Page 125 of Labor of Love

“You’re not seeing things, Laney,” Marcus said, while Elden stepped close again, confusion in his prismatic silver eyes.

“Are you unhappy to learn that you are mated to a dark fae and two gargoyles?” Elden asked, his voice holding an edge of harshness to it when he spoke.

Laney could only stand there and stare. At him, at the brilliant bondmark, and at Marcus, who looked astonished and overjoyed.

“He absolutely is not,” Marcus said, chuckling a little, “but I fear he may be too stunned, exhausted, and overwhelmed to recognize that this is real.”

“This is real?” Laney parroted, blinking while trying not to let his hopes soar too high.

There was no way.

No way at all.

It just, it was too much a fairytale and then some, because even in the storybooks the castoff character nobody else wanted only found the one meant to be theirs.

One.

Not three.

“This is very real,” Truett said, chuckling as he traced over the sparkle of stars in the deep black lines running over Laney’s wrist. “We’ve dreamed of this moment, of finding of our other mates, for decades, and you, you’re here now, and oh my goddess, we’re, you’re, holy….”

His words trailed off as he hugged Laney as Elden finally him go.

“Elden,” Truett said, sounding choked up with both tears and laughter, his excitement wrapping Laney in a bubble of joy. “We didn’t just find our mate, he’s brought us another gift, besides himself.”

“I don’t understand?” Elden said. “Did he not come to us alone?”

“No, he didn’t,” Marcus explained. “Laney’s expecting.”

“A c-child?” Elden stammered, staring from Laney to where Marcus stood by his side. “Are, are you saying…”

“I-I’m pregnant,” Laney explained, studying the colors that wrapped around his hand as he rested it on his flat belly.

It was only then that he realized they hadn’t even bothered to pull clothing on after they’d landed. They’d just headed in, nakedand unashamed, as had been their people’s way since they were formed from the essence of the world around them.

“He was cast out for his ancestry, not once, but twice,” Marcus said. “They’d dumped him in a human city and left him to fend for himself. I barely saw him through the rain, with how hard it was beating down on the windshield. It was almost like I was meant to find him.”

Before Laney could form thought or words, his arms were filled with a weeping, laughing Elden, who hugged him tight, clinging like he was the one afraid a bubble would burst, and the pretty dream would be gone in a poof of smoke.

“His wings glow in the moonlight, like yours,” Truett explained as he hugged them from the side, joined moments later by Marcus. “We’d told him when we saw him that you might know who his ancestors were and who he belonged too, but even as we were speaking to him about it, I kept hoping, wishing to see one of our marks appear on his skin.”

“I felt the same way the whole length of the car ride here,” Marcus admitted. “My gut screamed that he was ours, but despite the hours we spent riding together, nothing showed on my skin besides the marks I already bore. It was difficult not to let my disappointment show, not when I felt like I’d been guided to him. I should not have even been on the road I was traveling. An accident left my original route blocked and forced me to find an alternate.”

“Really?” Laney murmured.

“Yes,” Marcus replied. “I’d never driven that stretch before.”

“I picked it for the sign over the numbers because I didn’t know what the numbers meant,” Laney admitted.

Marcus snorted out a little laugh. “Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

“What did it say?” Truett asked.

“Enchanted Forest.”

Silence followed his words, for several seconds. Then Marcus barked out a chuckle, while Elden giggled, the sounds like little musical chimes dancing in the air around them.

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