Chapter 133 - Inseparable

Nash

A servant knocked on the door in the afternoon and presented me with a package. He handed it over, gave a little bow, and then disappeared again before I could ask who it was from. There was no card, just a flat, rectangular box wrapped in plain white paper.

In my line of business, that’s a reason to be suspicious. But after weighing it in my hand and pressing my ear to the box, I determined that it probably wasn’t an explosive device, and carefully removed the paper.

Not a bomb. Just a 5x7 wooden picture frame. I’m sure it was no coincidence that it was a perfect fit for the ultrasound photo.

I knew it had to have come from either Daphne or Louis, but my gut told me it was Louis who sent the weirdly thoughtful gift. I slipped the picture into the frame and set it up on the bedside table. Then I laid down on the bed, propped my head on my hand, and stared at it.

That was my kid.

It gave me a weird feeling in my chest.

I opened my phone. Not the satellite phone that I used for business, but the cheap burner phone that I regularly replaced. At Daphne’s insistence, I had programmed her number, and Louis’s number into the phone. But I didn’t need to use the contacts list, I had already memorized them.

I punched in Louis’s number and opened a text message.

Thank you.

A few seconds later he replied.

You’re welcome.

Cherish this experience.

I was starting to appreciate the fact that Louis wasn’t a total a.sshole. If I had met him in a bar in some random town, we probably wouldn’t have hit it off as friends, but he wasn’t a bad guy. He seemed so smooth and polished on the outside, the picture perfect king in expensive, precisely ironed dress shirts, with his face always smooth and his hair always combed, and his damn shoes shined. On the outside, he was way out of my league.

But behind that posh exterior, there was something else. Something a bit dark, something a little dangerous and unpredictable. A hard, sharp edge that was neatly contained in a fancy jeweled scabbard. When I’d done my research, I had dug up all the rumors that said he had gone insane after the death of his first mate. A lot of people, probably his enemies, speculated that he was still unstable.

Louis Levesque had been to hell and back, and it still showed, when you looked deep. And I liked that about him.

Was it really that bad to be in a three-way arrangement with a man you liked and respected? Like Daphne pointed out, it didn’t have to be a sexual thing…

I rolled over and punched the pillow on the empty side of the big bed. What the hell was I thinking? With the psychic thing between us, there was no way it could not be a sexual thing.

How the hell did this get so complicated?

After a time, I got off the bed and went back to the desk to do some work. I was reading the reports from my field teams when there was another knock at the door. I didn’t have to glance at the clock to see the time, I just knew it was Daphne. When she was near, it changed the atmosphere.

Just like it did when Louis walked into a room. I rushed to the door with a giddy feeling, like I had been separated from her for weeks instead of just a few hours. When I pulled open the heavy door and found her standing there, smiling so sweetly, my heart beat faster.

“Hey,” she said softly.

“Hey,” I said back.

A second or two passed, and then I opened my arms, and she launched herself into them, jumping up, grabbing my shoulders, and wrapping her long legs around my hips. When her eager mouth met mine, my soul thrilled, like it had finally found a home. How the hell was it so spectacular every time our lips met? Wasn’t it supposed to become boring and predictable at some point?

I’d never stayed with one woman long enough to find out, but that had always been my theory. If you kissed the same woman for months, or years, or decades, eventually it became so familiar it was mundane, like kissing your mother on the cheek.

There was nothing mundane about Daphne’s kiss, or the way she squirmed against me, grinding her center into my zipper. I wanted nothing more than to back her into a wall and give her what she wanted, but in the back of my mind I was all too aware that anything I did with Daphne would be played out live for Louis. What if he was in the middle of a meeting or something?

So instead of pinning her against the wall and making love to her until all these disturbing thoughts fled my mind, I carried her over to the sofa and fell into the cushions with her still clinging to my shoulders like a baby monkey.

“Jeezus, I’ve missed you,” I groaned as I pushed her hair out of her face so that I could see you better. “When we’re apart I feel so…lost.”

“Mmhm,” She kissed me again, quickly this time, and then burrowed her face into my neck and wrapped her arms around my body. It felt like something inside me, something that had been wild and dangerous and unpredicatable was suddenly quiet and tame Like the touch of her fingers had the power to quiet my demons.

In so short a time, she had become my anchor to the world.

And that’s the moment, I truly understood what it meant to lose a mate. I knew I would go crazy without her. I understood why the bear shifter had become a serial killer, why Louis was said to have lost his mind for fifteen years. I knew why Daphne freaked out when I suggested we break up this three-way mate bond.

It was more than sex, it was more than something as intangible and transient as love. It wasn’t an emotional attachment. It was the glue that held my soul to my body, and my soul had inadvertently become entangled with Daphnes.

And with Louis’s.

Louis wasn’t just around to be some sort of fill-in foster dad for the child Daphne and I had created.

It was a quantum entanglement, and to try and separate it in the physical world could only lead to horrible, disastrous consequences.

I got it. For the first time, I really got it.

But I didn’t have a f.ucking clue what to do about it.

And I still couldn’t understand why this bond-thing had chosen me. Why bind a human, and out of all the humans, why me? Surely I was the most unsuitable mate in the history of all mates.

Unless…

My arms tightened around Daphne and until she squeaked in protest.

Unless, this is why I came back.

After I died in Afghanistan.