Reality crashed back in. Right. The banquet. All seven kingdoms gathering in one place for the first time in decades.
“We have that banquet tonight, remember?”
Mal groaned dramatically, throwing his free arm over his eyes like a petulant child told he couldn’t have dessert. “Do not remind me.”
“You literally organized it. This whole thing was your idea.”
“Past me was an idiot who clearly did not think things through properly.”
I grinned and kissed his chest, right over his heart. “Present you isn’t much smarter.”
“You are cruel and heartless and I do not know why I married you.”
“You love it.” I said with the biggest, goofiest smile on my face. Damn him for making me fall in love so hard with him.
“Desperately and pathetically, yes.”
***
Eventually, we had to get up. Duty called, as it always did. We bathed separately because bathing together would definitely make us late.
I returned to the bedroom wrapped in a towel, pulling out my formal gown while Mal stood in front of his wardrobe. He was glaring at his formal Lytopian attire like it had personally murdered his entire family.
“These buttons are impossibly small,” he muttered, struggling with the elaborate vest. Approximately a million tiny buttons,ceremonial chains, clasps that seemed designed specifically to frustrate. “Who designed this? Who looked at normal-sized buttons and thought, no, we need them smaller?”
I stepped into my dress, watching him fumble. “They’re the same size as always. You’ve been wearing this style for literally decades.”
“I have gotten used to your Earth clothes.” He yanked at a clasp. “Jeans are far superior to this torture device.”
I fastened the buttons on my bodice, thinking about how insane my life had become. Five years since that Halloween spell, since I’d accidentally summoned a werewolf king and everything changed.
“You just like jeans because they’re easy and require zero effort,” I said, smoothing down the fabric.
“They do not require an engineering degree to put on.” He gave up on the vest entirely, turning to me with a pleading, puppy-eye look. “Help me?”
I crossed over to him. From struggling bookstore owner in a small town to Queen of Ravenor. Sometimes I woke up thinking it was all a dream…Then Mal snored and I remembered nope, definitely real.
“You’re a thirty-something-year-old wolf king who has presumably been dressing himself for decades.” I started working on the buttons, fingers moving quickly through the motions.
“Who has been wearing t-shirts for four years.” He watched my hands. “I am out of practice.”
“Poor baby. You heard the Council last time. They don’t like human clothes at court.”
“Yes. I do believe it’s because they were jealous I didn’t have buttons to deal with,” then his eyes narrowed. “And do not ‘poor baby’ me while I am actively suffering.”
“Your suffering is very sexy.” I finished the last button and smoothed my hands over his chest. “Especially the button struggling. Really hot.”
“Everything I do is sexy.”
I snorted. “Sure it is.”
He grabbed my hips and pulled me flush against him. “You are mocking me.”
“Maybe a little.”
The rejection had nearly destroyed me back then. Finding out we were mates, having him push me away. But we’d found our way back. Got married. Had Killian. And now-
He kissed me hard enough to steal my breath, and I stopped thinking about the past entirely.
