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That was the thing. Anita just understood me, and I understood her.

She was usually so calm and in control, so I got a little choked up when I saw the emotion in her eyes as she stared up at me, her slender fingers gentle on my jaw.

“I love you too, Nuni,” she repeated, then released my face to slide her arms around my hips, burying herself against my front.

My body relaxed completely, fingers threading through her silky dark hair as I held her close. Calm contentment washed over me as we stood there. Faint sounds of suburban life filtered in from nearby yards. Kids screaming and laughing and splashing in paddling pools on a hot Sunday afternoon. Crickets chirping in the grass. The warm breeze rustling the trees. A familiar laugh reached us through the closed back door, but I couldn’t place which of my siblings it was.

I was pretty sure I’d never been this happy.

“Sorry, hold on…” Anita pulled back after another minute or so, her hands slipping under the back of my T-shirt to palm my bare skin as she gazed up at me. “How is the ice cream cake relevant, again?”

“I—It doesn’t matter.” I shook my head and cupped her face, leaning down to kiss her.

Chapter Forty-Six

Nuni

M y typically calm, unflappable girlfriend was stressed as fuck.

And I hated it.

Mainly because I felt entirely responsible.

We were just a couple of weeks away from the Rorik + Stimis anniversary party. I was super excited for it, mostly because I knew how hard Anita was working to make it a success and I wanted her to witness the fruits of her labour. But I’d have been lying if I said I wasn’t also looking forward to celebrating the business I’d built from nothing, as well as giving everyone in the company a night of great food and free booze.

I liked to think I hadn’t been too demanding about the party, but Anita was definitely tenser than I’d thought she’d be, especially because she seemed to be completely on top of the planning. I knew she was a perfectionist, but she was also pretty level-headed most of the time. She was majorly stressed out though, which made me feel really guilty.

I was a fixer by nature, so I’d been doing everything I could to try and help her relax without inadvertently annoying the fuck out of her. We were so similar in some ways, and I knew how irritating I found it when I was deep in the zone working on something and someone kept trying to distract me.

I took her out for dinner whenever she’d let me. I found nostalgia-inducing movies and TV shows from when we were kids for us to watch. I even offered to go swimming with her—I trusted the cleanliness of the Terres Gym pool far more than the one at Dunmore, mainly because Terres didn’t allow kids.

I booked her in for a relaxing deep tissue massage at Redmud Spa, confident that Svyn’s giant, meaty fists would be able to work the knots out of her back. I decided to get a facial and manicure while I waited for her, because I was extremely conscious that I’d be getting up on stage in front of hundreds of people soon and I wanted to look my best.

But when Anita came out of her massage, she didn’t actually look any more relaxed than she had going in. And then Svyn had come out of the treatment room looking a little concerned and mildly offended, telling me that she’d spent half the massage typing frantically on her phone because it kept vibrating.

So when none of that worked, I decided to bring out the big guns.

It was a Friday evening, and Anita had been glued to her laptop on the couch ever since we finished dinner. Her IBS had flared up last weekend because of the stress, so I made the executive decision that it was now my boyfriendly duty to try and get her to relax for the sake of her health. Just for the weekend, at least. And if I couldn’t achieve the entire weekend, just for the rest of the night.

I stood in the bedroom after my shower, waffling over the plan I’d come up with to distract her. I was really nervous about it. I’d never shown a human my true form before, but if anything was going to succeed in pulling Anita’s attention away from her laptop, I was pretty sure it would be me emerging from the bedroom eight feet tall with a long, lizard-like snout and huge, curving claws.

What if she found me really ugly though? I didn’t really like the way I looked in my true form, and I didn’t really like how much more… animalistic it made me feel, which was why I mostly stayed in my humanoid one. It wasn’t just my appearance— my voice grew deeper and more guttural. And I went all weird, wanting to sniff everything and run around and dig through the earth.

I didn’t want her to find me unattractive. Beastly. If she looked horrified, I’d just shift back and never show her again. It wasn’t like I was one of those demiurgus who preferred being in their true form while they were at home. It would be fine.

Except it would kind of suck if she really hated it. It was a part of me I didn’t show often, but it was still a part of me.

My hearts beating fast, I pulled on a pair of loose shorts and spent some time trying to calm down by fixing my hair in the mirror. Then, after giving myself one last look, I turned away and shifted, wincing at the slight ache that shot through my limbs as they lengthened, the muscles stretching. The ground got further away as I grew and my heels rose up off the floor. My vision shifted and adjusted as my face stretched into its snouted form. The tips of my ears fluttered rapidly as they picked up the tiniest sounds—the faint tapping of Anita’s fingers on her laptop’s keyboard. The slow drip from the shower. The hum of the fridge all the way on the other side of the nesthouse.

Swallowing, I opened the bedroom door and crept into the living room. At least I was stealthier in this form, so I was able to get right behind the couch, padding across the floor on all fours, without Anita noticing.

She jumped when I prowled up over the back of the couch and snuffled at her hair. “What—oh my god.”

Shit, was that a good ‘oh my god’ or a bad ‘oh my god’? Trying to ignore my nerves, I nuzzled my way down her neck then plucked gently at the cotton of her T-shirt with my teeth. “Hi.”

“Nuni.” She sounded kind of delighted. Almost a little breathless, actually. “Look at you.”

Finding the courage to lift my head, I grinned at her. “Yep. Thought you might want to see it.”