Page 13 of Reindeer in the Headlights
I hadn’t moved on, and I planned to stay here for the foreseeable future, but the lie just slipped out. It wasn’t me trying to be deceptive with Wyndham. It was just so ingrained in me to hide who I was. Humans don’t know about shifters, and I wasn’t going to be the one to break that rule. It wasn’t safe for others.
Except the rule excluded both family and mates. If I told him, it would be breaking shit. It was a case of me panicking and nothing more.
I trusted Wyndham, even before I pieced together that he was my mate just now. It had nothing to do with that. It had been a reflex move, and now that I’d said it, I wasn’t sure where to go from there.
At this point I saw two possible directions, digging myself into a bigger mess or walking away until I could come up with a plan. I chose the second option. And sure, telling him the truth wasanother way to go… most likely the best way. But that required a plan or at least part of a plan.
I couldn’t exactly just spit out that I changed into an animal and wanted to be his for the rest of my days. Not when he was trapped here in the snow. That wasn’t fair to him.
My coffee was strong and blocked my mate’s scent. It had to go. I walked to the sink and dumped it down the drain. I didn’t turn around, afraid of what I’d see on his face.
“I’m gonna make breakfast. You can clean up or whatever while you wait.” I sounded like a dick. I didn’t mean to, but that was a whole lot of information I’d taken in at once, and I needed a few minutes alone to process it before I made an even bigger disaster out of this.
My brother knew Wyndham was mine. He’d known from the beginning. He all but led me to that information, and I was so sure he was wrong, I’d ignored it. Or less sure that he was wrong, and more scared that I’d believe it and then be left rejected and heartbroken.
He was human. I didn’t know it was possible for him to dream of my beast, but he had. He was my mate. True, I’d never have that double verification of dreaming of his beast. And my dreams about him… well, they were the kind of dreams any alpha had when they found an omega as attractive as this one. But still, I didn’t need them. He was mine.
What I really needed to do was talk to my brother. He’d be able to give me some advice. Only I promised to make breakfast, and I didn’t have the time to walk down to the road. Things had been left awkward enough without me being gone when Wyndham came back out.
I opened the fridge, grabbed some eggs, glad that I had stocked up last week, and started cracking them into a bowl. I didn’t have a full plan of what I was going to do, but this felt productive. Half the eggs cracked, I looked out the window at the falling snow and decided it was an omelet kind of day.
Had I thought about it earlier, I’d have made biscuits, but I settled on making toast from questionably old bread that had been in the freezer. It couldn’t have been more than a couple of months, and bread was fine that long, but I wanted better for him.
I’d used the last of the bacon yesterday, which left a ham steak to cube up, an onion, a tomato, and American cheese. There was nothing gourmet about this meal, but I put my all into it, loving the distraction that came with having to chop everything up.
When the shower turned off, I started the toaster and turned on the skillet. When it was good and hot, I started to sauté the onions and ham. I managed to time it perfectly. Wyndham came out just as I was plating up his meal.
He was wearing the clothes I’d set out for him, and they swallowed him. But it was a sexy kind of swallow, seeing him wrapped in my clothing that said, “He belongs to me.”
Mate, my inner reindeer pushed forward.
Mate.
Mate.
No, we’re not doing that now.He wanted me to mark Wyndham right here and now, and I got it. That was what shifters did. But Wyndham wasn’t a shifter. We needed to take it slow or at leastslow enough that he learned who we were to each other and if he wanted that.
I set the plate down in front of him. “I didn’t have a lot of fancy breakfast things, but this should be good.”
“Smells delicious.” He sat down, watching me carefully the entire time.
I tried to act normal, grabbing my own fork and eating.
“Are you going to tell me why you turned weird?” he asked.
“I was just thinking about dreams and my family.” Maybe if I hypotheticaled the situation, I could lead him to figuring it out on his own. Gah, who was I kidding. My brother had tried that with me and it’d failed on an epic level. “My parents dreamed about each other before they got together. They say that’s how they knew they were for always and forever.”
“A dream? You mean, like I dreamed about that reindeer man? He’s my always and forever?” He chuckled, but it felt forced.
“I mean, hypothetically, maybe. What if he’s a shifter?”
“Nah. Shifters are all predators. Wolves, bears, tigers, and such. Not reindeer.” He spoke as if it was fact. And while it was true that fiction tended to highlight predators because people considered them sexy, this didn’t feel like a reference to a book.
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, when I was little, I met some. I mean, I knew them before.” He sucked in a long breath. “This will sound made up, but it’s not. Trust me?”
“A hundred percent”
