Page 119 of Destined Paranormals: Volume One

I suddenly felt something on my head. I looked up with my eyes but couldn’t see it. When I reached up, there was something that was soft on my head. I pulled it off and looked at the bright blue wool cap with a big pompom on it.

“That’s your hat,” Calum told me. He took it and slowly put it back on my head. “You need to wear it, though, to keep you warm. Your body will lose a lot of heat from the top of your head.”

I nodded, and when I reached back up, there were things on my hands. I held them up. “Gloves?”

Calum shook his head. “Mittens. Father most likely didn’t know exactly which size of gloves you need. They’ll keep your hands and fingers warm. You don’t want to get frostbite.”

I thought about it for a moment and nodded.

“Can we play now?”

Calum chuckled. “Absolutely. You run, I’ll chase you.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I took off running. I found it more difficult to run in the snow than expected, and it didn’t take long for Calum to catch me. When he did, I squealed as we fell. We landed on our sides in the snow, and when it touched my face, I understood what he’d meant when he said it was cold. I sat up and looked over at my mate, who was lying in the snow, looking up at me.

“Can we do that again?” I asked. I didn’t wait for a response though. Instead, I used magic to give me more of a head start, and I took off running toward the back of the house.

“No fair! You cheated by using your magic!”

I laughed. Still, even with the head start, Calum caught up with me, and he once again pulled me down into the snow with him. This time though, he rolled me to my back and then leaned down, covering my mouth with his.

I reached up, grabbing his coat with my mittened hands and holding on as my mate kissed me. When his tongue swiped on my lips, I opened for him, the heat from his lips feeling drastically different from mine, which had cooled considerably. I moaned when Calum’s tongue touched mine, and then whimpered when he suddenly pulled away.

“Soon, sweetheart. I promise I’ll start soon, and we’ll not stop until the morning. But we have to go look at houses in a bit, and outside in the snow is not somewhere that we should really get frisky at.”

I sighed and pouted a bit, but even I knew he was right. “Can we play in the snow again? Once we find our own house?”

“As often as you want,” Calum said, then leaned down and gave me another quick kiss before he stood and pulled me to my feet with ease.

I used magic to clean the snow off us, and we walked hand in hand back toward the house. It was time to go find our own place.

Chapter 9

Calum

Apparently, we had a few options when it came to housing. There were houses available in the pack and others in the den. But there were several houses that were for sale in between Timber Valley and Honey Creek. I had a feeling that the council had something to do with them because it was simply too convenient that there was more than one house that was empty without someone having snatched it up already.

Since I didn’t belong to the pack or the den and I had plenty of funds to outright purchase a house, I chose to take Asher to look at the houses that were available for purchase. We were being met at the first one to be shown around. Father had insisted on me borrowing his SUV, something that I was grateful for. I would have to get one for us if I chose to continue working. In all honesty, I was actually leaning more toward taking some time off. I had a new mate and hoped to claim him in a very short time, and we would be starting a family. I wanted to spend time with Asher and our children without having to leave him home while I spent hours at work.

“Do you think we’ll be able to find someplace that we like?”

I glanced at Asher and grinned. It had started to lightly snow in the last hour, and I wanted to be sure to be as careful as possible on the drive.

“I do. If you fall in love with a place, just speak up, and we’ll make an offer on the place. I think it’s a council thing though, honestly.”

“How so?”

I turned onto the road that we needed, wondering which house it was. There weren’t many, only about five; they all seemed to have very large lots, the neighbors were plenty far enough away, and each individual lot was secluded with trees. It was nice.

“It’s in the council’s interest to have the area filled with more paranormals than humans that don’t know we exist.”

“Right. But what does that have to do with the houses?”

“The council has either bought up empty places, or they’ve built them. Looking at these houses, I’d say they were new builds, and they did it with the intent of filling them with most likely council employees who choose not to live on the mountain.”

My phone said we had arrived at our destination, and I stopped in front of a gorgeous log-and-stone house.

“Whoa. That’s it?”