Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Adorable.
But it was a good question…and Wren wasn’t afraid to answer it either.
“This is what I was thinking.” He looked entirely too serious for a conversation about what toys he was taking to another planet.
I never thought I’d be able to say it, but this was more fun than Star Trek.
Chapter 23
Pierce
“I get to pick and choose where I’m little and when I want to have people stare at me, Daddy.” Wren was on his third round of that conversation with his Daddy, so I just ignored it. He’d win but it was going to take a while to get there. “If I want to be boring and blend in, that’s my right as a pain in the ass.”
Dragons above.
Merritt was doing his best not to giggle as he sat on my other side at the conference table and Kenzie was just nodding along seriously, but the rest of the room finally decided to stop ignoring what Wren and his Daddy were arguing about.
Unsurprisingly, it was Florida Man who spoke up first. “I have a question.”
That was not a surprise either.
“Yes?” I was doing my best to play stupid, but I knew at least part of what it was going to be about. “Did you have a question about the plan before we started?”
“Yes. Um. Kind of.” Cocking his head, Florida Man, whose real name seemed to be Alabama for some reason, focused on Wren. “I don’t mean to be rude this time, but it seems like you’ve decided you’re going through the portal. So…what do you actually do and why are you taking toys through?”
Well, as far as questions went they were actually fairly good ones and Wren had probably been expecting both because he gave him a beaming smile. His Daddy was smart enough to look worried and I had to respect him more for that. “I’m a little and I’m the only wilderness and survival expert the council was able to find. For some reason, even dragons don’t seem to like roughing it, but we do like toys.”
That actually got chuckles from around the room and Kenzie nodded seriously again. “Even my dragon likes pillows and toys. I think roughing it is a human quality. No offense.”
Wren blinked for a moment. “None taken. I learned from a human, so you might be right. He was my first crush, so I had to do a good job.”
I didn’t need to know that.
“Don’t tell your mother that.” The age difference alone would give her a heart attack…much less the fact that I was pretty sure he was talking about one of our older, slightly distant cousins.
Wren’s grin made me roll my eyes. “That’s why she tried to send me to that behave yourself camp.”
Ignoring that, because he’d won on that front too, I turned back to our Alabama Florida Man. “He’s actually an expert in his field and the best choice unless we want to bring in a full human.”
Everyone winced.
Drama queens.
Merritt’s shoulders shook but he managed not to laugh out loud.
“They’re not contagious.” Or weird just because most of them didn’t seem to be as colorful as the rest of us were. “There are a lot of them that would be very proficient in this situation and having a backup expert would not be a bad decision.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to send them through a portal to another world with only one person who could find water or help figure out what to eat just in case. Wren’s mate didn’t scream wilderness expert even though he’d done a good job of blending in.
“That explains some of it.” Our resident Florida Man nodded but he didn’t look away. “I’m pretty sure we’re missing a few details, though.”
Since he wasn’t stupid, just strange, I nodded. “You are. That was going to be one of the first things on the agenda.”
Shockingly enough, we had things that I thought were more important. “We can rearrange that list, though, but after this I’d like to narrow down which of the medics will be going and a few things like that.”
Merritt had been filling me in, but I knew with Wren’s drama I’d missed some of the details. We had to iron them out, though, because people had lives they needed to get back to. “I want to give the locals enough time to complain before the team starts planning.”
We also still had to figure out who was going to be monitoring the portal. Everyone agreed that it was important but they were playing hot potato with it, as Merritt liked to say. The only thing we had agreed on was that the locals would not be primarily in charge. There weren’t enough actual grown-ups in town to make that work.
“As you can see, the council group has expanded to include Wren’s new mate. They met recently and he’s also here about the portal.” Understatement of the universe right there.