Page 61

Not to be a vampire’s possession ever again.

“I don’t really have any right now. I just want to make a lot of cookies,” I said.

He chuckled, not looking surprised at all. “Alright.”

With that, he handed the deck over. I shuffled and dealt, and soon enough, was pushing the chips in the center over to him after he destroyed me.

He didn’t look at the list before picking a topic. “Let’s talk about announcing our connection to the pack.”

That was an easy one, at least.

“I don’t care when or how we do it. It’s entirely up to you,” I said.

My words relaxed him a bit.

He admitted, “I’d like to announce our mating to the pack tomorrow. The longer we stay silent, the more people will gossip, and I’d prefer to avoid anyone following us around to take pictures of us.”

I agreed, and that was that.

We played another hand, and I lost again.

“We already talked about kids,” he said. “Are you okay with shelving the topic for about a year, and discussing it more thoroughly after we’ve had that time to settle and figure everything out?”

My stomach churned a little. “Sure.”

In an ideal world?

Yes, absolutely.

That would be great.

But we weren’t living in Ideal Nation.

Or at least, I wasn’t.

And at some point, I’d need to tell Beck that he wasn’t either.

Yikes.

We played another hand, and he crushed me yet again.

I sighed as he took my chips.

“Let’s talk about the Wildwood Bitches group,” he said.

“What about it?” I didn’t even know why that was on the list, honestly. I only participated when someone asked me a direct question in the chat, and even then, I’d probably missed a few.

“I’d prefer if you make an announcement in there, too. I don’t want them making you uncomfortable anymore.”

Oh.

That.

“I wasn’t really uncomfortable.”

He gave me a look that said he didn’t believe me.

And I had called him to ask if he was sleeping with anyone else because of that group chat. So, the doubt was valid.