“Bull of Heaven,” he sighed with his palm resting over my lower belly that bulged with how well he had filled me. This time I heard it for what it was: a prayer to a deity I did not know.
Yet.
I bit my lip and stroked the hair off his forehead. The way he gazed at me said that this wasn’t just physical for him. A future I’d never dared to dream of reflected in his eyes.
Ross gave me one of his plaid shirts to wear and I followed him into the kitchen.
“Well,” I trilled as I sat on the kitchen counter with my bare legs dangling in the air, “we at least won’t have to worry about customer satisfaction.”
He scoffed but didn’t turn away before I caught the smile on his face.
“I gotuspastries for breakfast,” he grumbled.
“You gotuspastries for breakfast?” I repeated with an arched eyebrow and put heavy emphasis on “us”. “How did you know I’d be here for breakfast?” I stuck out my leg to block his path and he turned towards me. His hands gripped the counter on either side of my hips.
“I didn’t know. I just hoped I wouldnae fuck it up.”
Ross kissed me and went back to his coffee machine, humming under his breath.
I beamed at his broad back and sighed.
This has to be what home feels like.
“You didn’t, Horns.”
Epilogue
Ross - 5 years later
Scottish summer was my favourite day of the year. After almost a decade in which we’d all got used to the better weather, the rain and gloom had returned to Scotland with full force.
Sometimes you only realised what you were missing once you didn’t have it anymore.
I leaned back on the picnic blanket and took a few more of the quartered grapes Stella had brought to our seaside hangout, and glanced over at my wife.
She and Stella were deep in conversation about the best brand of rain gear for kids and about Stella’s handcrafting business. She’d moved to Carranbrae a few years ago to work at Gust & Grind, the Scales sister cafe. It had been her partner Mikke who’d encouraged her to pursue her art business on the side.
Since Saga’s birth three years ago, she only took occasional shifts to get out of the house.
I grinned and pushed up to my feet, but not before grabbing another few grapes. The sand crunched under my hooves as I trudged over to the boulders scattered around the beach at the bottom of the cliff that held Carranbrae’s lighthouse.
Stella and Mikke’s daughter crouched beside a tide pool with her brown fox ears twitching.
Briar charged past her a moment later with all the grace of our kind, sending sand flying everywhere. He chased a sea gull that was almost as big as he was. Mikke called something that I couldn’t hear over the sea breeze and laughed.
“Everything alright?” I asked him.
“Sure! Little Briar is very brave.” He gave me a wide grin that exposed his sharp fangs. “Battling the gulls.”
I snorted and ducked just in time to grab my small son in mid-run.
“Oi, wee bull, leave the gulls alone, will ye?” I nuzzled my nose into the crook of his neck. Briar wriggled in my arms, the tiny nubs of his horns barely visible in the riot of russet curls.
“Down,” he demanded with all the stubborn authority of a calf who had already decided the beach belonged to him.
I sighed and set him back on his feet.
“You know that he’ll keep chasing the sea gulls, don’t you?” A giggling Autumn ducked under my arm and slipped hers around my waist.
