“Let my son go!” Mildred screeched, glaring at Aunt Ivy. They were in her family barn, but right now, Mildred was so fearful that it didn’t feel like her home.

Aunt Ivy clutched her baby nephew, currently in his calf form, closer to her chest, like she wanted to possess him.

Lance, the blue dragon shifter, stood on the other side of the woman. Mildred and Lance wanted to corner Ivy, though they knew she had the upper hand.

Aunt Ivy kicked at the straw on the ground, her face a picture of smug coldness. “Why, Mildred, that’s no way to greet an aunt who’s been helping you for the past many years.” She grinned at Lance. “And you, boy, should be more thankful that I’ve been assisting your lady love all this time.”

At least Lance didn’t flinch when Ivy said “lady love,” though the term made Mildred want to shrink into herself. “You did help me at first,” Mildred said, staring at her baby son in Ivy’s arms. “And I will always be grateful for that. But you never told me you would do this to Kallias.” Angry tears filled her eyes.

Aunt Ivy laughed, her body shaking with malicious mirth. “You’re such a silly girl. Even now, you don’t understand what I’m doing for you. Poor Lance, too. It must have been hard to keep this secret from your beloved for so long.”

The blue dragon shifter gave Mildred a guilty look. She just gazed at the floor in response, her fists clenched.

With a shake of his head, Lance muttered, “I had no idea that things would turn out this way. I swear I would have told her if…”

Aunt Ivy put up a hand to stop him. A smile still stretched her lips. “You must think I’m some evil fairy godmother. But I did this all for your own good.”

“Really?” Mildred burst out. “How is this fair to Kallias?”

Aunt Ivy shrugged. “It wasn’t like you paid much attention to him anyway, as occupied as you were with his sister.” She gave Kallias a little bounce. The calf coughed and started to cry again.

Mildred ground her teeth and tugged at her hair, staring at her suffering child. He shivered from time to time, as if from fever chills. “Please make it stop. He doesn’t deserve any of this.”

The other woman chuckled. “Make it stop yourself.” She all but tossed Kallias at her niece. Mildred caught him with alarm. She wept as she looked at his tiny, distressed face. His forehead was hot.

Aunt Ivy began tapping her foot with impatience. “Come on, we don’t have all day. What are you waiting for?” She side-eyed Lance with a smirk. “Since he’s your lover, you’re not shy about feeding your son in front of him, right?”

Mildred cast her aunt a dirty look. “Of course not.” Gently, she placed her son on the soft straw below, and changed into her cow form.

The shift only took a few seconds, but with the sound of her baby son crying, it felt like an eternity. At long last, she became a large, black-and-white milk cow, ready to nourish her poor calf. The magic leaf kept her milk fresh, even when she wasn’t regularly feeding her children.

Unlike the last time she shifted in front of Lance, Mildred felt very vulnerable. She nudged her calf closer to her teats. Kallias continued to sob; he seemed heedless even of his mother’s gentle touches.

Mildred’s nostrils flared at Aunt Ivy, and her horns tightened, as if she could ram them into her aunt’s chest. “Why isn’t Kallias responding? He needs my milk to survive!”

Aunt Ivy put her hands on her hips, her face full of exultation. “Well, you should have thought of that before abandoning your poor kid to his babysitter.”

Mildred gritted her teeth. “If only I could be in two places at once. You might know how hard it is to raise two calves if you were ever a mother.”

“And without me, you would never have been a mother,” Aunt Ivy jibed.

The cow shifter took her aunt’s mean hit to heart. She stared down at Kallias. She shouldn’t have relied on a babysitter, after all. Samalla was still on the young end, barely twenty. She seemed warm and dependable, so what had Aunt Ivy said or done to get her to leave Kallias?

Mildred hoped the girl wasn’t hurt. But a part of her was angry that the younger woman hadn’t stood stronger for Kallias’ sake.

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Lance moved to Mildred’s other side. He put a comforting hand on the cow shifter’s hide, but she felt self-conscious since they had to pretend to be a couple in front of Aunt Ivy.

The dragon shifter murmured in her ear, “Mildred, breathe. Panicking will only make your son feel worse.”

Mildred wanted to snap at him. How could a parent not panic when their child was so ill? But instead, she asked, “Can you pick up Kallias and hold his mouth against my teat?”

The blue dragon shifter blinked, as if surprised by her request. Thankfully, he recovered before Ivy could suspect anything. Gently, he scooped up the crying calf and moved his face to Mildred’s underside.

Her son wailed and coughed, but eventually, Mildred felt him grip onto her. Slowly but surely, her milk flowed, and Kallias began to drink. She felt a relief so immense she almost collapsed. But she held herself up for his sake, and closed her eyes, willing herself to relax.

When Kallias let go of her, he sputtered but didn’t cry. Lance placed him on the floor and her calf slid his head down to sleep.

Mildred gazed at her son with guilt in her heart. If only she had been more careful…

Lance interrupted her thoughts, “Mildred, what do you do plan to do now?”

She shot him a look, afraid he was making fun of her. But his expression seemed sincere.

Behind him, Aunt Ivy was still gloating. The older woman said, in a sing-song voice, “Yes, what do you plan to do now? If you want your son to stay safe and healthy, you’ll need to be by his side constantly, because nothing can nourish him but your milk.” She laughed. “It’s a good motivator for you to pay more attention to your neglected son, isn’t it?”

Mildred stared daggers at her. “I never thought you would be this cruel to a baby.”

Aunt Ivy shrugged. “You’re exaggerating, Mildred, as usual. He’ll be perfectly fine as long as you nurse him, you know, like the mother you were supposed to be.”

Remorse warred with fury in Mildred’s mind. She stomped with her hoof, but not too hard lest she wake up her sleeping son. She let out a loud moo at her aunt, which Ivy didn’t react to, of course. “There are many other ways you could have convinced me to stay by my son’s side, ways that would be much kinder to him.”

“Like what?” Aunt Ivy shot back. When Mildred didn’t respond, she continued, “See? Kindness only goes so far. I had to do this because your maternal neglect was getting way out of hand.”

Mildred dug her hoof into the soil of the barn, her muscles tense all over. Beside her, Lance appeared morose but evaded Mildred’s gaze. The cow shifter said, “And why did you only tell Lance but not me?”

Aunt Ivy’s glance landed on Lance’s face; she smirked and looked back at her niece. “He is your lover, right? If I told him something, I assumed he would tell you. How did I know he would choose to say nothing until today?”

Mildred wondered if Ivy knew that their relationship was a farce, but decided to keep acting the part. She shook her head. “Lance just wanted to protect me. He didn’t want me to worry over nothing, since he didn’t think you were serious when you sent him that text.” And who knew how Aunt Ivy got a hold of his contact details? “He thought you were making a hollow threat.”

Mildred wasn’t lying about this. Lance hadn’t taken Aunt Ivy seriously, thinking she was a crazy old bat who liked to rule through empty threats. Foolishly, he brushed her off and didn’t tell Mildred or Demiel anything, believing that Ivy would just go away after he ignored her for a long time.

But while Lance and Mildred were at the Gloom castle, Ivy sent Lance a last warning text early in the morning — she had woven in the dark spell on Kallias. It was only then that the dragon shifter took her threat seriously and fessed up.

Mildred still wished he wasn’t such a dumb dragon. They may not be “friends” per se, but he should have told her out of common decency. But she knew that he could be overconfident and careless.

At least they had been able to come to Kallias today.

Aunt Ivy paced across the barn floor, like a twitchy, psyched-up predator. Mildred, who stood stationary above her sleepy son, grew increasingly agitated. Ivy said with a smile, “You can’t say that I didn’t try to warn you. It wasn’t my fault that your wonderful Lance didn’t heed me enough to be honest with you. Wow, what a great foundation for a relationship.”

Lance sighed at this, rubbing a palm over his visage. Mildred, on the other hand, seethed. She wasn’t sure if she was angrier at Aunt Ivy, whom she didn’t trust, or at Lance, whom she had grown to trust. Still, she could see what Aunt Ivy was doing. “Stop misdirecting, Aunt Ivy. It was your fault for laying your black magic on an innocent child. If you hate me, you could punish me directly. Why hurt a little boy?”

Lance finally looked up at her, and was mournful. “You don’t deserve to be punished, either.”

“Why should I hurt my niece?” said Aunt Ivy, truly a crazed old bat. “Besides, Kallias would be perfectly all right. It was just a mild sickness spell, no worse than a common cold or flu. He would only suffer, until you came back to feed him. And then he would be perfectly fine with your regular feeding. Until he grows old enough to not need his mother’s milk, of course. Isn’t that a clever way to persuade a mom to pay closer attention to her child?” The woman laughed, the sound like crackling thunder in a storm.

“A common cold or flu to a baby can mean a death sentence, Aunt Ivy,” Mildred said. “Would you kill your own grand-nephew?”

Aunt Ivy snorted. “No, but he wouldn’t die regardless. All babies get sick sometimes. It’s only a bit of suffering, just enough to get you to take better care of your son. You’re really turning this into something worse than it truly is.”

“Like what happened with Vera?” Mildred asked. Suddenly, she felt a surge of energy, fueled by indignation and also hope. “Did you give her an illness to convince me to stay by my daughter’s side?”

Aunt Ivy now faced her with eerily blank eyes, so different from her smug triumph earlier. She whispered, “No. Vera’s illness was not my doing.”

She didn’t sound like she was lying. Mildred’s stomach dropped.