Raising Beast Cubs to Find a Husband-Chapter 196: The Spring Bake Sale Declaration of War

The problem with letting Warlords join the Parent-Teacher Association was that they treated every single school event like a territorial dispute.

It started innocently enough. We were standing in the courtyard of Unity Academy, reviewing the sign-up sheet for the annual Spring Bake Sale. I was penciling in my name for two dozen dragon-breath tartlets when Lady Vesper, a tall, incredibly snooty Crane-kin mother, walked over.

She looked at our chaotic little family unit. Rurik was currently letting Vali use his massive arm as a jungle gym. Cassian was lecturing Jasper on the architectural flaws of the school fountain. Caspian was holding Orion, gently keeping our son from jumping into said fountain.

Lady Vesper gave a polite, condescending little laugh, fluttering her feathered fan.

"Oh, Sovereign Primrose," she cooed, her voice dripping with fake sweetness. "It’s so lovely that your... husbands are taking an interest in school activities. But really, for the bake sale, perhaps it would be best if the men just made a monetary donation? We wouldn’t want anyone getting food poisoning from raw boar meat, would we?"

Silence fell over our group.

Vali stopped swinging from Rurik’s arm. Jasper looked up from his notebook.

Rurik’s golden eyes slowly locked onto the Crane woman. His ears twitched, pinning back against his silver hair. Beside him, Cassian’s posture straightened, his eyes narrowing into dangerous, serpentine slits. Even Caspian, usually the calmest of the bunch, stopped smiling.

"Raw boar meat?" Rurik repeated, his voice dropping an octave into a low, terrifying rumble.

"Well, you know," Lady Vesper stammered, taking a step back as the sheer killing intent radiating from the men hit her. "Northern cooking is so... rustic. Baking is a delicate art. It requires precision."

"Precision," Cassian hissed softly.

"I think we will sign up for a stall, Lady Vesper," Caspian said, his voice smooth as glass and twice as sharp. He reached over and took the pen from my hand, signing their names in elegant, flowing script. "We look forward to the competition."

Lady Vesper swallowed hard, nodded stiffly, and hurried away on her long, spindly legs.

I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling a headache coming on. "You do realize what you just did, right?"

"She insulted our pack’s ability to provide," Rurik growled, crossing his massive arms. "This means war."

"It’s a bake sale, Rurik," I sighed.

"It is a battle of public perception," Cassian corrected, fixing his cuffs. "She implied we lack refinement. We must crush her stall mathematically and financially."

"I just wanted to make tartlets," I muttered.

---

An hour later, the grand kitchen of the Warlord estate had been transformed into a military command center.

I sat on a tall stool by the island, sipping a cup of jasmine tea, watching the chaos unfold. Initially, I had been worried. But then I remembered something very important: I was a Top Chef. And over the last few years, I had refused to let these men live in my house without teaching them how to cook. They weren’t amateurs. They were highly trained weapons of culinary destruction.

Rurik was at the kneading station. He had stripped off his heavy furs and was wearing a frilly pink apron that said *Kiss the Cook* (a joke gift from Luna that he wore with zero irony).

"Kneading dough is just like interrogating a spy," Rurik explained loudly to Vali, who was standing on a stool beside him, watching with wide eyes. "You have to apply firm, consistent pressure! Show it who is Alpha!"

He slammed his massive fist into a mound of spiced sweet-bread dough. *Bam! Bam!* The counter shook, but I had to admit, the gluten development was going to be phenomenal.

"Father, your technique is barbaric," Jasper noted from the other side of the kitchen.

Cassian was not wearing an apron. He had cast a localized kinetic shield around his pristine silk robes to repel flour. He was standing over a digital scale, using a tiny pair of silver tweezers to drop individual grains of sugar into a mixing bowl.

"Macarons require exact atmospheric conditions," Cassian murmured, his eyes glowing faintly with magic. "If the meringue is over-whipped by even three seconds, the structural integrity collapses. Jasper, what is the current humidity?"

"Forty-two percent, Father," Jasper replied, checking a magical gauge.

"Acceptable. Hand me the piping bag."

I took another sip of tea, highly amused. Cassian wasn’t just baking; he was performing edible alchemy. His macarons were perfectly uniform, colored a striking, shimmering violet with crushed mana-berries.

Meanwhile, Caspian was at the stoves, holding Orion against his hip. My handsome Merman King was humming a soft ocean shanty, his hand hovering over a pot of boiling sugar.

"Watch closely, little prince," Caspian whispered to our son.

Instead of using a spoon, Caspian used his water magic. He pulled the moisture from the air, creating a bubble of pure, cold water, and manipulated the boiling sugar into it. With a flick of his wrist, the sugar rapidly cooled and stretched, forming delicate, glass-like sculptures of leaping dolphins and blooming coral.

"Whoa," Orion breathed, his eyes shining as he reached out to poke a sugar-dolphin. "Can I eat it?"

"Tomorrow," Caspian chuckled, kissing Orion’s cheek. "First, we must display our dominance over the Crane-kin."

"Has anyone seen Lucien?" I asked, looking around the bustling kitchen.

"Here," a voice whispered right beside my ear.

I jumped, nearly spilling my tea. Lucien materialized from the shadows directly next to my stool. He didn’t have a spot of flour on his dark suit. In his gloved hands, he held a silver tray lined with two dozen perfectly spherical, dark chocolate truffles dusted with edible gold.

I stared at him. "When did you make those? I didn’t even see you turn on an oven."

"The shadows provide," Lucien said mysteriously. He set the tray down and vanished back into the dark corner of the pantry.

I just shook my head. "You guys are entirely too intense."

---

The next morning, the Unity Academy courtyard was bustling with parents, students, and colorful banners.

Lady Vesper had set up her stall near the center fountain. She had a very respectable spread of lemon cakes, scones, and cucumber sandwiches. She was smiling smugly, fanning herself and waiting for the disaster she assumed the Warlords would bring.

Then, we arrived.

Rurik and Cassian carried the massive display tables themselves, dropping them with a heavy thud right next to Lady Vesper’s stall. Caspian unfurled a silk banner, and Lucien emerged from the shadows to arrange the display.

When they stepped back, the entire courtyard went dead silent.

It didn’t look like a school bake sale. It looked like the display window of the most expensive patisserie in the Empire.

Rurik’s spiced sweet-breads were braided into massive, glorious crowns, glistening with honey glaze and smelling of cinnamon and roasted nuts.

Cassian’s macarons were stacked in geometrically perfect towers, shifting colors in the sunlight like precious jewels.

Caspian’s spun-sugar sculptures caught the light, looking like real glass, sitting atop delicate sea-salt caramel tarts.

And Lucien’s dark chocolate truffles sat in velvet-lined boxes, radiating an aura of dark, expensive temptation.

Lady Vesper dropped her fan. Her beak fell open.

"Good morning, Lady Vesper," Cassian said smoothly, adjusting his cuffs. "I trust your... rustic lemon cakes are selling well?"

Before the poor woman could answer, the crowd descended.

It was a bloodbath. Students, teachers, and parents swarmed our table. The Warlords didn’t even have to do the selling; they put the cubs in charge of the money.

"That will be two silver coins for the sugar-dolphin!" Orion chirped, flashing his sharp little teeth at a wide-eyed noblewoman.

"If you buy three macarons, I will calculate a five percent discount, making it economically foolish not to purchase them," Jasper informed a group of older students, adjusting his glasses.

"BUY THE MEAT-BREAD!" Vali roared at a terrified looking rabbit-kin boy. "IT WILL MAKE YOU STRONG!"

"Vali, no threatening the customers," I called out, laughing as I handed a wrapped tartlet to Mrs. Higgins, the teacher, who looked like she might cry tears of joy after tasting it.

Within an hour, our table was completely empty. Not a single crumb remained. The Warlords had a massive lockbox overflowing with silver and gold coins for the school fund.

Lady Vesper’s table still had half its lemon cakes.

Rurik leaned against the empty table, crossing his arms and looking entirely too smug. He grabbed the last sweet-bread roll he had hidden in his pocket and tossed it to Vali, who caught it in his teeth.

"Total victory," Rurik declared.

"Our profit margins exceeded expectations by four hundred percent," Cassian agreed, looking at the lockbox with deep satisfaction.

Caspian walked over to me, slipping an arm around my waist. He smelled like vanilla and sea salt. "Are you proud of us, Little Rose?"

"You’re all ridiculous," I said, leaning my head against his shoulder. "You bullied a PTA bake sale."

"We established dominance," Rurik corrected. "There is a difference."

"I saved you one," Lucien’s voice whispered. A gloved hand reached out from the shadow of the table awning, offering me a single, gold-dusted chocolate truffle.

I took it, popping it into my mouth. The rich chocolate melted instantly, perfectly balanced and decadent. I closed my eyes and sighed happily.

I looked at my chaotic, over-powered, intensely competitive family. They were absolute menaces to society. But as Orion and Vali chased each other around the fountain, and my husbands bickered over who had the best baking technique, I couldn’t stop smiling.

"Alright," I laughed, wiping a smudge of flour off Caspian’s cheek. "You win. But next year? I’m doing the baking. I can’t handle this much stress over a macaron."

"Deal," they said in unison.

Though, knowing them, they were probably already planning how to conquer the school science fair.