Martha was smiling at me across the table. Older, plump, with medium brown skin, she looked a lot like her daughters. She usually said little, at least to me, but I had watched her knit several sweaters and shawls during the Pack Council sessions.

She smiled brighter. “You’re getting married.”

Mahon grinned next to her. “Three out of four.”

Reminding him that he was adamantly opposed to Curran and me getting married would ruin the mood.

“Now if only we could find a nice boy and marry that hellion off . . .” Mahon said.

The hellion stuck her tongue out. “Maybe I’ll marry a girl.”

“That will be fine,” Mahon said. “As long as she loves you.”

Natalie rolled her eyes.

“Are you thinking of children?” Martha asked.

“Mom!” George and Natalie said in the same voice.

“No,” Curran said.

“Yes,” I said at the same time.

He turned to look at me.

“Thinking,” I said. Please don’t ask me anything else about children.

Martha grinned even wider. If we turned off the lights, she and Mahon would probably glow.

“Are you thinking of children?” Mahon asked George.

Eduardo choked on a piece of bread and coughed quietly.

“Dad, keep your paws out of my marriage,” George said.

Curran frowned. “I’ll be right back.”

He got up, brushed my shoulder with his hand in passing, and went outside.

“Someone’s pulled up to your house,” Eduardo told me.

Shapeshifters and their hearing.

“While he’s gone,” Martha said. “Come with me.”

I followed her into the back room. She took a small box from the night table and gave it to me.

“Something old.”

Something old? Oh! The rhyme. Something old, something new, something I didn’t remember and then there was blue in it somewhere . . . I opened the box. A dark chain lay inside.

“Go on,” Martha said.

I picked it up. Heavy for its size. The chain kept going and suddenly a bright green gemstone emerged, about an inch and a half wide. I held it to the light. A bear, carved with painstaking precision, down to the fur.

“When Mahon and I met, there wasn’t a lot of him left,” Martha said. “Even when he was human, he was full of bear rage. But I knew there was a man in there somewhere, so I went and found him. Before we got married, he gave me a set of jewelry: a ring, earrings, bracelet, and a pendant. He said it was because I was the stronger bear.” She smiled. “Back then we didn’t have the fancy shapeshifter-safe alloys, so it’s steel. But the stone is the real thing, peridot. I want you to have it.”

Oh my God. “I can’t.”