Page 71 of The Human’s Heart

“You’ve literally spent five days a week at my house for, like, two months.”

He shrugged. “Yeah, but we barely saw you before you met Hugo.”

I frowned at that even though he wasn’t exactly wrong. I hadn’t come home very often, but mostly because I’d been so focused on school and work and everything. Plus, without the portal, traveling back and forth took up a lot of time—a lot of time I hadn’t really had because of schoolwork.

But having Hugo in my life had changed that. He’d made me realize how much I’d missed and needed my family, and I was grateful for it.

I gave Grandpa a side-hug. “We’ll be here a lot more often.”

He kissed my forehead. “Good.”

We finished the walkthrough, and I started compiling a list of all the things we’d need to buy. My grandfathers said they’d take care of putting in all the kitchen and bathroom equipment since those couldn’t be made out of trees, even if the power and water and all of that was run on magic.

After my grandparents left, Uncle Tio stopped by, but only to drop off some food since he knew we didn’t have a working kitchen yet—not that Hugo could eat food yet, but I was starving.

So Hugo and I sat on a blanket I’d stolen from Uncle Thayer and had a little picnic in our future dining room. Well, only I ate, but Hugo sat beside me, rubbing my arm or my back or leaning against me as we chatted. It was nice.

We’d probably have to go back to my uncles’ house to sleep tonight since we didn’t have a bed yet, but that was going to be the first thing I bought so we could sleep in our new coven home tomorrow night.

“I love it here,” Hugo said as he rested his head on my shoulder.

“Me too.”

“I guess we’ll be spending a lot more time here, huh?”

“You’d be okay with that?”

He sat up and smiled at me. “Yeah, Zay, I would… because I only care about being with you. It doesn’t matter to me where we are as long as we’re together.”

“That’s exactly how I feel.”

We shared a kiss, and then he rested his head on my shoulder again as I finished eating, basking in the peace of our new home and our shared love.

Chapter 22

Hugo

Ihonestly never thought I’d love living in the middle of a forest, surrounded by about a billion of my boyfriend’s—mate’s AKA viramore’s—family members, but I seriously did. I loved it here. Everyone was just so… kind to each other.

Of course there were arguments, especially between Ailin and a few of his kids, but they were never cruel to each other. And they always made up, and of course, there was a ton of hugging involved.

There was tons of hugging. Period. All the time.

That was something else I didn’t think I’d enjoy, but it’d been so… nice.

I never really had nice in my life before now, and I didn’t think I’d ever get sick of it.

Buuuuuutttt… I really missed working.

I loved my job and my coworkers, and I missed them. I missed the atmosphere and the independence.

Kian had been hanging out with us and even staying in our new house, nearly every day, which was good. I was definitely still worried about him. He just seemed so… so fucking sad. But with Zay and me being forced to live here for the last few weeks, Kian had to come back too. And it’d been good for him.

His sister and cousins were taking him out and not letting him become a hermit in his house—or ours—which was great. He’d been hanging out with us a lot, and there was almost always someone else here with him. So yeah, he was doing a little better.

He wasn’t good, not yet, but I was hopeful that he would be.

Toby had taken me with him to run errands the other day, and I’d handled being around humans fine. I wasn’t even a little bit tempted. Honestly, it kinda grossed me out to think about biting into some stranger.