Page 31 of The Baker and the Kraken

Calder laughed. “True.”

“Can tentacles use chopsticks?” Adam wanted to know.

Laughing harder, Calder shook his head. “My squid arms and tentacles don’t generally do great with utensils.”

“Better for grabbing and stuffing food in your mouth?” Adam suggested.

(He’d seen several videos on YouTube.)

Calder snatched up an egg roll with a squid arm and did exactly that, making Adam laugh. His research had shown that squid beaks were used for tearing food into small pieces, but Calder just used his teeth.

Adam asked, “Is it true that squid brains have a hole in them for food to pass through?”

“Yes,” Calder said, and then correctly interpreted Adam’s expression. “In this form, my food goes through a human digestive system just like yours.”

Adam hadn’t really thought the internet was lying to him about this (he’d checked more than one site), but it was still a little strange to look at this man and know that when he was a squid, his food went through a long hole in his brain. Squid heads represented most of their body mass, so it made sense, but it was still weird. Of course, humans had a windpipe and their throat sharing space, so maybe they weren’t any more sensibly designed.

Adam knew the answer was magic, but it was pretty amazing what shifters could do, that so much of their body could change and rearrange when they switched between their human and animal form.

“That’s so cool.”

Calder smiled. “Magic has certainly brought a lot into our lives.”

Without magic, Adam and Calder wouldn’t be together, so Adam definitely agreed with that.

“So, what else about the bond?” Adam wanted to know. “We’ll be able to share our emotions and thoughts. I’ll be stronger magically. Will you be stronger?”

“I don’t think so.”

Adam frowned. “That hardly seems fair.”

Calder shrugged. “I’m a mythical shifter, sweetheart. I’m already as strong as I need to be.”

“But you should get some sort of benefit.”

Calder’s expression was soft and warm. “Adam, I get you. That’s all I could ever ask for or desire.”

Adam felt his face heat, but he couldn’t doubt Calder’s sincerity.

“I’m pretty excited about that part, too,” he confessed. This man had become utterly essential to him in a pretty short amount of time, but he genuinely couldn’t imagine living without him now. “I convinced myself I was totally fine alone, but it turns out I was lying to myself.”

Calder squeezed his hand gently with a tentacle. “You were waiting for me.”

This made Adam smile. Calder was good at helping him turn around his thinking. “Yeah, I guess I was.” Then another thought made him frown. “But you’ve been waiting for a long time, haven’t you? Like a really long time?”

Calder was a mythical shifter. Adam didn’t think those suddenly sprang up in the last couple hundred years.

Carefully, Calder said, “Time doesn’t work the same way for a mythical shifter as it does for others. Honestly, though, it’s almost entirely subjective, even if humans insist on labeling and measuring it.”

On the point of arguing, Adam realized he couldn’t. An hour where he was waiting to meet Calder could feel like an eternity, and the last hour he had with the man before he had to head into work could fly by in a flash.

He did notice that had been an evasion of his question, though.

“But you still waited for a long time,” he pressed.

“Yes,” Calder allowed.

“Like… centuries?” Adam tested cautiously.