Page 135 of Forget Me Not

Ray shook his head, pushing that thought away because Cal would live.

“I don’t have a mate.” It wasn’t any easier. “I don’t have a….”

His pained groan sent more plaster dust raining down, as if the building was shaking, or Ray was, stirring the air in the old, broken building.

“Callalily Parker is… Callalily Parker is not my mate.” Ray’s breath caught, but each word was distinct, audible to the human down the hall, deafening in Ray’s ears. “Callalily Parker is not my mate.” He swallowed the acid and chalk in his mouth. Then he snarled and let his voice carry through the stairs, the building, the block. “I do not have a mate.”

“What are you doing, Ray Ray?” Cal practically giggled around the question, curling up with laughter a moment later when Ray stuck his nose into his armpit and it must have tickled.

Ray frowned in confusion at Calvin Parker, who was in front of Ray’s desk despite not working in the station anymore. Calvin Parker, frowning in discomfort and pink with embarrassment as he explained that he thought Ray and Penelope might be able to make use of some magic consultants.

Ray buried his face in an old towel, his heart pounding at the traces of Cal’s cupcakes and orchids scent. Ray was hard from just that, aching, but it didn’t seem to matter. He put the towel next to his pillow, his stomach turning at how pathetic he was. A were who couldn’t claim.

But a fairy and a were? Mated? No one had ever heard of a such a thing. Ray would want—Ray wanted more than Cal could ever give. He knew it to be true. And in the end, Ray would become someone else. Rejected weres always did. Cal would be sad, feel sorry. Maybe even leave to avoid the sight.

This was better. This was livable. Ray could take it.

“How did you find me?” Cal jumped into Ray’s arms, giving Ray almost no time to hand his convenience store hot dog to Penn, who promptly started to eat it.

“I didn’t,” Ray explained, frowning a little but pulling Cal in close to nuzzle his ear. He nodded distractedly to Benny, who was pretending not to know either of them. “Penn just wanted hot dogs.”

“From my favorite place to get slushies?” Cal clucked his tongue. “Mated a few months and still lying about looking for me?”

Ray wasn’t lying. But protesting was a waste of time. He closed his teeth gently over the tip of one pointed ear and smiled when Cal’s shiver seemed to draw more glitter from him.

Memories trickled in and out of the forefront of Ray’s mind, too many to note in detail, from before, from that day, from the alley. Extra glitter meant happiness, Ray reflected while still on the staircase, then he was fucking Cal on their living room floor—no, nottheirfloor yet. Only Ray’s floor, at that time.

The human tried to speak the command again. “Kill your mate.”

Ray was in a drug store, buying odd and ends. Seeing the fidget toys and thinking of Cal, he grabbed a few.

Ray was in stiff khakis, painting a wall and arguing with no one about the spilled sugar on the floor he’d had to mop up before beginning this. Sugar stuck to things. It should have been cleaned up and wasn’t, and that was irresponsible and inconsiderate.

Ray was being carefully and delicately kissed. “I’m sorry.” Cal was worried and sweet and truly sorry. He was always truly sorry. Ray always forgave him. “I mean to and I forget, and I know your senses get irritated so quickly. But the bins are perfect and I got you something too!”

Ray, putting a half dozen donuts with rainbow sprinkles on his desk and hurrying away so he wouldn’t be there when Cal Parker arrived and found them.

Ray, exhausted, vaguely embarrassed and snarling about it while two geniuses petted him and then one remarked that they ought to try that again when Ray was better, let them wreck him in return. It was even more embarrassing having them discuss him like that, but they were petting him, and mate—no, not mate, was so happy.

“I don’t have a mate,” Ray told himself again to make sure. The pain did not ease. His memories remained.

Lis’ suggestion would never have worked, he realized, memories spinning around him. There was no single moment. Ray had found Cal and tried to run from him. Ray had given in the moment he’d seen Cal’s very real distress over a case and had decided to care for him even if Cal would never be his. But no one moment meant more than any other, because Cal was always Cal, and Ray saw the truth of him every day.

Upstairs, there was whispering. Penn was going to try to move. She was speaking to Ray, quiet, knowing he could hear her concern and her love. “I’m still here, Ray. You still have me. Remember that. You aren’t alone. You’re not alone.”

Smart Penny understood what Ray had done. She would protect Cal and help him on the quest this would set him on. Cal wouldn’t stop, not even if this killed Ray. Especially not if it killed Ray. But Penn would be there for him, like she was here for Ray now.

Ray opened his eyes.

He had to help Penn first. If that human was to be trusted, if the ambulance drivers believed the other one, no assistance was on the way. Ray would have to ensure that it was.

He shrugged his coat from his shoulders and let it fall. He pushed off his shoes, his socks, things that always tripped him up if he shifted in a hurry. He stepped out of the stairwell on two legs.

He looked away from the beam of light, stared beyond it to the small human shape at the other end of the hall.

His growl started low.

The human reached behind himself, hitting the wall at the side of the elevator, although the gears were already grinding, as if he’d pressed the buttons when Ray had first come into view. The flashlight beam veered back and forth in his unsteady hands. The light would be making Ray’s eyes glow.

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