__________
Bloodlust always smells better on Thanksgiving.
Not magically—Isabella would murder anyone who suggested her cooking relied on anything but skill—but the whole building feels warmer. Like the walls lean in a little.
I stepped inside to a wave of heat and noise. People everywhere, most of whom didn’t have anywhere else to be. Humans mixed in with supers, which meant SPID paperwork was going to be a nightmare after tonight. Rayven insists it’s “worth it.” Mav insists “don’t get used to it.” Falcon just steals an extra roll and pretends he understood either of them.
Isabella ruled the kitchen like a benevolent tyrant. Every time someone tried to help, she chased them out with a spoon. Cael hovered safely on the fringe, playing runner: pans, trays, spices, stolen bites of mashed potatoes. He thinks no one sees him. Isabella sees everything.
Falcon and Gabriel managed the door. One French, one English, equally exasperated, equally stylish. They ushered people in waves—exhausted mortals, displaced supers, a witch coven that always shows up three hours late. Someone muttered, “bring us your tired, your hungry.” Falcon pretended he hadn’t heard it. Gabriel definitely had.
Rayven was carving turkey with military precision. She uses the same posture she does when signing arrest warrants. I don’t point that out anymore.
Patch was here in human form, wearing a cardigan like he’d raided a university library lost and found. He passed out napkins with the same seriousness most people reserve for passing out court summons. Mav caught him trying to slip pamphlets on the tables.
“No politics around the turkey,” she said without slowing down.
Patch sniffed at her like she’d personally betrayed democracy.
Frankie showed up looking like a man trying to remember how to breathe. His tie was crooked, his shirt rumpled. He’s aging strange now—too slow to explain to the humans—and the holiday must’ve pressed on that.
“First Thanksgiving with all of you,” he said quietly, standing next to me. “Figured this was… safer.”
He didn't offer an explanation. I didn't ask. He was in his fortys now, but he still looked like the young rookie Rayven met ages ago. How do you explain that?
“Welcome to the asylum,” I told him. He laughed, but it didn’t reach his eyes.
Plates began landing on tables in a chaotic rhythm—Isabella commanding, Mav distributing food with naval efficiency, Cael ferrying dish after dish. In minutes the tavern fell into that rare hush that comes when hungry people forget, for a moment, what they were running from.
I walked the room with spare utensils because Mav shoved them into my hands and told me to “make myself useful.” Kids were drawing pictures on the backs of placemats. A couple of vampires were arguing over whether cranberry sauce counted as an acceptable “blood substitute.” A fae woman at the corner table was weaving glamour into the steam rising off her plate—habit, not malice.
And for once, no one was fighting.
No shouting.
No portal crises.
No Council panicking about rogue shifters.
Just… dinner.
Rayven brushed past me, murmuring, “Check the back tables. Someone’s missing silverware.”
“Yes, captain,” I muttered, but I did it anyway.
At one point, an elderly mortal woman broke down crying over her food. Isabella sat with her until she could breathe again. Watching that—watching someone who’s seen centuries sit and hold a stranger’s hand—that still hits somewhere deep.
Mav eventually wandered out to the patio. I followed. The cold air felt good. The stars were out, sharp and clear above the city haze.
“Something’s coming,” she said quietly, staring up like the sky owed her answers.
“You always say that.”
“This time I mean it.”
I didn’t argue. You don’t argue with someone who’s felt the tides of centuries.
We went back inside when Isabella banged a pan loudly enough to imply threats. Dessert came out. People laughed—really laughed. Full, belly-deep, relieved laugher. Patch got whipped cream on his sweater. Frankie actually smiled. Cael stole more pie than was morally defensible.
At the end, when most of the people had gone and the quiet settled, Bloodlust felt… full. Like the kind of full that doesn’t come from food.
Family full.
Found-family full.
History full.
I stood in the doorway, watching the plates vanish into the kitchen.
“Good night?” Rayven asked behind me.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah. It was.”
And somehow, it really was.
Bloodlust finally finished emptying out the way a battlefield does: slow, uneven, and full of the kind of silence that only arrives after people have cried, laughed, and eaten themselves into oblivion.
Frankie was stacking chairs with the defeated posture of a man who’d lived through a war he didn’t enlist in. Rayven wiped down the bar. Mav leaned against it, arms crossed, the picture of someone who pretends she isn’t exhausted.
Frankie broke the silence first.
“Why do you all do this?” he asked. “You feed half the neighborhood. Some supers, some mortals, some… whatever Patch counts as. You don’t get anything for it. What’s the point?”
Rayven looked up, halfway expecting Mav to let loose a snarl about humanitarian insanity or Rayven guilt-tripping her into charity again.
Instead, Mav pushed off the counter and answered.
“We do it because someone has to,” she said. No dramatics. No sarcasm. Just truth. “Someone has to give people a reason not to give up. Someone has to hold the line and say humanity’s worth the trouble, even if some of them aren’t technically human anymore.”
Frankie blinked. Mav didn’t stop.
“It doesn’t matter what the Council thinks. Doesn’t matter what New York politics thinks. Doesn’t matter what the idiots outside this place think while they argue about who deserves what.” She flicked a towel at a drying spot on the counter. “We’re not doing it to be recognized. We’re doing it because it’s right.”
Rayven’s jaw tightened—not angry, just moved in that way she never admits to.
Frankie nodded very slowly, like something heavy had just slotted into place.
“Then I’m staying,” he said, as though it were in question. “For as long as you’ll have me.”
“Don’t get sentimental,” Mav muttered. “You still leave hair in the shower drain.”
Rayven flicked her towel at her.
Frankie laughed, the real kind, and the tavern—old, stubborn, full of opinions—seemed to breathe in around them.
“Come on, mes amis, it’s time to go home,” Falcon said as he stepped in. Mav rolled her eyes at him but didn’t argue. She slipped her hand around his elbow like she’d been doing it for centuries.
Rayven and Cael followed, shoulder to shoulder, and Gabriel trailed behind them talking to Frankie about all the years they’d been feeding whoever wandered through the door. Isabella tried to stay behind to scrub a perfectly clean counter until Falcon gave her that look and told her it was time to go home too. She huffed like someone had stolen her broom. I laughed.
I followed them out, watching this ragged mess of people I called family. The trouble they caused, the half-baked arguments, Mav’s spines, Rayven’s relentless compassion, Gabriel’s quiet sense of duty… they poked each other nonstop and had opinions about everything under the sun.
Underneath all that noise, they were human. Ridiculously human. And I loved them for it.
I closed up, checked the lock, and headed home with them.
_________
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
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