Page 66 of His Sunshine Baby

“Cham…Champignons? That one is funny! Cheese isfromage, right?”

I remember that from one of his restaurant’s menus. He nods, amused to see me so excited.

“How do you say moon?” I ask.

“La lune.”

“I like that.”

“Sun issoleil, and stars are calledétoiles,” he continues.

I like that one too. Alright, maybe I’ll try to remember some of those. Nathaniel drinks a new cup of coffee.

“What about you?”

“I just know a bit of Spanish. And Danny likes K-pop and cheesy Korean series, so I know a couple of words too.”

“K-pop?” he says, frowning.

“Probably not your style, Mr. Black!”

I grab my phone and connect it to the speakers, looking for one song. Nate frowns when some really girly and bubbly song suddenly comes on. His reaction is so funny I laugh a bit. I decide to spare his poor ears and put on a more soothing one.

“I like this one on rainy days,” I explain.

“… I like it too. Better than the previous one, that’s for sure. What’s it called?”

“‘You, Clouds, Rain’by Heize.”

He nods and we listen to the piano and the singer’s voice for a while. Nathaniel seems to really like it. I see him check something on his phone.

“Oh… I didn’t expect the lyrics to be so sad.”

“Really? I think Danny told me it was about love.”

“More like a break-up,” says Nate. “‘For the first time in a while, I thought about you today. I deliberately look for a song we listened to together. My heart says it’s okay to be sad or depressed today. It doesn’t matter anyway when this night is over. I’ll forget you again and live like that for a while, and you’ll only live on in my heart.’”

I listen to him reading the translated lyrics, and I must agree. Quite sad, and a bit melancholic too. He gets absorbed in reading for a while until I decide to interrupt him.

“You’ve had one? A sad break-up like this?” I ask.

I don’t know where I got the courage to ask that question, I just blurted it out. Because I wanted to know. He never really gave me a reason for his “no love” rule…

“More like a heartbreak. My first love, I was only seventeen. She was a few years older.”

“Like your teacher or something?”

“No, my fated mate.”

I almost drop my cup. I feel my heart tighten, and my breathing stops for a couple of seconds. His fated mate. So, Nate had a fated mate. A real one. That sentence alone is kind of hard to swallow. Something inside me resonates a bit.

Finding our fated mate is like a one in a thousand, no, maybe even a one in a million chance. Most werewolves can only dream about it, and a lot of us spend our whole lives looking for it, hoping to find that one person to spend our life with. We are told, while still pups, that our fated mate is someone the Moon Goddess chooses for us, that one individual who is our complete match. A singular connection that can’t be misunderstood. The few fated mate couples I know are perfect for each other. Couples that can fight like any other sometimes but feel like two pieces of the same mold. I dreamt of it too, like everyone.

But I never thought that Nate would have found his, and lost her.

I feel a bit uneasy, now, asking about this. Isn’t it awkward? But Nate keeps talking without warning.

“It’s an old story, Elena. She was older, and already engaged to someone else. She recognized our bond, of course, but she wasn’t really interested. Her husband-to-be was loaded, and I was just a nobody, with a crazy Alpha father, a complicated life, and two siblings to watch over.”

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