Chapter 17 Fable
Fable
“Home” had never felt less like home.
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 moved there, 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 and lots of 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 just visit.
I wanted to stay! 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 of my 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 long call.
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 was why.
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 mates could cheat!
I couldn’t even bring myself to look at 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 and devotion.
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.
My jaw dropped as my gaze when up, up, up from where I’d expected to find the old woman’s face. “Guy!” I squealed as I threw myself across the threshold into my mate’s arms. “You’re here!”
“Merde, you’ve been crying. I’m so sorry, mon coeur. It was supposed to be a surprise, but then you called when I was in the rental car. I didn’t want to spoil it when I was just two blocks away. Forgive me?”
“Duh, of course I forgive you! You’re here!” I repeated, loving the way my body curved against his.
He kissed me once, long and slow, then carried me through the doorway and set me down in the front hall, kicking the door closed behind him.
He set me down on my feet then dropped to his knees right there on the tile floor.
Rolling my shirt up, he pressed the softest kiss to my round belly.
“And how is our child doing today?” he whispered.
I wasn’t sure if he was asking them or me, but since they couldn’t answer, I said, “They’re so excited to see their papa.”
As if in response, they gave a sharp kick, and Guy gasped. “I felt that!” He splayed both palms over my belly, his fingers long enough to span my ribcage, warm and steady. “Hey, my sweet darling. Are you taking care of your daddy for me?”
I giggled, carding my fingers through Guy’s hair. “If you mean keeping me awake at night by doing gymnastics in there, then yes, they’re taking very good care of me.”
Guy looked up at me, his eyes glistening with love. “Aw, then I’ll just have to make sure I take extra care of you while I’m here to make up for it. How about that?”
“Oh yeah? And what will that entail?”
He pursed his lips in exaggerated thought.
“Hmm, well, how about we start with a massage,” he purred, rising from his knees.
As he moved up my body, he peeled my shirt up until I had no choice but to lift my arms, and he tossed the discarded fabric aside.
“I will oil you up and rub you down until you’re a puddle of relaxation.
Then I will cook for you and feed it to you bite by bite.
We will take warm baths together, and there will be lots and lots of sex. ”
“Mm, that all sounds very thorough,” I murmured as he backed me up toward my bedroom.
“It might take a while. How long do we have?” He’d just gotten here and already I had my eye on the clock.
I should’ve been savoring each moment I had with him, but instead, all I felt was dread for when he would inevitably go home.
Without pausing our steps, he leaned down and kissed me softly, as if he knew exactly what I was thinking; with the mating bond between us, he probably did.
His whiskers tickled my chin, cheeks, and nose, helping to anchor me in the here and now.
“Do you think we can do it all in five days?” he asked, his fingertips dancing down my spine and tucking into the back of my pants.
It was more time than I’d hoped for. “I’d better use some of that banked sick time I have at work, just in case. This is for my health and wellness, after all.”
His smirk made my insides feel warm and gooey. “Just call me Doctor Charpentier,” he teased. “It’s time for your physical.”
I laughed, which was no doubt his intention. “Please don’t tell me to turn my head and cough.”
“How about I tell you to get on all fours and spread your legs?”
“Okay,” I said, breathless and already needy. I stepped back so I could kick off my pants, then crawled onto the mattress and peeked over my shoulder, back arched to offer myself to him. “Is that what you had in mind… Doctor?”
His eyes were glazed with want, with need, as he watched the slick dripping down the inside of my thighs.
I’d been extra horny as my hormones surged, and I felt especially lucky to have my mate here in person to help take care of it.
Without looking away from my spread cheeks, his hand went to his belt, tugging roughly.
“Yes, just like that. Be sure to tell me how it feels. Tell me everything.”
With his pants left open and hanging off his hips, as though he couldn’t resist himself long enough to get fully naked, he knelt on the bed behind me and licked right along my crease, from my tightening balls to the apex of my cleft, before returning to spear his tongue as deep into my puckered hole as he could.
His groan vibrated through me as he reached between my legs and gave my cock a long, slow tug.
A gasp shivered past my lips, and my limbs quivered, threatening to buckle.
“Yesss,” I hissed, writhing on his tongue.
I needed so much more than that, but I had no idea how to ask.
So much of our relationship was through text and phone calls, and I felt like the physical part of our relationship had some catching up to do.
Luckily, it seemed that Guy was pretty good at reading between the lines, interpreting not just my moans but my pauses.
He pulled me up until my back was against his front, and he pressed a kiss to the mating mark on my shoulder, his tongue finding the grooves.
I swore it heated my skin. “Don’t be scared to ask for what you want, mon coeur. Ask for it and it’s yours.”
“I just want you,” I whispered, reaching back and tangling my fingers in his hair, twisting to kiss him. “I want all of you.”
“You have me. Toujours.”