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Eula laughed, a genuine laugh, looking down at the locket again. “Like the time I lost this – I don’t think I’ll be rushing into something like that again. But me and Ambrose, we had some fun times, I tell you what. You don’t want to know what we used to get up to.”

Ethan’s head whipped up faster than should have been possible, like an overstretched rubber band snapping. His stomach dropped into his feet.

Inside his head, the pegasus whinnied in horror.

“Ambrose?” he said, though a voice inside his head tried to reason that it didn’t mean anything, and there were plenty of people called Ambrose in the world.

Well, not plenty , but some , and that was all that mattered, right? It would be too much of a coincidence.

No.

No way.

“Yes?” Eula said. A mischievous smile twitched at the corners of her lips. “He was my particular friend back in the day. You remember – the one I was hiking with, when –”

With impeccably bad timing, Ethan’s cellphone started to ring.

He picked it up, intending to end the call – and then he saw the name on the screen.

Ambrose Roan .

It occurred to him that any other person would just have the name listed as Dad , but, well, business life came before family life.

But beyond that…

What the hell?!

Why was his father choosing to call him now , when – when –

“Father?” he said, turning to face the corner of the room, like that would do anything to remove him from the gaze of prying eyes. “Look, now is not a great time –”

“I’m sorry, Ethan,” Ambrose said – before apparently correcting himself. “ Son. I’ve been – well, I’ve been an idiot.”

“What?” Ethan said, barely getting the word out of his mouth in his shock. It was the first time in his entire life that he’d heard his father say something even slightly apologetic, let alone self-deprecating.

It was bizarre. Even more than that, it was suspicious .

Had some sort of supernatural creature taken over his father’s body? Was Ethan going to have to solve yet another mystery? He needed a break, dammit!

“You can come back whenever you want,” his father went on. “I… I overreacted.”

Ethan was silent, too shocked to know what to say. And it took his father a moment to gather himself too, apparently, needing a moment after even this small admission of fault. He cleared his throat before continuing.

“I – I only pushed you so hard because I wanted you to succeed and be happy. But I see now… kicking you out was a mistake. I should’ve listened to what you had to say.”

“Father? Are you okay?” Ethan asked urgently. “What’s going on? Are you in trouble?”

“Ambrose?” Eula said behind him, and Ethan almost jumped out of his skin.

“Who’s that?” Ethan’s father asked suspiciously as Ethan pulled the phone away from his ear, his father’s voice clear in the silence that had fallen over the room.

“It is you!” Eula exclaimed, barging around the furniture and grabbing the phone from Ethan’s slack fingers. “I’d know that voice anywhere!”

“… Eula?! ” Ambrose said incredulously, his voice clearly audible even though Ethan no longer had the phone. “What the hell are you doing there?!”

“I could say the same for you!” Eula said cheerfully. “ I’ve been helping out your boy here. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I’ll tell you that much.”

“What?” Ambrose said, pure confusion in his voice, and Ethan almost felt sorry for him.

“Anyway, it was nice of you to call and all, but I’ve moved on,” Eula said. “Onward and upward, and all that.”

Ethan was starting to see where Janie got it from.

Ambrose sounded bewildered. “Moved… on?”

“Sorry,” Eula said brightly, and if nothing else, Ethan was glad that this minor fiasco was providing her with a much-needed distraction. “But you’ll find someone else, I’m sure.”

There was a long pause in which Ethan could almost see his father rubbing at his forehead in consternation, before he said, “Could you put Ethan back on, please?”

“Sure thing,” Eula said. “Catch you around, Amby. I might have moved on, but you’d still be welcome around anytime – for old times’ sake, of course.”

She handed the phone back to Ethan, Ambrose muttering imprecations in the background.

“Father?”

“Maybe now isn’t a good time,” Ambrose said, his voice sounding strained.

I could not possibly agree more, Ethan thought.

But what he said was: “Probably not. There’s a lot going on here.”

“Will you be back in on Monday then, Ethan?” His father’s voice still sounded a little ruffled, but Ethan could tell he was trying to put a professional face on it – as always.

His father might be extending him some unexpected leniency, but it was still clear: business came first. “Swynford is back on board, and I’d like for you to lead the project.

You deserve it. You put a lot of work into that presentation – and in the end, Swynford found the whole thing quite amusing. So, no harm, no foul. What do you say?”

Ethan did actually appreciate the gesture – and, if circumstances had been different, he would’ve accepted in a heartbeat.

But things had changed. He had changed.

His mate was here. His new life was here. He was here – a new version of himself, a better version of himself, that he had barely begun to get to know.

He couldn’t let all of that go.

“Sorry, Dad,” he said, the word coming to him with difficulty. “As much as I appreciate the offer, I can’t do it.”

“Son?” his father said, his shock evident in his voice, and Ethan realized that it was probably the first time he’d ever defied him.

Ethan smiled. “I’m on indefinite leave,” he said. “Emphasis on indefinite . I don’t think I’m coming back.”

He paused, then hastily clarified, “To work! I’ll come back and visit, of course. But it’s just not me. Not anymore.”

He decided to leave out the part about becoming a receptionist at a veterinary clinic out in the boonies. Best to take this one step at a time.

There was a very, very long pause on the other end.

“And what’s brought this on?” his father asked at last, in measured tones.

He thought about beating around the bush, but in the end, he decided that it would be best to be honest. His father would appreciate it.

“I’ve met her,” he said, dropping his voice – but then he realized that Janie had left the room, presumably disgusted at her grandmother being all weird at Ethan’s dad, and so he raised his voice again. “I’ve met my mate.”

The pause was even longer this time.

“Eula?!” his father finally blurted. “Son, no .”

“No! Not Eula!” he yelped. “Her name’s Chloe! Shit , Dad, don’t scare me like that.”

“Oh, thank God,” Ambrose muttered.

“Ol’ Eula’s the catch of the day, you know,” Eula called out, and Ethan didn’t need to be able to see her in order to know that she was winking saucily. “You’re missing out.”

Ambrose sighed.

“Okay, son,” he said. “I tried to protect you from all that fated mate stuff in order to help keep you focused on what needed doing here, because I’d seen the most hard-nosed people go soft when they found their mate. But if this is truly what makes you happy…”

“It is, Dad,” he said, smiling.

Ambrose muttered something incomprehensible under his breath, before putting on a more professional tone. “I’ll hand off your work to Dennis, then.”

“Sounds good to me,” Ethan said amiably. And it did sound good. He knew that Dennis would jump at the opportunity. He always had been snapping at Ethan’s heels – but then, maybe one day Dennis would find his own mate, and start to re-think his life plans himself.

In the meantime, who knew what would happen? Maybe Dennis would do an even better job with the Swynford project than Ethan would have.

Don’t go too far, the pegasus muttered darkly. It had never liked Dennis.

There was another long silence, before Ambrose said quietly, “Pursue your happiness, son. Don’t be like me.”

“What?” Ethan said, stunned by what appeared to be an actual demonstration of paternal love, but the line had already gone dead.

He stared at the phone, trying to digest the events of the past five minutes.

What the hell just happened?

The pegasus was dumbfounded. Of course, it was thrilled that they’d been given his father’s blessing, and it wanted nothing more than to be with their mate – but it did also love the corporate life.

Ethan had never quite understood why an ancient mythical winged horse would be so into eight a.m. budget meetings, but, well, there was a lot about the pegasus he didn’t understand.

With time, he was sure that the pegasus would manage to reconcile the major life changes they were about to undergo. And Chloe’s business was going to require a lot of work in order to run at peak efficiency.

See it as a new challenge, he told the pegasus, and it stood a little taller, puffing out its chest.

He wondered about the connection between his father and Eula – and then he didn’t wonder about it any further. He didn’t want to know, and, more to the point, it wasn’t any of his business.

Though he did wonder if the two of them had something to do with the fact that Curtis had been haunting him.

Maybe whatever magic had brought Curtis back had meant to attach him to Ambrose, since he’d been there the day that the necklace had gone missing, but it had attached him to Ethan instead by accident?

Ethan suppressed a sigh. This is why I don’t like magic.

In any case, it was all over and done with. Today was a day of endings, but also of new beginnings.

“Everything okay?” Chloe asked, coming over to him, concern and amusement both written across her face.

“More than okay,” he said, taking her into his arms and letting the warmth of the mate bond suffuse him.

“Everything’s perfect.”