Page 16 of Beary Mated Christmas

“Alpha, come on.” He held up his phone. “Look at what we can do with the dragées.”

“Bookmark it, omega.” I winked at him. “You’re going to need energy later, and it can’t all be from sugar.”

We ate the whole chicken and the bag of salad tossed with bottled Italian dressing I’d brought along. I had forgotten any kind of lettuce, so it would have gone to waste otherwise. Eating dinner with my omega while he teased about getting started on cookies was the most delightful meal of my life to date.

And once I’d thrown the packages into the bear-proof waste can, I returned to find Abel already using a hand mixer to beat sugar, brown sugar, and butter until light and fluffy. Because we had agreed that it wasn’t Christmas without chocolate-chip cookies. Also, several others we remembered from childhood, none of which used the super-fancy decorations. Both of our families made delicious cookies, but they were all homey in appearance.

Hours later, we had piles of cookies, more than even we could eat in one evening, which was good because when I was sliding the last snickerdoodles onto the cooling rack, I turned to see what we’d done to the kitchen.

“Alpha,” he whispered. “This is bad.”

“I…yeah. It is not exactly tidy in here.” I had no idea how we got a smear of chocolate on the ceiling. “I’m tempted to say leave it until morning.”

“That might be a great idea.”

“Except…do you want to see this before coffee?” Because I definitely did not.

“Ugh, probably not.”

“Then let’s get to it. I have an idea to make the time pass. Why don’t we see how many Christmas carols it takes to get this place shipshape?”

He agreed, reluctantly, and we set to work. Thirty carols later—some were repeats because we couldn’t think of that many—we had a clean kitchen, a whole lot of cookies to enjoy for the rest of our stay, and very little energy left to do our wreath.

That project, I could face over coffee in the morning. Because what energy remained, I had other ideas for. We could decorate then, too. There was nothing about doing anything with this omega I didn’t look forward to. Even the cleanup had been fun because we did it together.

Chapter Twelve

Abel

My parents had texted a number of times since I arrived, and I’d given them a standard answer in return.

Maybe it was time to change that.

“My parents are worried,” I said, showing Denali my phone.

“Mine are as well. They insist on me giving them proof of life every day I’m gone.”

I let that settle between us for a few minutes. Denali was resting, watching the fire, and I was trying to read but with him next to me, it was hard to concentrate. The honeymoon phase was in full swing.

“Do you want to tell them?”

He turned to me. “Do you?”

I laughed. “I want to shout it from the rooftops, but I understand if you—” I didn’t even get to finish my sentence before he got on his phone and I heard the beeps of an outgoing video call. “Good thing I’m dressed,” I joked.

“Not really.”

In seconds, I heard his mom’s familiar voice. “Hey, Son. I’m glad you checked in. Everything okay?”

He sat up and put me in the frame. “Everything is more than okay, Mom. Is Dad around? I’d like to tell you both something.”

“Sure. One sec.”

After a bit of rattling and bustling around, she came back with Denali’s dad in the background. For most of my life, these people had been my secondary parents. I loved them, and they’d always treated me as one of their own.

“Abel? Is that you? H-how did you two…” His mom stuttered over the words, but her grin told me everything. Parents had a sixth sense about these things.

“I got here and this cabin was double-booked and it was Abel who had booked it. We got caught up and well, we’re mated, Mom and Dad. Abel is my omega now and he’s marked.”