And There Shall Be Rejoicing In The Halls!

“Mom, why is everybody acting all crazy?” Thor asked as he watched people literally bouncing off the walls of the school. Marissa had been called to the school to come pick the boys up due some of the kids picking fights with her boys. And no, she was not buying the principal’s line that Loki and Thor were the instigators. But Loki, for all his small stature, had a smart mouth, a hair trigger temper and a young  alpha wolf’s disinclination to take shit from anyone. It didn’t take much to get him fighting, just like it didn’t take much to get his uncle Nick fighting.

“Your Aunt Ziva had her babies,” Marissa replied dryly.

“Babies, as in twins?” Loki asked, perking up a bit. He’d been sitting next to her, with his brother on the other side of him, moping, with a swollen nose and the beginning of a black eye, saying nothing since she got there. Thor also showed some signs of scuffling but like their dad, Thor had taken it on the chin—literally—and then blew it off. Of course, he’d only been fighting because Loki had been fighting. It was Loki’s temper that got them landed in the principal’s office.

“Why are people acting like fools because of that?” Thor asked sounding bewildered.

“Because no one was expecting it,” Marissa said. “It seems like everyone had a bet on what Aunt Ziva was going to have, a boy or a girl, and when she had a boy and a girl, it threw everyone for a loop.”

“A boy and a girl? That’s kind of cool,” Loki said quietly. “Is either of ‘em alpha?”

“Yep, from what I understand, the little girl is,” Marissa replied, not sure about her smaller step-son’s reaction.

“We’re going to have to make sure there’s some protection in place for them,” Thor said with all the gravity a naturally buoyant eight-year-old could muster. Loki nodded is head, nibbling on his lip.

“Someone’s going to have to make sure our new cousins get the training they’ll need early. Girl alphas start getting tail chasers early, whatever that means. We’re going to have to make sure she doesn’t get bothered too much,” Loki added after a moment.

“Wait just a minute there,” Marissa said, alarmed. “Where did you guys hear about tail chasers?”

“Billy Wolvington,” they both answered promptly.

“That’s one of the boys you two were fighting with, right?” Two heads bobbed in unison.

“Billy said that now that the McMahon had a female alpha, he was going to mate his way into being top alpha of our pack and then maybe we wouldn’t be such losers,” Thor said.

“I thought he was talking about Aunt Reetha,” Loki said.

“And we just got her back so we didn’t want that hydrant humper pestering her until she left again,” Thor began.

“So he had to set him straight,” Loki finished. Marissa didn’t ask about where they heard ‘hydrant humper’ from; that was classic Reetha.

“But now that we know he was pro’lly talking about our new baby cousin,” Thor continued, “we know that it pro’lly wasn’t Aunt Reetha he was talking about.”

“He wouldn’t have a chance with Aunt Reetha anyway. She says that young’uns—”

"We don’t repeat Aunt Reetha’s words!” Marissa cut in sharply.

“Fine,” they both said, sounding distracted.

“Aunt Reetha can take care of herself now, anyway, ‘cause she’s full grown and an alpha. We got to make sure our new cousins are protected,” Loki said, his dark eyes flashing.

“Yeah, ‘cause with two more pups in the pack, we stand to be a lot stronger than other packs.”

“We may be smaller, be we got brains,” Loki agreed. “And we got the only female alpha born outside of the Hancock pack in something like a hundred year.”

“I don’t think your Aunt Reetha would like knowing that you think she’s a hundred years old,” Marissa commented dryly. Oh, boy, her little guys sure were in a hurry to grow up. They’d had their first real pack hunt earlier this year and now they were planning guard duty and a training syllabus for their new born cousins. She was beginning to have some idea of why Vern was just a little bit crazy after raising their father and his siblings!