“I think I can wake up for bacon,” I said. “But I can’t make any promises. I guess I’ll give you my spare key in case I’m not awake yet when you knock on my door.” I went to my junk drawer and took out the key that I left with my neighbor, Madison, when I went on vacation. “Promise to be respectful about having a key, okay?” I said to Blue.
He winked at me as he snagged the key out of my hand. “I would never be disrespectful about it,” he answered.
I leaned on my doorframe as they left my house. I could see a little skip in Blue’s step that meant he thought that things were going well. There was a little heaviness in Jasper’s stride. I knew that he was used to being in control and setting the rules up. With me, he didn’t get to be in charge. I didn’t know how he’d feel about it down the line, but for now, we needed to establish boundaries and expectations. Our relationship, if you could even call it that, was so new that I already recognized that he’d stomp all over me given half a chance. So I couldn’t give him one.
9
Breakfast
BLUE
“Are you sure about this?” I asked my alpha.
“Yes,” he said, shifting the weight of the grocery bags in his arms so that he could unlock the door to our mate’s home. “She’ll love it.”
I didn’t know if she’d like a home-cooked breakfast. My own mother fought like a banshee anytime someone tried to cook on her stove. I gave it a fifty-fifty shot. I prayed that our mate would forgive us for working in her kitchen.
We turned on the lights in the kitchen and hunted for everything we needed as quietly as we could, not wanting to wake her before dawn. Soon, we had a pan of bacon sizzling on the stove, a tray of buttered toast in the oven, and a gigantic pan of scrambled eggs on the rack under the toast.
“Smells good.”
We turned to look at our mate, whose footsteps we hadn’t heard over the crackle of the bacon cooking on the stove and the sound of the blower.
“You look good enough to eat,” I said. “Good morning.”
She was wearing a silk pajama set. I lifted her up and set her on the counter, nuzzling her neck so I could smell her unique scent. “You smell better than bacon,” I told her.
“Quite a compliment,” she responded in a dry tone. “But don’t think that you can distract me from breakfast.” Her stomach growled. “I’m as hungry as a bear.”
“Probably not as hungry as a werebear,” Jasper remarked, pulling the toast and eggs out of the oven.
“Smells heavenly,” she moaned. “Hurry up.”
Jasper had worked in a restaurant kitchen when he was a teenager, which meant that he knew how to plate food quickly in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Before I could blink, he had fixed three plates with the first helpings of breakfast.
“Is breakfast your only meal of the day?” our mate asked us.
“No,” I told her. “And that’s only the first serving.”
She blinked, but we steered her towards the table that I’d already set. We dug into our food. She only ate about 5% of what was on her plate.
“Do you not like eggs, toast, and bacon?” I asked. “We can get you something else.” I shoved Jasper’s shoulder. “I told you we should’ve just gone to Yoder’s.”
“No!” she yelped. “I love eggs, toast, and bacon. It’s just that the amount of food on my plate could keep me happy for a week.”
We both looked at it. “But it’s just a small fraction of breakfast.”
She gulped hard. “I guess shifter appetites are something that I’ll have to get used to if we…”
“We will,” Jasper announced, even though I glared a warning at him.
“What happened to take it slow and making sure she was comfortable?” I asked, standing to get more eggs and bacon. I wasn’t sure if the toast would fit on my plate.
“I can speak for myself, you know,” Jasmine interjected. “And our relationship isn’t real yet.”
“Real? We have a key to your house. What more is there?”
She crossed her arms and muttere