Page 283 of Boys Who Hunt

“Don’t listen to her. She hates everyone in this room,” Elliot whispers to Ivy.

Sunny chucks a piece of bread at him so hard it leaves an imprint on his forehead. “Shut it, lil’ dicky.”

“Little?!” Elliot scoffs. “I do not—”

“Prove it,” Sunny says, leaning back in the chair. “Go on then, show the rest your teeny tiny dick. They’re waiting.”

“Sunny, we’re at a family dinner, please.”

My mother steps closer and clutches our chairs. Sunny immediately straightens herself in her seat.

“And you boys, behave around the new girl. For the love of God, we do not need to scare her away the first time she meets us,” my mom tells Atlas and Elliot, and they immediately look away as if they’re scared for their lives.

And something about that is so funny, I burst out into laughter.

Mom leans over to stare at me with those killer eyes of hers. “Stop laughing.”

I nearly shit my pants.

“Yes, Mom.”

“Good.”

She smiles. “Keep it civil. This is a family dinner, after all,” she says before walking off.

“Holy shit, your mom’s intimidating as hell,” Ivy says.

“You should’ve seen her when she was in her twenties.” I look up at one of my extra dads, Nathan, suddenly hovering over my chair.

“Jesus, where’d you come from?” I say, grabbing my heart. “I didn’t even fucking see you approach.”

“I’m a ghost.” Nathan wriggles his fingers in the air.

“The ghost with nine fingers, how scary,” Dylan says, wriggling his fingers in the air too.

And boy, I have never seen anyone more willing to grab a fork and stab Dylan’s eyes out. Luckily, they’re all made of plastic. Silas’s mom knows how to prepare for the worst.

“Not again …” My other extra dad Kai shakes his head from the corner of the room. “Can you guys not start another fight for once? We promised Penelope and Lana.”

“Kai’s right, don’t offend the moms,” my dad says, patting me on the shoulder. “I’m proud of you, Max. You did it.”

“Thanks,” I say.

“I love these family dinners,” Blaine, Orion’s dad says, as he leans back in his chair. “Reminds me of the good old days.”

“You make it sound like we weren’t fighting every other day,” Ares, Atlas and Apollo’s dad, says.

“Me? Fighting? With who?” Blaine raises his brows. “I was just reading my books in the corner, minding my own business, enjoying the view.”

“The view of us knocking each other’s heads off, yeah,” Kai says, chuckling.

“That’s just the Phantoms and Skull and Serpents being uncivilized,” Blaine muses.

“Uncivilized?” Nathan rasps.

“Tartarus is a much better house, let’s be honest,” Ares says, stoking the flames.

“You want to prove that, brother?” Kai says, leaning his chin on his elbow.