Page 32 of The Baker and the Kraken

“Yes,” Calder agreed. He hesitated for a moment and then admitted carefully, “Perhaps longer.”

Adam goggled at him. Millennia came after centuries. Seriously? The man might have waited thousands of years for him? (Or for someone who could be his mate. But that felt like splitting hairs. Now that they’d found one another, it surely couldn’t seem like anything except Calder waiting this long for him. Adam had to still the urge to apologize for taking so long, as if that had ever been in his control.)

And yet Calder was still just sitting there, looking exactly as he always did. (With tentacles now, admittedly, but Adam was quite enjoying the warm clasp of them while the two of them ate at the same time. He could envision a lot of fun with all these limbs.) Adam’s perception might be changing, but Calder was exactly the man he’d been when Adam had first met him. He’d always been a possibly millennia-old shifter. He’d done a good job of explaining why he wanted Adam, even if part of Adam thought that had to be an error. Maybe his human brain just wasn’t designed to grasp that much time.

Calder continued, “But I had many calls upon my time, and I always knew it could take a long time to find you. I slept when I needed to, and I spent a lot of time swimming in the oceans. Time passed differently in that form. It’s not like I spent a thousand years in a 9-to-5 job I hated.”

Adam barked out a surprised laugh.

Calder grinned at him. “And I assure you that every moment was worthwhile since it led me here to be with you now.”

Adam had to smile, melting in the face of such sweetness. And really, even though the timeline was very extreme, he supposed this was the same feeling that mates or even just regular partners usually had. They could have found one another sooner, but they found one another… when they found one another. That’s how every relationship worked.

They’d found one another now, and they’d spend the rest of their li—

Adam straightened abruptly, alarm zinging through him with a sharp metallic bite. “Oh, my god, you aren’t going to die when I do, are you? Calder, we can’t—!”

Calder had been alive for millennia, but if he bonded with Adam and he was tied to Adam’s little human life…

No.

No, no, no, no.

Even as panic engulfed him, Calder’s arms reached across the table to join his tentacles and actually plucked Adam out of his seat. Adam clutched at the firm skin, shocked back into the present moment with a little shriek, and he found himself settled on Calder’s lap a moment later.

Calder’s human arms joined all the others, and it was a lot harder to panic when wrapped securely in so many affectionate arms.

“That’s not something you need to worry about,” Calder soothed.

“Of course I have to worry about that!” Adam exclaimed, feeling some of the alarm spike through him again. His voice was still too high. “Calder, I know it’s not definite that the shifter will die if the witch does, or vice versa, but look at what happened to my aunts! I can’t be responsible for your death. I can’t.”

He couldn’t bear the idea of cutting Calder’s life off like that, not even when he knew that it should be Calder’s choice.

Calder’s expression was very serious. “Adam, sweetheart, this is how the mythical shifter bond works. When one of us dies, so does the other.”

Before Adam could figure out how to yank Calder’s tentacles off and run for the hills, he continued. “But if we bond, your life will be extended to match mine.”

Adam was so caught up in his worry about cutting Calder’s life short that it took him a long moment to understand what Calder was saying.

“What?” he gasped out.

Calder nodded, gaze intent on Adam’s face. “You will live as long as I do. We are very hardy and difficult to kill, and the same would be true of you.”

“Are you sure?” Adam asked anxiously.

“I am entirely certain, sweetheart,” Calder assured him with the ring of absolute truth. “You wouldn’t have to worry that I would ever leave you, nor I you. If one of us was somehow killed or if we decided eventually that we were ready to move beyond, then we would die together. Otherwise, we live for a very long time.”

“Why aren’t there more of you?” That was maybe not the point, but Adam was still reeling, and the question had popped out.

“Unlike other shifters, we believe that a finite number of us ever came into being. We don’t procreate as regular shifters do. Over the vast stretch of recorded time, a small number have gone. We think they’ve chosen to move beyond. Some may still be sleeping and will rejoin us at a future time. But we were never numerous.”

Adam tried to grapple with this. “Wait. Came into being? Does this mean you don’t have parents?”

Calder shook his head. “No. We believe the Magic itself created us, but it’s not like that can be independently corroborated.”

“Wow,” Adam said, unable to come up with anything more intelligent to say.

Calder smiled softly, his gaze intent on Adam’s face. “I spent a long time as a kraken before I decided to become human. We were not born human as regular shifters are. We have similarities, of course, but we’re fundamentally different.”