Page 25 of Eager Beaver
“Gods, I love you,” I said without thinking, swooping in and peppering his face with kisses.
“You love me?” he gasped, and I paused there, lips on skin, dreading that I had just taken a step in our relationship without him. Just because he was pregnant, that didn’t necessarily mean love. But when I pulled back to look down at him, he was smiling, tears beading on his lashes.
“Is that okay?” I asked warily. “You don’t have to say it back. I understand that it’s sudden, but… you’re my mate. That’s like a shifter’s destiny. You’re the one person on this earth that is meant for me. That’s probably how you were able to get pregnant—fate will always find a way to bring us together, no matter the distance.”
“That’s so beautiful,” he said, sniffling back tears. “Fate or not, I love you too, Guy. It is sudden, yes, but from the moment I laid eyes on you, it felt right. I didn’t know how it would work—hell, I still don’t—but I don’t want to be apart from you anymore. I want to stay.”
This man, he was my everything. He’d taken my shifting in stride, was handling a surprise pregnancy with nothing but joy, and he was willing to give up his life in California to be with me. I didn’t deserve him.
Human laws prevented him from moving here yet, but… “There is something,” I began, leading him back to bed. “Something that will make us feel more connected, even when we’re apart.”
“Tell me,” he demanded, fingers digging into my arms in desperation.
“A mark. A bite,” I said more specifically. “If we bite each other, it will create an unbreakable bond, no matter the time or distance apart.”
He was already nodding. “Yes. I want that.” He peeled back the sheet he was wrapped in and looked down at himself. “Where?”
“Right here.” I traced the slope of his neck, then moved down to his shoulder, where my mark could be easily covered. As much as I wanted to show the world that he was mine, a scar like that in the human world would draw questions.
I lay back on the bed, taking Fable with me, and even though we’d spent hours pleasuring each other, I was more than ready for one more time, this one with the most satisfying conclusion—the promise of forever.
17
Fable
“Home”hadneverfeltless like home.
When I’d first moved to California, I’d been proud of my tiny apartment. It had meant a new life, a fresh beginning where I could become anyone and anything I set my heart on. It meant independence and freedom. Now, though, it felt dark and dreary. These walls felt more like a prison, all because my heart wasn’t anywhere near here. It was over 3000 miles away, over lakes and forests and across a fucking border.
Being in different countries meant this wasn’t just a long-distance relationship. If he’d lived in Pennsylvania or New Hampshire, I could’ve packed up my belongings and movedthere, easy as pie. The end. But that border between our countries might as well have been a hundred-foot concrete wall. I mean, the border was nothing more than a dotted line that could only be seen on maps. It wasn’t even real! But tell that to border security. So that meant paperwork—lots andlotsof paperwork. It meant applying for temporary residency, then citizenship, and a wedding, of course, because governments didn’t recognize fated mates, no matter that it was even more binding than a human marriage. There would be no divorce in our future.
I’d been up to visit Guy twice over the past couple months. Technically, I was allowed to stay up to six months as a visitor, but I didn’t want to justvisit. I wanted tostay! I still needed my job to pay for my apartment and my bills, in the meantime. Guy wanted to visit me too, but once the sap started flowing, he had to be there to harvest. And then, he had to turn that sap into maple syrup. It was a whole process, and while I could take a long weekend here or there, he couldn’t just press pause on the trees.
Soon, I told myself. Now if only I could get an actual deadline. Then I could at least count down the days on my calendar.
I wiped the steam from the bathroom mirror and stared at my changing body. My stomach had begun to round as our baby grew, my angles softening, curves and valleys appearing where before I’d had planes. The first time I felt the baby kick, I’d cried for an hour because Guy missed it. He’d missed a lot of things, and I knew it was killing him. He’d told me the mating mark would let us feel connected even when distance separated us, and he was right. I could feel him there, inside me, just as he could feel me—but it wasn’t the same for either of us as his hand on my stomach, able to feel each time our baby moved.
My gaze shifted to the mark on my shoulder in the mirror. It had healed into a scar that I would proudly wear for the rest ofmy days. Just two straight lines, the mark of his beaver’s teeth. It was kinda like tattooing my man’s name on my ass. I pursed my lips in thought as I turned to check out my ass in the mirror.Hmm, I wonder if Guy would like that…Guy wore my bite mark too, though it was obviously from a human and had healed almost instantly. Shifters were pretty incredible like that.
Getting dressed after my shower felt like a chore, much like everything else these days. Even cooking, which I usually loved, had lost its luster. I still spent time making healthy food because it was what our baby needed to grow big and strong, and my growing appetite meant I was more than happy to eat it all. And besides that, I had to keep creating because my blog had been going crazy for all these maple recipes I’d been coming up with. Guy had done some kind of cross promotion on his website, and almost overnight, I’d gone from 18 followers to over 800, and I’d started an Instagram page too that was gaining some traction. I was still small potatoes, and I wasn’t exactly earning an income from the blog, but it was a silver lining when I was feeling lonely, missing my mate.
As I often did when I was missing Guy, I found myself reaching for my phone. We talked every night before bed, deep conversations about the meaning of life and love, before our video calls inevitably turned sexy, but that didn’t mean I didn’t miss the casual stuff too. The “hey, how was your day?” and the “I heard a joke today. Wanna hear it?” I pressed the button to call him and listened to the ring.
It rang a few times, and when it finally picked up, there was no video. “Hey,” Guy said, his voice tight. “Sorry, I’m in the car.”
Even though I couldn’t see his face, his voice set something at ease inside me, recentering the hurricane of emotions into a single point. “Oh. Going somewhere fun, I hope.” I smiled, getting up to make a mug of tea, prepared to settle in for a longcall. I often kept him company like this when he drove to and from nearby cities to drop off cases of syrup to local businesses.
“Yeah, I hope so.” There was a long pause of strained silence while I waited for him to explain where he was going, but then he said, “Uh, sorry, hun. I can’t talk now. Can I call you later? Love you.”
I tried to hide my disappointment, and I was glad he couldn’t see my face because I was sure it was written all over it. “Sure. Yeah, of course. I’ll talk to you later. Love y—” The call cut off before I could finish the sentence. Past my own confusion and disappointment, there was a strange tug through the mating link, an emotion I’d never felt from Guy before. It almost felt like… guilt. But what did he have to feel guilty for?
Wandering back to the table where I’d spread out all the immigration paperwork, I dropped hard into my chair, paranoia creeping up on me. There was no doubt that Guy was lying to me, but the question waswhy. I’d been cheated on before, pretty much the worst kind of betrayal, but I had a hard time believing Guy would do anything of the sort. I wasn’t even sure fated matescouldcheat! I couldn’t even bring myself tolookat another man. All I wanted was Guy!
With my tea left untouched beside me, I stared down at the forms, unseeing. Maybe he was having second thoughts about mating me. Maybe he didn’t want me to move to Castor Lake like he’d said. My eyes stung, and my vision went blurry with tears, dripping down my cheeks until they landed on the paperwork, smearing the ink.
“Oh, shit,” I muttered, scrambling to grab some tissues to dry my tears and blot the ink. I was being silly. It was just these pregnancy hormones that were messing with me. Of course Guy loved me and wanted me there. If I looked past that strange tingle of his guilt, I could feel his unquestionable love anddevotion. It was just so hard to keep my head on straight when he wasn’t here.
I was fanning the wet paper with my hands when a knock came at the door. I sighed. I hadn’t ordered any food to be delivered, and the only other person who ever knocked on that door was my elderly neighbor, Mrs. Clark, when she needed computer help. “Did you forget your password again?” I said as I swung the door open.
