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“Please inhale.”
I down a breath, let it out, find Ollie watching me again, red-faced and oh so tender.
It’s like every dream I’ve ever had is coming true. Every piece of every puzzle that I’ve been missing. It’s right here. It’s with him. Soulmates. A destiny filled with love. Someone to be my someone. And…and magic. A world of something more than wake up, go to work, feed yourself, shower, sleep, repeat, repeat, repeat, taxes.
“You mustn’t understand.” Ollie swipes his hand over his mouth. “You don’t get a choice on who your soulmate is. And now that you’ve claimed me, you’re stuck.”
My heart plummets. “Oh.” The air in my lungs compresses. “Right.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry… I kind of assumed you…” I open my car door, suddenly constrained inside the vehicle. “Right. You were trying to get the emotions you couldn’t control out through your music so you wouldn’t act on them, because you have reasons to not want to act on them. And now I’ve…ruined everything.”
He’s stuck with me.
“No. No. No, no, no.” Ollie exits the vehicle, loops around the hood, and drops into a crouch in front of me before I can step outside. He takes my hands and looks up into my eyes. “Brittny. No.” His nostrils flare with an inhale. “I want to be with you. Soulmates are what every faerie who has one and believes in one dreams about. You’re the one coming from a world that doesn’t understand the culture. You’re the one who’s stuck with all this knowledge I can’t undo.”
I stare at him, certain I’ve misheard something. I echo, “Faerie?”
He flinches, curses, and drops his forehead against my hands.
“There are faeries?” I ask. “Not just shifters?” Then again, it would be really weird if only chihuahua shifters existed, I think. Yeah. Faeries existing, too, makes way more sense.
Ollie’s feeble exhale runs across my fingers. “I’m a type of faerie called a werecanine.”
I have so much to learn. I ask, “Werecanines are like werewolves, but they can turn into chihuahuas?”
“Werecanines can turn into any canine form.”
“But you choose to be the cutest chihuahua in the world…to…what? Flex on every other chihuahua in existence who cannot begin to compare?” I smile, floating. This is the most amazing thing I have ever heard. Magic, shifters, faeries are real.
Alana would kill to know about this.
He deflates. Like a balloon. “Once, I thought being a chihuahua was funny. Once, I believed it was fitting. Now, I’m embarrassed.”
“You’re the prettiest chihuahua I’ve ever seen.”
He sighs, dragging a hand over his face. “I…appreciate the compliment.”
I very much adore this man. Every moment with him so far has felt like breathing for the first time. Is it because we’re soulmates? Is there some kind of unnatural pull between us? I would have thought, for lack of a better term, that pull would be more physical. Like in the books where soulmates are doing the hanky-panky by chapter two. Instead, this feeling settles in my bones like a deep sense of belonging. Like a hug around my heart.
“Can you not change into anything else now that you’ve picked chihuahua?”
“I…can. It’s just…” He peers up at me, despondent and desperate. “I’m growing weary, sunshine. Can we go inside?”
“Are you deflecting my question?”
“Are you going to press it?”
I shake my head. “Boundaries are important in a healthy relationship.”
A weak smile curls up one corner of his mouth. “Glad to hear it.” Rising, he helps me get the luggage I need from the back of my car, all the while answering more of my questions as they pour from my brain.
Does he need pj’s?
No.
Where do his clothes come from?
