Page 25 of His Fate
Or our baby sisters—Zoja, Svetla, and Lida—though they'd surely protest my referring to them as babies, then remind me that they were in their two hundreds and could fight with the best of us.
My heart aches for them and the void their loss has created in our lives.
But I smile.
Smile at their memory.
Smile at how they will be avenged.
I smile as I watch the glass container filled with chicken and vegetables and biscuits covered in the most delectable gravy spin in circles on the tray in the microwave.
I smile because they would love my mate, my beloved Josephine, and the way she is already trying to take care of me by providing me with meals prepared by her delicate hands. They would admire her strength and resilience. Her sense of responsibility and loyalty. My mother would adore Posey's devotion to family and nurturing qualities that are so much like her own.
And my father would jest over taking her as a second mate for himself solely based on the way she cooks.
So despite the hole in my heart, I smile because my beloved has given me reason to do that again.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you were wearing the look of a happily mated male."
I glance over my shoulder as Henrich walks in, dressed to the nines in his starched white button-up shirt and neatly pressed slacks. He has taken a liking to what he calls “power suits” since we migrated to America and rarely wears anything else. It suits him really, makes him look like the powerful healer and knowledgeable historian he is, but it doesn't stop Milos from his perpetual teasing.
I shake my head and pull my meal from the microwave as it dings. "We have not mated yet, brother."
"I am aware. Had you actually performed the mating ritual I'd expect to not see you for days, and when you reappeared from your den you would not be alone standing in the kitchen in your underwear reheating..." He sniffs the air then his eyes slide shut. "What is that delicious aroma?"
"Mine," I say around a mouthful of food that I could eat forty plates of.
Henrich grins as he takes a seat at the table. "Something from your mate then?"
I nod and shovel more into my mouth.
He laughs as Milos and Andrej join us.
"What is that heavenly smell?" Milos asks while coming to stand by me.
I pull the dish away and turn so he can't see it or get his hands on it. "It is mine."
Andrej huffs as he sniffs the air, takes a seat next to Henrich. Our eldest brother is dressed in a black T-shirt, black military grade cargo pants, and combat boots. Forever the captain of an army and the sharpest mind in the strategies of war.
"Chicken," he grunts. "Carrots, celery, potatoes...biscuits?" A twitch of his brow.
I nod and take another bite. "Posey cooked something called chicken and dumplings for dinner and offered to share it with me."
"And you only brought home enough for yourself?" Milos asks while leaning around me, trying to stick his fingers in my food.
I growl and snap at them. "She sent me home with what was left. For lunch. For me."
Milos pouts but gives up and takes a beer from the refrigerator and goes to join our brothers at the table.
"You do know lunchtime was hours ago, right brother?" Henrich grins.
I nod. "I am aware."
"And we are leaving to go have a meal and meet with the shifter woman in just over two hours?" Milos adds while picking nonexistent lint from his “dragons do it better” T-shirt.
Since traveling stateside, Milos has been able to express his idiocy on a whole new level thanks to online shopping. He has purchased at least fifty different dragon themed T-shirts, all with some sort of witty or stupid slogan laced with innuendo about our other half and though I find it moronic, my dragon gets a kick out of them.
Thank the gods Milos is a master blacksmith and forger of weaponry or else I'd have no use for him.
