Page 1 of Have a Bear-y Little Christmas
Chapter 1
Remington
’Tis the Season
“Deckthe halls with boughs of holly!”the kids of St. Luke’s elementary school sang, all three choirs coming together in one big finale medley.
“Oh, Ilovethis one!” my mother-in-law said, beaming from ear to ear. She knew exactly which medley they were singing and how it sounded, because they performed the same one every year. Since my girls had both joined during their respective first grades, I’d been hearing the tune for half a decade.
I didn’t mind. It was another marker for my daughters’ growth, andboyif they could just slow down for a moment, I’d be most appreciative.
“That’s my Addy, my Eva,” I bragged to my father, like he didn’t know. He wasn’t exactly blessed with the gift of gab, but the smile gracing his face was enough. He and my mother lived about two hours away—more toward the wilderness than in the suburbs like me—but they always came for the girls’ holiday concert.
“Are those the shoes I bought her?” my father-in-law asked, his eyes glued to the stage. My in-laws lived even farther away than my parents, on our ancestral clan lands, so they had every excuse to miss it, but they came every year to cheer on their grandchildren and film the concert.
They’d always been big on recording memories, but I’d noticed an increase in the habit over the last two years. Not that I could really blame them with everything that happened. We’d all learned exactly how valuable a memory could be, and that it should never be taken for granted.
“’Tis the season to be jolly!”
I was practically glowing with pride as my girls sang their hearts out. Adelaide, my eldest, was belting it out like a champ, and while Evangeline was much more reserved and occasionally glanced down at her feet, her mouth was always moving, and she was indeed emoting.
Clearly, they got it all from their mother because I didn’t have a lick of musical talent. It was one of the many things they’d inherited from her. But, hey, it looked like Addy was getting my height, and both my children had gotten my curls, so it balanced out a bit.
They switched to a Christmas ballad about coming home, and Addy’s confident expression flickered for a moment. I knew exactly what my darling little overachiever was thinking, and I resolved to give her extra hugs tonight. Not that it was ever a struggle to show my children affection. No, I tried to take advantage of every second before they became old enough to realize how uncool their old man was.
That was part of being a parent, I supposed. We went from being our babies’ everything to being their cringy, often-resented supervisor, to hopefully becoming a loving guardian to turn to in times of need or comfort. I was still on that first part, and I wasn’t exactly eager to leave it.
That was the funny thing about time, wasn’t it? The more excited we were about something, the more we craved and adored it, the faster it flitted by until it was gone. The present, no matter how wonderful, would inevitably become the past—what was and could be no more.
So yeah, I understood my in-laws’ desire to record everything.
Speaking of time moving fast, it felt like I’d blinked and the song was over. The different grades’ choirs were bowing on the stage. I stood and clapped, as did many of the parents, family, and otherwise trusted community. I even saw some raised and waving hands, which told me the Delhar family was in attendance. Apart from their eldest and youngest, the rest of the family was deaf. The eldest, Symphony, was my daughter’s academic rival.
Yeah, Addy had just turned ten, and she already had an academic rival. Apparently, the two girls had a pact that one of them would be valedictorian and one would be salutatorian, and they were in a race to see who would be which.
Already, my baby was so much smarter than me. I’d been a slightly above-average student, but I hadn’t really gelled in public or private school among humans, so I’d homeschooled with my clan.
I was incredibly glad I did, though, because it was on an inter-clan field trip to the city aquarium during eighth grade that I’d met my wife, Zara.
I could still remember the exact moment I saw her, standing alone in front of a cephalopod tank, studying them with an inscrutable expression. Her skin was somewhere between gold and honeyed birch, her dark hair tightly braided. Her eyes were such a pale green that they almost looked gray in the light of the aquarium, her cheekbones high and elegant. Like royalty. Like anempress.
Naturally, I’d broken the ice by walking up to her and telling her that the correct pluralization of octopus in English was actually octopuses, and that octopi was technically incorrect, as it assumed the word followed Latin pluralization rules when really, octopus originated from Greek.
Somehow, that had worked.
We hadn’t dated right away—we were both young, after all—but we’d exchanged AIM usernames and chatted as regularly as you could expect of two homeschooled bear shifters who hadn’t hit puberty yet and only had one family computer everyone had to share. And, then there was the added bonus that using the internet back then blocked the phone lines.
But through those silly messages, we’d formed a real bond, and no one was surprised when we started dating in tenth grade. It also became much easier to visit once we got our bear forms.
Well, onceIgot my bear form. Because although my wife was also a bear shifter, that was never in the cards for her. She’d been born with a genetic abnormality that would have required ancient shifters to give their baby up to the closest body of water, but thankfully, we’d moved beyond those primitive times. Her parents raised her, cherished her, and loved her all while knowing she would never be able to shift.
My in-laws were the loveliest people, and I was so lucky to have them in our lives. Every time I became overwhelmed with being a father, I could talk to either of them or my own parents and glean something that made the rising tides of parenthood seem a little less terrifying.
“I don’t know how, but they keep getting better every year!” my mother-in-law, Amara, said, still clapping even though most of the applause had died down. “I think Addy’s gonna end up being a mezzo-soprano like her great-granny. And I wouldn’t be surprised if little Eva has alto tendencies.”
She said it with such fierce pride that I got a little choked up. Knowing my children were so unabashedly loved and supported always got to me. I’d grown up in a loving home, but neither of my parents could say the same. My mother came from a clan deep in the Southwest that had tried to marry her off to the alpha’s son before she even had her first shift. My father’s mother had dipped when he was young, and his old man had been a mean alcoholic who made a living by brewing moonshine strong enough to get bear shifters drunk. The guy would have made a killing if he didn’t gulp down so much of his own wares. As one would expect, my dad had fled that situation as soon as he was physically capable.
Despite all the odds stacked against them, the two of them had broken the cycle with me. They had planned on having more kids, but when that didn’t happen, they dedicated themselves to being the best parents to me they could possibly be. Were they perfect? Of course not. But I was far from a perfect child, so it all worked out.
