Wild Magic Three: The Shade of the Earth- a M/M fantasy shifter romance

22- To Our Friends

SAMI—

For a brief, few minutes, I'd thought my mate didn't want me. I'd thought he wanted his freedom. He wanted out of this relationship I had dragged him into. So of course I would let him go. When your mate denies you, even after you've done everything you could to show them you could provide and care for them, you accepted it and you spent your life protecting them from afar.

So that's what I would do, I'd told myself.

But then he'd said those pretty words, the ones that had my chest tight and my eyes hot. The ones that had me wanting to climb up into his arms again and not let him put me down. That made me want to claim him, finally, wholly as my own. Put my mark on him, in him, as much as he'd let me.

He just laughed when I tried to jump into his arms again, his hand in mine making me frustrated that he wouldn't let anything else touch. I needed his skin, I needed his heat, I needed his body and his tongue and his sweat and his cum and I needed it now.

"Calm down, Sami. We're real close, just through here," he said, pointing out a copse of willows to the back of our den.

Our den. My mate gave me a den— a home. I'd never had one before, even when Ma and Pa were alive. They'd lived in the shared rooms with the other slaves, not a den of their own. And in the wild, I'd had to keep moving, from place to place, nothing permanent, not a den I could be safe in and never have to sleep half-awake for fear of predators.

My mate had given me a den of my own— to share with him.

I wanted to crow. I wanted to hoot and holler and claim and bite and fuck. I wanted my Robert beneath me, to show him my gratitude that not only had he given me a den, pretty and white with little windows and a porch and the lake just beside it, but he'd been patient when I'd misunderstood what the den meant. He'd talked me through it, instead of letting me think I was shameful and that he didn't really want me.

When we passed the willow trees, I realized we were only a yard from Nibley and Dasan's cottage, and I smiled. My mate was near his friends— he could visit them anytime he wanted, and we could have dinner together and they could come see the den my mate got just for me.

Without pausing, my mate pushed through the door into the cottage, dragging me behind him. The two men inside looked up at our entrance, and I felt my ears heating as they glanced from Robert, to me, to our clasped hands, then back to Robert.

"Yeah, come right in, Robbie," Dasan drawled, his eyes sparking with amusement. "No need to knock or anything. Gods, you're going to be a terrible neighbor, ain't you?"

"Shut it, Dassie," Robert bit out, and I had to hide my smile against his stomach. My Robert only liked his name, and hated when people shortened it. I was happy to only call him Robert. It was a good name, a strong name, a name that he could be proud of. Like I was with my own, given to me by my mate himself. "I need to tell you both something. Well, we need to tell you something."

Dasan opened his mouth to reply, probably to joke, but Nibley held his hand up and stopped Dasan before he could make a sound.

"Go ahead, Robert," Nibley said with a smile at me.

They knew. They already knew, but my mate had something he wanted to prove to me. He wanted to show me, with what he did, rather than just telling me he wasn't ashamed of me. So he went to the two people who meant the most to him— except for me, of course— and was going to tell them that I was his. That he was mine. That finally, finally, we were right and proper mates.

Robert swallowed hard and then, all at once, like he had to push it out with his breaths, he told them about me and him and he made me want to cry again.