Chapter 37
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
After growing tired of the curious glances tossed up at him, Cole moved deeper into the shelter and leaned back against his bag, closing his eyes and trying not to worry about Akai abandoning him. He wouldn’t have done it without good reason.
If Bob knew about the accident, was Akai in trouble?
Had he been dragged away to answer his own set of questions?
As much as he wanted to do something, there was nothing he could do, as he didn’t know where to start. He didn’t know where to get food, or how to pay for it.
Was this a very large and potentially costly mistake?
Wood creaked as someone started up the ladder.
“Are you up there?” Akai called then mumbled something sharp and unintelligible.
“Yeah? Where else am I going to be?” Did Akai think he was going to go wandering around on his own when he didn’t know anyone or anything? It was like getting off a plane in a foreign country where all the signs were in another language.
His head popped over the edge of the platform. “I also expected to be here.” He bounced onto the platform, landing in a crouch. “There has been a complication.”
“Your ex has shown up and the baby is yours?”
Akai froze. “What?”
“That was a joke.”
“It was not funny. And it is worse than that.”
Was now the time to confess his suspected complication? “I also have bad news.”
Akai sighed, lips turning down as he looked at the wooden platform. “You hate it, and want to leave?”
“No, worse.”
“Oh. The one with the worst news should go first, but I do not know who has the worst news.”
That made a weird kind of sense despite the obvious difficulty in establishing the right order. “If it helps, mine came from Bob.”
“You should definitely go first.” Akai sat, legs crossed.
Cole sat up and moved closer, mirroring his pose. He beckoned Akai to lean closer as this was not the kind of news he wanted to be saying too loudly and whispered in his ear. “Bob said we have a long and complicated past. I think he knows.”
Akai put his hand over Cole’s mouth. “Do not whisper such things.”
“That’s what he told me.” His words were muffled by Akai’s fingers.
“That is very bad…yet I am sitting here.”
Cole lifted his eyebrows and ran his tongue along one of Akai’s fingers. Akai released him. “We do not have bedding, so do not try to tempt me.”
“It was that or bite you.”
“Same, same.”
Cole shook his head. “I think you need to talk to Bob.”
“I will hold that suggestion and present my own news which may change your opinion. My parents are here. They wanted to surprise me. I had to tell them I have a mate, and my father was rather dramatic about it in front of the healer.”
“Now I know where you get it.”
Akai gasped. “I am not dramatic.”
Cole tilted his head, not sure he was ready to meet the parents. He could barely handle one harpy.
“Fine. Maybe a little. You should meet my uncle. He will death spiral all the way to the ground when wronged…then pull up and land safely, of course. He just wants everyone’s attention.”
“Is he here, too?”
“No! Only my parents, and they are upset that I brought you to solstice before telling them I had a mate.”
“Were we supposed to invite them to the ceremony or something?”
Akai shook his head. “I think they feel left out, but they’re the ones who moved away. They were hoping to convince me to leave this time.” He picked up Cole’s hand. “I am not leaving.”
“And we are not mates…” he murmured.
“Yes, I am aware.” Akai kept hold of his hand. His thumb sweeping over the back of Cole’s hand. “I have not shown you around, and I have not set up a nest for you, so it is presumptuous of me to ask, but have you thought about maybe being my mate for real?”
Cole licked his lower lip, sure that every monster in a ten-yard radius must be able to hear the pounding of his heart. “I have, though I don’t know what that looks like. How do I live in both worlds? Especially if I don’t age because my lifespan is linked to yours?”
“I don’t know. But plenty of humans manage, and we have all of solstice to figure it out.”
“You’re not asking because your parents are here?”
Akai lowered his gaze. “No. I have thought about asking you since the monster house. But I am asking you to give up a lot because I cannot pass in your world. I will always be the wolf on your back seat.”
“More like the wolf with his head in my crotch.”
Akai laughed. “I want you to be happy.”
“I want us to be happy. When we were at the cabin, I remembered what that felt like. I wanted to stay there and never leave, pretend that the rest of the world didn’t exist.”
“So did I. It was easy, and it felt right in a way I haven’t felt before.”
“Are we cursing the fate lines and blood debt again?”
“Perhaps we should be thanking them?” Akai asked, hope lacing his voice.
Cole remembered his aunt claiming that everything happened for a reason when he was still in hospital.
At the time, he’d been too hurt and angry and was convinced she didn’t know shit and was only trying to justify her own situation.
Both could be true, even if he didn’t understand why he got lucky and her family got shit.
Had they hunted and killed monsters in the past and gotten cursed?
“I still wish we had met under better circumstances, both times.” But if they had met in any other way, it would have been easy for them both to run away and ignore what was right in front of them.
“Agreed, but I do not regret crossing your path again.” Akai gave his wounded wing a twitch.
“So what do you want to do about everything?”
Akai pulled him into his lap, and Cole went willingly, turning so his back was to Akai’s chest and resting his head against Akai’s shoulder.
Akai wrapped his arms around him. “I think we should set up the nest and then talk to Bob. We can make it official before we meet my parents for dinner.”
Cole pulled away enough to look at him. “Dinner?”
“I was ambushed!”
“So that makes it okay to ambush me?”
“Are you more worried about meeting my parents than being my mate?”
“Yes.” It should be the other way around as one was forever. But making it official wouldn’t change anything between them. It was everything else that needed to be settled, and they could take their time sorting that out.
Akai laughed. “They do not bite. They want to meet you, and they will probably invite us to come and see them, but we don’t need to rush.”
“No rushing.”
“Except now, so we can finish unraveling this mess before dinner.” Akai kissed the side of his neck and gave him a little push to get him up.
Cole stood, ducking his head to avoid banging it on the sloped roof. “Ugh, fine. If you’d told me to grab the bedding, I would’ve done it in one trip.”
“This way, I can show you the markers, so you don’t get lost.”