Page 59 of Captive Mate
Chapter 20
Cute Little Tufty Ears
Home was an idea that took a while to really register with me.
Yeah, Matthew and I fucked every night. And yeah, I got some of Ian’s fancy shampoo and put it in Matthew’s bathroom — our bathroom. My bathroom, almost, considering how much time I spent showering, something Matthew smiled at but never teased me about.
He always got to knot me on nights when I spent an hour in the shower without him saying a single fucking word about it.
The Armitage pack was wary at first, but I knew they’d started to accept me when the pups were allowed to run through the house without their parents watching warily, brushing past me as carelessly as they did everyone else. The pack didn’t have that many kids in it, but there was a small gang of pre-teens who liked to shift and wrestle around out back, and a few toddlers who sprouted tiny claws and fuzzy tails when they were startled. I wasn’t a pack animal, but these kids were well cared for and obviously well loved, even though all their clothes were old and mended. I couldn’t help smiling when they barreled through and howled in squeaky little voices.
But it didn’t fully sink in until two weeks after I’d gone back to the Armitage territory to stay.
I’d mostly finished with my jobs for the Kimball pack. I couldn’t be sure whether or not Matthew had carried out his threat, but the first morning he’d dropped me off, I’d turned to say hi to Colin and Colin had looked behind me, turned bright red, and shaken his head. I thought it was more dignified to pretend I hadn’t noticed anything.
So Colin had been a lot more professional, and the work had gotten almost done, but I had to head back that day for a few hours to fix the warding in a spot where they’d done some landscaping work.
I was just putting away the cereal box when the front door slammed. A moment later Nate came stomping into the kitchen, scowling ferociously. He had a cup of coffee in one hand, and an empty mug in the other, which he slammed down on the counter in front of me.
“For you,” he growled.
In scrawled, cramped, nearly illegible handwriting, it readMy Mate Is an Asshole Who Won’t Let Nate Grow Valerian Because He’s a Princess Who Doesn’t Like the Smell. I had to pick it up and turn it all around, squinting at it, before I could make it out.
“Ian won’t let you grow valerian?”
Nate grimaced. “Ian doesn’t care. It’s Matthew. Fucker. He claims it stinks. I’m the pack warlock, I need my herbs!”
Valerian did smell terrible, but it was necessary for a few spells I did too. I was totally on his side on this, but…oh, fuck. Hang on.
“Wait a minute. Matthew? He’s not your mate.” My brain slowly churned to the inevitable conclusion. “He’s not my mate either! What the fuck is this?”
I set the mug down on the counter and backed away from it slowly, resisting the urge to wash my hands.
“Right,” Nate snorted, with an epic eye-roll. “Not your mate. What the fuck ever.” He took a giant swig of his coffee. Before meeting Nate, I hadn’t realized coffee-drinking could express such a range of emotions, but I’d wised up. The way Nate was slurping meant he wasfurious. He pointed an accusing finger at me. “I don’t care what you have to do, but change his mind!”
And with that he stomped out again, muttering about how Matthew didn’t know anything about gardening anyway.
I stared at the mug. It didn’t do anything untoward except…exist, which was more than enough.
Matthew. My mate.
Something he hadn’t even hinted at wanting from me.
And yet here I was filling the role of the pack leader’s mate, at least in this makeshift excuse for a pack: being harassed before I’d even eaten my breakfast by pack members who had some problem with Matthew and hoped I’d intercede for them. Other packs had more formal processes for putting complaints through a leader’s mate, like filing a petition.
This one did snide handmade Sharpie coffee mugs.
Fuck, some days the Armitages really underlined the point of why Matthew’s mother had been so happy to move to a remote cabin in the mountains.
Maybe they had a spare bedroom.
Ugh.
I abandoned my cereal and headed to the car, slipping away before Matthew could reappear from wherever he’d gone with a councilmember who needed his take on some boring issue or other. I needed to brood.
And brood I did, through a long day of carefully spreading salt, muttering incantations, and funneling power into the broken part of the Kimball wards. It only took a quarter of my attention at most. That left seventy-five percent of my brain to worry about what Matthewdidwant from me, if he didn’t want to mate me.
He hadn’t even said he loved me, not in those exact words. And not at all since he’d tracked me down to bring me home.
