“Yep, basically that. You truly are my soulmate, Rainer. I’ve spent lifetimes reading, and I fucking love that you’ve read enough to understand what I’m talking about.”
“Hey,” Drystan says. “I read all the time.”
“You read history and biographies.”
“I like what I like.”
I grin at Drystan’s pout.
“Yes, and that’s great. Good. Anyway… There is kind of a fated mates thing that all monsters feel. You can feel it without even seeing them in person. When you see something about them, a piece inside you saysthey’re mine. That feeling is stronger when you’re in front of them. Humans feel it too, though it’s not nearly as strong on their end as it is on the end of the monsters.”
“I’ve been told that humans interpret it differently,” Notto says. “An unexplained reason why they like someone when they don’t feel like they should. Or liking them in spite of a quality that they’ve hated in the past.” He reaches for my and Drystan’s linked hands and pulls them up. “Wanting to touch them when maybe you’ve avoided touch in the past. Kind of an opposite-reaction pull that you’ve not experienced before.”
“I’m caught up in your monster mumbo jumbo,” I say, hooding my eyes. And yet, just as Notto has pointed out, I would be horrified any other time in my life. But I’m not. The way my heart beats rapidly in my chest, I’mexcited.
Mama always told me not to trust a monster further than I could throw one. Somehow, I’ve trusted these monsters inexplicably for weeks.
“Yep,” Keary says, grinning. “You’re as much a victim of the monster mating as monsters are.”
“What if you don’t like your mates?” I ask.
“I’ve never seen something like that happen,” Keary answers. “There’s no such thing as rejected mates in this life as there is in books. Our monsters don’t randomly choose your enemy to be part of your family.”
“Some hypotheses state that when we die, our souls are broken up into pieces, and those pieces get redistributed into other souls. The familiarity that we feel when we meet our mates is those pieces of soul recognizing each other and coming together again. The pieces are meant to be together, to fit perfectly, like a puzzle, so there’s no way that you wouldn’t like one of them,” Drystan says.
That sounds incredibly romantic. To think of pieces of past love coming again time and time again.
Drystan presses his lips to my cheek. “Does that smile mean you’re not objecting to being ours?”
Am I?
DRYSTAN
Together: My heart won't stop racing whenever I look at them, knowing that we’re finally together. My heart beats rapidly for an entirely different yet equally potent reason when our private parts fit perfectly together too! I just love when puzzles are all snug and glued together.
Rainer is so cute when his eyebrows knit together like that. I know he recognized those feelings in himself as Notto explained everything. I’m trying not to get too excited, but I still remember the way he cupped my face when I was in the middle of a freak-out and didn’t think I was pathetic and weak. The memory is through a fog, so I can only barely make it out, but I’m at least seventy-seven percent confident that the moment happened just hours ago. Not lifetimes.
I’m pretty sure that means he’s ours.
“I’m going to reiterate that you have to share him,” Notto says to Keary. “Our human pet isn’tyours. He’sours.”
“He might not like being called a pet,” Keary points out.
“He equally might not like being called precious,” Notto counters.
All eyes turn to Rainer as he watches demurely. “The fighting stops if we all agree to your monster mating weirdness, right?” He completely ignores their talk about what to call him. There’s nothing wrong with his name though, so I’m going to continue using that for now.
“I’m sorry,” Keary says. He’s getting rather good at apologizing. Maybe I should point that out so he can be proud of that fact like I am. He touches Rainer’s face with the backs of his knuckles, and my heart skips at the way he looks at Rainer. “I didn’t mean to push you away. Yes, the fighting stops.”
“Does that meanyou’regoing to accept it now?” Notto asks Keary.
Keary isn’t usually a worrier, nor does he react with emotion. But he looks between us with his lower lip between his teeth. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’s tired of fighting since he has been struggling with it just as much as we have. Though having been denied this for so long, Notto and I feel frustrated and harassed.
He isn’t just fighting the same fight we are; he’s also fighting a second one against himself. I can’t imagine how exhausting that is.
He sighs. “Yeah.”
The immediate relief in his eyes is only magnified when our monstersfinallyget what they’ve been longing for. Once he lets his walls down, it’s instantaneous.
