Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Aiden
I sat on our bed staring at my phone. Daddio’s name was right there, brighter than ever. So why did I pause? I knew they wouldn’t be mad at me, disappointed, maybe, but not mad.
Taking in a deep breath, I hit the call button. It only rang once before Daddio’s familiar voice came through, a touch frantic but also filled with relief.
“Aiden?”
“Daddio?” I croaked.
“Oh, my boy!” I heard him sob with relief.
“Is it him?!” I heard Dad’s voice join the sobs.
“Yes!”
“Hi, Dad,” I greeted, my voice choking up.
“Are you safe?” Daddio asked.
“Yes, I’m safe,” I assured them.
“We were told you were involved in an accident, but we weren’t allowed to see you,” Dad told me, his tone laced with anger and worry.
“I was in a coma,” I explained, not knowing how much I was allowed to tell them. I had taken the news of other worlds fairly well, but that was mostly instincts telling me it was true. My dads didn’t have the luxury of instincts to guide them on this, and would likely think I’d gone mad.
“A coma?!” Dad balked. “They never said that! We feared you’d died!”
“Died?!” Now it was my turn to balk. Had the rulers truly fucked up that badly? “You believed me to be dead all these years?” I almost begged them not to tell me, but I needed to know.
“No,” Daddio assured me. “We knew you were out there, just not where or what had truly happened. Call it parental intuition.”
Dad snorted. “Yeah, right. I seem to remember a certain bear hunting down hospitals and demanding to find his son.”
Daddio tsked. “That was a moment of weakness.”
“Uh huh, weakness,” Dad muttered.
I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “I’ve missed you.”
“We miss you, too, son,” Dad said. “When will we see you again?”
“Oh, hang on,” I said, clicking the camera button, and there my dads were, looking way older than I’d thought. I probably should’ve prepared myself for seeing them three years older, but it was too late now.
Daddio had a fully grey beard now, his hair in a buzz cut, likely from thinning to the point that it no longer mattered.
Dad was cleanly shaven, his hair pure white and set into his familiar style.
But it was their eyes that had changed the most. They looked wiser somehow, not that I would dare tell them that.
“You look so thin!” Daddio gasped. “You need ribs. That’s it, you need to come home so I can feed you.”
I laughed. “Nolen cooks for me.”
Their silence had me realizing I’d just told them Nolen existed, and I’d also sort of told them I was seeing someone.
Daddio got closer to the camera, looking pointedly around my bedroom. “Who’s this Nolen? Can he cook ribs? Never mind, I’ll teach him.”
That had me sobbing with relief, but my dads horrified faces told me they didn’t think this was happy tears.
“What did this guy do?” Dad demanded. “Where are you? We’ll come get you.”
I shook my head. “These are happy tears. I promise.”
“Oh,” they said in unison.
“Nolen is my boyfriend. He helped me out with everything as I healed. You two will love him.”
“If you love him, we’ll love him,” Dad assured me.
“I don’t know,” Daddio said. “I never did learn if he can cook ribs.”
“I’m sure I can manage,” Nolen’s playful tone had both my dads speechless. Hell, I was, too.
Beckoning him closer, I held my phone out so both my dads could see him.
“Hi,” Nolen waved at my still speechless dads.
“Wow,” Daddio finally muttered. “You went from dating pretty girls to hunks.”
I laughed. Nolen might have lost a lot of his body mass, but the magic truly had helped him gain a lot of it back, and with his height I knew he was taller than both my dads.
“Hello, Nolen,” Dad greeted, using his accountant/no nonsense voice. I snorted at that. But I secretly loved that he tried to intimidate Nolen. It meant they cared.
“Where’s Derek?” I asked Nolen, wanting him here, too.
“He’s in the living room.”
“You have a son?” Daddio asked Nolen, more out of interest than shock it seemed.
“Um,” Nolen said, looking pointedly at me.
“Let’s go into the living room so they can meet him,” I announced, taking my dads with me. They were silent as I moved, likely trying to see my surroundings as I moved about the house.
Derek sat on the couch and watched the same movie we’d watched earlier. I sat next to him, still out of frame as I said, “Dads, meet Derek.” Then I moved closer to Derek and made sure we were both in frame.
Silence.
Derek did a cute wave thing. “Um, hi.”
Their eyes went from me to Derek and back again. “They lied to us?” Dad whispered in disbelief. “They said your twin died.”
“I wasn’t even told I had a twin,” Derek informed them. “My childhood trauma had me forgetting everything, so it wasn’t until I met Aiden that I knew either.”
It was a lie we had to tell them, but it was still close to the truth.
“How on earth did you find him?” Daddio asked, still looking between us like he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Nolen and Derek are boyfriends,” I started. “And once we met, we just fit together, the three of us.”
“This is probably going to sound wrong, but as your dad I need to know,” Dad began. “This isn’t some kink thing, right? You aren’t just there for… fun?”
Derek choked on air while Nolen looked puzzled, I guess this world isn’t used to kinks, who knew?
“It’s not like that,” I assured them. “Nolen loves us both equally and even with our memories once forgotten, me and Derek have the same bond now as we had as children. We belong together, not romantically, but as family. Sharing Nolen makes sense to us.”
“Just how long did your coma last? It sounds like you’ve been together for years?” I could hear the accusation in dad’s tone. That I should’ve called them sooner.
I needed to lie now, and I hated that, but it was necessary.
“We met on my travels and I went with them into the wilderness. I wanted to camp out where we didn’t have a signal and just see the world.
We spent a lot of time travelling, so when I got into my accident, we were far away from everything.
As soon as I was healed, we told the hospital to contact you, thinking that they had.
Waking up from a coma meant I needed to gain my strength back.
” I spoke like my coma had ended years ago and not mere hours.
“We continued our travels because I wanted to experience life. Having almost died frightened me into seeing even more, travelling farther.”
They remained silent, so I kept going. “We got back home this morning, and I just turned on my phone for the first time in years.”
“We only got one call to tell us you were in an accident, nothing else,” Dad said. “After a while we started searching for your name and whereabouts, but we had this feeling that you were alive and well, it was like we just knew and were comforted by that.”
I eyed Nolen, that had to be magic. He winked. Okay, definitely magic.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be. We’re just relieved you’ve found not only your twin, but a man you love, too,” Daddio said. “We can’t wait to see the three of you.”
“Soon,” I promised.
We spoke a bit more before hanging up.
“You okay?” Nolen asked, taking my phone and placing it on the coffee table.
“Yeah. I needed that.”
“Should I have stayed out of it?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I loved that you joined me. Them having met you both already helps ease my worries a lot.”
“I made him wait a few before I let him go,” Derek snickered. “He was so on edge I almost begged him to go in the end.”
I smiled at that. “They’ve gotten so old.”
Their smiles fell.
“Do you want us to move there? We don’t have to stay in this world if you want to be close to them,” Nolen assured me.
I shook my head. “I want to stay here. This feels like home, but maybe we could visit them often? Is that an option, or do we have to choose one world or the other?”
“We can travel as often as we please between the worlds,” Nolen answered. “After all these mates showed up in your world, the rulers made the portal permanent, meaning it gets refueled weekly to stay open.”
Slumping back in relief, I gave them both a lazy smile, feeling the strain of being awake take over. Had it truly been this morning we’d woken up from our sleep?
Nolen seemed nervous as he moved from foot to foot.
“You okay?” I asked, eyeing his movements.
“We need to talk about our mating.”