Page 9

“We both did.” He winked. It’d have been hard not to after the night we shared in each other’s arms.

We took a shower—together, and got ready for the day with Porter wearing my sweats. They were too small for him, not that I minded seeing them snuggle his ass. I had his clothes running in the apartment-sized washer/dryer in the bathroom. Karma had even left detergent for us. She’d thought of everything.

As we were figuring out where we should go for breakfast, there was a knock at the door. When I opened it, no one was there, but there were three bags of groceries with a sticky note on one saying, Welcome. Here’s your Animals starter pack.

I suspected that wasn’t a normal way for people to wake up in their new apartment, or maybe here it was. But in any case, I was grateful. Spending the morning here where I could snuggle and ogle, and drool was a thousand times better than hitting up a diner.

“We have food.”

Porter helped me carry the bags in, and when we unloaded them there were the fixings for making breakfast, lunch, and even dinner. If we didn’t want to, we wouldn’t have to leave the apartment all day. Well, my mate wouldn’t. I had an afternoon meeting with Karma, her mate, and probably one of the local builders.

We put everything away except for what we were making for breakfast, which was going to be basic eggs, toast, and sausage. Neither of us wanted to spend the morning cooking.

“I’ll put the coffee on,” I said, grabbing the grounds.

“I’ll start the sausage.”

The scene was so domestic. The two of us worked in tandem in the kitchen, me putting on the toast as he moved from sausage to the eggs.

His phone vibrated on the counter.

“Want me to grab it for you?” I asked.

“Nah. Just read me the message.”

It was such a little thing that he trusted me with his phone, but it said a lot. I’d tried the dating thing before with a couple of humans I met. I figured why not. It wasn’t as if my true mate had been knocking on my door. They never went far. How could they. Neither were for me.

One thing they had in common was their protectiveness of their phone, not wanting me “in their business.” I’d never had a need to see their phone, but the way they were weird about it said I probably should.

But Porter was different. He was asking me to read it.

“It’s from somebody named Angus.”

“Oh, go ahead.”

“It says, Sorry about yesterday. I know we were supposed to meet and talk about our mating, but, you know…hope you understand.”

My stomach dropped. Our mating.

“Shit.” I wanted to be the better person, but I couldn’t be. It hurt. “ You were supposed to get mated to someone else yesterday””

Another text came in.

“Don’t worry. You’re still my best friend.”

“About the mating thing…” Porter looked green. He really was supposed to be mated to someone else. Had I pushed him too hard? I didn’t think so.

“You know how in the movies people say, ‘If I’m not married by thirty, we’ll marry each other’?”

“Yeah.” There were a bazillion movies and shows with that theme.

“We kinda did the same, but with mating.”

My jaw dropped. Who did that? My mate, apparently.

“Is he going to hate me?” I wasn’t worried about Porter leaving. He made his decision with a little help from Fate, but this Angus must be important if he was going to mate him.

“Absolutely not. He found his mate. I found mine. Our pact led us to meet here, and look, it got us both exactly who we were supposed to be with… Why, is my sexy little capybara jealous?”