Page 14 of Omega Dragon Manny (Shifters For Hire #3)

CLARK

Being together with Beau lit up my world. I never fully grasped the loneliness I’d been enveloped in before he came and took it all away. Coming home to him each night was everything.

After cutting down to half days working at home for a week, I added half in the office, and now I went back and forth.

Some days I’d be in the office, some days I’d be home.

It was more like my old routine, with one major exception—I set up boundaries.

I didn’t take on more work than I could handle during my workday, and I made it clear to the office that my goal now was to do the best job I could in my current position.

I wasn’t trying to climb up the ladder.

I wasn’t racing to partner.

I didn’t want any of that.

This was my job and nothing more.

I’d actually been considering taking a demotion to a position with fewer responsibilities, because at the end of the day, work only mattered as much as we needed the income. My job no longer defined me, and it didn’t prove the kind of alpha that I was or wasn’t.

I shut down my laptop, stood up, and stretched. It was just about time to go home, and I had a stop to make along the way. I wanted to surprise my omega with his favorite dessert, one the bakery only made on Fridays.

I’d pre-ordered ahead this time, learning my lesson from last week when I tried to get them and they’d already sold out. Even with that stop, I was home hours earlier than I used to be, back before I’d finally opened my eyes and realized what my priorities needed to be.

When I walked into the house, bakery box in hand, I saw Beau on the floor on his belly, propped up on his arms, with the three little ones doing the same.

In the middle of them was a cube that played music.

It lit up in time with the music, and right now, it was playing something from Bach whose name escaped me.

Depending on what side of it was up and how many times you tapped it, it played a wide variety of songs, and you could even isolate particular instruments. Betsy particularly loved this. Our sweet baby girl was very much a fan of the violin, and it tended to be a frequent part of the rotation.

I gave Beau a half wave, brought the dessert into the kitchen, then joined them on the blanket. The kids had gotten so big in such a short time. If I were to guess, they’d be crawling any day now.

I thought I was tired when they were newborns. Chasing them around the house once they were mobile was going to be…interesting. A new definition of tire was probably going to enter my vocabulary.

“I’m home from work,” I sing-songed.

Two of them reached for me, then gave up when the song switched and their attention was suddenly elsewhere.

Beau looked across the blanket at me and winked.

We fell into our evening routine. The kids now ate at the table with us. They weren’t eating what we did, at least not in the same form, but we always made sure they had puffs or Cheerios to practice grabbing and gave them the homemade baby food that Beau made every day.

No matter how careful we were, dinner time always led to messy babies and bath time.

It was nice having this routine, something to look forward to when we came home. And while it did change as the kids grew, the framework stayed the same.

And just like most days, they were all sound asleep before the last story was read.

“Do you think I’m boring?” Beau asked, rubbing his chin. “They always fall asleep when I read.”

“They do.” I wrapped my arm around his shoulder. “And I wouldn’t call your reading boring. I’d call it magic sleep whispering.”

He rolled his eyes. “Do you want to wash or dry today?”

“Hmm. What do you want to do?”

It was the same conversation we had every night, and in the end, we always settled it with rock-paper-scissors like we were seven years old instead of full-ass grown-ups with three little ones in their care.

Doing dishes together was one of my favorite things, which sounded ridiculous. We had a dishwasher. Everything could go in there. But more often than not, we opted to wash by hand. That was when we had some of our best conversations.

Which was good, because today, I had something I wanted to talk about.

I knew Beau was a dragon. I’d known he was a shifter from the beginning, and he’d told me about his flight when we first got together.

But I hadn’t met his dragon yet. And it wasn’t like he was a bunny and could just shift in the living room so I could say, Hey, nice to meet you.

He was way too large for that. At least I thought he was.

I’d never asked. Maybe those teacup-sized dragons at the giftshops were true to life.

In any case, I wanted to move forward with our relationship. The only reason I hadn’t pushed it earlier was because of our weird dynamic. He lived in my home and worked for me. That gave me power even if I didn't choose to yield it. I never wanted him to feel cornered into anything.

Except the pull to mark him was getting stronger every time we were together. I wasn’t alone in this. But until we knew each other completely, including his dragon, we both agreed it wasn’t time.

“I was thinking,” I said, drying a plate, “maybe we could find someone to watch the kids for a date.”

He raised a brow. “A date?”

We hadn’t had a date outside the house, not unless you considered it a date with the kids in tow. I hadn’t minded. We were able to have plenty of in-home dates. But also, it would be nice if we were able to get away for an afternoon, just the two of us, even if it wasn’t to see his dragon.

“I thought maybe you could…show me your dragon.”

He dropped the plate he was washing into the sink. Thankfully, it didn’t shatter.

“You’re not scared of him?”

“No. But now that you say it like that, maybe I should be,” I teased.

“Not at all,” he said, still looking stunned. “But what brings this up?”

“I’ve been thinking.” There were so many ways I could say this wrong, and I wanted to get it right. Instead, I went with the first thing that came to mind. “I don’t like you having your own room. I want you to move into mine.”

He blinked. “It feels weird asking me to do that, though. Not when—”

“Not when I’m paying you?” I finished for him.

He nodded. “Yeah. That.”

“But I don’t want you to work for free either. This was your job. Taking your job away because I want to hold you all night wrong isn’t good either.”

“Why is this so awkward?” He grabbed a towel and dried off his hands.

He took out his phone, typed something, and held it out to me. There were numbers, not just numbers, dollars, at the bottom.

“Why are you showing me this?”

“See? I haven’t spent a cent of your money since we kissed. It didn’t feel right.”

He had been banking all of his money. That had never been my intention. It was his to spend.

“Maybe I could work—”

“Beau,” I said a little too sternly.

“You’re right. Asking you to let me work for free doesn’t feel right either. So what are we gonna do?”

“We could start with me meeting your dragon.”

“Consider it done.” He kissed my cheek.

“But that’s not enough.” I smiled. “You could, I don’t know…marry me.”

His eyes went wide. “Shifters don’t usually marry.”

Which wasn’t a no.

“I know. But we haven’t mated either.”

He smiled faintly. “Do you want to?”

“Yes, of course I do, but why don’t we table all this until after I meet your dragon? We keep talking in circles, and that’s the next step no matter where we go from there. I’ll get someone to watch the kids tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? How are you gonna get someone to watch triplets tomorrow?”

“I know a guy,” I said confidently.

And by “know a guy,” I meant I was about to cash in a really big favor with someone at work. I’d probably have to take on some really crappy projects to make up for it, but it was worth it.

Because while not much had been decided tonight, it was a step forward, and that was exactly the direction we needed to be headed…forward.