Page 28

Bellamy

“ H ere are your glasses babe.”

Your definitely not at all suspicious glasses.

She only tends to wear them when she's gaming or working with small parts for a long time and it strains her eyes, but with the new project she's been wearing them more often, and always has them on hand. Which makes them the perfect place to slip another camera.

I maaaaaay be a little obsessed, but in my defense, if my mate didn’t want me to stalk her, she wouldn’t give me so many perfect opportunities.

“Oh, thanks.” Ever clips them to the front of her shirt, which honestly, just makes my case. Should she keep them in a safe case? Absolutely. And normally I’d give her a hard time about it, but it serves my purposes well.

Ledger leads her towards the freshly renovated living room. It was hard keeping her out of the house for an entire day, but I swear, Ledger’s a miracle worker. When he’s determined, he gets shit done. Built in bookshelves now line all of the walls, half of them filled.

“Holy shit,” she gasps, looking at the new space in awe.

Ledger sheepishly rubs the back of his neck. “If you hate it, I can change it back; this is your house, and I didn’t mean to overstep. I just thought-”

She throws herself at him, shutting him up with a fierce kiss.

“I love it. Besides, this is technically our house now, right?” Her cheeks tint pink.

“Shit, we haven’t really talked about that, have we?

Do you guys even want to move in? We’ve all been tripping over each other and fighting over the bathroom.

Should we talk to Ellis about a bigger place, or-”

Now it’s Ledger’s turn to kiss the hell out of her, stopping her anxiety spiral before it spins out of control.

After several minutes of this, I glance at Myles and roll my eyes.

He fights a smile before clearing his throat and interrupting before Ledger starts stripping our girl before we’re even done showing her the rest of her surprise.

Actually, he might be onto something here…

Myles clears his throat. “I finished setting up the workshop in the basement, but it really didn’t need much work, so I got you something else.”

Ever frowns. “You guys didn’t have to get me anything in the first place. What’s with all the surprises all of a sudden?”

“Do you want to waste time on silly questions, or do you want presents?”

She narrows her eyes. “That depends, what’s the catch?”

My chest tightens. I hate the fact that she’s lived the kind of life that any kindness she received was cause for suspicion.

Where she couldn’t trust anyone’s motives because she was surrounded by shitty people that taught her that love was transactional.

Something to be earned, and taken away as a punishment.

If they even bothered trying in the first place.

“No catch, beautiful.” Cupping her cheek, I rest my forehead against Ever’s, closing my eyes for a moment and breathing her in. Reveling in the fact that I can finally touch her. That she’s really here. Mine. And I’m going to love her so hard, she’ll never want to leave.

Kissing the tip of her nose, I spin her around to face Myles and playfully smack her ass. “Now, off you go. Let’s see what sort of gift your mage got you, shall we?”

Arson peels himself out of the shadows in the corner of the room, weirdly silent this entire time.

“I’ve got it.” In the next blink, he transports all of us to the bedroom, and I stagger at the abrupt change.

Unlike every other time he’s yanked us through the shadow realm, it was so seamless, it has me second guessing if I imagined the whole thing.

Myles stares wide-eyed at his brother. “Well, that’s new. Power boost?”

Arson smirks. “Not the only new trick up my sleeve, either.”

Yeah, because that’s exactly what we need. To supercharge the already overpowered psychotic demon. And now that he’s bonded to Ever, no other mimic can borrow his powers to stop him, either.

Thank the Fates we’re on the psycho’s good side.

At least until Ever and I cement the bond. Downside, they’ll all get another power boost once they have another mimic in their bond group. And the Fates only know what type of havoc Arson will wreak then.

“Close your eyes,” Myles tells Ever, then leads her over to the walk-in closet. Flipping on the light, he discreetly takes a deep breath to bolster his confidence before saying, “Okay, open them.”

Hell, even I’m surprised, and I helped sneak the bags up here.

There’s still enough space for each of our clothes, but the vast majority has been taken over by a small department store.

There are a few dresses, both fancy and casual, but primarily, it’s witty graphic t-shirts, jeans, leggings, and shorts.

Dozens of pajamas in assorted styles. And…

Ever plucks a hanger from the back section and raises an eyebrow. “I’m pretty sure dental floss would cover more of my ass than this.”

I bark out a laugh as soon as I see it. I’m sure it’s some kind of lingerie, but honestly, it’s mostly black leather strips so thin, it’d be a miracle if it covered her nipples.

With the way it’s parted on the bottom to frame her pussy, it sure isn’t leaving much to the imagination, if we could even figure out how to get her in the contraption.

Ledger’s chest rumbles like a chainsaw while Myles blushes furiously, fidgeting with his glasses. “The sales woman picked everything out, but I saved the receipt. Toss whatever you don’t like on the bed, and I’ll exchange it.”

“Are you kidding?” I gesture at Ledger, who looks borderline feral just picturing Ever in that. “Half of this is going to wind up in shreds. She’ll need the backups, don’t waste your time taking anything back.”

Ever whips off her shirt, swapping it for a new one that says Life Fucks Me Harder, so get in Line before any of us can pounce, and kisses Myles. “This must have cost a fortune, you really didn’t have to. But I love them, thank you.”

“Of course I did. Now the next time one of us does something stupid, you won’t be able to pack everything you own into a single backpack. It’ll buy us time to grovel and win you back before you can leave us.”

Her eyes get misty, and she blinks furiously. “Myles… I don’t need stuff. I just need you. ”

He presses a gentle kiss to Ever’s lips, cupping her jaw. “Well then I guess it’s a good thing you can have both.” With one more kiss, he reluctantly pulls away. “I’m pretty sure Bell will shank me if we make him wait to show off his surprise any longer.”

Arson is seriously learning how to read a room, because he has us downstairs in such a seamless transition, I blinked and missed it.

“You remembered,” Ever whispers, staring up at the cloud ceiling, the LED lighting behind it giving the den an ethereal, stormy glow.

“Of course I did; it was important to you.”

Arson chuckles. “Says the man that can’t remember anyone’s name half the time.”

“I remember everything that matters, ” I correct with a glare. “Why would I waste brain space on strangers’ names?”

Ever throws her arms around my neck, and I tug her flush against me, careful not to crush her glasses. “It’s perfect. ” She buries her face in the crook of my neck, taking a few moments to collect herself before framing my face in her hands and kissing me like we’re the only people in the world.

Threading my fingers through her hair, I take control of the kiss, imbuing it with every emotion that threatens to overwhelm me.

Years of yearning, of dreaming that I was born as any other kind of myst so I’d be free to chase after her .

How I nearly missed my chance because I wasted so much time being afraid to take the leap.

And how fucking thrilled I am that she’s really mine.

Every roll of my tongue and hard press of my lips against hers seals a silent promise.

No one will ever take her for granted again. Not when she has the four of us as mates.

“You guys outdid yourselves,” she says, voice rough.

“We wanted you to know what it was like to finally have a real home.”

“A life that would absolutely wreck you to leave behind,” Ledger adds with a soft smile.

“I almost made it without crying, you jerk,” she jokes, swiping at her eyes with a watery chuckle.

As she collects herself, I grab the remote.

I bought her a year’s subscription to that anime streaming channel she mentioned, and figure it’s as good a time as any to download the app and sign in so it’ll be ready whenever she wants to watch.

But no matter how many times I hit the power button, nothing happens.

I pop off the back of the remote. “Does anybody have a couple of AA batteries?”

Running her finger over the spines of the new games I slipped onto her shelf, Ever distractedly calls over her shoulder, “Just take them out of the smoke detector.”

Ledger beats me to it, gaping at the back of our mate’s head with a horrified expression. “ Excuse me. Do you do that often?”

She shrugs. “I mean, not often. But if my wireless mouse dies mid game, you can’t expect me to run out at midnight for batteries; that’d be dangerous.”

Well, it was nice knowing the guy. If the heart attack doesn’t take him out, living with our mate just might.

Ledger’s eye twitches. “Be right back.” His footsteps thunder down the hallway, front door closing behind him as he runs next door to his house.

Myles is pinching the bridge of his nose, shaking his head in defeat, but doesn’t look exactly surprised at the revelation.

At least she isn’t leaving the house in the middle of the night without us, I suppose?

All things considered, that’s far more dangerous than taking the smoke detectors out of commission when she has a shifter mate that would wake up from a dead sleep at the scent of anything out of the ordinary in the house, and a shadow demon that spends most of his time watching her sleep.

Speaking of…

I glance over at Arson leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He’s usually worse than a toddler trying to get Ever’s attention over every little thing. Not to mention, I haven’t seen anything in the house besides Myles’, Ledger’s, and my surprises.

Son of a bitch.

Once it hits me, I feel like an oblivious asshole. While we were busy running around town buying things and renovating the house, he’s been her guard dog, keeping her out of the house so we could surprise her. We didn’t leave him any time to arrange his own surprise.

“It’s from both of us,” I blurt. Ever stops what she’s doing to tilt her head at me in confusion. “The gaming den. It’s from Arson and me.”

Her eyes widen. “Oh!” Closing the distance between them, she jumps, and his shadows spring out of his body to catch her. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize or mean to ignore you. Here I am, molesting Bell’s face while you watch. I'm a dick.” She palms his face and kisses the hell out of him.

Arson gives me a confused look over her shoulder, but doesn’t contradict my claim. “I got you,” he searches my face with a frown before slowly saying, “ another gift, too.”

Well… shit. Now I feel stupid.

Arson reaches behind his head and strips off his shirt.

Among the hundreds of scars littering his torso is a splash of color on his chest, right above his heart.

Ever’s name is scrawled out in bold script, intertwined with some popular gaming characters hanging off of the letters or jumping off of them, a cord wrapping around the letters and ending with a chibi figure rendition of Ever herself holding the controller.

It’s… absolutely perfect, the son of a bitch.

A mismatch of all of our mate’s favorite fandoms emblazoned on his skin to commemorate his dedication.

“We wanted to give you a home filled with things you couldn’t live without,” he explains. “But the only thing I don’t want you to leave behind is me.”

Kiss ass. Why didn’t I think of that?

Obviously, she melts for him; that type of romantic shit is better than foreplay, and the two of them are damn near dry humping by the time Ledger comes back into the room with a toolbox and grocery bag filled with supplies, grumbling under his breath as he heads straight for the smoke detector and rips open a new package of batteries.

“Oh, I almost forgot the last surprise!” Arson suddenly gasps before sprinting from the room, leaving a breathless and confused Ever behind.

Aaaaaaaaaand he’s back. All that silent brooding shit today was just the hyperactive demon trying to keep a secret and not ruin the surprise.

He returns a few minutes later, wheeling in Adam’s cage.

With a flourish, he whips off the blackout cover, and we’re treated to a tiny scream.

“I added a couple of mice. But it quickly got out of hand, so I dropped in a snake to take care of them. Turns out, he’s deathly afraid of snakes.

Isn’t it nice when these things work out? ”

Ever busts out laughing, crouching to get a closer look, while Myles lectures Arson on reptile habitats and the upgrades they’ll need to do if he truly intends to keep it.

Ledger simply sighs wearily in acceptance and slides a package of batteries into Ever’s desk so she’ll quit stealing them out of the smoke detectors.

I don’t have the heart to tell him she’s absolutely going to forget they’re there the next time her mouse dies and will one hundred percent raid whatever device is closest because it's habit now.

Shaking my head in amusement, I glance around the room, my heart lighter than it’s ever been. We may have been trying to surprise Ever with her dream home, but by doing so?

We also built mine.