Page 4 of Protected By the Elf Prince

And it was that part that had stuck with me.

Not the new ink that had painfully appeared as soon as we were close to each other, mine on my wrist, his on his neck. And the talk about fated mates or completing bonds or whatever the hell else hadn’t been what was playing on a loop in my mind either.

It was the way he’d looked at me.

Like he was… pleased. Like he’d found something he’d been missing.

I scrubbed a hand over my face and stared harder at my coffee. I’d gotten up, since sleep wasn’t happening, and hoped that a wake-up buzz from the brown liquid would knock the thoughts loose.

Didn’t work.

There was nothing about last night that made sense.

Shifters. Vampires. Elves.

My brain kept trying to file it under dream or hallucination, but the problem was that dreams didn’t follow you into the morning.

Slowly, I turned my hand over. The tattoo was still there, marking my wrist and up my forearm.

It wasn’t like normal ink a tattooist could do. A dark blue that shone in a way I couldn’t describe, it almost looked alive and like it was part of me now.

I swallowed.

“Okay,” I muttered under my breath. “Okay, so… this is all real.”

Saying it aloud didn’t help. If anything, it made my chest tighten.

I dragged my other hand through my hair, fingers catching, and leaned forward, elbows on the table as I stared at the damn thing like it might explain itself.

It didn’t.

Of course it didn’t.

Because apparently I was now living in a world where Fate just decided things for you and didn’t bother asking for your input.

Lucky me.

Sighing, I closed my eyes, until I could feel that familiar weight of a child watching you because they were worried about you.

Only this child was a fully grown man and hadn’t lived at home for a long time, but he’d stayed last night. Not that I’d been in this house long. I’d only moved to town when an accountant job opened up close enough that I could apply. Close to the club, too, so I could finally be near my son again.

I let out a slow breath and leaned back in my chair.

I looked toward the doorway to see Monkey there. That was his club name, earned when he became a member of the Fury Motorcycle Club. When he was born, we’d named him Leon, but once he’d patched in as a full member, he was christened with Monkey—no doubt because all the monkeying around he did. When he’d asked me to call him that, I did.

He was my son, no matter what he wanted to be addressed as.

His mother—God rest her soul—may have had a different opinion, but I just wanted my son to be happy, and as a member of the club, he was.

He was leaning against the doorframe like he’d been there a while, arms crossed and quiet. His eyes flicked down to my wrist, then back up to my face. “Morning,” he said casually, like this was any other day.

I huffed out something that might’ve been a laugh if it didn’t sound so rough. “Yeah. Let’s go with that.”

He didn’t smile or move. He just stayed where he was, watching me like he was trying to figure something out. Or maybe like he was waiting for me to say something.

Did he expect me to have made a decision?

I looked back down at my wrist again. “Still there,” I said, because apparently, I was stating the obvious now.