By the time I heard Sin’s footsteps pad out into the kitchen, Phantom had turned off the shower and was frantically drying himself off. I didn’t wait for him.
I was down the hall and closing myself into Crescent’s sunroom in seconds, immediately smacked in the face by the strongest hit of desert eclipse I’d ever experienced in my life.
Damn.
My head spun a bit.
Crescent lit up when she saw me, only her eyes and nose peeking out from her blanket cocoon. She was quick to fling one of the blankets aside, welcoming me to cuddle up against her pyjama-clad body.
“Come on!” she whispered urgently.
I practically dove into the nest.
Phantom was not as lucky. As the room’s doorknob began to turn, I heard Sin’s voice call out sharply. “Phantom.”
Perfect. I got Crescent all to myself. At least until the hash browns were cooked. We just had to make sure we kept talking in whispers.
“Brought you a gift.” I reached my hand into my deep sweatpants pocket and pulled out the pieces of sketchbook paper.
I separated one from the others and pushed it her way first. It was the newest house sketch.
She immediately grinned and pointed out the owl. “Is that kind of owl something I could see here?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe. It’s a barn owl, I think they’re common?”
She whipped out her new phone, excitedly pulling up the search bar. Our internet took a solid thirty seconds to load the search for ‘barn owls,’ and then when she tapped on an article titledBarn Owls - Everything You Need To Know, there was a slow spinning circle in the centre of the webpage as it loaded.
Eventually it popped up, and according to the geographic range, we were in luck.
“If you ever see one, you have to come get me,” she made me promise.
I put my hand over my heart. “I swear. We’ll see it together, Moonlight. Do you want to see the real gift now?”
Her grin widened. “There’s more?”
I grabbed the other three sketchbook pages, thumbing through them to check them one final time.
The corners were folded, but not harshly, and the paper had a slight wave to it. I’d carried them around a while, making tweaks, wanting to make sure the sketches were perfect.
“Yeah. These… uh…” I stared at them for a moment, a tightness in my chest as I wondered if maybe, this was a terrible idea.
I shoved them into her hands before I could back out.
She looked down at the first one and gasped.
It seemed like it was a good thing until a tear leaked down her cheek, and then I cursed. “Fuck, I’ll?—”
My attempt to retrieve the art resulted in a feral little growl, and my omega frantically pushing herself back away from me. I blinked down the place she’d just been—which she was now about a foot back from.
Then back up at my omega with tear-shined eyes and an angry little pout.
Our bond was an eruption of hormones, and anything Crescent felt was a siren call to Sin, meaning I had about zero-point-five seconds before he burst in, hunting for my head.
“Do you… like them?” I asked.
It felt like a stupid question, but she’dcried. And then defended them with one of the most intense sounds I’d ever heard from her. But I was having trouble getting past the tears.
“They’re mine,” she whispered. “Forever. And they look exactly perfect.”