Page 48 of Targeted By Temptation
“It's a boy.” The midwife placed a red, squirmy bundle on Reign's chest.
Our son was waving his clenched fists in the air, and I fell in love with him. But I had no words. There was nothing that could describe this moment. I put my arms around my mate and our son, kissing them both and telling Reign how proud I was of him.
I got on the bed and snuggled with my mate and the baby, ignoring the frantic pacing of five pairs of feet my shifter hearing picked up outside.
“Let them wait. We’re a new family and this is us time.”
“Please tell me they won’t insist on naming him Maynard Boaz Ezra Riggs Thiago Lake Grey.”
I scoffed at the suggestion. “Don’t be silly. It’ll be Ezra Maynard Boaz Riggs Thiago Lake Grey.”
We settled on Archer.
EPILOGUE
REIGN
“Is this what you call getting ready?” I looked down at my adorable family, shaking my head.
Archer and Ezra were doing their new favorite thing—racing. Archer was officially the fastest crawler on this planet, and there was nothing he liked more than when my mate took his fur and crawled around on the floor with him. It was absolutely adorable, and by far one of the sweetest things I’d ever seen. But we were in a time crunch.
Ezra shifted. “Give me five minutes to throw my clothes on. What was I supposed to do? He looked at me so sadly.”
Ezra could never say no to our son, but to be fair, I couldn’t either. Nor could his grandparents or uncles or cousins.
I bent down and scooped up Archer. “Your daddy really needs to learn how to say no to you.”
Ezra chuckled in the corner as he was pulling on his shirt. “As if you’re any better at it.”
It was true.
My mate was ready quickly, and we drove down to the grand opening of my new studio, which was what I ended up calling my range.
Bowtastic Archery Studio.I wasn’t quite sure it worked, but it let people see that I thought of archery as an art, and that it wasn’t all about being an exclusive club or one of the snobby ranges I’d been to over the years. Also, it opened us up for bow making in the future, which was an art form.
We’d see how well it worked, and if need be, we’d make adjustments along the way.
So far, I had a few classes set up and ready to go. None were full, and if you took out people I knew, they weren’t even half full. But it was a start, and a slow open was better than being overwhelmed from the beginning. I didn’t want the studio taking over my life just yet. I was a dad and mate first and foremost.
My mate’s brothers were already there when we arrived with their little ones. Boaz had come extra early to let the caterers in. Was it over the top to have caterers for a soft open? Probably. But this was the first thing I’d done career-wise on my own and I wanted to celebrate it in style.
The property was absolutely perfect for what I wanted. It wasn’t fancy fancy, but it wasn’t too rustic either. Best of all, it was both human and shifter-friendly. I suspected my clientele would be mostly shifters and a few local high school kids who got a taste for archery in gym class and were looking for something more. We’d see as time moved on.
When I spoke to my mate about having the property be multi-use, he helped me with a business model. I knew little about the shifter world at large, but he did. What I did know was thatshifting could be very dangerous during human hunting season, and this property could help with that.
With Ezra’s help in getting the word out, I’d already arranged for groups to come and shift and hunt in the backwoods. We spent a good chunk of my father’s money posting and fencing in the extensive area, making it a safe space for them to get their fur on. The area aound us didn’t have a lot of shifter-friendly hunting grounds.
It was an odd combination. The public-facing business was teaching a skill that was used for sport, sure, but also for hunting. The kind of hunting that made shifting dangerous in many places. And the secret-facing side of the business was for shifters to hunt without fear of human weapons. Somehow it worked.
Boaz and his mate were looking at some of the new bows I had lined up on the wall that I had custom-made for the smallest of archers. In the future, I want to be able to handcraft them myself. I’d taken a couple of lessons with a master bowyer. I had a long way to go, but he assured me I was a natural.
“These are beautiful. I didn’t know they made them that small.”
“They usually don’t, but I wanted this to be an inclusive place.”
At first, the grand opening was more of a family party than anything else. We ate the snacks that were catered in. The kids devoured the cupcakes. We talked. We laughed.
But then something I never expected happened.
