“Thank the gods,” I breathed, then we were back to kissing.
And as strange as it was to have an audience around us, it only added to my joy when they cheered. I hoped that they took comfort in the display, as I had no doubt many of them thought such romance would never be in the cards for them.
But if there was one thing I had learned from the entire experience, it was that true love and connection was worth fighting for. Worth never giving up on. I couldn’t say exactly what our future held, but I knew wherever our path led, I would be happy to be on that route as long as Naomi was by my side.
I couldn’t say how many minutes we stood on the dance floor, lips locked as the music surged around us, but however many seconds or minutes it was, it just wasn’t enough. When we broke our kiss, I still wanted more. I wanted to chase Naomi’s lips with my own. Somehow, I resisted, but my fangs were fully out and itching. I wasn’t worried, however, as I knew that once we went home, we would have plenty of privacy to do whatever we wanted.
“Thank you,” Naomi murmured as she leaned her head against me, the two of us transitioning into a slow dance along with the music still pumping from the speakers, the soothing melody almost working like a scene transition.
“For what?”
“For everything.”
That really was the long and short of it, wasn’t it? Contentment flowed through me, heady and thick, so I closedmy eyes and allowed myself to justbein the wonderful experience that was the present. No more worries. No more planning. Just the woman I loved in my arms and the community we were beginning to build all around us.
Yes, I would absolutely need to talk to that siren with the speak-and-spell, who I was pretty sure was a coder, but that could wait.
For the moment I had everything I could ever need.
And her name wasNaomi.
TWENTY-TWO
NAOMI
It Takes a Village
“Are we absolutely certain everything is set up correctly?” I asked for maybe the sixth time, but thankfully no one around mentioned it. They were giving me grace considering what a big day it was for me. Or maybe they were as anxious about it as I was.
“Everything is set up exactly as it needs to be,” Chuck said, his voice the calm I very much needed. He was the newest addition to our team, and I had come to appreciate the shifter’s candor. I had no idea there were so many of us latent folks in the city, but it had only been a year since our debut event, and already seven of us were in contact with each other. Not all wolves, of course, but that wasn’t important. Whatdidmatter was that we had found each other and were helping with different tips, tricks, and general support to get through our various situations.
The biggest being how to deal with family.
“It’s gonna be okay,” Reggie assured me from where he was standing by the window, pumping the dumbbells he always had in a bag in his car just in case he got a bit anxious and needed to self-soothe.
Speaking of family, mine both had and hadn’t changed. I’d pretty much stopped going to the family dinners, although I did stop by on the holidays. However, if anyone got out of pocket, I cut it off or left the situation.
As a result, I didn’t really speak to Maverick or my parents other than on those visits, and they also didn’t try to interfere with my life. As for my younger two siblings… Mason and I were at least friendly with each other, while Reggie and I had grown closer than we’d ever been in our entire life. I didn’t know if it was how I confronted them after my date with Rowan, if it was seeing me beat down our alpha brother with my purse, or if it was just a change in his views in general, but I had grown to really appreciate his company and his insight.
“From your mouth to the gods’ ears,” Carolina agreed from the laptop screen.
Once, that would have been the only way I would have been able to communicate with her, but she had come an incredible distance in such a short amount of time. Although she still had her bad days, and was most definitely a homebody more than anything else, she didn’t have the same fear.
She did, however, have the flu, hence her virtual presence.
“We do not need the gods,” Xiánlü said through the device that Rowan, Chuck, and Penelope—a technopath we’d met at the mixer—had all built together. My boyfriend had contributed his instrumental and musical expertise, Chuck the coding, and Penelope the magic programming that somehow (it was explained to me, but after emotional neuropathic synthetic convalesce, I kind of zoned out) allowed her to control the tone, pitch, andeverythinglike it was an extension of her.I thought that was pretty amazing, and while the siren was quite the accomplished coder herself, it was a privilege to see her surprised by something so intricate and personal on her birthday. “We’ve worked hard and the app is immaculate. We just have to wait for the full integration into the scrying system, and I have no doubt we’ll be inundated with the demand from new users.”
“I like your optimism,” Daniella mused. “Never thought my graphic design degree would actually be useful for something, but man, if this does well, it’s going to lookamazeballsin my portfolio.”
I nodded along, trying to present myself as calm even though my heart was racing. Our little ragtag group of magical misfits had grown from roughly twenty-five to nearly a hundred in a single year, and our only reach was the city and surrounding suburbs. Even though I was thrilled that we’d found so many common souls looking for connection and friendship, I couldn’t help but think that there were thousands upon thousands of us out there, too far away to ever see a poster or flyer, no matter how many places we pinned them.
Naturally, when my mind had started to walk down that path, I realized that really everything that had happened between Rowan and I, as well as the mixers, was all by chance, or ratherByChance.If it weren’t for both of us downloading that human dating app and matching, we’d all still be so alone.
And that was what inspired me to make an app of our own. Something for all the supernatural folks who felt like an unfitting puzzle piece. We called itMis-Matched, and our core group had been working on it for nine months.
“I’m sure it will be magnificent,” Iko said from the kitchen before coming around the corner with a comically large tray in his hands. “Tea, anyone?”
“Oh, me, please!”
