Page 11

Chapter 11

Zayne

F or the first time in years, I was excited. Never before had my team shown so much promise after just a week of training. They were working hard, sure, but it was more than that. They were excited about the season and ready to really amp up their game.

Not only were they slaying it as a team, but I’d met with their other teachers at the school, and the students were all staying on track with their other studies. For the returning students, multiple instructors said it was their best academic year yet. I couldn’t be more proud.

There were times when I had students who only wanted to be there for the games and had no desire to learn anything else. A lot of times. But that wasn’t how things worked around here. It was more like the human college version—their studies were important and would help shape the rest of their lives, and without passing grades, they couldn’t compete. Looked like that wasn’t going to be a worry this year.

The only concern I had was for Jay, but he had not done anything that raised a red flag big enough to take action. Every time he said something he shouldn’t, all it took was a glance or a sentence and he stopped. I wanted to be wrong about him, and had almost convinced myself I was early on, but I couldn’t pretend anymore. Sure, it was just an inclination I had that perhaps his attitude wasn’t fully accepting of Ash, either as an eagle, an omega, or both, but I trusted my gut on this one.

I didn’t love that he thought that way about my mate, and that alone was an issue. But it went far beyond that. An attitude like that was going to negatively impact his future, and as his teacher, that ate at me.

As great as everything was going, it wasn’t perfect. Ash and I had been so busy with classes, him getting acquainted with the school as a whole, and me making sure all things were in order, that the two of us had had no time to simply slow down and enjoy ourselves. Our picnic slash day of flying still hadn’t materialized, and most nights we ended up eating dinner late and falling straight into bed, not always to sleep right away. It was great, but this go go go wasn’t sustainable. Not in the long run.

Before being mated, I’d spend my entire weekend studying flying footage, analyzing new formations we could try, and figuring out what we needed to practice. My life was work, work, and more work. It was great for the team, until it wasn’t.

The weekend was about here, and we hadn’t discussed plans. Perhaps my mate would want to do something different than all work, because… he understood life better than I did when it came to that. My stomach twisted itself in knots as I thought about the weekend ahead where we had the time to ourselves and absolutely no plans. It shouldn’t be so stressful, and somehow, I managed to make it so.

I arrived home first, put my laptop and things away in my office, then paced around the kitchen, waiting for Ash to arrive. He got here not long after me, his smile wide when he opened the door.

“Hey, how was your day?” he asked.

We’d had class together this morning, but since then, we hadn’t seen each other. He had been shadowing the math department, and I’d been in meetings. I wasn’t sure which was worse. Although the way Ash fit in with all the departments hadn’t gone unnoticed. The staff loved him.

“Good. How about yours?” As good as meetings could get, anyway.

He toed off his shoes. “Good. I feel like there’s so much to learn and catch up on here. I spent two hours in the library picking out a few of the clan history books that I’d like to go over.”

In the short time we’d been together, I’d gathered that my mate was a voracious reader. He’d spent a lot of time inspecting my bookshelves. I was less so, but I did enjoy it from time to time.

I cleared my throat. “Any thoughts on dinner? Would you like to go out? I feel like I should—” No, that wasn’t a fair thing to say. I stopped myself, thinking over how I wanted to phrase my thoughts. I didn’t want him to think taking him out was a chore, even if I hated the thought of leaving my house after a long week of work. He’d mentioned a place he and his friend used to frequent before he moved here. Ash wasn’t like me. He enjoyed people-ing.

Ash beat me to it. “I thought we’d go over some of the footage we took this week, maybe talk about the team. I wouldn’t mind familiarizing myself with our past competitions as well. I watched footage before joining the team, but now that I know them better, I want to watch it again. The team from the Azurewing clan is going to be tough to contend with this year. Justine moved up from the lower division, and she’s pretty good. Unless… you don’t like to work on weekends?”

This wasn’t him being nice or trying to do what he thought I wanted to do. He had really thought about this and came up with this idea. We really were made for each other.

“No, that’s—honestly, that’s exactly what I would be doing if…” Sometimes I needed to think more before speaking. Sometimes I needed to think less. I was kind of a mess like that.

“If I wasn’t here?” Ash filled in, and I hated it.

“That’s not what I meant.” Even if it was what I’d been about to say.

Ash stepped forward and wrapped his arms around my middle. He pressed a soft kiss to my jawline. “I don’t need you to change anything about your routine for me. We’re building a life together. You don’t have to work around me. Tell me exactly what you’re thinking, and I’ll tell you what I’m thinking, and we’ll figure out where those two things overlap.”

“Talking isn’t easy.”

“It is if you trust that I’m not going to get upset or annoyed. I’m pretty low-key, mate, I promise.” He kissed my cheek. “How about now that I’ve told you what my thoughts were for this weekend that we finally have just the two of us, you tell me what your thoughts are?”

“I can do that… but you’re distracting me by being so close.” I pressed a kiss to his lips, letting my tongue explore. The kiss deepened. So much for talking.

He backed away, breathless, with a broad smile. “Easy there. That’ll come later.” He winked and adjusted his jeans.

“Like I said, I figured we would go over some footage, talk about our ideas for the team. You can work however you like to work, I’ll work however I like to work, and then we can toss ideas out there and see what fits—see how they align.” He was so much better at this communicating thing than I was. “I don’t need a special date or any sort of outing. I like to stay in. I love this place, and I feel at home here. We can do dates and travel during the off-season if we want, but right now we have a competition to plan for.”

I let out a breath. “Those were my exact plans. Then I started second-guessing, thinking perhaps we should do something else, go someplace else. I haven’t had to do this relationship thing before.” Waiting for my mate had always been my plan. I’d been beginning to think that would never be in the cards for me. I was so happy to be proven wrong on that.

“I’ll teach you.” He winked again. That wink was going to be my undoing. “Do you shift at all on the weekends? Go out flying?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Once I start thinking about formations I want the team to work on, I practice them myself. See how they feel, see what comes naturally, what doesn’t, find out if there’s any way I can help work them through it.”

He nodded. “Well, I can’t exactly do it that way, but I can fly. And soon, I’ll have a different set of wings.”

I raised a brow. “That’s right, you will. Do you feel any different?” I quickly glanced at his abdomen and looked away.

“You’re so cute when you’re shy and unsure,” he said. “I don’t feel any different, yet. I’ve been trying to see if maybe I sense something, but nothing so far. It’s very early, mate. I may not even be pregnant.”

I hated the look of disappointment on his face. “I know.”

“Would you like me to be feeling different?” Both hands were on his middle. We’d talked about the possibility of having kids few times, but we hadn’t talked about our feelings around it.

I nodded eagerly. “I can’t wait to build a family with you.”

“Me too. I still want to work, though, and coach. Our family will come first, of course, but I’m not going to not work. I hope you know that.” He grabbed the back of his neck. “The childcare here is amazing. It isn’t like we’d be choosing between quality care and home care.”

I wasn’t sure if that was him explaining it to me or if he was trying to convince himself.

“Only the best people have been hired for that department.” Which was mostly true for all of them, but doubly so there. “And I figured you would want to keep your job. You worked too hard to get here to have to start all over again.” I hesitated. “Maybe it’s time for me to retire. It’s not like I’m fresh out of school myself.”

He shot me a glare. “No, mate, it is not . I like working with you.”

“All right.” He hadn’t left room for argument, so I wasn’t going to give him one. Besides, I liked working with him too.

“You think about dinner—either takeout or if we want to make something, or… I don’t even care what we do as long as it consists of food. I’m going to go shower. I was combing through a lot of dusty books.”

“That sounds great. I’ll queue up some of the footage I have. We can put it on the big screen.” We had set up cameras in multiple locations with the hope of catching every move from different angles. It didn’t only matter what they looked like from the front, every single movement counted.

“Perfect.” He gave me another quick kiss and skipped into the bathroom.

“I think this is going to work out just fine,” I said to myself as I heard the shower turn on.

No part of me felt like cooking and even less of me felt like driving to town for food. I dug through the freezer and found a pizza. There was nothing delicious about it, but it would do.

Pizza in the oven, I cued up the footage and checked the timer. There was still 7 minutes left on dinner.

“Plenty of time.” I shucked my clothes on the way to the bathroom. “Knock, knock,” I called into the cracked doorway. “Any room in there for one more?”

“Only if that one more can reach the spot in the middle of my back that I keep missing,” he teased.

“That one more is the king of back scrubbing.” I walked into the bathroom and under the shower with him. “Fair warning, dinner will be ready in six minutes.”

“Six?”

“Yep. Six.”

“Then why aren’t you kissing me alre—”

I reached behind his head and puled him to me, giving him a searing kiss, one that was a promise of things to come.

Spoiler alert: I burnt the pizza. Totally worth it.