That gave Cas pause, and he sat down on the one stool I had in the back of my shop. We probably should have had the conversation upstairs, but I really hadn’t wanted to give myself time to procrastinate or chicken out. That felt too much like lying.
Even sitting down, he was basically my height. I’d never been with anyone quite so much larger than me. I wasn’t a tiny woman. At around five-six, I was actually taller than the average woman, let alone the average Asian woman. But Cas was just so big.
Striking, really. I’d noticed that from the first moment he’d walked into my shop.
He had to be six-three, or six-four, and that shock of chestnut hair perfectly shaded those bright green eyes. Sometimes when I met attractive people, they slowly dimmed over time, growing less and less appealing. But not Cas. No. The more I got to know him, the more I was drawn to him. The two of us were like opposite ends of a magnet, irrevocably drawn to each other.
“You really feel that way about it?” he asked softly, looking at me with those soulful eyes of his. God, he could stare at me like that forever, and I would be happy.
“I really do. Besides, I’m really excited by these cake flavors. I haven’t done them before, and I honestly think they’re going to be a great combo.”
Cas took a deep breath as he digested all the information I’d given him. The fact that he was so calm even though we seriously disagreed, was enough to knock my feet out from under me. Also, he’d listened to me. I’d gotten so used to being dismissed in culinary school or at my apprenticeships and having to prove myself that I forgot what it was like to be trusted.
“You want to tell me about them?”
Now it was my turn to look shocked. “Are you sure you wanna hear about it?”
He leaned forward and kissed the tip of my nose. I loved how often he gave me affection. I hadn’t really realized it, but I’d been touch-starved since my mother’s death-likely before that, too. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d held someone other than my mother’s or Cas’s hand.
“Felicia, if it’s something you’re excited about, of course I want to hear about it. Tell me everything.”
So I did. Cas wasn’t being patronizing or pretending to listen. He was genuinely excited for me, and asked me great questions, like how I would stop the weight of the heavily layered cake from squishing out all the filling.
“If the Ramirezes have any taste, they’ll have no choice but to love this,” Cas said, slinging his arm over my shoulders and pulling me to his side for a hug. “Although, I can’t guarantee that they do.”
“Hey, what is with the rivalry between y’all?” I asked cautiously. “How far back does it go?”
Cas heaved a sigh and was quiet for so long that I was sure he’d change the topic, but he didn’t. “It pretty much goes back to all American people. All the land around here used to be the territory of the Sauk, Shawanaga, and even the Chikashaw shifters. But then settlers came in, and they brought the fairies with them.”
“Fairies! You mentioned those before.” And so had Gammy McCallister, if I remembered correctly. “They’re kind of like your governing body, right?”
“No, that implies people voted for them. They kind of just… took over. They’re tricky, ya know? They offer amazing things, but their contracts are tricky.”
“Ah, yeah, I’ve heard about needing to be careful what you say to the fae folk,” I mused, thinking back to various tales and myths I’d read. Wild to think that so many of them were based in truth.
“That’s putting it mildly. But yeah, the tribes ran afoul of the fairies, got tricked with some bad contracts, and that’s when my pack and the Brouchard pack came in.”
“The Brouchard pack? I don’t think any of you have ever mentioned them.”
“That’s because they were wiped out two hundred years ago, and any survivors scattered to other continents.”
My eyes shot open at that. “Wait, they what now?”
“Like I said, you don’t violate fairy contracts. There are consequences, which all those Native shifters found out. They managed to band together. That stopped the encroachment of settlers, fairies, my ancestors, and the Brouchards for a while, but with everything going on against Indigenous people, their numbers continued to fall.
“Eventually, it seemed like they were going to vanish entirely until they were contacted by scouts from a faraway tribe in Mexico that was facing the same thing. They both worked out a deal with the fairies to allow them to unite and officially claim the land to the east and north of the city that was forming.”
“So, this basically goes all the way back to Manifest Destiny?” Wow, I’d gotten involved in something much bigger than I had thought. Fuck.
“Yeah. And I can’t exactly tell them they’re wrong for being upset. We did wrong by them, and we’ve never paid for it.”
“Why not do that then?”
Cas gave me a curious look. “What do you mean?”
“Pay the consequence. Like, give them some of your land or work out some sort of treaty. After so long, don’t you think it’s time to mend fences?”
“I wish we could. The whole reason my father ended up challenging the previous alpha was because Barris was trying to incite violence against the Ramirez pack to cover up his gambling problem. He always wanted to try to fix things, but the fairy contracts keep our hands tied.”
“How so?”
“Well, both our packs have sworn fealty to the fairies. If they’re ever in a fight and need muscle, or another magical war happens, we come in clutch. There’s also whispers that the fairies use us for assassinations when they don’t want to get their hands dirty, but that’s a little old world in my opinion.
“And in return for this loyalty and the taxes we pay them, they protect us from human technology, provide any sort of spells for the safety of our people should we need it, and keep us safe from other Wild Folk.” He rubbed a hand over his face and sighed again.
“Part of me would love to just give the Ramirezes their land back and find a new place for my pack, but we’re bound to the land and our contracts. It’s a catch-22 no matter how you look at it.”
“You didn’t explain all this before,” I said lamely, thinking back to our walk together. He had mentioned the fairies and the fact that they complicated things but not much else.
Suddenly it made much more sense why he’d been so tight-lipped about the entire situation. I knew enough about Cas to know that he had a pretty strong moral compass, and obviously what happened to the Natives in the area was pure wrong. I knew if he could, he’d want to fix it.
But why didn’t the fairies want to? That was what baffled me. Surely, they had to know all the damage they were causing. Sure, I got that power and contracts were like their thing, but they had to be in a pretty comfortable position after so many centuries of being in charge.
“That’s because it’s messy and complicated. While everyone kind of knows the generalities of what happened to the Indigenous folks of America, it’s another thing entirely to contextualize it, you know. I feel guilty for things I had no hand in, but I profit from violence that hurt hundreds of thousands of people. Systematically, at that. I didn’t want to burden you with that.”
“Cas,” I murmured, leaning my head on his shoulder. “I’m a first-generation Asian-American woman and an orphan. I get it. Existence is complicated nowadays.”
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