But the yearning that had coiled around my heart for five long years had me blurting out, “You’re my mate.”
“What?”
I babbled about my prayer, the shirt, the change in scent and trying to find him. Details spilled from him about his brother’s medical emergency—an organ transplant—and then hewasin my arms, his scent filling my lungs.
“I… yes… Wow, I… yes… I’ll be your mate. For always.” He tugged at his hair. “This is bonkers. But I need to get back to work. Wait for me?”
“Forever.” Another hour tacked onto the five years that had passed would be excruciating.
He went to open the door, which was difficult because I wouldn’t let him go.
“It’s locked from the outside.”
5
MERRICK
It wasn’t a dream. It wasn’t my imagination. It wasn’t wishful thinking. King was here.
Suddenly, I didn’t care that my boss fucked up. If anything, I owed them a huge-ass Christmas present. King. My King was here, and he remembered me. He more than remembered me… he said I was his mate.
I knew about shifter mates, and growing up, I’d always been kind of jealous of them. My father got married, had us, and then my dad left, just left out of the blue and never turned back. After the divorce, he started a new life and got himself a whole shiny new family. He never even showed up when my brother was on death’s door
That didn’t happen with shifters. They mated instead of married, and it was like this magical bond where they were just together forever because they wanted to be, not because of some legal contract like a marriage certificate. At least, that was how it was always presented to me. I was sure like all things, it was a bit of truth mixed with some exaggeration, but gods, it sounded wonderful.
And now, thinking about how my attraction to King had been so deep and so intense, so fast, and how it never died down… I wondered if maybe I knew all along that he was mine and just didn’t piece it together. The human experience and shifter experience were just so different, at least as far as love went. It would make sense that I hadn’t picked up on it. But also, by that logic, shouldn’t King have known?
Gods, this was overwhelming.
I needed air. To breathe, to think, to figure out what all this meant, because it felt like my world was tipped upside down and then thrown somewhere else to begin again. Almost as if my one life ended and a new, better one was about to begin the second I felt his touch again. But with him so close, my brain wasn’t braining, and I had to sort out what was happening before I did something foolish, like get caught banging him in the wine cellar.
Getting fired the day you met your person, the one you’d been waiting for all those years, would be a pretty shitty way to begin. My plan was to go up the stairs, throw champagne at people, and then, as soon as it was possible, sneak away, bringing King with me. Where? I didn’t know. His place? My place? My vacation in the mountains? But one thing was for sure, I wasn’t leaving without him. I did that once, and it was something I would always regret.
My plan had one major flaw—the wine cellar locked from the outside. I didn’t have my phone. We weren’t allowed to have them with us, but it wouldn’t matter if I did. Building the wine cellar had a big, fancy press-worthy event a few years ago, and part of making it a “perfect environment” for the wine, whatever that equated to, resulted in not having cell reception.
“Will someone come get us?” King asked, looking far more worried than I was.
Because honestly, there was something so comforting about being in this enclosed space with him. My emotions were all over the place. One minute ago, I couldn’t wait to get out of there, and now I wanted to rush into his arms and stay there.
“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” I said. “There’s plenty of wine upstairs, so maybe people won’t come down for more anytime soon.”
I went to lean back against the door. At least, that was the plan. Instead, I leaned forward and straightened as King’s arms wrapped around me, holding me close.
“I did look for you,” he said.
“That was my fault.” I brought my arms around him too, giving in to the feeling of comfort, safety, and warmth I felt. “I wasn’t technically old enough to be working at that bar back then.”
He froze.
“No, I wasn’t too young in that way. I was a grown-up. It’s just that particular bar had a 25-year-old minimum age for all employees. They wanted to keep college kids from taking jobs to give their friends free drinks. So I used a fake ID, and the information wasn’t quite accurate.”
“You’re not Merrick?”
“No. My first name was right, but my last name was spelled wrong. My birth date was wrong. My address was wrong. Even the state was wrong. I thought it was such a good idea at the time, and now I realize it thwarted my happiness all this time. I wasn’t trying to be deceptive.”
He kissed the top of my head. That tiny sign of affection was everything.
“I never thought you were,” he said. “But also, if I’d realized then that you were my mate at the time, I’d have come with you that night. I wouldn’t have let you go. So this is on me as much as it is on you.”
