He couldn’t understand it. Everything was wonderful, yet Mommy, Daddy, and Mr. Griff seemed determined not to be happy. They all pretended that they were, but Danny could tell the difference.
Daddy came round nearly every day to take him out into the woods to be lions together. When Mommy hugged Danny goodbye, it was always a little too hard and long, as if she was still worried about Daddy picking him up. Danny couldn’t work out why. Daddy had gotten a booster seat for the amazing car, after all.
Danny loved being lions. Daddy was always much happier on four paws than he was when he was a person. When he was a person, he talked too much about how Mommy and Mr. Griff were doing things wrong and how much better everything would be if he was Danny’s alpha.
It made Danny feel strange and nervous when Daddy talked like that. It was better when they were just being lions. Everything was simpler as lions.
Mr. Griff was around a lot, but somehow it felt like he wasn’t. It was like whenever he played with Danny, his lion was a very long way away, keeping a wary distance. And he never, ever touched Mommy. That was wrong, Danny knew, though he wasn’t quite sure why. It was something to do with needing to have both a mommy alpha and a daddy alpha in a pride, otherwise there wouldn’t be any new little lions. Simba worried about it a lot, anyway.
Mommy worried a lot too. Danny could hear her crying sometimes, late at night, when she thought he was asleep. She didn’t know that Simba let him hear her. Sometimes he really, really wanted to climb out of his bed and into hers, to give her a big hug and tell her everything was going to be okay.
But he didn’t dare. Mommy always thought that she had to fix things all by herself. If she knew Danny’s big plan, she might ruin the whole thing.
The problem, Danny had decided after careful thought and a lot of discus
sion with Simba, was that Mommy and Daddy hadn’t properly understood their places in the pride. Mommy was supposed to be Mr. Griff’s mate—which was like being married, but more so, according to Simba—but for some reason she didn’t seem to want to be. And Daddy was supposed to be beta, helping defend the territory and raise the cubs, but for some reason he didn’t want to be.
It was all very strange. Why didn’t Mommy and Daddy want to be in Mr. Griff’s pride? Couldn’t they see that Mr. Griff was the biggest, bestest alpha ever?
Danny had tried to explain all this to Daddy, but he just got all grumbly and snarly and wouldn’t listen. It was like he was jealous of Mr. Griff, which was silly because being an alpha or not wasn’t something anyone could help. It didn’t make Mr. Griff better than Daddy, any more than Daddy having a nice car meant he was better than Mr. Griff. It just meant that they had different jobs.
Danny had learned a lot about alphas and being a shifter from Mr. Griff and his friends. Mr. Griff had amazing friends.
That was what had given Danny his idea. Mr. Griff had introduced him and Mommy to some of his friends who were mated, and that had made it clear to Danny that Mommy and Mr. Griff just weren’t doing it right. They needed someone to help them out.
Danny and Simba had a plan. They were going to make sure that Mommy and Mr. Griff became a proper alpha pair. They were going to make sure that Daddy realized that Mommy and Mr. Griff were a proper, mated alpha pair. Then everyone would be in the right place, and everyone would be happy.
And they had the perfect opportunity to carry out their plan, because soon it was going to be a very special day. A day when nobody, not even Daddy or Mommy or Mr. Griff, could possibly be sad. The very best time of year, apart from Christmas! Danny could hardly wait.
At Halloween, he was going to fix everything.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Hayley
“It’s Halloween!” Danny shrieked at the top of his lungs, the cape of his Mike the Knight costume flying behind him as he ran in excited circles around Hayley. “It’s finally Halloween! Hurry, Mommy, hurry!”
He hasn’t even eaten any of his candy yet, Hayley thought in amused dismay. What’s he going to be like after the sugar hits?
“Okay you, calm down,” she said, trying to keep him in the beam of her flashlight as they walked down the street. “Mr. Griff isn’t going to want to take us to the party if you’re screeching like a crazed monkey.”
Danny instantly took her hand, his brown eyes wide with concern. “I’m being good. I really am. Promise, promise, promise we can go, Mommy?”
Hayley couldn’t help laughing at his over-the-top look of cherubic innocence. “I promise. I know how much this means to you.”
He’s so excited about this party. I guess he just can’t get enough of being around other shifters
The thought gave her a pang in her chest. Over the past few weeks, she’d seen Danny blossom as he explored this new, secret world. She’d come to realize just how cruel it would be to keep him apart from his birthright. And Reiner was part of that. No matter how uncomfortable Hayley found it, Danny needed his father. He had to have someone who fully understood what it meant to be a shifter.
Griff isn’t enough, whispered a small, traitorous voice in her mind. Maybe even Griff’s friends aren’t enough. Maybe the law is right. Maybe I can’t ever give Danny what he truly needs.
Hayley banished the sickening thought. She wasn’t going to let any of her worries taint Danny’s enjoyment of this special night. Resolutely, she straightened her rabbit-ear headband, trying to get into the Halloween spirit.
How many chances do you get to go to a Halloween party with real, actual shapeshifters? This’ll be fun. Halloween is meant to be a break from reality, a chance to pretend to be someone else. I could do with being someone else, for a bit.
I certainly look like someone else, at least.
The costume shop hadn’t had a lot of options for larger ladies. She’d been going to go as a ghost, but Danny had pitched a fit at the prospect. In the end she’d had to relent and allow him to pick out her costume…though she’d drawn the line at the donning the fuzzy bikini. After a bit of a battle, Danny had grudgingly allowed her to wear the ears and fluffy tail paired with a soft but figure-hugging knitted black dress. The overall effect, she feared, was still rather closer to Playboy bunny than was entirely appropriate.