Page 3 of My Big Fat Shifter Wedding

“How should I know? I’m not his babysitter.”

I jabbed him again, this time a little harder. Although Leandro was my elder by two years, he could be such a brat, and I had no problems treating him as such.

“Ow! Fine, fuck! I think I heard one of the boys call him over into the woods or something.”

“The boys?” I asked dubiously, certain he wasn’t referencing a certain comic-inspired show with a disappointing final season.

“Yeah, you know. The teens and college-somethings that are just so… angsty and terrified of ever being perceived as cringe.”

“Exhausting,” I agreed.

I was so grateful most of my childhood had passed without social media. There were advantages to the information age, of course, and I loved being able to look up anything at the drop of a hat, but as an ugly duckling who grew into a slightly below-average duck, I knew I was lucky that entire awkward transition hadn’t been subject to being documented on the internet forever.

“I think I’m gonna⁠—”

I never quite got that sentence out either, but it wasn’t because of a trio of sugared-up cousins. No, it was because suddenly there was a happy shouting from the back veranda, and the crowd parted to allow me to see four of my relatives carrying a cake covered in sparklers my way.

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you!”

More cheers arose as the majority of the partygoers joined in. One would think that the vast range of keys people were singing in would be painful for our wolf hearing, but to me, it sounded like pure joy. I smiled, giddiness bubbling through my core, and clapped my hands along with the scattered words. I didn’t join in the singing, though. I never sang.

At least not in public.

“Happy birthday, dear Ooooolllliiiiiiivvvviiiiiiiiiaaaaaaa! Happy birthday to you!”

And then the cake was in front of me. The cake for my birthday. I realized that if I hadn’t been interrupted when I had, I would have continued to miss my own party, which I had spent so many hours setting up. Huh. Perhaps something to think about later. At the moment, I had a cake to deal with!

“Three cheers for the birthday girl! Come on now, blow out your candles!” That was my papa, of course, his cheeks red with merriment, disposable camera already in hand. No matter how many times we explained to him that his phone could take amazing photos and keep them forever, he always insisted on wielding the past in one hand and the present in the other. Personally, I liked it. The best of both worlds, really.

“Make a wish! Wish! Wish!” my mother chanted, her eyes nearly closed from how widely she was smiling.

There were more cries of encouragement all around, and I was acutely aware that, at least for the moment, all eyes were on me. It was terrifying, but it was also exhilarating in a way I didn’t mind. In fact... maybe I kind of liked it.

I took a deep breath, a wish sitting right in the center of my mind. But, before I could exhale, the table jolted three times, and a quarter of my candles went out.

Of course, it wasn’t due to some freak-of-nature gust of wind, but rather the triplets, who were standing to my right in a neat row on the table. Perhaps the only time they had been “neat” in their lives.

“Excuse you!” I could tolerate a lot, but blowing out someone else’s birthday candles went way over the line of childhood mischievousness and into downright rude.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Vedette cried, snatching two of them off the table while her husband, Cesare, grabbed the last one. “Here, someone relight the candles!”

How she managed to pull a lighter from her dress pocket with her hands so occupied was beyond me, but she did, and my uncle Luigi rushed to take it from her.

In the slight interim, Leandro stepped forward, looking like the cat that got the cream.

“Since we have a natural sort of pause here, I wanted to take a moment, with all of you assembled, to spotlight my darling Roma.”

“Who, me?” His girlfriend’s tittering voice rose up from further in the crowd, and she stepped forward, dressed to the nines in designer clothing like she was often wont to do.

She was quite literally named after the tomato. Her parents insisted it was a way for them to remember the homeland they missed so much. Roma was every bit the Italian princess one might imagine.

“There she is. Isn’t she gorgeous, everyone?”

I loved my brother—I did—but sometimes he could be so annoying, and he was beginning to get on my nerves. It was my birthday, but of course he had to find a way to⁠—

Wait, is he getting down on one knee?

It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, yet I couldn’t look away.