HORNS (BoyXBoy)

Chapter 88

⚠WARNING⚠: this chapter has violence in it.

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Chapter Eighty Eight

After my car ride with Sebastian, I spent the rest of the night relaxing in the sitting room just talking with Echo and Raph on the phone. The two of them were trying to make cupcakes for Aerin's birthday party, but were having trouble since Echo kept messing up the flavors.

I hadn't seen Huang at all by the time I went to sleep around six in the morning.

The next night, however, passed by in a blur of activity from the moment I woke up. Everyone was busy doing something--whether it was preparing food for the supernatural crowd that would undoubtedly be showing up for Aerin's eighty first birthday or heading out into the city to help normal civilians with rebuilding and clearing away the wreckage in Wilmington.

People were setting up party streamers and decorations and doing their best to make things as fun as possible. I spent pretty much the entire night helping Sebastian, Cassidy, Diana, Buck, and my dad with the dining room preparations since Aerin's birthday was a special occasion and everyone typically went all out for it.

I worked up a sweat, but truthfully, I didn't mind.

Many werewolves didn't make a big fuss about birthdays because they either had an unlimited number of them in their future or they'd already seen too many to count. From what I'd heard, time tended to lose meaning to supernatural creatures over the age of two hundred.

Aerin, on the other hand, was a special case.

Because of his unusual circumstances with how he'd been turned, he'd spent fifty years living all alone, hiding among normal people with absolutely no idea about the existence of werewolves, mermaids, dragons, sirens, banshees--or even the Underground. He'd been alone, living day to day, with nobody to really talk to. He'd told us a long time ago that he'd never really celebrated his birthday because he'd had nobody to feel happy he was born.

His birthday used to make him sad.

Ever since then, my pack and his pack, along with the majority of the friends he'd made over the last five years, made an effort to throw him the biggest, brightest party ever. For me, it was worth the effort to work up a sweat if it meant we could all show him he was loved.

His smile was worth any struggle.

"Okay, Buck, stop," Diana suddenly sighed, snapping me out of my head momentarily. "You're supposed to put the streamers beneath the happy birthday banner, and if it you tape them up vertically they'll fall off!"

"Look, quit harpin' at me at me about the decorations," the man grunted, pushing his long salt and pepper braid off his leather-clad shoulder. "They'll be fine wherever I put them."

"Not if they aren't straight," Cassidy muttered, and I turned to stare at them.

"Quit crabbin' at me!" Buck snapped. "I'm a hundred and seventy two years old!"

Diana just shrugged and stepped back, folding her arms with a smirk. I cringed since I knew that look: she was waiting for the stubborn old biker to mess up so she could rub it in that she'd been right. I absently watched as Buck took another set of streamers out of the big box that Sebastian had brought in. He looked between the tape and the pink and yellow streamers a few times. I glanced over at Cassidy and Diana, who were watching him intently, and turned to look at my father and Sebastian, who seemed immersed in a quiet conversation as they set the table.