Misty
One Month Later
Cole pulls our rental car into an inconspicuous apartment building parking lot under the glare of a flickering streetlight. It's bitter cold and starless–a stunning contrast to the last month we spent in Tarsian–specifically Oasia–tucked in a small house in the inner city since the palace was lost almost completely to the massive fire in the aftermath of Cole’s first battle with Richard.
We haven’t talked about that night very much. The night of my birthday, his rejection, and the official start of the war. It was a month of preparations, politics, and very late nights spent alone while Cole sat in meetings with the newly established Elder Council of Tarsian.
Three new kings were recently chosen by my aunt, and now… we’re off the hook.
Just in time for the massive memorial service for my grandparents being held tomorrow at the royal temple.
Cole stalls by slowly killing the ignition and rifling through the backpack he’s been dragging around since I first met him. He pulls out a set of keys and stares at them as if in disbelief.
He didn’t think he’d ever be coming back here.
“Did your landlord just keep all your stuff for you?”
“I paid rent a year in advance,” he says under his breath but refuses to meet my eye “I have a few months left of that lease.” He looks flustered as he adjusts his coat then stares at his reflection in the rear view mirror before taking a deep breath and stepping out of the car into the chilly night air.
He rounds the car and opens my door as I gather my purse and the book I’ve been thumbing through during our drive. I smile up at him, debating making a joke about his chivalry, but the look on his face gives me pause.
“We don’t have to go in. We can get a hotel,” I say as he closes the door. “We could stay with my parents, actually. You could see my old room.”
He smiles faintly, jiggling the keys in his hand. “I’m sorry. It’s just weird being back here. It doesn’t feel real.”
I look past him at the pale gray siding and the four stories of square, neatly spaced windows spilling light into the parking lot.
He’s right. Nothing feels real right now. I haven’t been back to Crescent Falls since… well, since before TU was attacked for the first time. The war was a shift in the paradigm–an undoing of everything we knew and believed to be true. The idea that magic like Richard possessed lurks just out of reach–that it even exists–has my stomach in knots every time I think about it.
Lately, the memory of that strange woman and her fangs keeps clogging my dreams. There’re worlds like ours out there–shifter worlds… with other beings so unlike us it makes my skin pebble with uncertainty.
I destroyed the Gate of the Gods.
But Arthur said it was one of many. What happens when that knowledge falls into the wrong hands?
What happens when someone comes along with the power to do so without needing something like the Book of Whispers to activate one?
It’s a good thing Cole kept a copy of it. I still haven’t been able to find the nerve to start my research, though.
I let my thoughts tangle while following Cole up a flight of stairs, then another, until we reach the third floor. It’s the middle of the night, and only a few people are up and about. A woman steps out to greet a wolf who scratches on her door just as we walk down the hallway. A young man steps out of his apartment with three of his friends, the smell of cheap beer following behind them as they brush past us.
Cole’s unit is on the end, the corner, and overlooks the woods that once belonged to Ryan’s pack. Seeing the wall separating the NZ from Silverhide again is jarring, to say the least. As far as I know, no one has taken over the old territory yet.
Cole unlocks the door with ease and steps inside. I follow, feeling an overwhelming sense of both excitement and worry.
I was so upset that his wing of the castle in Oasia had been so… sterile and boring. It wasn’t his, at all. It was simply where he stayed.
But this place? This was his home for two entire years.
I’m about to meet my mate for the first time, honestly. What if he’s a total weirdo?
He turns on the main light, revealing a very basic, very male living room and a small kitchen with oak cabinets. The walls are a muted grayish-blue. A stoic, comfortable looking leather sofa greets us right away. He has a TV, a few pictures hanging on the walls, and a very neglected Ficus that’s so withered it flops over in its pot, brown and leathery.
Cole carries our bags down a short, narrow hallway. I follow, passing the kitchen, which is spotless and smells sharply of citrus-scented cleaning solution.
“I had a cleaning company come yesterday,” he says, setting our bags down in the corner of his… bedroom.
I glance into the bathroom, desperate to open the cabinet over the sink and pick through his toiletries, but decide I’m the one being weird and follow my mate into the bedroom instead.
The first thing I notice is his scent. It’s everywhere. Beautiful and instantly comforting, cutting through whatever the cleaners used to wash the bedding and mop the wood floors. This room–out of the whole apartment where he lived, alone–is his. Pictures of his family and friends I’ve never met sit in frames on his dresser or are pinned on a bulletin board above the desk along the far wall, which is stacked full of anatomy and biology books. His bedspread is several shades of deep green–a quilt, handmade. I run my hand over it, feeling him watching me, but saying nothing as I continue my exploration. The bed takes up the majority of the room. I sit on the edge closest to the bedside table and look through the books stacked there. More books about medicine and the body in general.
“You look disappointed,” he says, tucking his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He’s wearing jeans and a hoodie, which makes him look like… someone I’d see at a coffee shop and bat my eyelashes at until he noticed me. He’s clean shaven and has let his hair grow out a bit. I was right about it being curly.
He shed that slightly scary, dominating shell of armor that he wore for months. That side of him is gone–and buried.
“I’m not disappointed,” I tell him, giving him a weak smile. “I’m actually relieved you don’t have posters of women in bikinis plastered everywhere.” At that thought, I open the drawer in his bedside table. Nothing weird there, either. No… condoms or anything of the like.
I rise and move to the closet doors, sliding them open. He steps out of my way, leaning his shoulder on the wall.
Button down shirts greet me. A few white coats I’m sure he wore to work at the hospital. Scrubs. The works.
He’s a normal guy.
Thank the Goddess.
“Hey,” he says, trying to get my attention. “What are you looking for, exactly?”
I heave a breath and turn to him, resigned. “Honestly, I was worried I’d come up here and find the girlfriend you failed to mention waiting for you to finally get home.”
He arches his brows.
I shrug, then slide his clothes to the side, giving myself room for my own clothes, which I’ll have to pick up at my parents’ house tomorrow, at some point, since all I have is the clothes I’d grown accustomed to wearing in Tarsian.
In fact, I’m in a pair of leggings and one of Cole’s sweatshirts right now because it’s all I have that’s not a fantastic gown, and seeing my mate’s apartment for the first time wasn’t a gown event.
I flip my hair over my shoulder and frown at the closet.
“We won’t be living here for very long,” he assures me, leaning into the closet with his hands braced on the top of the doorframe. “Our next place will have a walk-in closet.”
“Is it weird being back?” I ask, turning to face him.
“Yes, very.” He gives me a soft smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “I’m glad you’re here with me.”
I wrap my arms around his waist. His hands drop from the doorframe as he embraces me back with a groan. “That was a long trip.”
“I know. I’m exhausted.” I close my eyes for a moment, breathing him in. I wonder if every newly mated couple feels this way–unsure. Not about each other but about the future. Things changed so fast for us. Things are still changing, still so uncertain.
I went from hating this man to loving him so deeply the idea of us being apart again is a form of torture. I went from being a wild college student to… pregnant. I went from being a year away from finishing my degree to captured, tortured, and thrown into a brutal war that claimed the lives of my grandparents and forever changed my family.
Now, I’m wondering how I’m going to fit my shoe collection into Cole’s closet. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t feel real. I feel like something that minuscule could be taken from me at any minute.
He cups my face between his hands. “I know what you’re feeling. It’s valid. This is… a hard adjustment.”
“I just want things to feel normal again.”
“We have to find a new normal.”
I lean into his touch, letting his warmth soak into my skin. Letting his scent and proximity untangle my thoughts and numb my senses. Eventually, I end up in the bathroom with him, vigorously brushing my teeth while he checks the water temperature of the shower.
“It takes a while to warm up,” he grumbles.
“Why’d you live here for so long if you didn’t have hot water when you needed it?”
“Not all of us were born in a castle.”
“Okay, Alpha King.”
He smirks, rolling his eyes as he pulls his shirt over his head. I immediately shut up, watching the way his muscles flex as he turns back to the shower. “It’s close to the hospital, and I wasn’t here often. I can afford more, but at the time, I didn’t need it.”
It dawns on me that I’m the luckiest girl who's ever lived. This man is my mate. This beautiful, kind, brave, and apparently frugal man is mine.
We made it out. Both of us.
And now, I’m stepping into the shower with him, in the apartment we now share, looking toward a future, together.
“I only have two-in-one shampoo.”
“Goddess, you’re such a guy,” I tease but make a mental note to raid my mom’s heavily stocked bathroom for her good shampoos and soaps tomorrow before the memorial. I pluck the single bottle off the shower shelf and gasp, holding it up to him. “Cole, this is three-in-one. Shampoo, conditioner, and body wash? That’s worse! Who are you?”
He steals the words with a kiss that nearly knocks me off my feet. He presses me against the tiles, shielding me from the spray of the water. I fumble with the bottle of soap, deciding to just toss it over the curtain since I’m going throw it in the trash anyway, and wrap my arms around his neck.
He groans against my mouth, our bodies flush and heated, and not just from the water. I can’t get enough of him. His mark on my neck burns as need thrums through my body. His hands slide down my sides, gripping my waist as he nibbles my lower lip, drawing out a sharp moan. He grips the back of my thighs and picks me up, pressing me into the tiles.
“Wrap your legs around my waist,” he rasps against my mouth.
I obey. The head of his cock prods my entrance, stretching me as he grinds his hips into mine. My fingers lace through his wet hair, my mouth covering his in another heated, untamed kiss. “Please,” I pant, tugging his hair. “Please, Cole–”
He groans as his cock slides home, parting my folds. I arch my neck, closing my eyes against the sensation of him thrusting into me so fully my toes curl.
He grips my thighs hard enough to leave bruises, but I’m beyond feeling anything but the way his cock is hitting places so deep I’m not sure if I’m screaming his name or just imagining it echoing through the bathroom.
He grits his teeth, burying his face in the crook of my neck.
My entire body rattles with pleasure as he grinds his hips again, slowing his pace like he’s savoring this moment.
His lips brush over the mark he left on my skin before he nibbles down my neck. I moan, overstimulated and starting to tense up, my leg muscles locking and my core throbbing with desire.
“Come for me,” he says, lifting his face to mine. His eyes are dreamy and hooded, dark with need.
“Make me come,” I counter, gasping as he slams into me, pinning me there. I’m totally at his mercy, his whim. My body has always been his. Maybe that’s why I was so willing the very first time we did this–when we were forced to do it.
It’s always been great. He’s always been great. But this is….
Another thrust sends me over the edge. My inner muscles tighten around him, spasming. He claps a hand on the tiles behind me and grunts with his own pleasure as he comes, filling me with warmth.
I’m boneless. My legs shake as I ride out the most intense orgasm I’ve ever had in my entire life. Cole kisses my temple, panting in my ear, “I love you so much.”
I smile the biggest smile that's touched my face in months.
Later that night, when Cole is sound asleep beside me with his arm draped over my waist, I watch moonlight drift over sheets that smell like him–like us–like the home we get to share, in peace.
I pray. It’s been a while, admittedly. But I’m not praying to the Moon Goddess tonight and thanking Her for this blessing, this gift.
“Thank you for giving him back to me,” I whisper to my grandma. “Thank you for giving me this chance. I promise I won’t waste it.”