by Ellis Leigh
It took me a solid five seconds for her words to make sense. All thoughts of Magnus and my own personal shame disappeared, and I rocketed into work mode.
“What do you mean, it isn’t there?” I was in motion before I finished my ridiculous question, heading for the walk-in refrigerator at the back of the kitchen.
“Um, that it isn’t here? As in, not at the banquet hall. I was making sure the macarons were set up on the trays the bride requested when I noticed the blank space in the display. I’ve looked all over for it—it’s not here.”
“That’s impossible. Ginger was supposed to—”
What Ginger was supposed to do was take the cake over before heading home for the night. What she’d failed to do was take the cake over before heading home for the night. The wolf sat in the refrigerator, looking just as real and regal as ever. Madeline had outdone herself—Ginger had failed miserably. “Shoot.”
“It’s there, isn’t it?”
I sighed and grabbed the cake, carrying it to the packaging station. “Yeah. It’s not even boxed. What was Ginger thinking?”
“Pretty sure she was thinking about that dragon shifter she met.”
Had I been dropped into an alternate reality? “What dragon shifter?”
“It’s not important. Look, the rehearsal is starting soon, and people are going to notice a giant empty space on the sweets table. You need to get that cake here.”
Work mode—deactivated. Me showing up at that building was so not happening. “No. I can’t be there. You’ll have to come get it.”
“There’s no time. There’s barely enough time for you to put that cake in your car and drive over here.”
She wasn’t wrong, but still…I couldn’t do it. I shook my head and closed my eyes, trying to drum up enough courage to face Nico and Magnus, to be seen. To walk into a room where almost everyone I knew would be milling around, knowing some of them likely had heard what I’d done. Kinship Cove was a small town, and people talked. Secrets didn’t stay buried for long.
“Coco, please,” Misty pleaded. “Your business needs you to pull on your big-girl panties and bring that cake over here.”
I swallowed hard, whispering, “I can’t face them.”
“You don’t have to, honey. Come in through the back—I’ll meet you in the kitchen and take the cake. Less than a minute from when you show up to when you leave.”
Less than a minute. To ensure the success of the business we’d built from nothing. Ginger may have screwed up, but that was likely an accident. If I didn’t come through, it would be on purpose. I couldn’t do that to myself or my sisters. “Yeah. Okay, I think I can do that.”
“Good.” She sounded so relieved. “Now, box up that cake and move your ass. You’ll be cutting it close.”
“On it.” I hung up and got to work, making sure the cake was protected in a large, sturdy box before carrying it out to my car. The darn thing weighed a ton, so the process wasn’t easy on my own. Still, I managed. And then I was off. Heading for the place where my ex was marrying his fated mate while his father—my current lover—looked on.
Not unusual at all.
I pulled up to the back door of the hall some twenty minutes later with one wolf cake latched securely in my passenger seat. My stomach churned as I hopped out of the car—less than a minute. That’s all the time I needed to spend there. I couldn’t possibly run into Magnus in under a minute. Not even if I wanted to.
And I sort of wanted to.
I missed him.
I was also apparently a glutton for punishment.
“Drop off the cake and go home. Less than a minute.” I practically chanted to myself as I grabbed the cake and headed for the kitchen entrance. The cake was heavy, though, and so was the door. I had to kick the metal surface in the hopes that Misty was waiting for me on the other side. It swung open a second later, and I hurried through, utterly focused on hanging on to the blasted cake until I made it to the prep counter twenty feet away.
“Thank god you’re here,” I said once I was fully in the kitchen space. “Let me just set this down so we can look at it, then I’m heading home. I want to get out of this place before anyone sees me.”
“But you look so pretty in your kitchen whites, Coco.”
I stumbled, nearly dropping the cake as I spun to face the person who’d opened the door. Who wasn’t Misty. Who was the last shifter I wanted to see…ever.
“Nico.”
His lips quirked into a cocky sort of grin as if he thought the breathy way I said his name had something to do with wanting him. It didn’t—the cake was really fricking heavy. I set the behemoth down on the counter and looked around, hoping Misty would appear from thin air. Or that the floor would open up and swallow me whole. Or for a horde of zombies to come racing in to distract the shifter.
No such luck.
“So this is the groom’s cake.” Nico sidled closer. “Did you make it?”
“Madeline handles the cakes.” Not that I should have to tell him that—he’d heard me talk about the bakery enough to know how our business worked. Not that he’d spent any time there. In fact, Magnus had spent more time in the kitchen in two days than Nico had in months. A heart-stopper of a realization and one that only pushed me to want this over with and fast.
I opened the box and stepped back, still proud of what my sisters had accomplished with the cake even if the man looking was one I had no interest in interacting with. “Madeline created this per Fiona’s request. I hope it’s to your satisfaction.”
He hummed, barely sparing a glance for the cake my sister had probably put fifteen hours into. “Well, I was hoping you’d handle everything. For me.”
He stabbed me with a look and the sort of smile that had once made my knees weak. Not anymore, though. My feelings for him had long been sitting in the negative column of my mind, and today was no different. I wasn’t feeling nostalgic or missing him—I was over it.
The person I was missing was his dad.
“Well…” No words for him or that ridiculous statement. None. “I should get going.” I turned and headed for the door. For my escape. “Misty’s here and will handle the cake presentation. Congratulations and thank you for using Cake-ily Ever After. If there’s anything else you need—”
“I need to know why you chased after my dad.”
Ice water. It pumped through my veins. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me.” He came up behind me, grabbing my arms and tugging me against his chest. “You miss me that much that you have to go sniffing around the old folks’ home?”
I jerked away, that ice water turning to fire in a heartbeat. “Magnus is not old, and I didn’t know he was your father when I met him.”
“But he is, and it’s weird. So how about you just stay the hell away from him, yeah? Not that he’d give you the time of day after I told him all about us.”
Oh. Oh no. “You…told him.”
Nico shrugged. “He asked about us, so I gave him the full story. How we met, the dates we’d been on, how you liked it when I would bite your nipples while you rode my cock.”
Dead. I was dead. As was any chance at reconciling with Magnus. Ever. “That’s… Why would you do that?”
Misty rushed through the swinging doors at the far end of the kitchen, looking panicked. At least, until she spotted Nico—then she looked pissed. “Shouldn’t you be rehearsing with your mate or something?”
He leaned closer, lowering his voice as he said, “I never was one to share my toys, Coco. And no man likes sloppy seconds.”
Misty jumped between us, looking positively fierce in her anger. “Oh, hell no, you don’t.”
But the damage had been done—he’d told Magnus about us. Everything about us. He’d destroyed any chance I might have had. Burned it all to the ground and swept away the ashes. And he knew it.
“Nice guard dog.” Nico shot Misty a grin as he backed away. “Good to see you, Coco. The cake looks awesome—I’m sure my dad is going to love it.�
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He disappeared through the far doors, leaving me alone with Misty.
“Tell me you don’t believe that bullshit line.”
I licked my lips, unable to speak. Not wanting to remember. I was going to be sick—he’d told Magnus about us. About our sex life. About things that should have stayed between us and never been shared. It had to have been in the last few hours—Magnus had been showing up at the bakery most of the day. He’d been trying to reach me. I’d ignored his texts and calls, and refused to come out of the kitchen, though. I’d…I’d screwed up so badly. Maybe if I would have talked to him first, explained what had happened with Nico and me, maybe he wouldn’t have asked. And then Nico wouldn’t have been able to sabotage…what? Magnus and I weren’t anything to one another. We’d dated a little and had one great night together. There was no long-term commitment there. No promises of a future. There was only food and sex and great company.
And I was going to miss all that so much.
“Coco.” Misty reached as if to grab my arm. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing,” I whispered, taking a step back. Needing to escape. “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters.”
“What are you saying?”
“I have to go.” I sprinted out the door, rushing to my car and hoping to be on the road home before I broke. Before the tears began to fall. Before anyone saw me crying behind the hall where my ex would be celebrating the upcoming wedding to his mate. I didn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea—I wouldn’t be crying over Nico.
I’d be crying over his dad.
9
Magnus
I’d never been so fucking pissed in my life. I’d been fuming all day, ever since Nico had interrupted Coco and me and she’d disappeared on me. I wasn’t mad at Coco, though. Never her. More at myself—at my failure to tell her she was my mate so we could build our bond, at the fact that I couldn’t convince her to even talk to me. I knew she was hurting, she had to be, and there was nothing I could do to fix it for her. If I’d told her she was my mate, none of this would have happened. She would have been confident enough in our connection to face down Nico. But I’d failed her by keeping the secret, and now she was suffering because of me.
So, no, I wasn’t mad at her—I was raging against a situation that was really of my own making.
The fact that I was trapped at Nico’s wedding rehearsal wasn’t helping anything either. The banquet hall smelled like Coco. Not completely—not as if she stood in the room with me—but her scent was there. Lingering in the rooms, drifting along on the recycled air through the vents. It would catch me at odd times and yank me out of whatever I was doing. It was also driving me absolutely insane.
As was the man I had recently learned was mine.
“I mean, if you’re that desperate, I’ll give you my black book of girls. Not like I need it anymore.”
My son was about to learn what battling with a real wolf shifter meant.
“Nico,” I said, biting back a growl. “Drop it. Immediately.”
He chuckled, catching the attention of his mate. Fiona was a lovely girl with a good head on her shoulders. She had also been raised in a shifter pack, unlike Nico. I had a feeling she’d be running things for a long time to come, which was likely the best thing for my son. He was a little too human at times. Like right then.
“Come on, old man. You have to admit this is more than a little weird. I mean…you had sex—”
The growl I’d been fighting reverberated through the dining room, making the shifters in the room go silent. Good—Nico needed to hear me for once. “What Coco and I did is none of your damned business. Do you understand?”
Nico opened his mouth as if to say something, but Fiona stopped him with a sharp, “That’s enough.”
My son’s jaw snapped closed. Not for long, though. “Fiona, I was just—”
“Being an asshole.” She stepped right up to him, looking fierce and filled with rage. I could relate. “You’re not much of a wolf, Nico. You’re not much of a son either—Magnus finally meets his mate after all these years, and you do nothing but try to come between them. That’s pathetic. But beyond wolf and son, you’re even less of a man and a mate for not thinking about your mate. Where did I go wrong that the fates saddled me with someone like you?”
The room had gone so silent. What was that human saying? You could have heard a pin drop. The shifters could have anyway, but still—silence. Everyone staring with rapt attention at the arguing couple. The ones who were supposed to be walking down the aisle in less than forty-eight hours. Talk about awkward.
When Nico didn’t answer Fiona, she spun on her heel and stalked across the room, with Nico chasing after his retreating mate. Thank the fates for small miracles. I’d been putting up with his shit all damn day, had been stuck running back and forth from the hotel to the bakery to try to talk to Coco while helping Nico get ready for the wedding weekend. Nothing about this day had been easy, but hearing anything about my mate being with another man had definitely made things worse. And having to smell her without being able to see her, to touch her, to know she was okay, was agony.
I spent the next hour shaking hands, smiling, and generally being the father of the groom for a roomful of people I had no interest in dealing with. The shifters were giving me a wide berth, perhaps sensing the level of stress my wolf felt at being kept away from his mate. Or maybe I had one hell of a scowl on my face. I couldn’t tell anymore.
“You really fucked this up,” a woman said. Not just any woman—the one from the bakery. The fox shifter who’d been playing defense all damned day. And she smelled so much like my Coco, I nearly whimpered.
“Where is she?”
Misty shook her head, keeping her eyes on mine and looking pissed as hell. “She’s not ready for you yet.”
A growl slipped out. One I had to swallow back. I didn’t want to upset my only link to Coco, didn’t want to lose the opportunity Misty’s arrival placed in my lap. So I pushed my pride as far down as I could, and I did the only thing I could. I asked for help. “What can I do?”
“Well, first, you can kick Nico’s ass for opening his mouth. I thought she was getting better, that she was close to breaking. But then the dick-nozzle—sorry, I shouldn’t insult your son—”
“It’s fine. Dick-nozzle seems appropriate, given the situation.”
“Good. So, dick-nozzle catches her in the back room and tells her no man likes sloppy seconds.”
My heart nearly stopped. The only thing keeping it beating was the intense need to destroy Nico. Son or not, a man didn’t get to speak that way to my mate. “I’ll kill him.”
“Yeah, but that won’t get you Coco back, so let’s tuck the killing away.”
Not an easy task. “Fine. What else did he say?”
She shrugged, her lips pursed as if she’d just taken a bite of something rancid. “Something about not wanting others to play with his toys.”
“Coco is not a toy.”
“Well, no shit. Glad you’re keeping up with me, dog.” She leaned over and grabbed a couple of pink macarons from the sweets table, handing me one. “Eat that. Coco made it.”
That was reason enough to eat the whole lot. I took a bite of the cookie. Sweet, crisp, slightly fruity—the cookie was an amazing feat of baking. It was also practically a piece of my mate. I could almost taste her in the almond flour, smell her in her filling. No wonder I kept catching whiffs of her throughout the hall—she’d left her scent on the cookies. I wanted to gorge myself on the macarons to hang on to whatever part of her I could. I also wanted to flip the table the cookies sat on and chase after my mate. Such a strange reaction to a cookie.
“They’re delicious,” I said, staring at the display of pink circles in confusion. Devour or destroy. Devour or destroy.
“You trash those cookies, and Coco will kill you.”
Decision made. I tore my eyes away from the display, catching Misty’s wink. “You sure do seem to
have my number, fox.”
“I’ve seen enough wolves meet their mates to know exactly how stupid they get about them.”
Mate. My mate. Whom I’d failed. Well, fuck, the fox might want to skin me alive once I admitted my failings. Time to man up. “I didn’t tell Coco that she was my fated mate.”
Misty didn’t look surprised in the least. “Yeah, I figured that out when Nico was able to get under her skin so easily. She has no idea how serious you are about her because you chose not to tell her this vital piece of information that affects the rest of her life.” Misty’s eyebrow raise might as well have been knives slicing through my heart. “You should have told her the first day. What’s wrong with you?”
What was wrong with me? I’d spent a hundred years alone, growing older in my appearance as my mated brethren stayed young. I’d assumed the fates had forgotten about me, had chosen not to give me the gift of a mate. I’d seen matings go right and so very wrong, and I was terrified I’d screw up mine now that I had finally found the woman meant for me.
But that was a lot to admit to a woman I didn’t really know, so I stuck with something she could understand. “She’s human.”
That earned me an eye-roll. “And she’s lived in a shifter town her whole life. She knows exactly how these things work. She was also raised with shifters as family members—the man she calls uncle is the Kinship Cove pack alpha, for crying out loud. She’s seen exactly what happens when a shifter meets their mate, and you didn’t do any of the things she would have expected. You kept this huge revelation a secret from her to protect her but ended up hurting her instead. Right now, she’s dealing with an intense pull to be with you, the fact that she might have ruined any chance with you because of her past, and the assumption that you’re going to leave her behind when you meet your fated mate. Because that’s happened to her three times.”
Oh, my poor Coco. “By the fates.”
“Exactly. You need to tell her the truth. That you’re her mate, that nothing else matters but your bond, and that you’re not simply going to vanish one day when someone better comes along.”