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The spider-kin pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “You will say no to Pete when he asks you to be his for life. I have seen this. Am I wrong?”
Ben looked down at the grass. “Maybe not.”
“Pete’s soul is shining and good. He is the bravest man I have known since my father died. Why will you reject him?”
“Is this some really weird version of a shovel speech?”
Liliana tilted her head to one side. “What is a shovel speech?”
“You know, ‘I have a shovel, and if you break his heart, I’ll kill you and bury the body where no one will find it.’ That speech.”
“That is something that people do?” Liliana asked, shocked.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m talking to one of my fifth graders?” Ben said, softly.
Liliana did not think Ben meant for her to hear that, so she pretended she hadn’t.
“In general, people don’t actually kill each other over hurting a close friend or relative, but the threat is intended to make it clear how important that person is to you, and that you won’t tolerate them being treated badly,” Ben explained.
Liliana thought about that. “I would not kill you for breaking Pete’s heart.”
Ben grinned at her. “That’s good to know.”
“I might break your bones, or threaten to cut off a limb or something, but I do not think I would kill you.”
Ben laughed. “That is definitely a shovel speech.” His smile softened. “You must love Pete a lot.”
Liliana swallowed and hugged her knees tighter. “If he loved me like he loves you, and he asked me to be his for life, I would say yes.”
“Hence your confusion as to why I might say no.” Ben sighed. “Come down and I’ll make coffee, and we’ll have this conversation where it won’t give me a crick in my neck.” The teacher picked up his tablet and stylus from the picnic table and went into the house.
Liliana climbed down and followed him. “I do not like coffee, but I like tea.”
“I’ve got some Earl Grey around here somewhere.” They said nothing more about Pete while Ben prepared a cup of tea and one of coffee, only exchanging a few words about sugar and cream.
Once they were inside and settled on the soft living room couch with their warm drinks, Ben spoke again. “Pete and I met in grad school, both pursuing our doctorates in biochemistry. Back then, if he’d asked me to marry him, I would have said yes without hesitation. Now that he works for the military, he keeps a lot of his life to himself. Sometimes I think there are more things I don’t know about Pete than things I do.”
Pete could not tell his beloved about fighting widow spiders or the empty pain a wolf-kin felt when he had no pack. He could not tell Ben Harper about two of his closest friends, the oak goblin and the wood sprite, or much about Liliana, the spider seer. As long as Ben Harper believed only in science and refused to even admit the possibility of more, he would never be able to share in much of Pete’s life.
Ben’s hesitation made a little more sense now.
There wasn’t much Liliana could do to help, though. Normals had been known to go insane when suddenly confronted with the truth of the world, or more often, they simply found “logical explanations” for the stranger things they experienced and insisted on the insanity of those who saw the truth.
She sipped her tea and wished she could open a few more eyes to look for ways to help without possibly sending Pete’s beloved into hysterics.
Ben set his cup down on the coffee table, and his smile turned bitter. “You fought with him against those killers. You know what he’s doing on a daily basis. He didn’t even tell me why he was going to be late tonight. You probably know him better than I do.”
This man loved Pete but could never completely know his mate until he first accepted that the world was not how he had always believed it to be. Her heart hurt for Ben. “When I am sad, sometimes, Pete hugs me. When Pete is sad, he wants you to hug him. I have fought at his side, but when the battle ends, it is you that he comes home to.”
The smile the teacher gave her conveyed both sadness and gratitude. Ben Harper’s smiles said more than his words. “So what’s this about his sword?” the teacher asked.
“Assassins are going to target Janice’s husband because they believe he has information they want.”
“Wait, are you talking about Janice Willoughby? Her husband, Lou, the mechanic?”
“Yes. Janice is my best customer. I warned her about the assassins, but I promised her that when danger came, Pete would protect Lou.”
“Of course he would.”
