Scanning over the bottom row of screens, Nic frowned.Reception. Reception.Then he realized he’d been looking for their statues – a feature that had been hard to miss. But now they’d been removed.We’re going to have to do something with that flowerpot. It just looks weird.
For a moment Nic couldn’t see anyone on the screen from the camera that faced the reception desk. That was unusual. That desk was always manned. But then a face popped up from behind the counter, as if the person was suddenly sitting upright.
Nic zoomed in. The face was sweet with a strong jawline. The man had a mass of soft, brown, wavy curls.He’s wearing glasses, Nic thought.That’s really unusual. Most paranormals had no issues with their eyesight, hearing, or anything else. But Sage, the one human on their payroll, wore glasses. Nic watched as the man tapped his earpiece, clearly speaking to someone on a call. He was typing as he spoke.He knows how to do the job, which is something.
His kraken stirred, eager to get downstairs and meet the man who was making his tentacles tingle. But Nic still wasn’t sure.Is it so wrong of me to want Luc to claim me first? I’ve beenwith him for so long… Surely, I deserve that.Although as fast as those thoughts were going through his head, Nic was worried that just thinking them made him appear insecure and clingy. Words Nic didn’t like using about himself.
“What’s the hold up? I thought you would’ve come back out to the pool by now with the laptop. Is he there? Have you seen him? Where is he? Show him to me.”
Nic sighed, stepping aside and pointing at the relevant screen. “Our mate wears glasses.” The words just fell out of his mouth. “How is he going to be able to go swimming with us if he’s wearing glasses?”
/~/~/~/~/
Luc.
There were very few times in their fifty years together when Luc wanted to bash Nic around the ears. This was one of them. “You’re complaining about his glasses. What’s the matter with you? You know, once we’ve claimed him, our mate won’t need his glasses. He’ll gain a lot of the characteristics from our shifted side – swimming underwater, getting stronger, seeing things better… My gods, he’s so cute. Smaller than I expected, although we thought we’d get a shifter, but he’s definitely cute.”
“Cuter than me?”
Luc shook his head before rubbing between his eyes with his middle finger. “This is getting tiresome,” he said softly. “Since we’ve been together, you’ve rarely shown any insecurities, and now that’s all I’m seeing.” He pointed at the screen. “That man is our intended. Our mate. A blessing from the Oracle. A gift from the Fates.
“Just seeing him on a screen, my kraken wants to smash through every floor until his tentacles are at reception – he wants to grabhim and whisk him up here. Don’t you feel anything like that at all?”
“You know I do.” Although Nic didn’t sound very convincing, and he wasn’t even looking at the screen. “It’s just everything’s going to change between us. It’s so difficult with three in a relationship – two people leaving the third one out. You’ve talked about that yourself, citing dozens of kraken relationships over the years, so you can’t tell me you haven’t thought about it. Why do you think I wanted us to claim each other first? What if I’m the one who gets left out?”
Luc stepped back as if he’d been slapped – he couldn’t have felt worse if Nic had punched him. “Where is all this insecurity coming from, Nic? Even if you discounted the deep love we have for each other, which you seem to be doing, we’re best of friends, too. We’ve supported each other through everything we’ve been through for the last fifty years.
“I genuinely don’t understand what’s going on. This is what we’ve been waiting for. He’s what we’ve been waiting for,” Luc pointed at the screen.
“Now you’re acting like you don’t want our third at all. You’re rejecting him before we’ve even met him, and what’s worse, you’re now doubting the love I’ve had for you since we met all those years ago. How could you? If you turn our mate down, then we will be forever the two of us, just the two of us, there will be no chance of having children…”
“You didn’t want children anyway. You and I could claim each other, and things could go on just the way they always have, except this time we’d have the claim I’ve waited fifty years for.”
Luc knew when Nic got defensive, he wouldn’t back down. Usually, that was Luc, but not this time. Staring into the eyes he loved so much, Luc said, “I don’t understand what’s changedyour mind about our third. We made a vow. Fifty years ago, you and I made a vow, signed in blood, that we would not claim each other until we claimed our third. If you’re not ready to claim Sage before the New Year, and he leaves, then you and I will never be claimed. The best we’d have is what we already have.
“You seem to have forgotten” - and that broke Luc’s heart, too – “that by you refusing to even meet our mate, you’re depriving me of our third, too. Is that what you want? Is that how little you think of me?”
Unable to even look at his mate anymore, Luc left, hurrying down the hallway to another spare room. Closing the door, he flopped on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
The image of their mate working in the reception, just downstairs, was burned into his brain. A sight Luc knew he would never forget.What does it say about fifty years’ worth of relationship, he thought angrily,when seeing our third on a screen might be the closest I ever get to being claimed. Watching my mate answer our guests’ calls while working at the graveyard shift of our hotel.
In that moment Luc just wanted to sell the damn place and be done with it, and Nic, too, for that matter. Nic had shown flashes of insecurity over the years, something Luc never understood then or now. He’d always believed Nic was perfect – confident, gorgeous, well spoken, fun to be with – and he believed he’d shown Nic his love in everything he did.
Sage might be fun and loving, too, but there’s a good chance we might never know about it.Tears filled Luc’s eyes as he thought about the Oracle’s deadline.Did she know…? Silly question.
The bigger question was more what did she know?What had she seen in Nic and Luc’s relationship over the years to give them their biggest gift and their most difficult challenge all at thesame time?I wish I knew the answers,Luc thought desperately, because he did know, deep in his heart, that if Nic didn’t come around, and their window for claiming Sage passed without the claim being made, then Luc wasn’t sure if his and Nic’s relationship would survive.
Chapter Seven
Sage
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d moved, you ungrateful shit?”
Sage took a double look at his screen. He’d only answered the call because he didn’t recognize the number, assuming somebody from the lab or the hotel had been trying to get in touch with him. He’d only been awake an hour, and he was due at the hotel in another hour. The last thing he expected was his father’s voice booming at him from an unknown number.
“Move from where?” Sage glanced around his living room. It was the same as it had always been.
He was quite proud of his little house, and while he didn’t have a lot of things, because he did prefer to be careful with his money, the few pieces he had, from the furnishings to the little art pieces on the wall, were all items that spoke to him, giving him a feeling of safety and security in his own home.
