Eli swallowed, the mist in his eyes coalescing into a few rogue tears. He reached up to wipe them away, but I caught his wrist and gently lowered his hand, replacing it instead with mine, using my thumb to softly brush away the tears. I traced the gentle lines of his jaw, up toward his ear, then slowly down toward his chin.
“You know, the other day, when I said we were something. It’s because I feel it with you already. I feel this connection, and I want to cement it. I want you to be my boyfriend, Eli.” The words fell off my tongue like sweet honey. I’d never meant something more. Never wantedanythingmore than Elijah Sager. “And I think fate wants the same thing.”
He looked up at my eyes, searching them for something, before he broke, looking down at his bare feet. “But—”Fuck. Last word I wanted to hear right now.“—if fate has so much to say about this, then how is that going to work with you still not publicly out? I can’t be a dirty little secret, Gabe. I can’t.” He took a step back. It was a small step, but it still felt like he dropped a fucking canyon between us.
“And you won’t be,” I said.
“Are you going to come out, then?”
The question caught me off guard, even though it shouldn’t have. “It’s something that I need to weigh.There’s a lot of pressure to keep this”—I motioned around at my shift room—“a secret. But I don’t want you to feel like one, either.”
Eli sighed. He rubbed circles into his temples. “I get it. As a gay man, I understand the pressure of coming out and know it happens on individual timelines. And as a human, I have absolutely no idea about the pressure of keeping an entire population of magical beings secret. But I can imagine it’s a heavy burden to carry.”
“It is, and it’s unfair that I ask you to share that burden with me. But—” I reached forward and grabbed his hands again. Fuck the distance. “—I already gave you my word that I’d never hurt you. So if I need to come out to keep that promise, then I will. I swear it.”
I wasn’t sure what the consequences of that would be, but I’d bear the brunt of them if I had to.
“I believe you,” Eli said after a short, weighted moment. There was a sparkle in his eyes now, no longer there because of the tears, but because of something else. Something that curled his lips into a small smile. “We can be a secret couple—for now—but I have one more ask of you…”
“Anything. The moon? I’ll grab it for you tonight.” I tried to contain the joy that blasted through my chest like it had come from a broken fire hydrant.
“No, but it does have something to do with that…”
I narrowed my gaze at him. “What?”
He looked around the room, and that mischievous grin of his—of my boyfriend’s—grew wider. “Can I stay in the safe room with you tonight?”
“No, absolutely no,” I said, my answer immediate.
He crossed his arms and cocked his head, his eyebrow arched like he was a callback away from booking a McDonald’s logo gig. I loved sassy Eli, but I wasn’t very comfortable with his ask. “It’s dangerous,” I continued.
“You said you’d never hurt me. Even in your were form.”
That… was true. In reality, the likelihood of me hurting Eli purposefully was zero to none. But still, animal instincts were sometimes difficult to predict, and with Eli possibly being my fated mate, I wasn’t sure how I’d react to him being around.
And beyond that, there was another reason. Maybe one that rang more true than the last one I gave him.
I didn’t want to scare him away. I’d just locked in our commitment; how badly would I have shat the bed if I allowed him to stay and witness me in a state only my pack had ever seen me in?
But Eli had proven that he wasn’t easily spooked. At least not when it came to shifter matters. And if we were to go through with a full moon ceremony, then he’d have to see me in my were form regardless.
Better on one of the most important nights of our lives or on a random Thursday when there was still plenty of time to process things.
I sighed, the decision becoming clearer. “Fine,” I said. “You can stay.”
He smiled, clapped his hands together, and simply said, “Fuck yeah.”
Eli leanedbackward in the chair, balancing it on the back two legs as he scrolled through his phone. If he was nervous about what was going to happen tonight, he certainly wasn’t showing it. If I had to guess, I’d say that I was the one more scared for this full moon than he was.
We’d spent the rest of the day relaxing around thecabin. We had dinner (a barbecue chicken pizza and a stacked bowl of loaded nachos), had some drinks, played a couple of rounds of a racing video game I’d recently bought, and then went up to the shifter room as the sun began its descent.
The transformation wouldn’t happen until the moon was at its zenith in the sky—which tonight would be at twelve twenty—and that gave us another thirty minutes.
Which was good because there were still a couple more things I needed to go over. I walked over to the daybed, crouched down, and pulled open one of the drawers underneath it. I lifted up a heavy set of chains ending in thick iron cuffs.
“Um… what the fuck?” Eli asked, his phone forgotten on the chair as he watched me carry the chains to the wall.
“I don’t always do this, but I just want to take some extra precautions tonight.” I attached the chains to the anchors on the wall. I then walked over and handed the key to Eli. He looked down at it like I’d just given him some alien artifact.
