herself. She meant the dragons host it at their place or something so it wasn't hunting in Faerie. That rule could not be broken. There wasn't hunting allowed in Faerie besides by licensed and designated fairies.

That made me feel worlds better. I could get on board then. It might seem silly or like pushing a nuance that took time, but once people got a waiver on a rule, they pushed and pushed and… It never ended well.

Once she helped me voice my concerns to Neldor, Lucca, and the commanders, they agreed it was smarter. I was glad because they had originally acted like I was being too much.

Maybe I was. I could accept that.

Butmy job was to protect the whole world and everyone in it. That was a huge fucking job and I wanted to never fail at it. So yeah, I'd rather pull any plug instead of risking something going wrong.

More should try that instead of taking stupid risks.

Yes, I knew that was hysterical coming from me of all people, but I thought it was a sign of my growth. Plus, I had support. When I was on my own, risks were all I could take.

Things were different and we had to be smarter.

The shifters were in when we put out feelers. Like they were all in.

Okay then. I cracked some jokes about men being idiots, but Lucca informed me that the women in his family were the ones so excited. It wasn't a sex thing.

It was a shifter or having a beast inside of them thing.

Fair enough.

The next issue was I didn't want this to be a thing for only the rich. We had the art auction for that. The sword tournament that was happening in a few weeks with the commanders. There was talk of doing another one in the fall for MMA-type fighting. That was for people who could afford it and we had lots of funds to use as a result.

What we needed was manpower. We needed more hands to build and fix and… All of it.

And I wasn't trusting that people would pay up when they got what they wanted. Call me cynical, but I called it prudent. A lot of people in these communities had done a lot to screw over Faerie and her people when fairies weren't around to force them to behave as they should.

So yeah, I wanted payment first.

Crazy, right?

The main part that Ronald didn't get that Lucca was now more familiar with was how to pay or what services we would want. He leaned into shifters being strong and durable so tearing down old buildings and the manual labor of getting it out.

Yeah, but that was something simple to do with magic. Our strong fairy magic at least. Someone with enough power went and basically dissolved the building into nothing. I turned a huge one into confetti to entertain people. That wasn't easy and not just anyone could do it, but it wasn't super hard and certainly not the best use of help.

Magic could do a lot, but it was a lot of intent. "Easy" instructions like destroy what I was touching. More complicated concepts were the hard part.

The best example was the one Lucca gave his dad. He had me dig out an area with magic. It was a mess. It was just "dug out." There was nothing exact or defined. It would take me just as much time and focus to use magic to dig out and level an area for a building foundation.

That was where the help was needed.

Same with putting in the foundations and leveling it. It was just as much effort to have a cement truck and people leveling it after than magic. Putting up beams or structures? Magic. For sure magic was better.

But the brickwork to make it blend and look like it belonged in Faerie? Yeah, that took too much effort in magic. It was too precise. So was even putting up drywall and nailing things in. A nail gun worked better than having me magically put them in.

Really, it did. So once we went over how the specifics went for us, Ronald understood it better and was impressed how Lucca had paid attention to the details. There was a reason Lucca was the right man for the job and it wasn't because I cared for him no matter what some people said.

And it was a lot of jobs that people who weren't contractors or construction certified could at least help with. If they had enough knowledge or at least were willing to learn, almost any idiot could use a nail gun and not shoot themselves in the foot.

I really hoped that was true at least.

The timing worked out really, really well even because we had about two dozen buildings that were going up that needed insulation put in. And again, that wasn't something magic helped the process with.

Then I realized it wasn't a coincidence and Lucca knew what was going on and had planned it. That was something shifters could help with since everything was there.

So for a week before the event, different groups worked with our people. From the reports I received, people did the work. They understood this was important and not just for this one event but the future of their pack, sloth, or group with fairies.

Connor organized a ton of dragon nobles and upper-class shifters his age to help for several mornings as more a gesture of good faith. He framed it as pushing their dragons and giving them something to make them happy. Dragons liked new and shiny. They were a lot like hobgoblins and curious about everything.

It worked. Seriously, Connor could talk a penguin into buying ice. For real that man was skilled.

Everyone more than kept their end of the deal, so I would as well. I always did and people knew that about me. I wanted that to be what people always said about me. It was important to me.

So the morning of the event, hundreds of fairies came through one of the larger portals with a list of animals for the shifters to hunt or eat in their animal forms. I opened a large portal to the right spot at the bottom of the Vogels's mountains where the party would be. To say they were shocked at the sight was an understatement.

I didn't blame them. Dozens of the animals we brought were knocked out. They were predators and not easily managed.

Yeah, and you didn't transport lions by asking them to follow you either. A few of the animals we brought were bigger and scarier than a wild lion.

I didn't like that at first, thinking about how much I'd judged people for hunting lions or trophy kills. Lucca reminded me that they wouldn't be trophy kills though. It would be for food. No heads or trophies taken.

Plus, our animals weren't a concern for going extinct or endangered.

That was more than fair, especially since we focused on the types that we were sure were back to our normal numbers. Even over them when the babies all grew up. So it wasn't like horrible humans doing an African safari illegal bullshit.

I felt better when the commanders acted like it was odd too. It just wasn't something we could understand as fairies. Like I would have thought bringing our bears around other bears when they were going to be hunted.

But apparently, it was bears that wanted to. They wanted that… Challenge? Comparing dick sizes?

I wasn't sure, but they wouldn't be the ones eating the bear meat. Again, all weird to me but as long as someone ate the animals and their deaths weren't for fun only, I didn't care.

Or at least not enough to risk the event. There had been a lot of time and goodwill put into it.

We went all out. We had so much food and Faerie everything that Sasha and Xavier couldn't hide their shock when watching it all be organized.

"Apparently, this is how parties work in Faerie," I muttered to them quietly. "It's like the craziest kind of potluck and block party. That was how Stefanie put it so I would have the right reference. Part of it is that we eat so much that it has to be that way or the food would all be gone."

"Plus, your people are excited, which is a good sign," Xavier replied just as quietly. "Ours as well."

I nodded. I'd heard that a bunch of his family, Sasha's family, and the Rothchilds had gone to help harvest groves at the sanctuaries so there was a ton of fae fruit and produce. It was fun though and was starting to look like a movie set from like a Middle Ages piece. That probably wasn't the right comparison but… It was where my mind went.

The tents weren't like farmer's market tents or even camping ones. They were massive tents like I'd seen in those kinds of movies. They were fancy cloth and had sides. Maybe wedding tents could have worked, but they normally were like one gigantic one, not a bunch of them all over and set up like party rooms.

It was cool. It was really cool and I was glad we did it.

The rest stops were all closed in Faerie for the day, cooking for this event instead and helping on location. I walked around and thanked all the workers I saw, even the hobgoblins I had had problems with. We'd never be friends, but there hadn't been any more problems and I could move past what happened.

As long as they kept behaving.

The only hiccup was some of the hawk shifters were upset that we didn't bring birds from Faerie. That was a bit trickier, but when they were told we didn't have an overabundance of them like we did aquatic animals, they were fine. They hadn't known we'd brought a ton of live fish that were on ice that we were going to toss in a section of the Vogel's lake.

It was netted off because bad things could happen if we left animals from Faerie alive in this world. That lake connected to other bodies of water, and I wasn't the only one worried about an Asian Carp situation with a fish from Faerie taking over.

Or it would die quick. I honestly didn't know the answer or how that worked. But we'd seen weirder things so again, prudence was smart.

Right as the event was going to start, Hudson found me and seemed nervous.

"Hey, can we talk about something?" he said quietly.

Immediately, I stopped what I was doing and turned to him. "Yeah, what's up?"

He cleared his throat and glanced around. "No, it's fine. I shouldn't have brought this up today. It's stupid."

I frowned as I moved closer to him. I didn't have a thought in my head besides getting him away from the eyes that always made us both nervous. I moved my hand to his arm and teleported us to the other side of the lake which was more for dragons our age just hanging out.

"It's not stupid. Whatever is going on." I shook my head when he started to argue. "If it's upsetting you, it's not stupid."

"You don't even know what it is yet, shorty," he said as he leaned down to kiss me.

I accepted the gesture but then bopped him on the forehead. "I don't care what it is. If it's on your mind and you're worried to talk about it, it's important. I also don't care about the time. It's not a formal event all dressed up, and it hasn't even started yet. You're more important to me than this event."

His shoulders relaxed and he cupped my face before giving me a deeper kiss. "I love you, Tams. This is why I love you so fucking much. You think you're so bad at the emotional stuff, but you're not. You always make sure—I'm sorry I didn't have more faith in you."

I didn't even get mad, kissing him this time. "We have too much going on. Big stuff. We keep accidentally pushing things off that we shouldn't. I do it. I know I do it." I cleared my throat. "Julian helped me realize how to articulate that better. Or he learned through therapy, and I like how it feels when he handles anything that way. I want to make you guys feel the same."

"I agree. Totally. I've noticed it too and it's helped me in therapy." He let out a slow breath before leading me over to a tree lying on its side to be a bench. "My session the other day made me realize that I was holding something in and it was building into… Something bad. I don't think jealousy but—resentment? I was starting to be resentful."

"That happens. Tell me about what. I'll fix it if I can."

He kept my hands in his, fidgeting and stroking my fingers. "You agreed to talk to me about the role that I saw as my future when I brought it up. And you made that a priority. I saw that. We discussed it right after and that helped."

"It was my fault you were in any sort of limbo. I should have done better by you guys. I just—no excuses. I should have done better, and I feel bad how I treated you both."

He brought my hands to his lips and kissed a few of my fingers. "I feel like you're still doing it. You agreed to what I thought but…"

"But what, beastie?" I worried. "Tell me and I'll fix it. I swear I will."

He sighed. "You just agreed to what I wanted, Tams. We've talked before about roles and you saw things I did. I have the right background to help with the military and guards. Protecting the castle. I learned a lot from Trigger and—"

"I agree. I think you're the perfect person," I said firmly, feeling bad for interrupting, but I didn't want to risk his tunnel vision on this. "I didn't just agree with what you wanted. I agree with it. Completely." I flinched when a bit of anger filled his eyes and he hurried to look away. "Sorry. I just wanted that clear so we're on the same page."

"I know. And I can feel your worry and fear. I'm not being a tunnel-visioned idiot on this."

"I believe you. I'm glad." I sighed when he looked back at me. "Yeah, I'm still afraid of that on our issues. I get less scared every time you bring something like this to me. That's—I can't snap my fingers and get over it."

"No, that's fair and I don't want you to."

"I'm not being dismissive, Hudson," I said when he was quiet a few minutes. "I just don't—I wasn't placating you."

"Except that's what everyone else thinks you did, Tams," he growled as he jumped to his feet.

"And not the idiots who talk out of their asses?" I hedged, not sure how to ask if people were just blowing shit up. I nodded when he shot me an annoyed look saying he wouldn't care if it was the idiots. "Okay, then tell me what to do or how to fix this. I'm not seeing what I did wrong."

His face softened. "I'm not saying you did anything wrong, shorty."

"I'm not perfect and I mess up. I've messed up if you're hurt, Hudson. I just don't know—I didn't grow up with being in all of this and castles and stuff. I don't know what I'm doing, so talk to me. I never want you to hurt."

He winced and then knelt before me. "Yeah, this is why I said it was stupid. You don't get it."

"It's not stupid," I said firmly. "We've hurt each other without meaning to. That's the only hurt I'm willing to accept because I won't mate an asshole. I don't want you to mate one either. Tell me what's going on. Please? Help me understand because I don't have the background you do."

He frowned and met my gaze. "Is that the role you saw me having? Putting things into Tamsin for you?"

So clearly, he hadn't seen that as part of the role. I licked my lips and carefully considered what to answer, but he snorted, already knowing what I was going to say. "Part of it, yeah. I guess I saw you as my advisor on it. You sense more than I do, and you know the realm of…" I shrugged.

He nodded. "That helps. That makes more sense." He sighed when I simply kept staring at him. "I was getting resentful that you were working so closely with Lucca, and his job has structure and a path and mine was kind of just ‘whatever.'"

I winced. "I didn't mean it like that but yeah, I could absolutely see how it came off that way." I gave him a soft kiss. "I'm so sorry, beastie. It wasn't—your role isn't placating or whatever. I just don't know how to…" I moved my hands almost as if I was working a Rubix Cube, trying to show him that I didn't even know what I was doing or working the problem.

He moved his hands over mine. "Yeah, I get you, shorty. I didn't think of this side of it and I'm glad we talked. I only saw the side of you working excitedly with Lucca and not me."

I licked my lips and gripped his hands. "Beastie, what you're feeling is valid, but I think you're a bit sensitive on this too. I really haven't been doing much with Lucca. Neldor has. I've jumped in, but this was all them. He's Neldor's right hand, not mine."

He nodded after a moment. "That's fair, but I was supposed to be your right hand in a way, and I haven't felt it at all."

And that was where I had messed up. I said as much and was glad he'd brought it to me… I just didn't know what to do about it.