Chapter 12 Stan
STAN
I loved shifting with my mate, and having to do it more often? Yes, please. I just hated that the reason was that my mate’s wolf was struggling so much.
When my aunt explained the trauma his wolf had been through, it made sense. I’d never heard of a shifter having that happen to them and had been scared at the time. But I’d convinced myself that all was fine now in that department. How wrong I’d been.
The entire visit highlighted how very little I knew about shifter medicine and shifter healers.
All my training had been with humans, and that was great.
That was my job and where my skillsets should be.
I sort of knew the basics of shifter health care—shifting helps you heal, viruses don’t manifest the same, that kind of thing.
But being with my aunt and seeing how she was able to help my mate in a way I hadn’t so much as considered had me second-guessing some of my life choices.
Maybe I wasn’t meant to be a human nurse.
Maybe I was meant to be a healer. I wasn’t sure what all that would entail training wise and if it was a career avenue or more of a calling.
Heck, for all I knew it wasn’t a possibility for me as half human.
It was something I needed to look into more, but not yet.
I wasn’t exactly keeping my interest in healers from my mate.
If he’d asked me how I felt about what my aunt did as a healer, I’d have told him and how it had me second-guessing some of my past decisions.
But I also wasn’t planning to talk to him about it yet, mostly because I couldn’t really piece together my own thoughts.
If it kept nagging at me this way after the baby came, I’d discuss it with him, and depending on how that conversation went, talk to my aunt about it. Until then, I planned to just let it simmer there in the back of my mind. Pregnancy wasn’t the ideal time to be making any major career moves.
Most days, I was able to leave it there as background noise.
But days like today, when my mate and I were outside running around in our fur, it was hard to.
We both loved to shift together, but this was a scheduled shift—one we planned to help his wolf and that had my brain going a mile a minute.
At least it had, until my mate’s wolf took off in our favorite game of hunter and prey. Today I was the hunter.
As I tracked Ax’s scent, I noticed little things he did along the way that told me his wolf was happier than I’d ever seen.
He wasn’t just running and hiding and covering his tracks.
No, he was leading me to some of our favorite places…
the tree that I loved because it reminded me of the one that grew outside our dorm in college, the berry bush I promised him would have the sweetest blackberries come spring, and the pine tree where we collected some huge pine cones to make ornaments for gifts at work.
He made sure to hit every single place that I’d pointed out to him as a human for being special to me.
All but one, that was, which told my fox exactly what he needed to know. His final location in this round.
With that knowledge in place, I changed my tactic.
Instead of tracking him, I took a hard right and bolted.
He was going to be down at the boulder, the one that was oddly comfortable for sitting on on a warm summer’s day, the one where I’d read countless books, the one that was the furthest away from my current spot.
I ran and ran and ran, covering up my tracks as I got close, using every trick I knew, and then hiding behind it and waiting for him to come.
I was there only two minutes when I heard his paws slamming into the cold ground. He wasn’t being careful. He thought I was long behind him. I bided my time until he was close enough to pounce on, and I jumped, landing on his back before he suspected I was there.
He fell over, rolled onto his back, submitting instantly and then licking my face.
Now it was my turn to be prey. I wasn’t going to be so easy on him. No predictability here. I licked his ear and then took off like a shot.
Unlike my mate, I was pretty adept at climbing trees, far more than a natural-born fox would be.
As soon as I thought I was far enough away from him, I climbed up a trunk and jumped from one tree to another, going back the way I’d come, hoping he’d assume I was going forward.
And he did. I watched as he went out of sight before coming down and circling back toward the house.
I was under no illusion that I was already winning this round. I highly suspected he was letting me win. The first one I won, fair and square. My guess was he’d never make that mistake in strategy again.
This time was different, he was letting me win. His wolf wasn’t this easily tricked. And the question was, why?
When I got to the porch where our clothes sat, I kept my fur and waited for him. I waited and waited. It wasn’t until the back door opened that I realized I’d been totally duped.
I shifted and asked, “When did you go in there?”
“Probably about three minutes before you sat on the porch.” He smirked. Yep. I called it. He played me, and I wasn’t even mad at it.
“And why didn’t you let me know?”
“Because your clever fox won, and as such, you deserve a reward.”
I crossed over to him, a shiver running through me as the cold wind lapped at my skin. “And what is my prize?”
“I ran you a bath.”
It sounded heavenly.
“You really do love me, don’t you?” I pressed my hand against his chest, wanting to feel his warmth.
“Of course, I do. But I love me, too.” He winked.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He pulled me inside, and I pushed the door closed behind me.
“Well, I won the second round.” He puffed his chest out, and I had to bite back a chuckle.
“And what do you win, sexy mate of mine?” I had a feeling I was going to like where this was heading.
“Obviously, a bath with my omega.”
He took my hand and led me to the bathroom. I climbed into the hot water, settled in, and he joined me, sitting across from me so we could see each other. “We need a bigger tub,” he said.
We both fit in it, and there was plenty of room lengthwise for that, but the water didn’t go very deep. Deeper would definitely be nice on cool days like this.
“Sounds like a plan to me. We could put it on the must list for our next house, or we could keep this place and just put in a new tub.”
I’d said it as a random comment, not a to-do list item, but my mate was ready for action. Gods, he was the best mate.
We hadn’t discussed where we would live, if there was going to be a change in my career, not the change I was thinking about but just which hospital I was working at.
But thinking about it, we’d had many conversations like this, ones that came up naturally in the context of whatever it was we were doing. Maybe that was enough for now.
“I say we wait until after our sweet baby comes to figure all that out,” I said. “You know, come to think of it, I’m not sure I want a deeper tub with a little one in the house.”
“Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. There’s a lot of safeguarding the house when we have a kit.” He grabbed his jaw the way he did when he was thinking. I wasn’t sure he noticed he did it.
“Kit? They might not be a kit. We could be having a pup. Do you have a preference?”
“Nope. I just hope, whoever they are, they are as wonderful as my mate.” He grabbed the washcloth from the side of the tub. “Turn around and I’ll wash your back.”
“Only if you wash my front, too.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” he murmured. “I’ll make sure to go over every inch of your body.”
And he did. Twice.