Page 16 of I Dated a Holiday Hero
Hever was hungry. “Is there anything else?”
Zera asked, “Are you coming back to work?”
“Sure. I just need someone to do a bug sweep.”
“No. I mean to work.”
“Oh, wow. I thought he took off.”
“He did but is still on your books. I want you to consider a few of the others.”
Salat growled. “How many are there?”
“That matches with her physically in this form? Twenty-four. If we can get her in for a scan in her scaled forms, we should be able to knock that down a bit.”
The cousins were looking at each other with uncertainty. She sighed. “You aren’t alphas; you don’t have the requisite drive to be anywhere near my file.”
Zera snickered. “You really don’t. Her need for contact is extreme. Well, I look forward to you doing a recalibration. I can’t wait to see what happens once we narrow down the field a bit.”
Khytten looked at Hever with understanding and pity.
“Yeah, but Mom gets irritated if I am more than forty minutes away from her. The vast majority of the alphas are Sethir. They don’t particularly like to commute. They like their omegas locked down and where they can find them.”
Zera murmured, “Not only that, but you are a tech of international renown. You can get a job anywhere, but our designs are proprietary.”
“Oh, honey bunny, I have designs for vehicles you would never let me build. And line after line of interactive children’s toys that don’t match Z-Corp’s brand.”
Zera’s voice was amazed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. I have made the spirit of the holidays presents for the last decade. I donated so many toys to the Uraddan kids so they could learn to play with them.” She sighed. “I am also done with not being remembered. I don’t like it, and the need for it has been blown out of the water. So, from now on, people will remember me.”
That caused a flurry of questions, but her mom held up some chopsticks, and Hever went to the family dining room to have dinner with her mom.
Auntie Salmet joined them, and slowly, the table filled with the family that had come to her rescue.
Uncle Iron was piling food on his plate. “You know, you are going to have to explain that last comment.”
“Oh, it’s related to the omega thing. I can make memories of me fade, and when Mom and I were going from embassy to embassy, it seemed sensible to blur the edges of what I was and where I had come from. Then, one of my cousins told me that I was picked up like a stray puppy and not a real cousin at all, and that was when I started doing it with family. Everyone remembered that Mom had a daughter, but the details were always blurry when I wasn’t there.”
She beat Remark to an egg roll and smirked as she reeled it in. “Remember defeat, defender-boy.”
The table burst into laughter, and she kept eating as a battle to get the food commenced without a bit being wasted.
When someone beat Hever to a dumpling, she let herself tear up and sniffle. She snagged the dumpling from the chopsticks and had it in her mouth. “Sucker. This is why I don’t use my powers for evil. There just isn’t a challenge.”
Khytten laughed and said, “You are a lot livelier today.”
“I got to be my scaled self twice today. It returns me to health.”
“Right, so what are these wings you mentioned?”
“I had soft bat-like wings on my back, and they cut them loose, pinned them in a box, and watched them try to flap free.” She sighed. “I could hear them calling to me, and it is still there. I really want them back.”
Zera said, “They were moving in the box?”
“I have seen the scans. I am descended from Nelith and Tirra’s dad. I have luck and god knows what else with a lot of regeneration available, when I use it. I wasn’t going to do it in front of my kidnappers.”
“And the poisoning?”
