9. Milo #3
And it was definitely the post orgasm bliss flooding his brain, but for one crazy second Milo thought…
I would. If my body were made to carry your pups. I would do it, my mate. I’d carry them, and welcome them into our family.
But of course that was the sex-addled part of his brain talking.
They stayed like that for a few more seconds, allowing their senses to slowly return.
Milo’s vision cleared first, until he could identify each glow mushroom bordering the clearing.
The air was filled with the music of autumn nights: rustling leaves and the hooting of horned owls.
It smelled like cold, if cold were to have a smell.
Crisp and awake. And last came feeling. The cool press of silky grass against his stomach.
And the heat of his mate pressed against his ass, their bodies still connected.
Grievance was slow to pull out, letting Milo’s body grip him one last time until he came free, his spent cock resting against Milo’s bare thigh with a wet slap. Then Milo felt soft lips press to his mating mark.
“I love you, Milo. My mate. My everything.”
Milo hummed contentedly into the grass as Grievance continued to trail gentle, worshiping kisses down his spine, across his shoulders, and back up his neck, all while murmuring sweet things into the night.
Eventually, the kisses slowed.
The clearing had gone quiet around them.
Not silent—the forest was never truly silent—but peaceful.
Crickets chirped beyond the circle of glowing mushrooms. Rustling branches whispered overhead.
Milo might have stayed there forever. Naked in the grass.
Warm beneath his mate. Thoroughly worshiped and far too satisfied to remember how his legs worked.
Then he noticed the lantern. It stood at the center of the clearing, dark beneath the moonlight.
Waiting.
“We should light it.”
Grievance lifted his head from where he’d been kissing Milo’s shoulder. “Feels odd to do it now.”
“Why?” Milo asked, genuinely curious.
“After it just watched what I did to you, I hardly feel like it’ll listen to my prayers.”
Milo laughed and rolled over. “It doesn’t work like that, my love.”
“I know. All my prayers have been answered already.”
And the devotion in those eyes told Milo he might have something to do with that.
Grievance climbed to his feet and held out a hand.
Milo accepted it, though standing proved considerably more ambitious than he’d anticipated.
His knees immediately wobbled. Quickly, Grievance caught him around the waist.
“S-sorry,” Milo said, leaning heavily against him.
“You can always lean on me, my mate. And not just when you’re too shaken to stand. I want you to lean on me when you are tired. When you are frightened. When the world is too loud.” He lowered his head until their foreheads touched. “When you simply want to.”
“Then I’d be pressed against you all the time,” Milo said.
Grievance’s grin flashed in the moonlight. “Sounds perfectly fine to me.”
Together, they crossed the clearing. Milo had lit the old Lantern plenty of times before. For festivals. For prayers. For luck. Sometimes simply because he liked seeing its warm glow between the trees.
But tonight felt different.
Maybe because he knew what this place had given Grievance. Once, that light had found him when he was frightened, hurt, and alone. It had led him through the forest until, somehow, impossibly, he had ended up in Milo’s backyard.
Milo glanced at the man beside him.
His mate.
His Veya.
His impossible, beautiful something.
“What are you smiling about?” Grievance asked.
“You.”
“There’s that strange streak about you again. Not many people smile at monsters.”
“I do at my monster.”
“Yes.” Grievance squeezed his hand. “Yours.”
Milo approached the lantern first. He dipped his fingers into the bowl of crushed Blazemoth Dust, coating his fingertips in the semi-transparent powder.
Then he reached inside the glass case and snapped his fingers beside the wick.
The dust ignited with a soft whump, and the flame caught immediately, filling the lantern with a bright violet glow.
Grievance copied him, but when he snapped his fingers, Milo knew the color had changed for him—though to Milo it remained violet.
“Green?” he asked.
Grievance nodded. “Purple?”
“Violet.”
“Violet is a kind of purple.”
“Yes, but violet is a more beautiful way to say it.”
Grievance thought a moment, then said, “Then mine would be… peridot.”
Milo smiled. “Like your eyes.”
They stared at the flickering flame for a moment.
Then, all around them, the world began to brighten.
Milo looked around, alarmed for a moment, thinking the sun was rising and they’d been out all night.
But quickly he realized it wasn’t the sun at all.
The mushrooms surrounding the clearing began to brighten like torches, one after another, until the whole forest seemed to glow.
Milo stared. “Well.” He swallowed past the sudden lump in his throat. “If that isn’t a good omen, I don’t know what is.”
Grievance wrapped both arms around him from behind.
“You believe in omens?”
“I’m a witch. It’s practically a professional requirement.”
A kiss pressed into his curls. Milo rested his hands over Grievance’s arms and looked at the lantern. A year ago, he never could have imagined this.
A mate.
A family.
A home that had somehow become louder, stranger, messier, and fuller than he’d ever dreamed it could be. And something told Milo they weren’t finished yet.
Not even close.
Whatever came next—wicked, wild, wonderful, or something else—Milo knew one thing for certain.
He wouldn’t face it alone.
Their lantern was lit.
And there was so much light ahead.