I needed to have a conversation with him. One where he wasn’t calling Jonah my boyfriend, and Liv wasn’t trying to get us out of my café as quickly as possible.
A real conversation.
Because I liked spending heat with him, but that was nowhere near the same as creating a permanent mate bond with him. Willingly or unwillingly.
I found two extremely expensive coffee machines on the otherwise-bare countertop. One was a grinder, and the other was an espresso machine. Both were the same brand I used in my café, and they looked brand new.
I wasn't sure whether to be flattered or concerned, because Callum had bought them for me, and they weren’t somethingyou could pick up from the neighborhood Monstermart. Things like that had to be special-ordered at least a month or two in advance from the humans who were willing to smuggle goods to immortals. Outside of our protected cities, we were feared, hated, and hunted.
When I opened the cabinets above the machines, I found multiple bags of freshly-roasted beans from my favorite roaster in the city. The nymphs ran it, and the beans they grew were legitimately mind-blowing.
My wolf purred happily.
"Since when do you do that?"I asked her."That’s not even a wolf sound."
"Since we have a mate."
"We're not mated to him yet."
She made a noncommittal noise.
"You know I have to try to find a way out of this, right?"I checked.
She wagged her tail lazily."Smells good in here."
It did.
Like pine, and ice. Coffee beans too, now that I’d opened the bag. Ice didn't even really have a scent, so it was strange to label it that way, but thatwasthe smell.
I sighed, and got to work making a shot of espresso.A cappuccino was exactly what I needed.
Between the cabinet, machine, and fridge, I found everything I needed to make it.
As I sat down in a barstool connected to the island and sipped my coffee, I decided not to be concerned that Callum seemed to know my drink of choice, and had ordered equipment for me.
There were bigger problems.
While I sipped, I spoke to my wolf in an attempt to process everything."Alright. So, Callum wants to cash in our bargain by forcing me to seal a mate bond with him.
It sounded even more insane when I put it into words.
"Mmhm,"my wolf agreed.
"It’s obviously not ideal to mate with someone I don’t love, even if he’s very good at helping me through heat. He’s never even let me touch him, and his magic is ice and pain. Plus, he murdered Simon. The world’s better off without that bastard, but still."
My wolf purred again.
The horny bitch liked that he was deadly, because of course she did.
"Deadliness aside, mating with him would mean spending immortality with him. We could live apart, but mate bonds come with a mental connection that we would have no way out of."
My wolf liked the sound of that, too.
I took another sip of my coffee to keep myself calm."He wants to use me. He doesn't love me. On top of that, we’re going to have to attend the Beta challenges like a trophy on his arm to give him an explanation for the murder."
"Why did he kill Simon at all?"my wolf mused.
"I don't know. That asshole should’ve died a long time ago, though."
