The Beast’s Fated Bride

4.

“There you are,” I murmured as I put her down on the grass and scratched behind her ears. “I know it’s a big, scary world right now, and no one was expecting this, but you’re safe. No one’s mad at you. In fact, we’re all very happy for you. We just weren’t expecting it to happen so soon, that’s all. Not even you.”

She whined and pressed her head harder into my hands. Poor girl. Her human mind was probably only just beginning to catch up now that there was no food to distract her. Unfortunately, since she was new to having her wolf form, she likely didn’t know how to turn back yet, and it would take her a while to figure it all out.

“There you go. That’s my girl. Just settle for a moment and let yourself breathe. You’ve made us all so proud. Look at you, so healthy and strong!”

“Arietty?” a familiar voice called. A moment later, the crowd parted, and Chris and Bethany came rushing toward us. “Arietty!”

I gave them space to hug their daughter, who was now letting out excited little yips. It didn’t surprise me when her mother shifted almost immediately, licking and pawing at her daughter as they no doubt communicated in shifter-speak. The girl still had a long way to go before she could speak back, but at least she would be able to understand it.

“Everything’s fine,” I assured my best friend. “Just made a bit of a mess, that’s all.”

Was that an understatement? Yes. But it wasn’t anything that we couldn’t repair. Besides, that was what the pack fund was for: fixing all the hiccups that came with human and shifter life.

“Thank you,” Chris said, looking up at me with those intense eyes of his. There was a depth of emotion in them I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt, and my heart squeezed at it. After everything Chris had done for me in all our years of being friends, I was finally paying it back a little.

“I’m gonna check on everyone inside. Be right back,” I said, tilting my head. Now that Arietty was with her parents, it was safe to leave her.

When I opened the door to Letitia’s house, smoke billowed out. Had a fire broken out? That was about the last thing I needed.

“How did she turn the broiler on?” Melodie shouted in frustration. She was pretty even-keeled—as much as a teenager could be—so concern lanced through me. I hurried to open a window while Auntie Letitia turned on the ventilation hood.

“It must have been when she crashed into it,” the older woman said with a heavy sigh. “This isn’t the first time a wolf has gone wild in my home, but I will say this has probably been the most damage one managed to do.”

“I can’t believe she shifted before me!” Saoirse said from where she was still pressed up against the wall. She was covered in flour, which made her bright red curls stand out more. “I’m a year and a half older than her!”

“Sometimes it works like that,” I murmured, grabbing a sheet pan and using it to wave more smoke out the window. “Do I even want to know what was in the oven?”

“No,” Melodie said miserably as she pulled one of the pans out.

My stomach dropped when I realized the smoking, cracked, mostly cinder of a lump was none other than the very cake I’d been talking to Chris about.

“Please tell me the other cakes are cooling somewhere,” I murmured as tears welled in Melodie’s eyes. I felt so incredibly bad for her, and I hoped she wouldn’t hold it against Arietty. Melodie hadn’t gone through her first shift either, and was on the cusp of being a late bloomer, so she didn’t quite understand the compulsions and confusion that came with being a wolf for the first time.

“No. All the layers for all three cakes were in there,” she said, wiping her eyes bitterly. “I know she couldn’t help it, but I’m so mad!”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” I said as she burst into tears. Being a teenager was hard enough, but being one in a wolf pack came with so many extra hurdles. “It’s perfectly understandable to be upset, even angry. Do you want some comfort right now or space to process?”

“Hug!” she blurted, and I wrapped my arms around her, squeezing just hard enough to be comforting. I let my inner wolf rumble through my chest, figuring the young woman could use the extra soothing.

“It’s okay, Melodie. You’re all right. Let yourself feel whatever you gotta feel, and then we’ll figure out what to do.”

“Can we start from scratch?” Saoirse asked. She looked less upset than Melodie, but she wasn’t exactly happy.

“There’s not enough time for that, especially not with all the layers needing cooling,” Auntie Letitia said matter-of-factly. “But that’s all right. There won’t be any less bounty, and we can just make twice as many cakes next time!”

“Okay…” Saoirse said in a thick, high-pitched voice that told me it was absolutely not okay.

It was a trivial matter, but I couldn’t help but think of how awful Arietty would feel once she was human again and understood what happened. Was it just cake? Sure. Would we live without it? Yes. But it felt a bit like a rain cloud over what was supposed to be a very sunny day for us.

I chewed on my lip a little as I contemplated what to do. Maybe we couldn’t have the delicious, light, and fluffy cakes everyone admired Aunt Letitia for, but surely that didn’t mean we couldn’t get any cake anywhere, right?

“Letitia, did you already make the rhubarb jam and the cream?”

“Sure did. The jars are in the fridge. I was just about to pull the jam out to get it to room temp.”

“All right, I’m gonna need those.” Once Melodie was done hugging me, that was. I wasn’t planning on ending the embrace until she was ready.

“What for?”

“I’m gonna go find us some cake.”

Felicia

Meet Cute

Due: $229.23

Due: $568.34

Past Due: $103.94

Due: $44.99

I sighed as I looked over the stack of bills for the umpteenth time and did the mental math to figure out how I was going to pay them. When the number I came up with wasn’t all that encouraging, I checked my online ordering platform again, hoping against hope that someone had used it in the ten minutes since I had last checked it.

But no, there were no online orders. There likely wouldn’t be any today, just like there hadn’t been the day before, or the week before, or the week before that. In fact, the last online order had been nearly a month earlier, and I doubted it would change anytime soon.

I really needed to step up my online presence, but I often found myself at a loss with social media. I tried my best, but more often than not it felt like I was throwing money into an endless abyss, which wasn’t exactly encouraging.

But I had to try. If things didn’t change soon, I wouldn’t be able to keep the doors of my bakery open for much longer. I’d already whittled down the morning prep by seventy-five percent for all days except Sunday, so there wasn’t much else I could eliminate. Point blank, I wasn’t selling enough, and I wasn’t selling enough because I didn’t have enough customers.

The thing is, once I got people in, they tended to become regulars or at least come to me for anything they needed for special occasions. Getting people here was the issue. Between so many folks having to cut back on everything and the proliferation of convenience baked goods a la Starbucks and Dunkin, independent bakeries were struggling more than ever. Especially newer ones.

“Let’s not linger on this for now,” I told myself as I pushed the bills aside and took a deep breath. I knew four out of five restaurants failed within their first few years, but I’d been so determined to make it. It stung my pride that after just nine months, I was already failing.

Not that life had exactly been easy for me.

No, in fact, it had probably been the hardest year of my life. And that was saying something considering I was a first-generation American raised by my widowed, immigrant mother after my father had died back home.

“First things first, let’s warm up the ovens.”