Page 9 of Resisted
“It should rest in the fridge first.”
Did I want to wait around for cookie dough for the rest of the night? Or did I want to salvage what I could of my day, crank these fuckers out, and be sated and drunk in four hours’ time? I picked four hours. I’d pick it every fucking time because as much as I loved Bella, this wasn’t how I wanted to spend my time. The salvage we’d just returned from had been a rough one. No one had died, thankfully. We hadn’t lost a single soul since Bella’s mother. But it had been rough all the same.
“We’ll just pop it in the freezer for like five minutes.” I grabbed the bowl to toss it into the icebox.
“I don’t think it works that way.” Her hands were on her hips again, like they always were when she knew she was right and had no problems pointing it out.
“It’ll be fine. Promise,” I assured her.
I ignored the objections and shoved it in the freezer, set a timer for five minutes, and started prepping a workspace. Glancing at my subpack, I didn’t miss the silent mouthed ‘thank you’ as they, too, pretended to make themselves busy. When my timer beeped, I grabbed the dough and plopped it down on the surface that was covered with flour. It wasn’t ready and I knew that, but I would not admit this to the preteen when I was so eager to get out of making these damn cookies.
I didn’t have to wait long for her to find out. The moment we pulled the first batch of cookies out of the oven and they looked like obese versions of themselves, I knew she wouldn’t hold back her opinion. And she didn’t. She complained about it the entire time the next batch was baking, as if she thought her complaining would encourage me to try again on a new batch. It didn’t, of course, though I knew Vince was moments away from caving.
After she finally gave up, she helped me color the frosting and lay out the sprinkles. At her request, we each got our own workstation. It was all so…thrilling. I knew the others felt the same, but we cared enough to humor the kid because, well, she was family. We were all she knew, and a part of me felt responsible for that fact.
“Vincent, a gingerbread man doesn’t dress in all black. What are you doing?” Her brows were pulled together as she scowled at him.
“Mind your own workstation, tyrant,” he mumbled as he strategically placed his white sprinkles to create a bandolier.
She glanced over at me and sighed, disappointed. “You didn’t even try, you just covered them all in sprinkles.”
“Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?” I pretended to act confused, earned me another eye roll. She turned her attention to Boyce.
“You didn’t decorate at all, you just ate all of them!”
“Not all of them,” he clarified.
“You ate all but one, and on that one, you left only the body.” She glared.
“Well, it broke off, so I ate it. I couldn’t have a head rolling around on the floor, now could I?” To make a point, he brought the body to his lips and bit down, spraying the rest of his workstation with crumbs. He chewed slowly as they faced off, neither one of them willing to look away.
She caved first. No surprise. Not when Boyce had years of training at staring down predators. “Why can’t you guys be like Vincent?”
“Vincent? You were just yelling at him for creating an assassin!” I reminded her.
“Well, at least he tried.”
Vince looked so smug. “Plus, every Christmas elf needs an assassin to protect them.”
He seriously worried me sometimes.
She grabbed the canister of blue sprinkles and sprinkled it all over a snowflake she had slathered in white icing. I couldn’t figure out what the difference was between when I did that and when she did, but apparently, if you’re nine, it’s allowed. She tossed the snowflake aside, grabbed another, and repeated her assault.
“I’ve been thinking…” Her words trailed off, and we all froze. Nothing good could ever come from a female that began a statement that way.
Instantly, Vince stood. “I need a smoke.”
He abandoned ship before we could blink. Then it was just Boyce and me, his eyes wide in fear as he looked between us. He might be young, but he’d most definitely learned when signals were blaring. He cleared his throat, ignoring the glare I was giving him, begging him to not abandon me. He bailed anyway, completely disregarding the solidarity that being in a subpack together should ensure.
“I forgot, I told Margret I would climb up on the roof and check on a loose shingle.”
Check on a loose shingle? That wasn’t even a—
Before I could object that the roof was tiled, Boyce was out of his chair and through the door. Fucking cowards, that was what they were. It didn’t matter that I was the alpha of the group. They all were perfectly capable of being alpha if they’d wanted, but obviously, this just proved that they didn’t have the balls.
I groaned. “What was it you were thinking, Belladonna?”
The nickname earned me another eye roll. Then she just looked uncomfortable. She cleared her throat, fidgeting. “I was wondering…”