Page 42 of Donner

"Of course you matter," Dad said with his usual tone that suggested I was an idiot for thinking anything less.

"He's my mate," I said to Papa. I met Beau's gaze, and he beamed at me.

"As you are mine," Beau said.

"We're so happy for you," Papa said.

Dad's mouth worked without sound for a moment before he chimed in, but Papa was already ushering Beau and me into the dining room to eat.

The conversation switched to topics where Dad was comfortable, sharing work stories about his glory days as Santa 65's Donner. I could tell Beau wasn't quite sure what we did the other days of the year. Most of the time, we looked at almanacs and weather prediction models trying to prepare for the type of weather we would have along our routes for the coming year. On Fridays, we shifted and practiced for the different weather situations we'd developed all week in the simulator. In November, that would switch to three days a week, and in December, we would practice four days a week before taking the two days before Christmas Eve off to prepare.

Papa frowned when I begged off a glass of after-dinner brandy. "Are you still upset with your father?" he whispered.

"No, Papa." I was surprised this part was still secret since papa had heard about Beau from Santa 30 himself. "I'm pregnant."

Papa's face lit up as he grabbed me for a hug, almost sloshing the open bottle of brandy between us. "Pregnant! That's wonderful news!"

"Wait," Dad said. "Are you a shifter?"

Beau nodded. "Golden eagle, Sir."

"Very distinguished bird of prey." Dad bowed his head in reverence to Beau, and I rolled my eyes. I spent my entire life trying to please my father, and in one night, Beau had him eating out of the palm of his hand and throwing compliments in every direction. I couldn't fault him for it, though. Beau was everything I wasn't, and that's why we were so great together.

I loved visiting my parents, but it was also nice to leave again. We sat on a double-wide bench on the bus ride home and held hands, our legs touching from knee to hip. It took everything I had not to curl up in Beau's lap. When we arrived at my building, I wanted to ask him to carry me to the elevators, but I settled for a kiss on my head and the feel of his gloved hand in mine.

Once home, Beau removed our outerwear as I stood and stared at the door. I'd picked the wall design myself, with a stone wall opening to a lush garden. I'd always imagined the lush garden would be out in the world somewhere waiting for me, but now, everything I wanted was right here in my apartment.

"Hey," Beau said, bringing me back to the present. "I was reading about our mate bites. We might want to redo them."

"Redo them?" I asked.

"They're supposed to be marks from our beasts. I could claw you or peck at you, and you could bite me … or gore me."

"No goring allowed," I said. My beast already saw Beau as our mate, but the thought of biting him again, after partially shifting, made him paw at my skin with his hooves.

I pulled off my sweater and t-shirt, and Beau did the same. Then, he stripped us both of shoes and pants and carried me to bed over his shoulder. I squirmed and tried to get free, but that only made my cock dig into his collar bone even more.

He tossed me on the bed like I was a sack of potatoes and fell on top of me with a shriek. He was already partially transformed into his bird. His eyes had a more golden cast to them, and his lips had sharpened, not quite into his beak, but sharp enough to cut me when he dragged his nose across my clavicle. Then, he shifted back and bit down on the fragile skin there, completing his bite. The pain seared into me, revitalizing me after the draining evening.

I'd never partially shifted before, not like this. I did my best to shift only my teeth and snout. It felt weird as fuck when I couldn't quite reach the spot I wanted to bite Beau because my nose was in the way. I dialed it back and bit at him again, this time connecting with his shoulder and breaking the skin. His blood filled my mouth for a moment, and my reindeer licked at it as though he was the best salt lick he'd ever experienced. One lick, and Beau's skin crusted over. Two, and it was completely healed, though I could feel the raised skin with my tongue as I shifted back to fully human.

Beau had shifted back, too, and he rolled on top of me, kissing me senseless. Then, he pulled back and examined his handiwork. "Now that's a mating mark," he said.

My mark on him was mottled and bruised, but beneath it, I could see the raised scar of my reindeer's bite over the top of the human bite I'd given him in Miami.Mine,my reindeer cooed.Ours. Forever.

I couldn't argue with that.

Chapter 24

Beau

The next few months flew by in a blur. Between learning my work duties and learning about being an eagle shifter, and then downloading the alpha book from the link Nick sent me, I had a case of information overload. I often fell asleep in the middle of a chapter and had to start at the beginning again the next night. Jax read faster than I did, and he also stayed up later, reading until he fell asleep, sometimes with his e-reader pressed to his cheek. I found him like that in the morning and plugged it into the charger so he would have it ready for the next night.

I loved working at the Community Center. The kids were a handful, which meant I had to come up with creative ways to remove bubblegum from hair, coax a kitten up from a heat vent (we did not discuss how it got there), and once I even shifted into my eagle to calm a little girl who was certain the world was going to end on October twenty-fifth at 10 a.m. When she saw me, she stopped crying, at least, and then her teacher calmed her down. By the time I left, it was 10:05, crisis averted. Thankfully, nobody saw me trying to fly down the hall without hitting my wings while carrying my clothes. Somehow, I made it back to my office to shift and change.

As the daycare teachers got to know me better, they used me as their bogeyman. "If you don't calm down, you'll pay a visit to Mr. Beau in the main office." Truth be told, I think one child in particular liked coloring at the table in the corner of my office, so he got in trouble on purpose. When I called him on it, we discussed more coloring time as a reward for behaving during class. After that, his visits stopped. It was the bittersweet end of distractions for me. I missed the little guy. I had to remind myself I would have my own kids to look after in a few months.

The best part of each day was knowing it was time to go home. Jax would walk into my office fresh from the bus now that he wasn't supposed to fly for anything other than work. He always had a smile on his face and a bag of takeout or groceries under his arm.

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