Page 18 of Baby and the Beast

Jesse looked up at him. “Still together. I’m—we’re—yours for as long as you’ll have us.”

“That’s forever, then.” Seth chuckled and felt his heart swell with sheer joy.

“I had to destroy my phone so it couldn’t be tracked, but I have a new one.”

Which Seth responded to with another kiss. “I didn’t think I would survive without you.”

“Never gonna happen.”

“I’m older. I—”

“Being mated to a shifter gives you our length of life. We’re going to be together for a long time. Long enough to see all our kids become parents, maybe grandparents.”

“All our kids?” Seth asked in amusement.

And Jesse giggled and snuggled closer. “I like big families.”

Funnily enough, now he thought about it, so did Seth, and he leaned in for another kiss.

And when they broke apart, both breathless and grinning like idiots, Seth cupped Jesse's face in his hands. "I promise to love you and Maddox for the rest of my now very long life. I promise to protect you both, to give you the family you've always wanted, and to never let either of you feel unwanted or unloved again."

Jesse's eyes filled with tears. "I promise to love you with everything I have. To trust you with our son, our future children, our hearts. I promise to be your partner in everything - building this place, raising our family, growing old together."

"Even the boring accountant stuff?" Seth teased.

"Especially that," Jesse laughed, then grew serious again. "Seth, you saved us both that night. Not just from the cold or the birth, but from a life without love. You gave us hope when we had none."

Seth kissed him softly. "You gave me purpose. A reason to be better, to want more from life than just existing."

The timer chose that moment to beep, and they both started laughing. "Some things never change," Jesse said fondly. "You're still taking care of me."

"Always," Seth promised, standing to check the lasagna. "And tomorrow we go get our son and bring him home where he belongs."

Jesse wrapped the sheet tighter and followed him. "Home," he repeated wonderingly. "I never thought I'd have that."

"You do now. We all do." Seth pulled Jesse in close to him. "This is just the beginning, you know. Everything we dreamedabout - the family, the life together, watching our kids grow up in these woods where they can be free to be exactly who they are."

"I love you so much it scares me sometimes," Jesse whispered.

"Good scared or bad scared?"

"Good scared. The kind that means I finally have something worth protecting, worth fighting for." Jesse smiled. "Worth living for."

And as they held each other in their half-finished cabin, with a puppy snoring at their feet and the promise of their son coming home tomorrow, both men knew they had found exactly what they'd been searching for all their lives - a love strong enough to build a future on, and a family that would last forever.

Baby and the Bear

Epilogue - Two years later

Seth was going toleavehim. Jesse could barely breathe around the lump in his throat, but it was the only explanation. He’d been behaving oddly for over a month and when Jesse had tried to talk to him, Seth had brushed it off every time.

Then there’d been at least one phone call where the caller had hung up when Jesse had answered Seth’s phone for him because Seth was upstairs with their son. Maddox was having trouble with a few of his back teeth that still hadn’t come through at the same time as deciding eating acorns was his favorite thing to do. He’d screamed the house down and it had taken a lot of getting him to sleep.

The number was one of those withheld ones, but it could easily have been a sales call and he’d dismissed it.

But then the diet had happened, and it made Seth miserable, and he would never tell Jesse who had masterminded the evil plan of making him lose weight. Jesse loved Seth exactly how he was. He loved his big man, and Seth ate very healthily in themain. He did a lot of maintenance work on the cabins himself. He was strong, could even pick Jesse up occasionally, and he was utterly perfect.

And the sex…

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