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“Don’t be mean. Please?”

There’s a thump and a growl from the small room off the kitchen, and even Nix has to shiver.

“You can get them to open the door…come on.” Luca drags a smiling Gideon around the corner.

The scent of bacon grows stronger as Jamie pulls two baking sheets from the oven, each holding bacon in various stages of crispness. Each packmate has their own preference, and none of them are the same. Gideon usually shrugs it off with a“Fuck it—eat it or don’t,”but Jamie likes everyone to have it just the way they like it.

It’s such a Jamie thing to do, and Nix slips in behind him to press his nose to Jamie’s shoulder.

Rowan was right—the babies are hungry, but he can wait because it feels wrong to eat without Rowan when he’s right here…or there.

“Smells good. Sorry,we took so long.”

Jamie still hasn’t looked at him or said anything, and even though his scent is neutral, Nix feels a tingle in their bond.

“Jamie? Are you upset with me?” Nix is learning to ask for what he wants and what he needs, and right now, what he needs is clear communication.

Jamie sighs, kisses him on the forehead, as he begins transferring the bacon to a serving plate.

Nix can smell covered dishes of eggs and toast on the counter; even the table is set—evidence that Jamie has been awake for a while.

“No. Not with you, never with you.”

“Then why won’t you look at me?”

The tongs clang when Jamie drops them into the sink, giving him his first look at Jamie’s red eyes when he turns around.

“I’m not upset with you. I am sad that you didn’t wake me up to go with you. You don’t have to explain anything to me, Nix, especially about this. It’s my shit.”

“I don’t owe you an explanation, that’s true. But I want to give it, if it’s okay?”

Nix leans back against the counter and rubs his belly. The girls are awake again, and their wiggles and tickles comfort him.

“I was going to go by myself—” Nix puts a hand up and shakes his head, cutting off the protest he knows is coming.

“No, I know it’s a bad idea. Gideon was already awake, and it was a sign of some sort, I think.”

“A sign?” Jamie asks, skepticism heavy in his voice. He crosses his arms.

The love of his life is, at heart, a logical thinker; he admits to a non-spiritual view of the world, and at one time, not-so-long-ago, Nix would have had to agree.

Nix ignores the suspicion in his tone.

“That I should take Gideon with me and go to the—myhouse together, rather than alone. I knew it would be a lot for me, and if I had asked, you would have moved heaven and earth to do this with me.”

“Fucking right.”

“But I needed to just feel me in here.” He moves his palm up over hissternum to where Jamie lives every minute of every day, since the dawn of time and until the end of days.

Jamie tilts his head and narrows his eyes, and it reminds Nix of the joke about smelling smoke when someone is thinking.

“You’re saying that I would have been sad, and sad for you; and that all of that would have made it hard for you to feel the things you needed to feel on your own.”

That was it exactly.

“I love doing this life with you, and it will never be too much to have you here.” Nix points to his chest.

“You’ve always been there, you know? But this time, it was going to be so hard. I didn’t want to wait for it to get any harder, and suddenly I was here in the kitchen.”