Page 19 of Jacked-up Mate
I dried off enough to sit in front of my laptop and started searching curses. I didn’t know why I thought they’d just be on Google. They weren’t, not real ones. There were plenty of sites about movies. Nothing that held any of the answers I needed. Why was this happening? Was I…stuck like this? Was it going to be like before?
Search after search…nothing came up. I was going to need to go into town and find a mage who might be able to help me. But not now. Not like this. No one wants to talk to a pumpkin head.
I still had my towel wrapped around me, staring blankly at the computer screen, when my mate came rushing in.
“What’s wrong, my love… Oh.” He stopped in his tracks. “That’s unexpected.”
Here I was, sobbing about my head, and his reaction was that it was unexpected. He wasn’t freaked out by it. Just surprised.
“It’s back,” I choked out.
“I see that.” He squatted in front of me, his hands gently on my shoulders. “Do you know what day it is?”
“Why does that matter?”
“It matters because it’s the full moon. I might not be a werewolf who’s ruled by it, but my beast feels it. It’s the one day he wants to get out even more. Do you think that could be something similar for you? Could it be the full moon?”
“You think the full moon made me…cursed?”
“Maybe.” He smiled softly. “You look exhausted. How about we get you in bed.” He picked me up in his arms, acting more like an alpha than I currently was.
He carried me to bed, covered me with the quilt, shifted into his wolf form, and snuggled beside me. We stayed that way all night.
When I woke up, I was back to normal. The next day too. And the next. Soon, it was pretty clear that my mate had been right. I was a jack-o’-lantern on the full moon. Maybe other times too.
The only way to find out was to track down the mage who’d done this to me. He was long gone from my phone contacts, but I went back to one of my old emails. I’d met him through an app, and, just like I’d hoped, there was an email with his name in it.
I searched his full name online. There were eighteen people in the results. I tried to contact them all. Some I couldn’t reach at all; the others were definitely not him.
I asked Cole to help me. He was king of the social media gig. He could find anyone. Anyone except the one person I was looking for.
Days went on like this. I was exhausted, missing sleep by getting up early and staying up late all in an attempt to find him. I was no closer than I was when I first started. And really? Would he help me? Maybe if he believed in true mates and had one of his own.
Foster came in and sat on the bed beside me. He closed my laptop gently and set it aside.
“We’re not doing this,” he said, taking both my hands. “We’re not. It doesn’t matter if one day a month you have your pumpkin head. We’ll just plan that as a stay-home date night. It’s no big deal.”
“You deserve—”
He held up his hand. He wasn’t having it.
“What I deserve is not at all what I have because there’s no way I did anything in this life or any lives before that could makeme worthy of having you as a mate. But here you are, wearing my mark. And I love you exactly as you are.”
I threw my arms around him. “Are you sure?”
“Of course I am.”
“Remember the day when you came home, and I was gonna make a fancy dinner, but I had a big old pumpkin head?”
He nodded.
“I was going to ask you something that night. But then I thought maybe it was a bad idea…that it was unfair to you.”
“You can ask me anything, Jack. Anything.”
“Will you move in with me?” I spoke so quickly, they blended together.
“I’m already here.”
