Page 16 of Ghosted AF
Albeit a magical one that didn’t need a full-time guardian.
Technically, I had completed the job I had been paid to do. While there had never been any real threat, I had identified the problem and made things right. As such, I really didn’t have areason to keep sleeping on Rylee’s couch, but he hadn’t asked me to leave.
We had never finished our conversation about fate bonds and what it meant to be mated, but his desire to keep me around gave me hope. To be fair, he hadn’t seemed opposed to the idea, just confused, and maybe a little apprehensive.
I just didn’t know why.
If he chose to bond with me, I would be able to hear his thoughts and communicate with him telepathically, an ability few shadeling possessed. Until then, I only knew what he told me, and so far, he seemed determined to keep his worries to himself.
As a distraction, I’d spent the day making phone calls and performing admin tasks while occasionally checking on the chick. Mostly, it just slept, but it would sometimes lift its head and chirp before dozing off again. It also hadn’t moved from where Rylee had left it on the coffee table, surrounded by a makeshift nest of towels.
First, I called the apartment management to let them know about their missing maintenance worker in hopes of saving Mykal’s job. The lady on the phone neither seemed to understand nor care what I told her, but she assured me she would pass along my message.
After that, I phoned Lucius to set up a time for him to come over and repair the bedroom door. Of course, he’d had opinions about that, loud ones, but he’d agreed to drop by the next morning to take a look at it.
With both tasks out of the way, I sat down with my laptop to fill out the incident report for MNSTR.
While I mostly stuck to the facts, I might have misremembered the timeline a little and minimized my involvement. I didn’t lie exactly. I just made it sound as if the problem had resolved itself without my interference. Which it technically had.
Once I had the documentation in place, I put in a request to cancel the job and refund the client’s payment. I didn’t feel right about taking money from my mate, but in this situation, I probably would have done the same for anyone else.
Especially someone who had spent their entire savings on a misunderstanding.
The sky had just started to fade to a dusky gray when the newly replaced front door opened, and Rylee strolled in with bright eyes and a couple of brown paper bags. He appeared to be in good spirits, and I didn’t detect any trace of the low-level anxiety that always seemed to mar his scent.
“I brought dinner,” he said, holding up the bags to show the Happy’s Harbor logo on the side. “I hope you like seafood.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I didn’t have a preference, but I bit the words back. Knowing him, he had spent his entire shift agonizing over what to order me, and I didn’t want to dismiss that struggle.
Meeting him at the edge of the kitchen, I tucked a knuckle under his chin, tilting his head up for a quick kiss. “I love it.”
I knew I had made the right call when his eyes went soft, and his lips stretched into a radiant smile. “Go sit down,” he instructed. “I’ll bring it to you in a minute.”
I thanked him with another chaste kiss, loving the way he followed when I pulled away. “How was work?”
“Good. Busy. We had a couple of softball teams come into the restaurant after their game, which is why I’m late.” He glanced at me over the narrow bar stop the sink. “How was your day?”
“Uneventful.”
“How’s Mykal?”
“Alive. Probably sleeping.”
He paused and looked up at me again. “Where is he?”
I jerked my thumb toward the sliding door behind me. “Outside. He kept knocking over shit trying to fly around the apartment.”
“Fly? How big is he now?”
“See for yourself,” I suggested.
Rounding the counter, he hurried across the living room while I followed at a more sedate pace, chuckling when I heard his intake of breath.
“What the hell?” he asked when I joined him on the patio. “He’s huge.”
As I had suspected, the chick had lost its baby fluff by midday, the soft down replaced by brown and gold feathers that didn’t look unsimilar to my own. Those, too, would molt, likely by morning, making way for his adult plumage.
Perched on the rusted metal railing that surrounded the concrete balcony, the adolescent phoenix lifted its head, peering at Rylee through sleep-blurred eyes. It cawed softly, a quiet, musical sound, before tucking its head under its wing and returning to slumber.
