Page 46 of Forget Me Not

“You’d have to be wearing a bodice for it to be ripped,” Ray commented, after giving Cal a quiet snarl.

“For you to rip it off me, you mean.” Cal did his best to waggle his eyebrows. At least, that’s what Ray thought he was trying to do. “Don’t scowl,” Cal added, after straightening up and dropping his attempted leer. “You’ll scare the kids in the play area.”

Children did not have a natural fear of wolves, or werewolves, or monsters, despite what people thought. Ray had seen them flock to roaring lions at the zoo and jump all over imps. Children were afraid of what people convinced them they should be afraid of, and the dark.

Nevertheless, Ray turned his head away from the play area to share his scowl with just Callalily.

“Fascinating that you would remember those novels but not the ones Cal read to you,” Benny remarked. “I mean… fascinating in the abstract. It must be irritating to have pieces of your memory out of reach.”

“I could…” Cal started up again, only to taper off and then poke resentfully at his computer. It had probably been another offer to make Ray “see” something. Ray had heard stories of fairies doing that. But one heard a lot of things about fairies, it didn’t make them all true.

A restaurant employee called out their order number at the counter. Ray got up before either of the other two could. He returned with a tray overflowing with several burgers for him, a grilled chicken ‘health burger’ for Benny, and a hot fudge sundae for Cal… and apparently also a little for Benny, who was given the cherries on top.

“Just…” Cal twirled his spoon and didn’t look up from his ice cream. “Just… um. For the future. It’s… fairies like truth. No, it’s more than that. We change luck, yes, and we don’t get sick, and we heal faster than anyone else, even weres. But, most importantly, we see the truth, and we can find it—helpyoufind it. We can bring the right memories to the forefront of your mind. I don’t know why. Maybe because we want to. Fairy magic is odd, almost cartoonish. It grants us what we want but only when we need it.” He poked at the scoop of strawberry with his spoon. “Humans gave fairies this reputation for creating glamours to fool or mislead them, made us kidnap humans in all their old stories, and trap them with lies or pleasure. Personally, I think that the humans convinced themselves of that because they were afraid of the rest. It’s people blaming someone else for their own problems. And, so, okay, that’s nothing new in human history. But that is still the reason that no one writes fairy romances. No one publishesRavished by the Fairyeven though plenty of people have been. Because we can’t be trusted—us, the ones who see truth—wecannot be trusted. Humans can’t imagine a happily-ever-after with us. Wolves can’t either, apparently.”

The addition was a whisper tinged with bitterness. Then Cal abruptly raised his head to look Ray in the eye. “Ross didn’t think I mattered that much to you because I’m part fairy, and because he had no reason to believe it. You only admitted what I was to you when you had to, Raymond. Ross made a potion to trap you—to trap you the way people think fairies do, and you drank it all in front of him, because you knew it wouldn’t change anything about what you felt for me, and you said…” he took a shaky breath, “you admitted…declared… that I was your mate.”

Ray flinched.

Cal didn’t apologize. “If he hadn’t done it, you might never had told me. Even though it was killing you to stay silent.”

“You really were lucky that Ross was so imprecise about most of his magic use,” Benny was loud at their quiet, quiet table. “Otherwise, you would have also been infatuated with him… for a while, anyway. I sort of doubt a spell in potion form would do much in weres. I mean, your metabolism would be done with the physical ingredients in the same amount of time that it probably would process a handful of aspirin.”

Ray forced his gaze away from Cal to stare at Benny.

Benny blinked. “Which is to say, you still would’ve loved Cal, even if it had worked.”

“Been bonded to Cal,” Cal muttered before shoveling a huge spoonful of ice cream into his mouth.

Benny gave his friend a pissy but stern look. “You know he loved you. You told me about it all the time.” His tone became slightly mocking. “His colors, Bens, his colors!”

Cal wriggled, uncomfortably and haughty at the same time. “So what?”

“He loved youandyou were his… match made in heaven.” Benny harrumphed and reached for his health burger. “That’s what he was telling you when he drank that potion and said what he said. Nothing Ross could do was going to change that. Right?” He looked directly at Ray, letting the silence linger until Cal stopped his wriggling and also turned toward Ray.

Ray kept his gaze up with effort. He inhaled. Hamburger grease and warm tomatoes and melted cheddar. Chicken tenders and sauce from a distant table. Floor cleaner. Three sodas in three flavors. Ice cream. Chicken with lettuce, onion, tomato, brown mustard, and low-fat mayo. None of it was calming.

“You’re asking about the bond?” he ground out, then moved his attention to the play area. There was surprisingly little noise. Two human-looking children were handing each other plastic balls from the pit, and one was sitting on a thick net, a few feet off the ground, reading a picture book.

Ray took another breath. Whipped cream and hot fudge. Chocolate, strawberry, vanilla.Nervousness. Anger. Hurt. Affection/worry/worry.

“I don’t know how it works,” he admitted. “Only that it does.”

The long, slow exhale was from Cal. He saved Ray, as he always seemed to, remarking softly, “It’s a matter of instinct, and weres tend not to examine those too closely. Even when he—even when they try to explain, they usually can’t. Not in words. It’s personal and a matter of senses, and vocalizing them must be difficult. Ray only knows the one mated were that I know of, and that’s just… knowledge. He hasn’t seen that were in person in years and not since he met his, er, special someone.”

Ray could have snapped at him, for the rescue, for his care and the sweetness on his breath. Cal kept giving Ray things when Ray had done nothing to deserve it.

He turned back to his mate, though that word and theideaof Cal Parker hurt in a way Ray couldn’t describe, a flash of white, of not-pain, through his skull.

“Ray?” Cal leaned forward, as if he’d seen a hint of the reaction Ray had tried to hide.

Ray shaped a howl into human sounds. “You have to want it.” It wasn’t much of a gift, and he didn’t think either of them understood, judging from their silence. He tried again, his voice only getting rougher. “It’s… much.” Ray growled impatiently. “We can’t… you can’t dig it out. It’s in the bone. In the blood. You don’twantto dig it out. Even if they don’t want you or they can’t have you. You—I—can feel it. Always.” He looked away again. “A wolf will chew off its own leg to get out of a trap if it needs to. There is no trap here, Callalily. I stayed, even if I didn’t speak. There is… there should have been… more than I gave you. Dating—no—courtship. I didn’t risk that with you. I let you think…” He swallowed. “There was no trap, Callalily.”

He flinched again, then reached up to rub the spot between his eyes as if it would make the flash of pain go away.

Cal touched the back of Ray’s other hand on the table. “You’ve never put it that way before.”

Benny seemed to have forgotten his burger. “But people do say no, right? It’s a major theme of all werewolf love stories, the potential for Rejection.” He gave the word the capital R it deserved.

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