No Room at Dragon’s Landing (Love Sync Mates, Season Two)

Chapter Fourteen

Boen

It had been a no-brainer that I was going to drop everything and come to Dragon’s Landing to live with my mate. I’d never felt like I’d fully been living until I met Cyrus. He’d helped me come so alive, and my creativity—boy, did it explode. I completed multiple storyboards for my publisher’s approval in record time, and they loved each one. They even said that Dragon’s Landing was good for me.

My agent agreed. He’d felt horrible when I told him about the scam reservations until I let him know that it was how I found my boyfriend. I hated to use that term, but my agent wasn’t a shifter as far as I knew, and it was easier to use the human words. He thought it was romantic and I should consider writing a book with a similar plot. Hard pass on that. Our story was ours, and I planned to treasure it for always and not shout it for all of the world. But I did appreciate the sentiment.

Packing up my small place and bringing it all here had been the difficult part, and it wasn’t altogether that bad. The landlord had been great about letting me break my lease, thanks to a housing shortage in my area. The second he listed it, he could get more money than I’d been paying him, making it a win-win for both of us.

Actually settling into life with my mate in our home? That had been easy. It didn’t take much to make his quarters ours. We were still working on figuring out the best place for me to work, but that was mostly a me issue. I’d figure it out, soon enough.

One thing was for sure; I didn’t love the idea of being isolated in a separate building while working, especially not if that building only functioned as a space for me. It felt like a waste.

Truth was, I really liked working in our quarters, even if it was a bit crowded. Recently, we’d begun talking about maybe putting a home out there for us instead of a studio. Then I could turn our current quarters into my studio. We hadn’t solidified the idea yet, but it was promising. It would give us room to spread out, but also, we wouldn’t have to worry about being loud at night—which sometimes we probably were in the main house.

“Everybody’s checked out,” Cyrus said as he came up behind me, resting his head on my shoulder. “No one checks in until tomorrow.”

It had been our first breather since I moved in. He’d blocked off the date initially as a test while working with the new the online booking system he adopted. Somehow he’d never realized he left it that way, which was how it accidentally became a day off, one we’d both been looking forward to.

“I was just thinking about something like this,” I said, showing him the floor plans I’d found online while he was dealing with the front desk stuff.

“You’re leaning toward a cabin?”

“Yeah, but also maybe not a cabin.” I clicked opened another tab. “We could do something like this, where it matches the B&B—almost like it’s one of the old outbuildings for this place—and it wouldn’t stick out the way a cabin would. It could be part of the place’s charm.”

“Oh, I see.” He scrolled through the slideshow. “It almost looks like when they used to keep the kitchens in a separate building, only instead of a kitchen, it would be our house.”

Which had been my exact thoughts too. “What do you think?”

“I think it looks good.” He sucked in a long breath. “But I kind of put a lot into this place, and I don’t know if I have enough to finance that.”

And this was where the uncomfortable conversation about finances was going to come in. He knew I had a job, and I knew he had one, but neither of us discussed what that looked like as far as money went. It hadn’t mattered at the time, but now it did.

I looked up at him. “You know both of us have jobs.”

He nodded.

“And one of us hasn’t been paying rent for months.” That someone being me. “And I got back my deposit.”

“This isn’t months’ worth of money.”

“There’s more,” I said, pulling up another screen and logging into my bank account. “This is my savings.”

“Your…your what?” He stared at the number. I didn’t blame him. Most people didn’t have that kind of cash floating around.

“That’s my savings. My accountant kept trying to have me invest it, but I wanted it for a house one day and didn’t want it tied up. It makes me all nervous when they start talking money and risks. We could do this with it if you want. I mean, I don’t mind, and it’s cute, and sometimes when you fill me with your knot, I tend to scream your name. It can’t be helped…it feels too good.” My nerves were showing with my lack of filter. Great. I’d had this conversation planned out in my head and, so far, not a single part of that plan had been enacted.

“I don’t want to take all your money.”

I tapped away again. “We probably should’ve had this conversation before.” And by probably, I meant we definitely should have. “But we haven’t, and now it’s kind of awkward…but…this is my other savings.”

“You have two savings?”

“And…” A couple more taps I pulled up yet another account. “And my checking.”

“Wait, are you saying…you have all this lying around?”

“Put that way, it does sound irresponsible, but yes, I do, and I finally know why I’ve been saving it all.”

“Are you sure you want to spend all that money on a place for us to live? There’s no rush to move out. We have a home.”

“I know, but lately I’ve been feeling like we need more space. I can’t explain why, but it’s like a need.”

“What are you two talking about?” His aunt walked in, her knitting bag slung over her shoulder. “You look too serious. Is it about the baby?”

“The what?” I asked.

“The baby.” She looked at me like I had two heads when she was the one talking about who knew what.

“Whose baby?” my mate asked.

“Oh, neither one of you figured it out.” She shook her head.

“Figured what out?” Now I was even more confused.

“I’m just gonna go now.” She turned to leave as if she hadn’t come in here and spun my head like a top.

“No, no, no. Get back here, Gertrude,” my mate said firmly. “Spill it.”

“Well, obviously he’s pregnant. Look at his mark.” She pointed to my neck.

He turned to me. “Huh.”

“Huh?” What was that supposed to even mean?

“Huh.”

“That’s all you’re giving me? Huh? Maybe you could explain it to me like I’m five.”

Instead of answering me, he focused on his aunt. “Gertrude, do you have a mirror in that knitting bag of yours?”

She plopped it on the counter and dug around. “No. Wait…why am I even digging in here? Of course I don’t. Go to the bathroom and look.”

“Better yet,” Cyrus said, pulling up the camera on the computer. “See?”

“What am I looking—oh. Huh.” Where my mark had been was still a mark, but now it was as if I had covered it with glitter makeup. “So, that’s new.”

“And?” Gertrude made a baby bump in the air over her belly.

“And you think that means I’m having a baby?” That was a leap.

“Probably not one,” Gertrude said, grabbing her bag and slinging it over her shoulder again. “Our family tends to run in threes… Not this one”—she pointed to my mate—“but on my sister’s side.”

I was still hung up on the number three.

“Three? You think I’m having triplets?”

“That’s one way to put it. But if you don’t believe me, go to the store and grab one of those tests. Spend the money.”

There were times I loved Gertrude, and times like this when… Yeah, I still loved her, but there had to have been a better way for her to tell me all of this.

“All right,” she said. “I’m going to the bakery. I want a cupcake, and I want to knit in peace. I’m going to stop at the store and buy those human tests while I’m out.”

“No, Gertrude, we’ve got it,” my mate dismissed, his exacerbation with her matching my own.

The second she was out, he squatted down so he was eye level with me and held my hands. “Do you need to go to the store?”

“No. I saw it on my neck. I’m still processing, but I saw it. I always wanted a baby, but why is she saying three? Three is a lot.”

“Three is a lot, but between the two of us, we’ve got a lot of love to give. So, if it’s three, we can handle it.”

“You’re not upset?”

“Why would I be upset? I have the love of my life here, only inches from me, and inside of him is growing our family. Life doesn’t get much better than that.”

It really didn’t.