by Sable Sylvan
Basil, the second youngest Scoville, hadn’t been at Bonimolean that semester. He’d been in Brazil, working on a special project, and came back to Texas that summer to work on setting up a restaurant for The Feminine Mesquite. Naturally, he was set up to work with Cayenne, the second youngest Quincy sister, a Southern belle who was no nonsense and knew the South and its people like the back of her hand. After all, she was pursuing a hospitality major with a focus in restaurant management and a minor in chemistry. The two had competed (well, Cayenne had tried to make it a competition) and nobody had won…until everyone won when the two finally learned to work together. They’d opened up a Brazilian-style steakhouse, with a Norwegian twist. They didn’t just have hot meat. They had hot meat swords, swords that were used to carry the meat in the Brazilian churrasco style, but the swords were wielded by waiters who were wearing little clothing…and what little clothing they wore matched the Viking longhouse decor of the restaurant, which served a mix of Brazilian, American, and Norwegian fusion cuisine. After having some celebration sex, they’d realized that they were fated mates, and Basil had proposed on the spot, which meant that they’d needed to host an engagement party for a formal presenting of her ring.
Basil gave Cayenne a ring, and Cayenne showed him a special tattoo she’d gotten to commemorate their union, as well as a painting of his grandmother, a woman who was very special to Basil. Savina didn’t know what the deal with that was, but she did know that all the Scovilles were moved…
…Including the one polar bear shifter she couldn’t frikkin stand.
Tall, toned, with blue eyes, what made Mace stand out even more than his currently lime green streaked hair was his brash attitude. He was the daredevil of the Scoville Brothers, the true bad boy. He had never given Savina the time of day, and the only thing that was worse than having to work with him at The Feminine Mesquite’s hot sauce shop was having to share a room with him.
The thing was, they weren’t actually sharing their shared room. All the other younger siblings were sharing rooms. Alice and Herb didn’t have a suite, as they had been together since the start of this crazy thing. Abigail had told Savina, in a drunken moment of weakness, that she used her shared room for amorous activities that required extra space. Addison and Sage used theirs for Sage’s music and Addy’s reading. Basil had set the room up as an art studio for Cayenne to help her relax, as her sister worked the hardest of all the Quincy Sisters and was learning to let herself slow down.
The room Mace and Savina shared was another thing entirely. Savina had arrived home before Mace and hadn’t stocked the room, but Mace flew in and started to put his things in the room without asking Savina. Savina could play that game, and with the help of Cayenne and a couple of her other sisters, she’d moved his items out of her room. Before, she would’ve been willing to share, but not now. She put her furnishings in the room, everything from her room but her bed, and by the end of the day, she’d found her items put back in her room, with Mace’s items back in his room.
The prank war had escalated. He’d replaced her hot sauce with a milder one. She had a private bottle of hot sauce she used that she kept in her area of the pantry. It was made by a competitor. Well, Mace had apparently bought a few dozen bottles of the sauce and some milder sauce that was the same color and nearly the same flavor. He’d slowly watered down her sauce with that sauce. Once Savina had started to drown her fries in a hot sauce that she previously only needed a few drops of, he had replaced the hot sauce with a super spicy ghost pepper sauce. When Savina next used the sauce, she was furious. Nobody wants to spend an afternoon chugging milk to make their tongue stop burning. The worst part of that was, while she was trying to get the taste of ghost peppers out of her mouth, Alice and Herb had dragged Mace into the kitchen and gave them both a scolding, taking away their driving privileges. Savina and Mace were going to have to carpool with the other siblings and could no longer use their own car to commute or run other errands.
Savina hadn’t come up with an idea for revenge yet. She could destroy his clothes, but that wasn’t clever. She could replace his apron with a smaller one, but that was harder to do than the hot sauce gag, and it wasn’t original or funny. She looked over Mace. He had to have a weakness.
Mace was standing by his brothers and talking while they roasted the meat, wearing a black shirt with a sports logo on it, jeans, and a black belt with silver spikes. He could turn into a polar bear. He was an heir to the Scoville fortune (even though he was the future clan omega). Was there anything he couldn’t solve with might or money?
Cayenne walked up to Basil and wrapped her arms around Basil. Savina got up to talk to her sister and congratulate her again about her engagement.
“Cayenne, you two are adorbs,” said Savina. “I know I’ve said it a million times, but it’s true.”
“Thanks, Sav, it means a lot,” said Cayenne.
“It means a lot to me, too,” said Basil. A spark came off of the grill pit, and Basil caught it with his fingers.
“Ouch,” said Cayenne. “You need a bandage?”
“Nah, but you should back up,” said Basil. “After all, you don’t want to have to go all the way to Dallas to get a weave if you burn off all your hair. You have such nice hair.”
“Hey, no such love for your best man’s hair?” asked Mace. “What, you think I’m a limey bastard?” Mace’s joke went over Savina’s head until she remembered that the mother of the Scoville Brothers was an Englishwoman.
Ugh. Mace. Constantly trying to make things about himself, thought Savina. She gave Mace another look. Maybe she’d just identified his weakness. The cogs and gears in her head started turning.
Savina backed up from the flames to avoid the sparks, but she had no idea that when it came to The Feminine Mesquite, there was no avoiding the sparks of the flames of Fate.
Chapter Forty-Four
Two Weeks Later
Savina Quincy woke up on Sunday morning and stretched, cracked her neck, and didn’t bother to get changed out of her comic book themed pajamas. She went to brush her teeth in her private bathroom and then peeked inside of the door that didn’t lead to her bathroom, nor to the rest of Mesquite Manor. It was the room leading to her shared suite with the one Scoville Polar she couldn’t stand. It was the room she was supposed to be sharing…with Mason ‘Mace’ Scoville.
The room was empty. The navy blue carpets and white walls were bare, except there were marks on the wall from the rough moving of furniture and removals of posters. Empty was good. It wasn’t ideal…but it was good. It meant that Mason hadn’t moved his stuff back into the room yet. Maybe he’d finally learned his lesson. Well, if her prank had gone as planned, he really would’ve learned his lesson. He’d moved her stuff out of the room, and he’d also glitter bombed her room, setting up a booby trap in her bathroom that unleashed a deluge of glitter into her bathroom when she had flushed the toilet. It had taken her all week to clean up on her own, but it was going to take Mason a lot longer to clean up the mess she’d had in store for him.
Savina closed the door to the suite and left her room to go downstairs to meet with her siblings and her future brothers-in-law for breakfast. Her sister, Alice, and her fiancé, Herb Scoville, owned Mesquite Manor, and the manor’s namesake establishment, The Feminine Mesquite. Herb was the eldest of the Scoville Brothers, and therefore, he was the future alpha of his clan. Alice and Herb were the owner and CEO of The Feminine Mesquite and oversaw everyone else’s positions. Herb’s future beta, Clove, was engaged to Savina’s second eldest sibling, Abigail. Abigail and Clove ran the hot sauce factory, an old factory that Herb had bought and renovated. There were many abandoned buildings in Fallowedirt from businesses that hadn’t been able to afford to give the small Texas town a chance. Another such building was the old warehouse that Herb had purchased for company use. After all, they needed somewhere to hold all the hot sauce. That’s why the middle siblings, Addison and her fiancé, Sage, ran the warehouse together. The se
cond youngest siblings, Cayenne and Basil, the restaurant management major and the well-traveled shifter, ran the restaurant next door to the hot sauce shop, which they’d turned into a Norwegian-Brazilian-American fusion barbecue joint called The Matchstick Grill.
That left Savina and Mason, the youngest siblings, with the most boring jobs. They were in charge of helping out at the hot sauce shop. This meant cleaning, sorting, restocking, handling payments, handing out samples, and any other grunt work that Alice, Herb, or any of their older siblings needed to be done.
The only thing worse than working with Mason was sharing a suite with him. To make things fair, Alice and Herb had paired people up in suites by age, with the biggest suite going to their second in commands, and the smallest suite going to Savina and Mason. Each suite had a set of two bedrooms, linked by a shared room. Each bedroom had private closets and a private bathroom. The shared room was meant to be a private space the two could use for whatever they wanted. Abigail and Clove had used their room as a study space and now used it as a private sex dungeon. Addison and Sage used their room for her reading and his music. Basil had set up the suite as an art studio for Cayenne, and he would sit in there, learning to paint and draw, while Cayenne drew her beautiful paintings. Everyone had a perfect room…except for Savina.
She was stuck with Mason, the cocky bastard who, if he weren’t such a rude dude, would be someone she could admit she found…attractive. How couldn’t she? He had everything she wanted in a guy. Looks, a hard body, and…well, that was pretty much it. Savina had just finished freshman year, for goodness sake. She wasn’t exactly looking to settle down, although that didn’t mean that she didn’t find herself entranced by the wedding planning. After all, there was a quadruple wedding happening in just over a month, and with all four of her sisters as brides, she was their maid of honor…even though she was the youngest sibling, and the one with the least experience in wedding planning.
Savina reached the dining room. In the dining room, the rest of the siblings were already gathered, wearing their usual off-work clothing. The brunch buffet was set out. There was an omelet bar manned by a member of the staff that ran Mesquite Manor as well as self-serve options for cereal and pastries and juices. There was a barista running the coffee bar. It was Lauren, the head of the household staff, who always got the first pick of the coolest jobs. After all, she was the one who assigned them.
Savina kept her hands stuffed in the pockets of her cozy red hoodie as she looked over the spread. She picked out a blueberry muffin and a cup of lemon tea, hot, with sprinkles from the cupcake selection (one of Savina’s little quirks), and an extra lemon wedge, before taking her seat at the big table. Everyone was there…except for her suitemate.
“Sav, be a dear and get Mace, will you?” asked Alice, as she carried her omelet over to the table. “At the very least, bring him some food.”
“Ugh, do I have to?” asked Savina. “It’s the frikkin’ weekend.”
“You heard your sister,” said Herb. “But…don’t bring him a plate of food. Just bring him a muffin or two, something to whet his appetite. He needs to come downstairs. We’ve got a company-wide announcement, and although it doesn’t concern the two of you, I’d prefer for everyone to be here for it.”
An announcement? Savina had no idea what the heck Herb was talking about but he never ordered her around, so if he was telling her to do something, it was serious. She got up from her chair, without too much attitude, and plopped a donut and a muffin onto a plate. She put her hoodie’s hood up out of habit and walked back up to her suite. The last thing she was looking forward to doing was knocking on Mace’s door…especially if her prank had gone as planned.
Savina knocked at Mace’s door. While hers was covered in movie and comic book posters, his was covered in extreme sports posters. At least the hot dudes on motorcycles and skateboards were something nice to look at while she waited for sleepyhead to get the heck up.
Savina heard rummaging inside of the room. She knocked again.
“Mace?” called Savina.
“Come in,” said a muffled voice.
She tried the door. It was unlocked, so she opened the door slowly.
The room was dark inside. Mace must’ve put his curtains down. She looked around. Mace must’ve left his phone out to use as a walkie talkie to prank her from another room. Ha-ha. Real funny.
Savina turned to leave, and she heard a growling noise. She turned slowly…and saw two pinpoints of red glowing in the bedroom.
Savina backed away nervously toward the door, but the light coming from inside the hallway illuminated what was inside the room.
It was a wolf. It was a big, bad wolf, growling at her, its eyes bright red and glowing. It was moving toward her slowly.
Then the wolf pounced, its paws reaching out toward her face. Big, hulking, and growling, with matted mangy fur, the wolf’s head got up close to Savina’s.
Savina shrieked and dropped the plate. The plate shattered and pastry bits went everywhere.
The wolf stood up and started to laugh.
Wait, what the heck was going on?
Savina reached for the light and turned it on.
This was no wolf. This was a man, wearing black athletic pants and a matching shirt, wearing a wolf mask, wolf paws, and black sneakers.
“Are you frikkin’ serious?” asked Savina. “You nearly gave me a heart attack!”
The man removed his wolf paws and mask and tossed them onto the bed. It was just a set of silly rubber props with LED details. The man ran his hands through his hair, which was crimson, save some brown streaks which had previously been lime green.
“And you ruined a six hundred dollar dye job,” said Mace. “And my hands.” Mace showed Savina his hands. His hands had the typical marks of his shift. Bear shifters often had marks on their hands resembling bears’ paws. Mace was no exception. However, his black paw pads were covered with red and looked bloody.
“And you ruined my new desk when you moved it roughly,” said Savina. “I guess we’re even.”
“Not even close, toots,” said Mace. “Or should I say…Little Red Riding Hood?” Mace pulled on one of Savina’s hoodie’s white strings, and she batted his hands away.
“Save it,” said Savina. “Listen. Alice and Herb have an announcement to make. They sent me upstairs to get you.”
“Uh-huh,” said Mace, crossing his arms. “Let me guess. You have another prank set up downstairs? What, this time you’re going to add hot sauce to my maple syrup?”
“No, I’d like to consider myself a little more original,” said Savina, a hand on her hips. “Come on. I was sent to bring you down. That’s why I had the muffin and donut for you.”
“I suppose I’ve tortured you enough for one morning,” said Mace, running his hands through his hair again. “Although…this is going to take much longer to wash out. What formula did you use?”
“Some vegetable oil based thing. It’s not permanent,” said Savina. “It also shouldn’t be that…red.”
“What can I say? I like a long shower,” said Mace. “All right. Okay. Let’s go and get this done.”
Mace and Savina headed downstairs. Savina was surprised that Mace wasn’t madder about the hair dye prank. After all, she had ruined his dye job. It was a miracle he hadn’t gotten any on his face.
Mace entered the dining room and made a beeline for the food. Everyone else had already started eating, and Savina took her seat. Her food wasn’t too cold. She ate up, and Mace took the seat next to her. After all, all the other seats had been taken by the couples.
“Nice hair,” said Sage. “You planning on going to beauty school?”
“What, when I can’t even manage to dye my own hair red without going full Lady Macbeth?” asked Mace, flashing his brother his hands and turning them over.
“Dude, how the heck are you gonna get that out?” asked Sage.
“No clue,” said Mace. “I guess I’ll be wearing gloves at work this wee
k. You like me as a redhead, Addison?”
“Oh yeah, totally sexy,” Addison assured Mace, but she looked to Sage and couldn’t help but laugh. “Doesn’t this mean…”
“That’s right, baby, get excited to see a red polar bear on that football field,” said Mace, taking a swig of OJ.
Savina was fuming. Had Mace managed to spin this as another one of his bad boy antics? No frikkin’ way! How could he be a prankster, a charmer, and have the ability to make anything work for him, even counter-pranks?
The worst part of it was that Savina had somehow managed to make Mace look even sexier. He looked good as a redhead, real good. Mason had always gone on about his Viking heritage, just like the other Scovilles. However, it was hard to imagine any of the other brothers as a Viking, with perhaps Sage as an exception, given that his hair had a natural black streak that made him look otherworldly. Mason, the most fit of the Scovilles, the most daring, with the scars to show it, and the one who always seemed to be getting himself caught up in one mess or another, looked the most like his Viking ancestors, in both demeanor and appearance. The red hair only helped highlight that heritage. It made him look less like a polar bear shifter but somehow, made him look even more animalistic and primal.
It made him look hotter, spicier, and that drove Savina nuts because the rich red dye hadn’t just turned his hair pink, as she’d intended. It made Mason look like some ancient European warrior, perhaps the spawn of a Celtic maiden and her Viking lover. He looked like a force to reckon with, even with a cocky smile on his face as he shot the shizz with his brother. He looked like he belonged at the head of a Viking longboat, navigating a band of men through the storm, not the end of an antique dining table in an American manor, waiting for a business briefing.
