by Marcy Jacks
He could start with the basics. “I am so fucking sorry. For everything. I can’t believe…I blamed you.”
“It’s okay.”
Gold shook his head, even as Sebby reached for his hands and gripped them. “No, it’s not okay.”
“It is.”
“Stop being so forgiving!”
Gold couldn’t stand it anymore, and it made him blow up on his mate.
“You don’t have to be so forgiving to everyone! You don’t! We wronged you. I wronged you!”
Gold tried to pull his hands away from Sebby’s, but the man wouldn’t allow it. He held on tighter.
“I tied you up naked in the basement.”
“Yeah, for like, twenty minutes.”
Gold was pretty sure it had been longer than that, and he was also sure that wasn’t the point.
“It doesn’t matter. I blamed you. I told you I didn’t want you. I was fucking horrible to you.”
“And we talked about it before.” Sebby actually managed a smile at him. “You forgave me.”
“I wasn’t the one who had any forgiving to do.”
“I know, now. You didn’t know it then either, but you still forgave me, and despite thinking the worst, you wanted me.”
Sebby sucked back a deep breath through his mouth. “When you charged at Artemis and me, I thought you were coming for me. I thought the mating spell had been removed and you wanted to kill me. Hearing that it was a natural mating was, honestly, the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
The break in Sebby’s voice got Gold in the heart with a thin knife, it really did.
“Our mating was real, and you still wanted me. You’d come to save me.”
“What good that was.”
Sebby reached up. Gold froze when he felt the light touch of Sebby’s hand across his cheek.
“You came for me. I love you for that. And when we were talking, when you forgave me, I just wanted a life with you. Just because the shoe’s on the other foot now doesn’t mean I’m going to rub it in and torture you with what happened. I didn’t agree to work on the mating with you because I wanted to get back at you. That’s never what I wanted. I just want to be with you.”
The shine in Sebby’s eyes, the words he used and the expression on his face as he looked up at Gold…
Gold half laughed. “Christ, you’re going to make me start crying now.”
He rubbed at his eyes just to banish the burn. He didn’t want to deal with that right then. He didn’t want to saddle his mate with any guilt over Gold’s reaction to this.
It really was a circle jerk of guilt, wasn’t it?
“So…you’ll still have me?” Sebby asked, hope in his voice, as though he had any reason to doubt.
Gold nodded. “Only if you’ll let me make this up to you. I mean it,” Gold added when Sebby shook his head. “I can’t…I can’t just have a normal relationship with you, knowing what I did.”
There had to be something. Something he could do for his mate. Something Sebby wanted that would make up for this. Or, at the very least, get the ball rolling.
Sebby sighed. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”
Gold grinned. “Not a chance.”
Sebby swallowed and glanced away from him then back up. Their eyes locked, and there was a confidence in those blue depths Gold had never seen before.
“All right. The next time we have sex, I want it to be in your bed. And we’re going to share your room. If that’s all right,” he added, some of that confidence slipping away.
Gold blinked. “That’s it? You’re already getting that if you want it. It’s a given! There has to be something else.”
There was no way he was going to let this settle with his mate asking for something that was already so easy to give.
“Okay, maybe breakfast in bed for a few days?”
“Done. What else?”
Sebby grinned. “Now you’re spoiling me.”
“I am. These are easy ones.”
“Okay, okay. Well, it’s my birthday in a month. You think you could take me to the bookstore and we could look around? I can’t exactly leave the territory now without getting lost on my way back.”
Gold hadn’t known his birthday was coming up, but now that he knew it, he was glad for it. “Exactly. We’ll do the whole nine yards.”
“Don’t worry about the whole nine yards. I just want to spend time with you.”
“If you like books, then I’ll get you a library. I want to know everything you like so I can give it to you.”
Sebby blushed, a cute blush. The sort of blush that came when he was flattered by something.
It was better that than to be ashamed.
“How old are you going to be?”
“Twenty-four.”
Perfect. Gold couldn’t believe he hadn’t known that.
“What kind of books do you like?”
“Sci-fi,” Sebby replied. “Anything in space is awesome. Not really into the whole wizards and dragons thing. I can’t stand it when the author gets something wrong.”
Gold grinned. “I can get that.”
They were both smiling now. They were talking. They were coming to an agreement, and with every moment that passed, Gold was becoming more and more confident that everything was going to be all right.
His mate was right here. They were both alive, and the world seemed intent to throw Gold extra chances to not fuck things up with Sebby, so why not take them?
“Are you…feeling tired?” Sebby asked, a strange question.
“I’m feeling all right,” Gold said. “Not tired.”
Then he realized what his mate was trying to say. He was politely trying to ask if Gold still felt weak.
“I think my strength is up. I hear you’re pretty good at healing spells.”
“But not ward spells. I couldn’t go so far as that pond everyone likes swimming at.”
“That’s fine. I’m sure whenever we all go up there, we’ll just make sure to go in groups.”
With plenty of warrior dragons around to protect the young.
“That’s good to know, but back to your strength…” Sebby’s face turned such a bright shade of red, even as he smiled. It was cute. “Do you think, and only if you’re up for it, that we could go up to your room and…”
Gold was grinning even before his mate trailed off, and just to prove he did have the strength, he reached down, hooked his arms beneath Sebby’s knees, and pulled the man up into his arms.
Sebby cried out, shocked, though he held on to the back of Gold’s neck tightly as Gold began walking home with his mate.
“We can do that right now.”
THE END
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