“Hmm.” Lethe, back on two legs, waited with the goat until it got back on its feet. “Maybe you have to be gwyllgi to fully appreciate it?”
That she thought of me as pack, as gwyllgi, meant the world to me. For her sake, I would go terrify some goats. I would just have to ask the goddess, and maybe the goats, for forgiveness later.
The winning team earned a round of beers pulled from a cooler full of ice and hidden under a bush to deter poaching from the gwyllgi on patrol. Linus wasn’t a fan of beer. He preferred bourbon. Oddly enough, it was a taste he had developed thanks to Maud’s drinking habits. He was in the minority, however, and so he accepted the ice-cold bottle and drank deep. His pajamas were plastered to him with a combination of paint and sweat, and mud caked his feet. The frosty drink was heaven.
“You can’t go through life decapitating that which annoys you,” Cruz said, voice scratchy. He touched the splatter of bright paint coating his throat from where he dove to avoid a headshot. “You get that, right?”
“It’s worked well for him so far,” Hood pointed out. “He’s rich, girls seem to think he’s handsome, and he’s marrying the woman of his dreams.”
“Most of that is genetics.” Corbin winked at him. “The last one is pure luck.”
Luck, or the result of meddling mothers who felt they’d known what was best for their children.
The marriage contract between Grier and him had always set his stomach roiling, but she had been the one to rediscover it in Maud’s library, and she had been the one to enforce it.
That Grier had chosen him, contract or not, that she loved him… He didn’t understand why or how, but he was determined to do his best to ensure she never changed her mind.
Oscar drifted over to Corbin and slumped against his shoulder. Maintaining his corporeality for this long was difficult for him, carrying and loading a weapon was even harder. It required intense focus that drained him for hours afterward, sometimes even days. For Oscar to attend the wedding, he had to be put to bed now and given time to recover.
“Go on.” Corbin gave him a push, and like a slow-motion balloon, Oscar drifted toward the house. “I promise I’ll catch you up on what you miss.”
“Okay.” He yawned. “See ya.”
“Now that the kid’s gone, the real fun begins.” Hood rubbed his hands together. “Let’s do this.”
Using the tail of his shirt, Linus wiped the sweat from his eyes. “What did you have in mind?”
“There’s a club in town—”
Midas cut in, his bright eyes laughing at Linus. “A strip club?”
“Have you met your sister?” Hood searched the bushes to his left and then to his right, checking to make sure his mate wasn’t about to ambush him. “No, it’s not a strip club.”
Discontented grumbles rose from the single guys, but Linus was relieved to have that staple of traditional bachelor parties off the table. He could appreciate a beautiful woman, and he could appreciate a beautiful naked woman, but he would prefer both of those to be Grier.
“Just get in the SUV.” Hood sounded disgusted as he herded them toward the driveway. “I borrowed Princess Sparkle to haul your worthless asses around for the night.”
“You brought that thing?” Corbin twisted up his lip, exposing fang. “It’s Pepto Pink.”
“Get over it,” Hood barked. “It’s my baby’s favorite color.”
Cruz picked fuzzy green burrs off his pajama top. “Lethe or Eva?”
“We don’t call her Eva-Diva for nothing.”
“You couldn’t have waited until she turned sixteen and bought her this?” Corbin recoiled from the idea of riding in it. “It’s not too late to reclaim your manhood and buy a nice black, blue, or red one.”
Gwyllgi burned through alcohol too fast for it to affect them, so Hood was stone-cold sober when he answered. “That baby’s life is hard enough as it is.” Only among friends would he ever admit it. “We took her car shopping with us after Grier brought home Moby. Eva begged us to buy Moby a little sister, but she wished it came in pink sparkles. So, yeah. I paid extra. Yeah, I got it customized. And you know what? My baby loves it. So you can line up and take turns kissing my hairy ass if you’ve got a problem with that.”
No one breathed another word of complaint as they piled into Princess Sparkle.
Our team won. No surprise there. Lethe was fiercely competitive, and even more so where her mother was concerned. They tagged several of the same goats and got into a knock-down, drag-out brawl over who got credit for them. While they rolled in the grass, snarling and snapping, Adelaide and Hadley compared the time stamps to award points where they were due.
“This would be so much hotter if, say, Jack and Linus were the ones rolling around in the muck.”
A snort of laughter escaped me. “Don’t give Lethe any ideas, Marit.”
Jack was Marit’s gwyllgi boyfriend. At twice her height and three times her width, he was a brick wall of a man with the heart of a pianist.
“You’re right. I should keep those ideas to myself.” Her eyes went dreamy. “Mmm-hmm.”
“Please keep my fiancé out of your fantasies.”
Gazing off into the distance, she sighed. “Too late.”
When the alphas finished asserting their dominance, they both shifted in a burst of laughter that made the rest of us nervous. Whatever had set them off appeared to be resolved, though.
“Do you want to hear who won?” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “After all that?”
“Nope.” She grabbed the keys out of her pocket and jingled them. “We won. I always win.”
“Not always,” her mother said smugly enough that Lethe had to swallow a growl.
A booming gunshot rang out, and I ducked on reflex. “What in the…?”
Another blast, this one closer, had the girls backing away slowly.
Speeding over the hills, heading straight for us, a bulky four-wheeler growled under the strain. A young man drove, headlights flashing, while a short woman stood behind him, sighting her shotgun for another blast.
“Get off my land,” she boomed at us. “Leave my goats alone.”
“I called the cops, you dirty thieves,” the man added. “They’re on the way.”
Bride or not, I got trampled in the rush back to Moby. I still had a foot hanging out the door when Lethe gunned the engine and whipped us around for the drive back to Savannah.
“Ladies and gent,” she hollered, “reach beneath your seats. There’s a second bottle. Chug it.”
Patting around the carpeted indention beneath me, I made sure there weren’t more hidden bottles. “When did you have time to restock?”
“I’m a woman of infinite mysteries.” She flipped her short hair. “Okay, red team is ahead. No surprise there.” A grumble from the back caused her face to flush. “Stuff it, Mother. If you can’t play nice, I will drop your geriatric butt off at Woolworth House and leave you there to play pinochle with the ghost boy.”
In the odd way of dominant gwyllgi, Tisdale settled into blissful happiness at having been put in her place by a fellow alpha.
The more I knew about gwyllgi, the less I understood them.
“What’s next?” Hadley dared the question. “Do we need to change first?”
“Nope.” Lethe turned smug. “You’ll all fit right in as is, my little bumpkins.”
“You’re taking us to that new bar, the country one.” Adelaide caught on first. “There’s a mechanical bull, right?”
“You people don’t like surprises, do you?” Lethe threw up her hands, which took them off the wheel and forced me to swallow my heart where it stuck in my throat. “Yes, yes. There’s a bull. Same teams. The team with the best rides wins.”
“What do we win?” her mother asked. “Or are we competing for bragging rights only?”
“Please.” She scoffed. “Like it’s worth bragging that my team beat you bunch of losers.”
“I didn’t know you were into themes,” I said before Tisdale got mad enough to climb into the front seat and take a bite out of her daughter. “What are you calling it? Gone Country?”
“Themes are lame, but you’re a sucker for them, and this is your night. I figured you would appreciate the novelty.”
“Aww.” I rested my head on her shoulder. “You get me.”
“Don’t flatter me. You’re not hard to figure out. Keeping you alive? That’s the hard part.”
It’s not like she was wrong, but still. Rude.
Determined to help her keep her winning streak alive, I began reading blogs with tips on how to stay seated on mechanical bulls. The words swam together, and I couldn’t remember how much wine I had drunk or how another bottle got in my hand. Pretty sure I drained mine from under the seat already, so where…?
“Where are the boys tonight?”
The yellow lines on the road were squiggling, so I wasn’t brave enough to risk turning my head, but I was pretty sure Tisdale was the one doing the asking.
“They wouldn’t say,” Hadley answered. “Guess they don’t want us to worry.”
“Would you?” Tisdale asked, the question pointed. “Worry?”
The tips of my ears burned hot as I realized I was eavesdropping on a private conversation.
Whatever Hadley said, I made sure I didn’t hear it. I wanted my conscience clean.
Taking another swig of my drink, I engaged with Lethe, who was listening so hard it was a miracle she hadn’t abandoned the wheel to climb in the back. “Do you think goats would make good pets?”
The SUV swerved a bit. “What?”
“Goats.”
“They’re tasty and provide both meat and cheese. How many animals can say that?”
“You missed the part where I said pet.” I set my drink in the cupholder. “Not dinner.”