“But we didn’t?—”
“Not going to happen.” I cut her off before she could so much as hint to my future mate that I’d even considered sleeping with someone other than her tonight. “Time for you to go.”
“I haven’t even paid the?—”
Still not tearing my eyes away from the Rest of My Life, I snatched the receipt I’d just laid down before she came on to me and ripped it up. “All taken care of. Now, please fuck off.”
Somewhere in the periphery, the blonde gasped and whined something about me being rude.
But I was too busy filling up a glass with the water my mate had requested. I set it in front of her, along with a menu. “What can I get you, honeybee?”
She blinked.
“Oh, I wasn’t planning on eating,” she said, even though my bear picked up on her stomach growling from behind the bar. “But if that’s a requirement to wait here, maybe whatever’s cheapest on the menu. Like, an appetizer?”
“So, one steak dinner with premium sides coming right up,” I said, writing out the ticket for Cody. “Medium okay for your cook?”
“Yes, but that doesn’t sound cheap.” The cutest little consternated look came over her face.
My maul was going to turn her into a bear, but I swear, right now, it was like talking to a bunny.
“No worries. It’s on me, eh?”
I would’ve offered to pour her a drink, too—if I didn’t want her completely lucid and full of consent for all the things I planned to do to her when I got off.
I rushed over to the kitchen window tucked into the bar’s hidden corner to clip the ticket and ring the call bell.
I didn’t bother to wait for Cody to acknowledge me and chat a little, like I usually did. The Rest of My Life was waiting, and Cody was grumpy about his mate going to the outer limitswithout him anyway, even though both her other husbands had dropped everything to escort Noelle and Holly there, along with both our town’s Mounties and that lucky bastard Hawk.
For once, the thought of Hawk didn’t fill me with the bitterest of jealousy. And though I was tempted to pull out my phone and text both my brother and the mayor—wherever he was—about finding the perfect match for our maul, rushing back to our future mate won out.
“So, you in town for the Christmas in July festival?” I asked her. “Staying at the lodge?”
“Well, I’m trying to…”
Her shoulders sagged as she told me the whole story—about being Holly’s best friend, forgetting to email her back, and having to wait to see if she could get a room at the lodge.
Listen, I know both of my other maul members can be a little unethical at times. Gideon did some seriously black-ops stuff for the Joint Task Bear Force—so dark that he still won’t talk about it, years after returning to Bear Mountain a shell of the intense-but-not-completed-dead-eyed guy he used to be.
Even worse, Rys was former CSE—Canada’s version of the NSA—so he was probably one of the guys calling those black ops shots before transitioning into his current role as our mayor and MLA.
Up until that point, I’d always thought of myself as the only completely upstanding guy in our trio.
In fact, several reasonable ideas immediately sprang to mind for how I could help our future mate. I could ask Gideon to get that out-of-service room fixed up, so she’d have somewhere to stay tonight. I had Hawk’s number, so I could text him and let him know Holly’s friend had arrived. Hell, I could ask any Ayaska in this bar to escort her straight to their door. Since there was no crime in the Ayaska Village, none of the houses had locks. She could let herself in.
But I found out I wasn’t nearly as nice a guy as I thought. Instead of offering up any of those easy solutions, I said, “I’ve got an empty bedroom at my place. You can stay with me tonight.”And every one thereafter, I mentally added.
Humans didn’t have the olfactory sense to know on a fully conscious level when they’d met their scent match, so telling her this obvious-to-me thing at this stage might scare her off.
“Really?” Hope lit her eyes—but only for a second. Then she shook her head. “Actually, no. I shouldn’t do that. I don’t know you, and that means I shouldn’t trust you right away.”
I crooked my head. “Sounds like you’re kinda quoting something.”
She winced. “I am. I’m on the spectrum. So sometimes it’s hard for me to properly assess other people’s intentions. Especially strangers, which could be potentially dangerous for me.”
She was on the spectrum? So was Gideon—either that or he had severe, untreated PTSD that made him have to mirror me to come off as remotely human. My half-hour of reels-based research hadn’t turned up a clear answer.
Either way, she was perfect for us. Honest, like me. Direct, like Gideon—at least when it was just the two of us. That meant whatever the mayor saw in us when he asked to form a maul… she had it, too.
