Elder Alix sighed in relief as someone else caught Rae’s attention.

He now owned more outfits than he ever had in his life, and Rae was promising to send him more for being a good sport about testing things for her fashion house. He was utterly mentally exhausted by the process, and it was still early in the day.

"Alright, everyone can split up again if you want. It’s probably best that I keep my Dana Mage with me, though. I don’t trust those idiots to actually go away and behave." Karl suggested.

"Is it wrong to hope that they didn’t? I mean, Dana got to have all the fun last time, I just got things moving. There weren’t any in that group that had the skills to even put up a fight if I got serious." Rae noted, looking over her shoulder as she walked away with the Lycan girl.

"No traumatizing the children." Karl warned.

"Got it. I knew that you’d be on board."

The Elders on security detail shared a concerned look, and then sent two of their own members to follow the spider.

If they didn’t, she was definitely going to commit a murder.

Happily.

Remi laughed from her spot on Socrate’s shoulder as the Elders ran after Rae and the Lycans.

{I say that we go see what Hawk is up to. They said barbarians with whole roast pigs. That sounds like a fun place to hang out until dinner. We can see if they will test our new recipes.}

The crowd looked excited to hear that, but Karl was almost certain that they didn’t know the pair were Alchemists, not Chefs. If they had known, they might have run away instead of following the group over to the barbecue joint, where the confused Barbarians rushed to get everyone seated and served.

It wasn’t often that they got a mid-afternoon rush like this.

"Karl! Welcome back. I take it that the issue has been settled?" The head chef asked, raising his voice to be heard from the kitchen.

"Indeed. It was just some idiots who thought cute meant weak."

The barbarian laughed. "Slow learners. Did I ever tell you about the time I got shanked by a bunny?"

Everyone in the restaurant turned to stare at him. What the hell did you have to do to get stabbed by a bunny? For one, they weren’t Immortals, so they wouldn’t do much damage. But they were generally peaceful and exceptional at escaping from awkward situations.

"Oh, don’t look at me like that. Someone put a compulsion curse on her. I just saw fluffy ears and never expected there to be a blade. Turns out, if you give a bunny a poisoned dagger at the Immortal Rank, they can do some serious damage, and they’re deadly hard to catch."

One of the ladies in the crowd laughed. "That’s no joke. I tried to catch one to give her a tip one time, and she just vanished. Like, gone the second she turned the corner."

Dana laughed. "You all need to take advice from Karl, he’s the master of making friends with bunnies."

The patrons turned to Karl, who shrugged helplessly. "What can I say? I have an affinity for beastkin of all sorts. The bunnies can sense that I’m soul bonded, so they don’t see me as a threat in that way, and I’m quite generous with them if I have a chance.

It’s just a combination of the right status and good timing."

As he was speaking, one of the serving bunnies brought over a round of drinks, and Karl idly patted her head, then handed her a coin, while Cara stuffed the girl’s pockets with cupcakes.

The bunny was so flustered to be given a cash tip that she didn’t even notice the badger.

The patrons in the restaurant chuckled as they saw Karl slip the beastkin cash and pat her head before she ran away to grab the next order. That feat alone was nearly impossible to manage, but he had done it so casually that even the bunny seemed startled that it had happened.

"So, what are the plans for the rest of the day?" Elder Alix asked, carefully testing the ale to see if it was actually good, or just barbarian grog posing as ale.

"I was thinking that we should sit here and eat and drink until the roast pig is done, then eat some more, and perhaps have another drink."

The staff at the restaurant cheered, and a number of the locals who had followed them over joined in.

A party at the barbecue place it was.

With everyone but Rae in one spot, that greatly limited the exposure that they had to ambush. Karl didn’t actually expect anyone to get the drop on Rae in an ambush. But even if they did, Rae was not an easy target to kill, and she had a protective Lycan father with her.

If they endangered his daughter this time, he would not stand idly by. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

As the afternoon wore on, the party at the barbecue joint expanded, with more people coming and packing the place until the party had spread out of the patio and into the street.

It was completely out of hand, and far beyond anything that the small Clan running it had expected. They were running out of everything. Not just food, drink too.

They had called for more, but the delivery hadn’t arrived, and there was still time before the pigs they had put on would be ready. They had thought that one for Hawk and one for the restaurant would last them all week.

But that was not going to happen.

The smell of roast pork and the sound of the party were bringing more people over, and that was only encouraging more people to join the party.

{I can help with fire. I have the skill to transfer heat from my innate flames to the meat to bring it to perfect temperature in seconds.} Hawk offered, speaking Avian in crow form.

"You can do that? If you can, we just loaded that smoker. That one would be enough to keep up with the crowd, if it was ready now, and not in the early hours of the morning," the head chef replied.

Hawk strutted over to the smoker. Now was his time to shine. He had been working on his barbecue techniques with Mystic Cooking for some time now, and he had it very close to perfection.

He could even roast the wood evenly, to infuse the smoky flavour that they wanted.