“This looks amazing. I can’t believe you did all of this.”

  The table is full of food that we’d have back home with my family and at the summer family gathering. There’s spiced apples wrapped in crispy pie crust, sweet buttery acorn squash, corn bread, what looks like elk tenderloin, steamed green beans, and a bowl of blackberries.

  We wrap our babies in a tight hug and give them kisses before we take a seat. We help fill each other’s plates and our babies watch and wait for us to try the food before they dive into their own plates. Awenasa and I smile as we take a bite of the elk. It just melts in my mouth.

  “Damn, this is good.”

  “Yeah, this is delicious. You cooked the elk perfectly. Thank you, loves.”

  They beam at us and then lift their own forks and knives to eat.

  “How was your partial day off today? Did you get to rest at all?”

  “I didn’t have one. Sara made me work and it was embarrassing.” Shannon looks up quickly from her plate with a very concerned look. “What do you mean, embarrassing?”

  I don’t answer, so she looks at Awenasa and Jaime, both of whom are smiling really big. Awenasa pulls her phone out and bites her bottom lip.

  “I don’t think they’d be happy to know I recorded this, because it won’t be released for a week, but I couldn’t help myself. She was beautiful.”

  She hands her phone to Shannon, and Madison and Sam stand up to look over her shoulder. I hear the music start and each of them release low moans and gasps of awe. My face blushes beet red and I lean my head on my hand to look down at my plate.

  “Holy shit, baby. You were sexy as hell, but that was really powerful. What were you feeling when you did that dance? I could feel it in my chest.” I slowly look up at them. They have tears in their eyes. “I was missing all of you.” They look at me longingly, like each of them wants to tackle me and kiss me for days. “We missed you too, sweetie. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about this at all. You’re beautiful and it’s a very moving dance.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We should get you one of those slips.” I laugh hard and shake my head. “We’ll get them for you. Actually, I like that plan.”

  They grin and go back to their seats to continue eating.

  “Anything else new around here besides the new SUV?” Madison nods as she swallows a bite of food. “I think you’re going to reach that thousand cap you asked me to make on the ticket sales for the event in Delaware. Before we picked you up, the count was getting close to nine hundred. Do you think the squad can help that day?”

  “Shit, that’s a lot. Yeah, I’ll ask them. Jaime said she can help too. Talia and a few of her friends accepted the offer to work that day to help with merch sales, so that should help some. Did those extra card readers for the phones and tablets come in?”

  “Yeah, they came in yesterday. We need to make a run to a bulk store when we get home for drinks and snacks for a concession stand. This school doesn’t have one like the last school did.”

  “We’ll probably have at least three hundred people roaming around at the slot gap times like last time. Do you think we need more people to help?”

  “Maybe. We need to have at least three people behind concession and merch tables at all times. It was crazy at the last event and this one’s going to be even bigger. If the squad can help you run the classes, then between us, your parents, and Talia and her friends, we should be ok for managing the rest of the event. Let me know once you talk to the group if they can help, then we can figure it out.”

  I pull my phone out and send a group text out to the whole dance group, giving them details on the event and asking who wants to help, with an offer to pay them.

  “Oh, wait. I ordered something else too.”

  Madison runs off and returns with a handful of various color rubber bracelets. They have, “I Danced with The Wolf”, stamped into them.

  “I thought we could hand these out after we check tickets so we can keep track of people coming in and out of the gym easier. It will also help us to make sure people aren’t staying for more than one session. We can designate a color band to each session so we can ask the others to clear the floor when we switch groups.”

  “This is brilliant.”

  “Thank you.”

  I hand one to Awenasa and Jaime to look at and they smile and agree it’s a good idea.

  “Have you been overworking yourselves? You’re not letting this get in the way of school, right?” They smile affectionately at me and shake their heads. “No, we’re doing fine in school.”

  “Ok, good.”

  I set the bands aside and continue eating the delicious meal they prepared. While I stuff myself with as much of the amazing food as I can, we talk about our trip and what they’ve been doing here while we’ve been gone. As I’m leaning back, holding my painfully stuffed stomach, my phone vibrates and lights up with a few new messages from Symone, Sara, and Keira.

  Symone: Hey, baby. You forgot to text me that you got home safely. Yes, I’ll help you, but you don’t need to pay me.

  Me: Sorry, I fell asleep on the ride home and then when we got home. I’m paying you. This event is going to be huge and we’ll make a shit ton of money, so we can afford to pay you.

  Symone. Ok, fine. I’m in. We’ll need to do video sessions so you can teach me the choreography.

  Me: Definitely.

  Symone: Ok, baby, I’m exhausted. I’m going to sleep. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.

  Me: Goodnight. Thanks for your help.

  Symone: Anytime.

  Sara: I thought you’d never ask. Let me know if you need more people. I can ask some friends to help out as well.

  Me: Thanks. We may need more people checking tickets and running merch and concession sales. Maybe a few more dancers. I’ll let you know after we figure it out.

  Sara: Ok. I’m crashing. Later.

  Keira also agrees to help and as I’m responding to her, Tonya and Jade also respond that they’ll be able to help out.

  “The whole group is on board to help. After expenses, what are we looking at for bringing home from this event?”

  They smile really big and Madison pulls her phone out. She swipes through some screens and pulls up a chart she uses to keep track of the business financials.

  “Well, ticket sales are still open, so this will probably go up by a few thousand. But only counting what we’ve sold and if I estimate the same amount of merchandise sales from the last event, we’re looking at a take home of close to eighty grand. That doesn’t include concession sales.”

  “Are you serious?” Madison grins and nods. “I expect we’ll break even or close to it on concession sales, so I didn’t work up figures on that.”

  “Wow. I don’t even, shit, that’s, damn… I don’t even know what to say to that.” They laugh a little and have such amazing happy smiles on their faces. “You’re all amazing.”

  “So are you, baby. That’s why these people want to take a class with you.”

  “I hope we have time to do another event before we have to fly to California again.”

  “The schedule looks really tight, but we can do one in the second week of December. I would have to book the school and start the ticket campaign this week though if you want to do that. I also need to know where you want to go.”

  “Where do all of you want to go on vacation?”

  “Some place warm.”

  “Ok, let’s do it.” They smile really big and Madison leans over the table to kiss me for a moment. When she sits back, she looks over at Jaime and asks, “Will you come with us?” Jaime looks kind of shocked and blushes a little. “To help with the event?”

  “Well, that’s only one day. But if we’re going out of state, we’ll try to make it a full week vacation.”

  “You want me to come on your family vacation?”

  “Sorry, would it be weird for you? We don’t want to make you uncomfortable.” Jaime laughs a little and shakes her head. “No, it wouldn’t be weird. I’ve been sharing rooms, and sometimes a bed, with Kayla and Awenasa for weeks. I just don’t want to intrude on your family time.”

  “You’re going to be spending a lot of time with Kayla this year for the TV show and the concert tour, so we want to be able to get to know you better.”

  “Ok, maybe I will.” Madison smiles and stands up to start clearing the table. “Good. Why don’t the three of you go sit in the living room while we clean up?”

  “Ok, Maddi.”

  I take Awenasa’s and Jaime’s hands and we fall onto the couch together.

  “Dinner was amazing. Your girls are really good cooks. Are you ok with me going on a family vacation with you?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “If I’m there, you have to be tame.” I laugh a little tilt my head to look her full on. Jaime is looking at me with an adorable sleepy smile. “Just because I identify as a wolf, doesn’t mean I’m a wild animal behind closed doors all the time. I can be tame, even when I don’t have an audience.”

  “You shouldn’t have to be tame on a family vacation.”

  “Then I’ll just kick your ass out when I need to be a savage with my girls.” Jaime laughs hard and lays her head on my shoulder. “Ok, fair enough.”

  “Baby, come here.”

  Awenasa looks at me with half closed eyes and gives me a lazy smile. She lays her head on my chest and I pull Jaime back down to lay on my lap. I close my eyes and a thick fog takes over my mind and makes my body heavy and slow.

  Chapter Three

  I open my eyes and blink a few times, trying to bring my eyes into focus. I lift my head and I’m very confused. How did I end up in bed? Last thing I remember, we were sitting on the couch taking a nap after dinner. I have Awenasa laying on my right side with her back to me and my arm wrapped under her, holding her close. Jaime is wrapped in my other arm with her head on my chest and her leg draped between mine.

  My other girls aren’t in bed with us and the door is closed. I try to lift my head to see the alarm clock on the bedside, but Jaime’s pillow is blocking it from view. There’s a lot of sunlight pouring in the window, so it has to be late in the morning, if not afternoon.

  I lay my head back down and gently kiss Awenasa’s shoulder. She looks so beautiful and peaceful when she sleeps. She stirs a little and lifts her head. She sits up confused and dazed and looks down at me. As her eyes meet mine, she smiles and lays back down facing me. She gently caresses my cheek and kisses my lips for a few moments. She looks at Jaime sleeping on me and her smile widens. She gently kisses my cheek and neck and then lays her head on my chest and rests her hand on my stomach.

  We lay like this for a while longer, just letting Jaime sleep as long as she needs to. It feels like another hour, or close to it, before Jaime wakes up. She slowly rolls off of me and arches her back to stretch out and then rolls back onto her side to look at me with a very rested look about her and a cute happy smile. Awenasa and I smile at her as she sits up on an elbow.

  “How did we end up in here?”

  “I think my babies brought us in here last night. How did you sleep?”

  “Great. I feel like I’ve slept for days. We didn’t, did we?” I laugh a little and shake my head. “I doubt it.”

  “I really need some water.”

  “Me too. I guess we should get up.”

  We sit up and push the covers down. Jaime laughs a little as she looks down at herself and quickly tries to cover herself.

  “Whose shirt is this?” I smile and look her up and down. She’s only in a tee shirt with nothing on her legs. “Mine.”

  “Your girls are cute.” I laugh a little as I get up. I grab a pair of pants from my pajamas drawer in the dresser and toss them at her. “Thanks.”

  Awenasa is also only in a tee shirt, so she gets up and slips into a pair of flannel pajama pants before we leave the room. I wonder why I’m the only one they put pants on.

  We peek our heads into the spare bedroom and my jaw drops. The room if full of boxes of merchandise and they’re working on filling shipping boxes and labeling them. There’s a huge stack of at least twenty boxes already filled, taped, and labeled sitting next to the open door.

  “I need two smalls of the charcoal gray pullover hoodie.”

  Shannon reaches into a box and then leans over to hand them to Madison. As she’s turning back around, she catches us watching and smiles.

  “Wow, you’re finally awake. Are you feeling better now?”

  “Yeah, thanks for letting us sleep. What time is it?” Shannon looks at her watch and smiles. “Almost one o’clock. Are you hungry?”

  “Starving. We need a bigger place. The business stuff needs its own room. How often are you doing this?” They laugh a little as they look between each other. “We have orders to fill almost every day. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like after you and Jaime start showing up on TV a lot more. We’ll probably need to have our friends come help us fill orders just to get through them.”

  “How many do you have left to do today?” Madison reaches forward and grabs a small stack of printed order forms and thumbs through them. “About twenty. It shouldn’t take too much longer. We’ve come up with a pretty good system.”

  “Can I help?”

  “After you eat.”

  “Ok. I want to come kiss all of you, but I don’t know where to step to get to you.” They smile and laugh a little. “We’ll get one when you come back. Shannon made breakfast hash so you can just heat that up. It’s on the top shelf in the fridge.”

  “Ok, thank you.”

  We make our way to the kitchen and Awenasa gets to work reheating the breakfast hash in a skillet, while I get us glasses of ice water. After the hash is heated through, we take our plates and glasses back to the spare bedroom to sit with our girls.

  We carefully tiptoe around the desks to get to the large lounging chair and sit side by side to watch my girls work. They really do have a good system. Madison grabs the order form, tells Shannon what she needs, fills the box, and then passes it to Sam to double check, tape, and label. While Madison is loading the box, Shannon builds the next box to hand to Madison after she gives Sam the filled box to check. It only takes them a couple minutes to fill one order.

  “When you’re finished eating, the new posters are in those tubes on the desk if you want to check them out. They turned out really good.”

  I smile and leap up. I set my plate and glass aside and quickly wipe my hands off on my pants to make sure they’re clean and dry before I pop the top off the first tube and pull out a poster.

  “Those are just the proof copies. If you’re happy with them, I’ll add them to the website and place an order for a bunch of copies.”

  The first poster is a collection of various still shots of me doing a hip-hop piece dressed in my knee length sweat pants and a sports bra that we filmed in an alley with brick walls and fire escapes in the background. It looks really cool.

  The second poster is a collection of pictures of my dances with Awenasa from the family gathering at home. The center of the poster is me in flight with the hawk wings as I flew off the shed. It’s incredible and causes so much emotion well up in my chest.

  “These are amazing.” I show Awenasa and Jaime and they’re equally impressed and happy with them. Awenasa’s face is incredible as she looks at the hawk poster. “I love this.”

  “Oh, Awenasa, the item you asked Uncle Elsu to make came in. Kayla, hand her that box next to the posters.”

  Awenasa sets her plate down in excitement and quickly opens the box and pulls out a small jewelry box. She pulls out a silver ring and smiles really big.

  “Perfect. Here, puppy. People have been asking for more jewelry pieces. What do you think of this?”

  I take the ring and smile really big. It’s a nice silver band with a crosshatch pattern etched in the sides, a howling wolf head inlay of black obsidian on the top, and it has “The Dancing Wolf” engraved around the inside of the band.

  “This is amazing. How’s he doing with filling all of the orders? Is this affecting his own business?” Awenasa smiles and takes the ring back. “Yes, but in a good way. He’s getting a ton of click through traffic from your site to his and they are ordering more jewelry off his site. He had to hire another person to help run the store on the reservation so he can spend more time making and shipping jewelry. He’s ecstatic.”

  “What does our schedule look like before I have to leave for the concert tour? Do you think we have time to visit before I have to leave?” Awenasa looks up with tears in her eyes and quickly stands up and pulls me into a hug. Madison answers while I hold Awenasa in my arms. “I think March is our least busy month to be able to pull that off.”

  “Ok, let’s make it happen. We need to call all of the dancers and family home for a big pow wow.”

  “I love you.” I smile and kiss Awenasa’s lips. “I love you too.”

  I hold her for a moment longer and then carefully roll and put the posters away. By the time that we finish eating, my girls are finished with filling the orders and start cleaning up and neatly stacking boxes of merchandise in the closets and against the wall between the two closets. Shannon pulls out a folded cart that looks like a tall ball basket on wheels and they load it with the fifty or so boxes and poster tubes they just filled.

  “Wow, you guys really have a huge operation going on here. You do that every day and take that many packages to the post office every day?” They look at Jaime and smile. “Pretty much. Some days less, some days more. The more Kayla is on TV or doing the events, the more sales we have. We’ve had to take five loads like this a couple times. We’ve gotten on first name terms with pretty much everyone at the post office.”

  “That’s amazing.”

  We follow my girls back to the front of the apartment and put our dirty breakfast dishes in the sink. I wrap my girls in a tight hug and give each of them a kiss.