Long excerpt this week because it didn’t make sense to chop this scene into two sections. Molly’s eyes are healing nicely – yay! The headache has been stupid bad this week (sigh), and I’m trying to not freak out about it because I’d actually been experiencing a reprieve the last few weeks – still in near constant pain but not so much that I needed the rescue meds as often – and I’d started to hope it was a sign of things shifting for me. Hopefully, it’s just a blip and it will smooth out again, because I have books I wanna write!
Treat yourself to something for me, and I hope you enjoy Kandy’s next chapter.
– Meghan
Reminder: this is a first draft so typos abound, plus possible tense changes. Anything in [parentheses] needs to be fact checked or I’m not happy with the phrasing yet.
Start here: Misfits 2: Chapter 1, Part 1
Or if you’re behind:
Chapter 1, Part 2
Chapter 1, Part 3
Chapter 1, Part 4
Chapter 2, Part 1
Chapter 2, Part 2
Chapter 2, Part 3
Content of note: explicit language.
A curvy brunette werewolf in ass sculpting jeans and flower print silk blouse was bingeing cupcakes at the desk that occupied most of the office off the kitchen of Cake in a Cup, aka Jade’s bakery. The state of the brunette’s makeup and her puffy, red eyes were the only explanation I needed for why she wasn’t holding court in the bakery storefront seating area.
The twenty-four-year-old Rothchild bride-to-be.
Factoring in the uber-tall, dark-skinned latent werewolf pressed against the kitchen wall to the side of the office door with a clipboard cradled defensively to her chest in an attempt to stay out of sight, and I knew that the pack princess was being a completely unreasonable.
“Bitsy,” I drawled as I leaned against the office doorway and leveled a hard gaze on the princess demolishing cupcakes. Cupcakes that even I knew were even better when savored.
“Kandy.” Rebecca Talbot aka “Bitsy’ offered me a tight smile, but remained out of the princess’s sightline.
Smart wolf.
Bitsy’s dark curls were seriously perky and abundant today, adding about three inches to her already impressive height. [Hazel-eyed] and smooth skinned, she was dressed in dark wool pants, a thin-knit light gray cashmere sweater, and understated designer sneakers. All contrary to her typical choices of bright colored Lycra and neon running shoes. In professional mode, because I asked her to run point on the wedding for me during her holiday break from university.
“How far did you get with the list?”
“We’re stuck on the cake,” Bitsy muttered. “Again.”
“I picked the napkins!” the baby girl princess within the office howled.
“The color of the linen.” Bitsy grimaced. “But not the fold.”
The pack princess, aka Elizabeth ‘Leesa’ Rothchild, shot to her feet behind the desk, dark eyes flashing and pale skin flushed. “You are such bitch, Bitsy.”
I snarled.
Leesa froze, trying to hold my gaze. She clenched and unclenched her fists, then shuddering, she dropped her gaze.
“Where’s your … bridesmaid?” I couldn’t remember her name. “The one with the ass. Filly? Frizzy?”
Bitsy quashed a smile. “Was there something specific about her ass?”
“Fiona!” Leesa snarled, then shoved a hunk of chocolate cupcake in her mouth. “She’s your second cousin! You could at least remember her name!”
“It’s too small,” I said, answering Bitsy.
She hummed thoughtfully, smiling to herself.
“What?” I snapped. The lovely relaxation provided by two orgasms and a short nap with Jorgen was rapidly diminishing.
Bitsy shrugged. “You’re one to talk.”
“My ass …” I snarled. “Is none of your business.” I held my hand out for the clipboard. “And it’s perfectly proportional.”
The junior werewolf passed me the clipboard with a look of gratitude.
“Take the rest of the day off,” I muttered.
“Really?” Far too pleased for my liking — I really didn’t want to take on Leesa duty if Bitsy was that glad to be rid of her — Bitsy bounced on her toes, her dark curls mimicking the movement.
“We’re going dancing tonight!” Leesa shouted from the office. “I have to have some sort of bachelorette party.”
“Fiona can watch over you,” I said, glancing through the six page list attached to the clipboard and finding it woefully less than half finished.
Leesa folded her arms, trying to pin me with a defiant look that end up aimed at my right shoulder instead. “I need Bitsy. You promised she’d take care of me.”
I’d done no such thing.
Bitsy sighed. Already giving in.
Leesa flicked her gaze to meet mine, then looked away, whispering pathetically. “Please. You know that … everyone else thinks I’m crazy. But Bitsy doesn’t give a shit.”
“I’ll be back in a three hours,” Bitsy said gruffly, pushing off the wall.
“An hour and half,” Leesa demanded. “We’re going to dinner. And wear something pretty.”
Bitsy spun on her heel, marching toward the steel door that opened into the back alley.
“No sneakers!” Leesa howled after her.
Bitsy strode through the back exit without further acknowledging the pack princess, crossing through wards that surrounded the exterior of the bakery without pause. The door slowly shut behind her. Other than the contained mess of cupcake remnants scattered across the desk in the office, the kitchen was sparkling clean. Even the long metal workstation and the fronts of the stainless steel fridges, ovens, and dishwasher gleamed. The scent of lemon verbena, indicating that Blossom had cleaned up after the morning bake, was a subtler underlying scent under the lingering chocolate, butter, and caramelized sugar overtones.
I transferred my attention back to Leesa, waving the clipboard in her direction. “Your sister is here.”
“You think I don’t know?” Leesa cried, gesturing toward herself and then the demolished cupcakes.
I ignored the outburst. “I’m taking this list to her.”
Leesa’s shoulders slumped. “Please don’t. It’s my wedding.”
“I am not your keeper. I am not your wedding planner.” I kept my tone low and steady. “I’m here to make sure that the pack negotiations go smoothly. You are secondary.”
“The wedding is important,” Leesa mumbled. “Part of the negotiations. An alliance.”
“It’s not looking that way is it?”
“I’m pregnant!” The admittance burst out of her.
“I know. I can smell you.”
“Right,” she sneered. “I forgot you’re so much better than the rest of us.”
“Stop forgetting and this will go much smoother.”
She met my gaze fiercely.
Finally showing some backbone. She was a Rothchild after all. Her sister, Audrey, was my beta. Her father used to be my alpha. The last time I’d seen Leesa at one of the monthly full moon pack runs she’d been [twelve]. Werewolves might breed easier than the rest of the Adept, but their youngest, late in life child, had been unexpected for Arthur and Edith.
Leesa’s demeanor softened. She licked her lips. A slow, wicked — purely conniving — smile spread across her face. She couldn’t out stare me. She couldn’t out muscle me. But she could play games on a pro level. I didn’t even need to know her as an adult to know that. Because she was a female werewolf whose position had been guaranteed by the privilege of her birth.
The same could have been said of me, of course. Until I fell for an another female werewolf. Though I’d known I was bisexual, not gay, from the moment Dedra made a play for me and I really enjoyed it. Immensely. Enough I actually considered ending my friends-with-benefits relationship with Justin, Leesa’s dead brother, to commit to the relationship with Dedra.
But a Tate werewolf wasn’t allowed to be outwardly anything akin to being gay.
“I like the spice chocolate cake,” Leesa practically purred, trying to come off as sultry instead of the whiny princess persona she’d been wielding for the last twenty-four hours.
I curled my lip at the ridiculous attempt at using what little she knew about my own sexuality against me. Seriously, ick. And she better not be fucking playing Bitsy like that. Much younger than me, the latent werewolf might actually fall for it. “Which one, Princess? There are two currently on the desk before you.”
A spike of fury lit Leesa gaze.
I bared my teeth.
She huffed. “The dark chocolate with cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger.”
I laughed. “That’s the base of Envy in a Cup.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “The names mean nothing.”
I stared at her — long and hard, so tired of this garbage already and seriously pissed to have to teach her manners when it came to not insulting her hosts.
Leesa paled, even further. Her dark eyes and smudged mascara standing out in sharp contrast. She jutted out her chin, but then grimaced. “I’m sorry.”
I stared at her a while longer, then I glanced down at the clipboard, flipped a page, and found the section about the cake. I put a checkmark next to her selection. “And the frosting?”
Leesa cast her gaze across the cupcakes she’d practically obliterated binge eating, then said, sulkily, “I guess it should be one of the white ones. Traditionally.”
I considered lunging across the office, pinning her to the desk and force feeding her the rest of the —
The pen snapped in my hand.
Leesa flinched. She opened her mouth.
“Don’t apologize,” I snapped, stepping into the office and tossing the broken pen in the empty garbage can. It promptly disappeared.
Leesa’s mouth fell open, presumably having felt the spark of energy that had grabbed at the pen. The unexpected magic wiped all her pretense away, and she smiled with genuine glee. “What was that?”
“Brownie magic,” I said, stepping around the desk and retrieving another pen from the top center drawer.
Leesa brushed her shoulder against mine, and I didn’t correct her. Werewolves were touchy, and she clearly needed the grounding. Plus I’d crossed into her space first. “I don’t know what a brownie is … it sounds racist.”
I snorted, clicking the pen and testing it on the edge of the list that Leesa and Bitsy were supposed to have gone over by the end of the day. “Do you care?”
Leesa frowned. “Of course, I do. That kind of shit doesn’t have any place in the twenty-first century.”
I eyed her, genuinely surprised.
“Nor does … anyone’s sexuality or preferred gender,” she added stiffly, pissed that she was being forced to defend herself. “And …” Her tone strengthen, and for the first time I caught a glimpse of the person Leesa was under all the upbringing and early pregnancy hormones. “… people should be able to marry how they want!”
“Like a werewolf marrying a grizzly?” I asked, heavy on the irony that she’d compare her situation to anyone who was actually marginalized.
“Yes,” she said. “And Mel isn’t even white!” She grimaced slightly. “Well … not totally white.”
That was news to me. The groom and his family had arrived yesterday, unwitnessed by me. I’d been too busy securing the meeting rooms and the wedding venue at the last freaking second.
I raised my eyebrow.
“Metis,” she said stiffly. “That’s a type of First Nations here in Canada.”
Well, well, no wonder the Rothchilds had their collective panties in a bunch. Not only did Leesa’s fiance transform into a grizzly, not a wolf, but he had tanned skin?
Leesa smirked. “And he’s seriously hung. Like …” Her gaze went a little glassy. “Like …” She hummed quietly.
“And very rich,” I added, smirking.
The Dubois pack ran a mining company. Very successfully. When they officially broke from the North West Coast pack, Desmond was going to lose a large chunk of income.
She shrugged. “No richer than I am. We already signed prenups.”
It was my turn to gape at her. “Do your … does your mother know?”
She sighed. “Audrey does … now.”
Well, that explained the state of Leesa’s makeup and her holing up in the office with a mountain of cupcakes.
A genuine grin spread across my face. Not only was Audrey going to be in a state, she was going to have to tell her parents. Because there was no way that her younger sister hadn’t deliberately told her first. And while Audrey might be my pack beta, might have once saved my life on a beach overrun with demons, we didn’t get along. At all.
I represented a slew of things that Audrey deemed beneath my so-called station, but it was that I was more powerful that her, even without the cuffs, that pissed off the current Rothchild heir the most.
If I chose it, I could be alpha of any pack, including the East Coast pack where we were all born and raised.
Leesa smirked at my dark delight at her pissing off her uppity, perfect sister, then she took the clipboard from me. She surveyed the damage she’d done to the cupcakes spread across the desk before her. “I want tiers of cupcakes,” she said decisively. “Not just one cake. Multiple flavors of cake and icing.”
“How many tiers?”
She grinned. “As many as we can fit. The witches will help, right?”
“We can ask. It’s a little beneath Pearl. Or Scarlett. Hard to ask the head, or even a chair, of the witches Convocation to ensure the stability of your cupcake tower.”
Leesa sucked on her lip sadly as her earlier satisfaction over making an actual freaking decision bled out of her.
Huffing internally, I added, “Maybe Burgundy.”
Leesa’s pleased grin instantly returned. She plunked the pen out of my hand and put a precise tick mark in front of every cupcake on the list, deliberately crossing out Heaven in a Cup as she passed it. Then she glanced at me. “I like it, but Mel doesn’t like coconut.”
“Put a dent in rest of the list,” I said flatly, turning away from the desk. “I have some calls to make but I’ll stay with you.”
Leesa settled down in the desk chair, dark hair falling forward in a thick curtain of waves as she poised the pen at the top of the page. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I glanced back to see she was already texting one-handedly.
If it was supposed to be her bachelorette party tonight, then it was probably Mel’s stag night as well. But I had a feeling I was about to meet the groom.
He should have been helping make decisions all day already.
– Misfits 2, Chapter 3, Part 1 – first draft
Are you new to the Adept Universe? Click here for the suggested reading order where you can download a PDF that includes all the shorter stories (and where to find them).
The first book in the Misfits of The Adept Universe Series is Mory’s Misplaced Souls. Kandy’s three prequel shorts can be found in Moments of the Adept Universe 1
