Lin says “Alright, clown, what are you doing back here?”

  “I am finally ready to evolve, but I need to check when the wedding is.”

  Lin says “How come?”

  Myria says “Wait, before that, you mean you don’t know when the wedding is? You haven’t been counting the hours?!”

  Bella says “Uh oh!”

  “No, I have been doing a lot of other things. Honestly, I don’t even know what day it is. Besides, you are already mine, the wedding is just a formality!”

  Myria says “Oh? What things are so important that you lost track of what day it is?”

  “Setting up the government, getting the network set up and expanded, hunting what I needed to be ready to evolve, and a few other things.”

  Brightfire says “That is quite the list. Don’t mind Myria too much, she is just stressed out from trying to get everything perfect for the wedding.”

  “That’s understandable. I’ve never understood why women love weddings so much when they cause so much stress. But we will do whatever you want.”

  Bella says “I don’t understand it either, but planning it is kind of fun.”

  Myria says “You can say that since you aren’t directly involved. It takes all the stress out of it.”

  Bella says “Yep! It sure does!”

  Brightfire says “Don’t sound so thrilled!”

  Lin says “Anyway, to answer your question, the wedding is in eight days.”

  “That might be long enough.”

  Lin says “Long enough for what?”

  “When I evolve, I will be in a coma-like state. It can last up to a week. I was worried that if there wasn’t enough time before the wedding that I would have to put off evolving until after the honeymoon.”

  Lin says “Ah, that makes sense. Oh, speaking of the honeymoon, did you find a good place?”

  “Yep, everything is prepared.”

  Lin says “Good, that is one less thing to worry about.”

  Myria says “Wait, aren’t you going to tell us the plan?”

  Lin says “Nope, it’s a surprise.”

  Myria says “Then how come you get to know about it?”

  Lin says “What? Do you want to trust things to Ash with no supervision?”

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  “Hey!”

  Myria says “You bring up a good point.”

  “Hey!”

  Bella says “Give it up, Ash. You’ve lost before you even begin.”

  “I know that. I wasn’t planning to argue, I was just expressing my position.”

  Brightfire says “What position would that be?”

  “Someone who is smart enough not to argue with his wives when he is outnumbered?”

  Brightfire says “Really? That doesn’t seem to have been the case so far!”

  “Hey! Are you against me too?!”

  Brightfire says “Us wives have to stick together! Especially if we want to keep you from doing anything crazy!”

  “How’s that going?”

  Brightfire says “That depends on what you were up to on your hunting trip.”

  “Not much, just finding out how big and mean some of the ocean critters are.”

  Lin says “That’s no surprise. Did you wake up any ancient gods?”

  “Nope! Didn’t even find any traces of one!”

  Myria says “Meaning that if you had you would have woken it up, right?”

  “Yup! Um, no wait!”

  Lin sighs and says “Why do I feel like we are the ones who are outnumbered?”

  Bella says “Probably because four of you aren’t enough to equal his ability to find trouble.”

  “Hey! I haven’t found any trouble in a long time!”

  Bella says “Only because you have been too busy to! It seems that is the key, as long as they keep you busy you won’t find trouble!”

  Myria says “Well, we are certainly going to do our best to keep him busy!”

  Bella says “That’s not what I meant and you know it!”

  Lin says “Ash is only peaceful when he is sleeping and other than exhausting him so that he sleeps we don’t really have a way to keep him busy.”

  Bella says “Sounds like the only answer is to get him enough wives to keep him exhausted all the time!”

  Myria says “That would take a lot of women! How are we supposed to find that many women that we can get along with and that will get along with each other?”

  Lin says “That is probably impossible. Even with just the four of us I expect there to be occasional conflicts and arguments.”

  Brightfire says “So, do we just try our best and hope it works out? Or are we going to look for another way to keep him out of trouble?”

  “Shouldn’t you wait to have this conversation when I am not around?”

  Lin says “If we did that we would miss out on all the interesting faces you have been making!”

  I am not sure what face I am making at the moment, but whatever it is it sends the girls into peals of laughter. I am well aware that they are just teasing me, but that doesn’t stop me from reacting to what they say. Unfortunately, I know them well enough to know that the more I react, the more that they will tease me.

  So, I can get frustrated or angry with them since that would just make things worse. Luckily, I know that they aren’t serious about adding a whole bunch more wives, otherwise I would lose it. I obviously can’t win here, so I decide to change the game and start walking upstairs.

  “Since I am going to sleep for about a week this is your last chance to join me for some fun!”

  Lin, Myria, and Brightfire all look at each other for a few seconds and then follow me. As the three of them are running up the stairs I can hear Bella laughing at them, but they ignore her. The four of us have several rounds of fun, fall asleep, then have a couple of more rounds when we wake up.

  When we are done, the girls go back to sleep and I head downstairs to spend some time with the kids. I have breakfast with them and then spend a few hours just playing with them. This is something I haven’t been doing as much lately and I have missed it quite a bit.

  While I am spending time with them, I hand over the small obelisks that I made to Kechara. While I am thinking about it, I also send a message to Lizzy through the network. That way if she runs out again she will know why she can’t get a hold of me.

  I also leave a general message on the system so everyone knows to contact Lin if something comes up. With that, everything is as ready as I can make it for me to sleep for a while. So, I head downstairs to my bath since that is where I evolved last time and it worked fine.

  “Evolution!”

  Evolution Ready! Start Evolution Now? Y/N

  “Yes!”

  Evolution Beginning!

  Calculating Sources…..

  Lightning: 25%

  Fire: 20%

  Fish DNA:15%

  Dragon DNA: 11%

  Miscellaneous: 9%

  Calculations Complete! Beginning Evolution!