Chapter Three

Logan

While Jessie met up with the others hosting the ceremony, I wiggled my way through the crowd with Jessica on my hip until we made it backstage. I needed to see Zoey-bell in the flesh before she officially became a tracker. I wasn't as nervous as Jessie was about someone else messing up the day as I was about our daughter changing her mind at the last minute. She spent so much of her first few years of college lost and wandering. Sure, Jessie would be disappointed if she changed her mind, but I only wanted to make sure she walked down the path that would make her the happiest. Life was hard and despite how much longer shifters lived now that the human governments had fallen, it was also too short to do anything that didn't make you happy.

I spotted her with a group of soon-to-be trackers. Her girlfriend, Kata, clung to her arm the shortest in the group of graduates and their partners. I liked Kata well enough. She was a sweet fox shifter, but I couldn't help but wonder what would happen to their relationship the moment one of them met their true-mate. Zoey-bell always told me I was too old fashioned to understand modern dating. Maybe she was right. I had sworn it off for quite a while before I met her father.

"Dad!" She waved to me, pulling Kata out of the crowd.

I hugged both girls and Jessica slipped onto Kata's hip, chatting away in her ear.

"Everything go okay with Auntie?" she asked as we hugged again.

"So far, so good. Some of the guys tried to give Xander a hard time, but he handled them just fine."

"What's Hattie like?" Zoey-bell asked.

"She's an Alpha dragon," I told her. "Sweet but sorta quiet. Though, with this lot you know no one new can get a word in edgewise."

"I should've sent you guys duct tape to make ‘em shut their traps," Zoey-bell laughed.

"Zoella," Kata tapped her shoulder using her actual name, "I'm going to touch up my nose and find a seat, okay?"

"Is it that time already?" Zoey-bell glanced around.

"Yeah," I said, checking the digital clock hung high on the wall. "I should get going too."

"Stop by before you leave, okay? I have something I want to tell you and Dad," Zoey-bell grinned and hugged me again.

I hated when she did that. My eldest daughter loved to tell us that she had news and then make us wait to actually hear it. All through the ceremony, I'd wonder what the hell was going on with her now.

"At least if it's after the ceremony, she probably hasn't changed her mind about her career path," my wolf chimed into my thoughts.